last saturday

Four corners no matter how small still can create an island. 

You can look up and around but here beside the             opening

is a horrifying step to            stake out the campsite and tarp the corners down

because the storm is blowing             in from the place where I have been             before.

But as for me and my house, we will stay amongst the            lightning strikes

and the crowd gathers gloriously beneath the gladiolus            hanging

but of course there isn’t room for an island

beneath those trumpets of tropical             varietals.

Two clicks to the left to illuminate a space of            dust

or mud-cloud             showing what was left after the downpour.

The birch bones shone like an X-ray of             crooked,

speckled pieces of disaster that night on                         the island

never knew this was                        coming

up and around like the comet that sat            burning

a hole            in the backyard between the trampoline and the house

that was built on the edge of the             sea.

You saw it when you descended the stairs.

The house from amongst the lightning strikes that once                        stood

on the island              now makes its way               floating

circling like the red light in the sirens you could hear approach in the distance.

how to write a poem

Sleep in a room that’s door opens to the outside and have your feet facing the wall. You might slip out or you might be pulled out but there’d be a fight first. There’s always a fight first, he told me. Just like in elementary when the popular girl made you fall in front of the boy you liked so you cried in the last stall on the right of the second floor gymnasium bathroom.  “God loves you” and sketches of crosses on a hillside watching you weep because graffiti at that age meant evangelism not conversion. It was in the moment when you cut the snowflakes out of printer paper and pasted them on the window this winter. Something changed that winter that caused the tenants of building to stop sleeping.  A steeping-feeling fell over the brick building on the edge of the city that told them it wasn’t time to go just yet but it wasn’t their decision anyway. There was more to be extracted no matter how painful the squeezing, tamping, smashing.  Try king cobras, love affairs, or the comet that sat glowing and burning a hole in the backyard between the trampoline and your house. You saw it when you descended the stairs. Try the stuff of your dreams. The red-head with a cleft lip told me the pile of carrots were the his treasure trove and he slept next to the outside door to guard them so I started with that.

digital jesus:

master sifter with his sieve

an augury

the causation of

dry mouth

like a mausoleum

an infrastructure

a certain fragile fiber of the foil

gold in the round circumnavigates the sun                   not down here

the seeds that permeated never planted

the distance long became the distance high

the rain that fell didn’t fall for growth

but out of fear                                    now it freezes

and the cold cuts clearer

I collect you

I said

as the building where we stood                                    burned

February

It took me 3 hours to get out of the shower today. The barrage from above and the drain guzzling from below were enough. The warmth encompassed and the slightly too-chlorined Nashville water beaded and broke into streams mirroring veins that pulsed beneath my skin.

The midday sun froze over the scene. A student found dead in their car on the 5^th floor parking garage next to the basketball stadium. The same garage I climbed to the top of to watch the sun melt into hills. But today was different. Today it stopped in its tracts like in Joshua but the rays this time didn’t showcase victory but instead a defeat. My space of glory was someone else’s place of knee-buckling sorrow.

A hospital suite of secrets, of screws and bolts and affairs and moving-ons. The keeping out was what got me. Thursday fell once more to 5 years of hiding and I wasn’t let in again despite my knocking.

These spaces were everything.

They were too much.

But this water hitting and hitting. The consistency of streaming, not screaming for life or love. It’s realer to me today. This is the only space I want to feel today.

red piercing circumnavigation

recollection                                                                                                                        repetition

                                                one in the same

one backward

drenched in ghost silk

a floral pattern of childhood

                                                                                                                        the other the nerves

                                                                                                            the stretch or known as the

                                                                                                                        coming into

                                    the night of sirens

haunts                                                                                                                       

the sweetest darkness                                                                                   

causes the retranslation                                                                       

hypothesis                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                        continues

                                                                                                                        the sound

                                                                                                            plagues the inky filter

                                                                                                            catches you up in the round

           

                        the machinery circumnavigates

the latter feeds the former through the frosted fluorescent spots in winter blackness

                                                                                                           

Hillsboro Road

A fire truck pounding like a steam engine through the rain on a narrow city street

No breaths or wavering

But the movement sends shudders and makes gutters

Of water pulsing into rivers following the flashing truck

Like it’s also rushing to aid

Or save

Like the water from a rock when struck

Or a side when speared

In a similar way,

Dark eyelashes splayed against a fair face in white morning light

Show the same complexity

The same unwavering of pursued

goodness like the rushing truck

But in unending softness

For the unnamed broken

For me

grace

It’ll stop you in your tracks

then

The causation equals likely to

Dry mouth

Like a mausoleum

Containing frozen words that bite

Metallic but quickly dissolve to dust

As the interior folds in on itself

The space

Getting smaller and smaller

due to articles

objects

an infrastructure

of a certain fragile fiber of the foil

The master sifter with his sieve

Collects the almost implosive particles

Trying to hide and disguise and

Tell of the reverse that’s already been won