endless summer

with you, gwen

you take the street with you now

all those years

a life spilling into ours

your kindness with arcing wonder

and infinite grace

she spat smoke, and locked the water in the jar

it is calm, and i am losing my guts, in a smile, propped up. there are so many things: pictureless mail—water in a bottle—centuries.

(the list of so many things:

I want to protect my mother from the whole world, her smile clicking over like a cassette tape. she doesn't know.

the future.

my bruised lip, or band of stars, or intoxication.)

but I am so happy, scratching, with an ant carrying the dead up. I need a blood song. I need a violent jaw. I need some thoughts torn, and limbs re-read.

crease me—grimacing—a tangle of sex.

his calcium levels defined him, and every winter coming down, and every funeral was still shitting itself, and foaming in prettiness, or traffic.

we were there with the sunset, though. the golden light cutting hands off with the heaviness of—I am walking faster—through—this night of trees.

we were together then and not now.

(the list of what it feels like:

impassable.

I sewed a blanket of this cult.

my tongue flickers.)

you want to speak, but offer nothing meaningful. you want rage, but this wasp has one head cut off, and apologies on his road map. it could say: I AM THESE MOUNTAINS. PLEASE DO NOT DISAPPOINT ME.

it is still trying, a paper machete of sadness—I don't have colours in my mind of a sun. there is a grey that stands still, and the wires behind all these eyes, and this breath composed of anvils.

I am cut. I am dripping, and spouting, and losing. I can't find the mouth of it, because it is invisible.

I cannot move like this. I am wasting, these acid heartbeats, this storm dive.

too much—I have pressed my heart to a universe, and jammed my head in a loft.

help, for my battery needs some care, because it is not working.

(this is how it feels right now. the lists are so heavy, and I am still vomiting them from me.)

Ian William L.

0112

I take the reins here. I am marking this as a journal entry, only that I hate the idea that you think I write this so it could be about me, but that is the least that I want. but I am a real person, too.

I have a favourite mug. I love you from my strange place. I feel the warmth of my loosing socks. I could misfire and think it hope.

I haven't had words largely because I am trying to keep myself in check. they will give you so many pills, but gym and exercise are truly curative. I sweat out the night. I am wracked with happiness.

and friends return, and I let go of lovers, but for the force of love.

don't hide away. we won't leave. your darkness must keep its season.

two hours ago.

you are not a liar, and you are not small.

take that one breath. that's where it started, you felt the thorn. but before it writhes and burns hot, spit it out.

those mornings, that gravity shivers, time sheds its skin, still clinging to the branches.

breathe out in slowness, the wires that run you through. your eyes don't crack, your skin doesn't leave you. and take a sip from your lists, and a bug bite that keeps your thoughts. this was so important, that stills the gun and climbs the wall.

i am a cold stone in morning light, the last thing you threw between us.

and so frustrating to hold a voice but be unable to speak.

and your sutures grow like teeth, you spit them out to be released.

i won't tell you not to be sad, and i won't tell you not to be wrong, but just that i remember you retracing the light across the floor, soft but for cracked lips.

write your own goddamn horror show and live faster than time.

studied.

the little fumble before you breathe

the elipsises catching before your fingertips

held the plastic sleeve

you stand against the wall

a purple ladybug, in violence

thrown the great streets

valentines/breakfast in bed.

i hope you are warm.

i took the wheel all the way to the dark.

i am shamed again or uncontrolled or sad—this fucking sharpness all the way through. i could not write because i was happy, and now it is rat poison, ugly bones. i have been alone for two years, and that always unfurls and—(the sound of———)

HANDS ARE HUNG AROUND MY SPEECH PATTERNS. I PULL AT MY THROAT, CATERPILLARS FROM THE BRANCH. MY BLOOD STUTTERS. I CAN NOT SEE YOU WITH THESE WORDS.

stop. fight. stand. halt. (redeem.)

breathe. gnash.

1. no matter i collect in this jar.
2. there is no way out of strangeness.
3. everyone around me is falling in love.
4. i am shy.
5. tomorrow i will fight harder. i will go alone.
6. but you're so pretty tonight.
7. i made you a mix tape.
8. the colours are not translating! right now, this—here!

the light bulb is vicious, this tic is pulling at my jaw, wide eyes and looking all the way down. and my forearms are heavy and i snap them against jam, against clocks. and i have said the birds break their necks and i think that every word ever spoken cannot be spoken again and i am losing this language to reptile blood and eyelid circuits.

i am trying to speak. i am gripped.

9.41. PM. WHY DO THE SHAPES HURT? IT'S—IT'S—IT'S—i am breathing and my eyes are closed. the sounds are all coming to life and the colours hurt.

AND I CAN NOT PUT UP A WALL.

(You are beautiful. You spasm in a little smile. Your blushed nose, teetering frame. You craft from paper things. You hear only the song that wants you here.)

the morning coming back.

a small bit of sunday morning love, all staticky and smoked, the radio smudge, and strum of hot breath, yet ash cloud, yet sea bird.

the only moment we knew.

COLOUR

live loudly, through all fault and favour.

WOUND

i burn through cheap math, brand the life you spit.

...to the stars through adversity

all my words are living

pass only to a smile

and i have untucked this small warmth

and nights that do not lash

i do not know when the lightning strike

will crack home—but how

just to be the sky

love without talent

light without end

feet soft under the grass

a shiver-kiss within beats.