Blur.

Lion Stuck

I.

That all-nighter we swallowed the fire.
You got hungry and jumped into Chicago’s Misfortunate Manhole.
So much for waiting for the cities to illuminate
and melt. You wanted to steal the cathartic hiss
of the policeman’s radio. It sang of a lover’s stained, desert sky.
You wanted to knock their windpipes.

II.

God save the bridge.
The milky highways, the trains running backwards at the speed of light.
Tell me you’ll never get used
to feeling the slow wind of it reaching to a halt.
I wanted to stand in front of you and
block the wind. Even the slightest whiff could make you blink.
But that one second could’ve traveled light years ahead and back
and I wouldn’t have even noticed.

III.

I should have also told you your voice was browning,
but it wasn’t your lion mouth that failed to open.
Your brain remembered the proper contractions.
Like 1000 how-to videos implanted in your head
but you refused to click on it.
I could test the way you wanted to sleep.
Drown in honey because that was the color of your father’s fists.
How sweet it tasted, like saltwater taffy
where his sweat made you shiver.
Your eyes focusing and refocusing
on the patched mistakes of the back screen door.

IV.

How do you like to say it?
City names, empty middle names,
mispronounced names crying to be read in the dictionary,
pleading in panic full names,
your second death when something whispers your name,
 the author’s redirection in a damp library,
pet names you’ve wanted to throw your shoe at?
How do you like to stretch the bench we’re sitting on
because you couldn’t scrape your ass off the pavement?
Say my name,
you bigoted, flame inducing,
still moving, hand warming you.

Say my name so I can’t hear it again.

Dear April

They told me the rain
was tears from God,
and that every umbrella was created to
boat around the weight of His children’s glory.

Why must you only be thought
with flooding our neighborhoods
with worms and wetness

ivy-lit smiles after smirks
and cool waists flashed to the sun?

It’s still too cold,
they say,
Your knees will catch
a fever.

I suppose I am mad
with her patient eyes
sliding into my muddy fingers
to hunt for sweetness
that my sister never found.

I am mad when her breath
buckles and swoons me
to sketch a play for the trees.

I am mad because

I have not contributed
a drop to God’s nylon canvas.

Here

They’re selling white on white
sheets to cover your pavement.

Black with fatigue,
quirky go-to’s to blush his face
and cast an anchor to his sailor eyes.

They’ve turned down,
tracing the wrinkles and
sickly aura of a night well spent.

Bless the woods,
but they are melting clear
and can see you in the harsh light.

Working Towards Summer Under What Circumstances?

I cannot recall the bruise on my thumb
and the lazy scent of saliva on the carpet.

Working, under what circumstance?
Have you not the mind of a nocturne?
Are you bidding me to sleep
when you know I cannot?

God, I wonder if his fingers fumble
once in a while,
when I firmly hold my soliloquy
between the reed and my sorrowing lips.

It hurts,
down bottom,
I think,
But Saturday holds a repetitive rendition
of the same smiling faces
and the same brand of red pens.

I am not tired;
one has a maximum that
has not yet been conquered.

The Inconsistency of a Beast

Provide some tears for the elephant’s
soliloquy or some explanation as to
why it swings its head back with more
vigor. Clumsiness times your bird bones
and crooked, hawk sculpture resumes
its less stealthy composure
under the trampled dust.
Look at your agility. Dumb.
Stiffened by the sun’s icy glare
and all the stars bearing usual
decisions but cannot move closer.
Then, explain the mouse burning
the elephant’s pride, an innocent
deliveryman with cool infrastructure
and yet you mock the mouse,
the thousands of mating mice
and elephants.
Forgetting your organs and theirs
are created with the same blood
of the universe.

Remarks on Hollow Street

Thanks for licensing     your wet name
Like a spoon against a bitten cheek

to take your vanilla trophy
and      pop it back in :

Your crowd of hairs,
tinsel with limited light

and hoard of little comprehension,

Ma’am, sweet goes your calves
and fish tail swinging back in glee :

Tell me of tomorrow,
please.

How did it end

It’s good, you’re here, that
you’re here, he says,
like every washed up Sunday
catching the beckoning
of a bruised door—

to his face, familiar and raw,
to the flipped kettle reflecting
every ounce of pocket dialed
numbers when the night was
cold and the room was warm.

He smells my jail-bait pupils,
directs the universe’s light
against them so I cannot
look down.

Where does it begin,
my December day?

micro

i am the edge of the island.

i am the smoke
that dawdles when
the sun is dead.

i am the saliva
shrilled over glasses and

i say i see crystals
even though your designed
adjective falters in your mouth.

for once,
i am relieved.

no harm done,
until the earth shifts again.

Museums

You are beneath my tongue,
and like the clip of our t’s
in Connecticut,
you feast away
the dirtiness of knowing
that the ten years
will be shoved into drawers
of slippers and failed papers.

Sometime— I will remind
you the parted hairs of whims
so tender to sell forgiveness
like water to silent palms.

an offering for jennifer

i take it the photo album has yet to be filled,

but that should be the least of your worries,
                               your husband sneers,
reminding the latest hours of his arrival
on his stolen calendar,
mice to walls, cheese to mice.

there is the picture of the fair,
a gluttonous belly patting itself
uncomfortably around thick crowds.

the paint is begging to strip
itself away from your cheek,
the neon of sliding gestures
meek.

       their brains are running.
       hers carries a missile
       with trillions of debt.

       jennifer,

he says.

    the kids have sharpied themselves
out from the portrait.

oh, and

you forgot to pay the photographer

again.