.png)
Night Birds
When the insomnia punches
the liver and my mind’s light
as my bones, I crank the heat
and stand naked before the glass.
The disease is most inspiring
amidst the dark, when my skin
glows like a Chinese lantern
and the subcutaneous fat remnants
murmur along my muscles
like ornaments. Scattered in the streets
are regrets paired two by two, grabbing
each other tight and halting towards
hangovers and sticky thighs. But this,
this is when I’m most lovely—
when I see my shoulders as coracoids
and not splintered, used up hangers.
When my ribs are strong and dangerous
as an iron maiden, not a cage whose every bar
I’ve memorized in bruises along my back.
Find me
in the darkest hour and I’ll show you
something so beautiful it breaks
and hides fast as a ghost
in the excruciating light of dawn.
______________
Conceptions
I’m writing a whole new
book, and just can’t stop. It’s become
so damned fast that I’ve screwed
my eyes shut and lifted my feet
to let gravity and nature do whatever
dirty dance they like. I said
the last one would be the last—
but that’s what we all say. Like,
when we have that perfect pair,
the boy and girl,
and then Whoops! someone forgot
the condom or mistook the birth
control pills for Vicodin again
and now there’s a brand new mess
brewing. But it’s fine, we can’t possibly
screw up this one as badly
as the last. Right? Or at least
that’s what we tell ourselves
when the panic sets in at two
in the morning. This one,
it will be better. Stronger. More
stunning and durable than those
last shameful productions. Because
if we didn’t think that, if we believed
it would be just as hard, the same
hurt and demonic thrashings in the most
embarrassing of times, we’d just stop. Stop
being stupid, making excuses thin
as our wrist skin and be a goddamned
adult for once. But we won’t. That’s not
how we were made. People, writers, poets
parents. We’re designed to forget. To keep
on, try just one more time to create. And maybe
this time, this time,
it will be so hellishly beautiful to erase
all those blunders and ugliness that came before.
Recollections of the Training Days
Dogs with prong collars adjust to the pinch—
that was me, immune
to the warm blood trickles
when he petted my car’s hood, see
if I’d strayed that day. My skin grew tough
against the spikes, so I got used
to the next telling me
I was almost thin
and should only speak
when commanded—like a dog,
a bitch, like something that scurries
on all fours tonguing up compliments
alongside filthy water bowls.
And then there was you. There are times
you make me feel like an animal
in the right ways. Times
when I need to re-learn tricks I lost
over the years like chewed
up toys or buried, cherished things.
I remember the choking nails in the deepest
of nights and how it felt
when you slipped them off, easily
and quickly
like my threadbare shirts
when you undress me in the mornings.