big jet plane.

tomorrow i will be on a plane to america, so far away from home for this new year to come. if i do not write for a while, this is why. i really hope this experience unbinds my thoughts: i really do want to give something more than i have.

i love everything: that is my core being. sometimes it is too much and too fast and conducting demons. but, for the rest of it, i am fuelled by love.

none of us are lost.

like snow, collecting.

my words lately have taken that edge i so strongly do not like, too removed to fill anyone's heart, too full to take to the sky. still, yet, they have gathered, and i do take flight, and these are what came to nothing, this december catching:

I

i thought of you at this moment and my mind went limp like glass, or static, or passing.

II

you struck my match and took to the streets, and i have mistaken so many hearts, for they shimmer in the light.

III

and i see in your eyes an ampersand.

IV

my breath traces like midnight to your stare, lightning bolts toppling the crown, scraping the nose, arcing the kiss.

V

there: no more hiding. i have told the truth and taken the rejection.

VI

put your walls up. (always at the tipping point, bathed in white.)

VII

say the love out loud. (or it dies.)

and write every happiness down, because love and light are all i wanted to give to you—none of these jarring nights, these metal impulses, these insect bones. but happiness is not the easy spoil, not won by waking, not received in rising. and the screeching wreck is fast (i will throw it from me.)

but i see a new face and immediately i am constructing. if i didn't, it might pass less ruinous.

it feels like hearing fingertips

try to retrace your memories: dna strands, the perfect dance, the shiver-smile, cold hair, and those eyes.

(his dark pearl, and insecticide, perhaps velvet, in skirmish.)

try to regather your structure: close your breathing, both parenthesis and paralysis, and the slight tether of repair.

try to remember your days: she will rise before you as a story, chewing on her lip, an apple, a war that does not just go into the sea.

try to hold as much as you can.

(more than those skies that burn with the night.)

try to keep her when photographs lose their stomachs, and words shed as brittle, and only limp arch.

try to renew.

try to renew.

try to renew, and sometimes you will.

(we must record only a truth, and stumble around it.)

and the truth—does it still need a defense? we feel the world strike us through, and put as much life into the pain to follow, and hang these along the darkness, and in that scant light, that the ribbons patch upon your hands.

gimme twice

not every song is an axe wound, a bee sting, a lightning bolt

some are the endless summer, the sling shot, the big tooth smile

arms out the passenger side, mouth open, sunscreen in your eyes

revival.

no light

i freed myself today, if only by searing you from me, from this night.

and now i know your hollows stand, but as a fire I set to the forest.

no, but how i wish you well and happiness
you will come to tell, and lies you wear around your throat
i am always blessed to keep you safe, as from afar
i am not the lover.

you never leave

I never want these bones to heal, for the ways in to be worn cleanly

if I should wake to only hang under the weight of my suit

and the light is only momentarily enough, as a lull

but—a song cuts me in two

your smile is no longer cracked with any trace of me

it was always edging, unfurling into reaches

now, I remember each day to be alone, things to make and lose

twisted metal wants up through my halls

how I can trace the sweat across scar tissue

chemicals, I only record you

pain, I move the world

another song, and my eyes becoming impenetrable

and what hurts more? the spike of memory, or the words that will not

tell how i fucking love you.

will remain nothing for you—

that you would find me, soon, and so

common, on these streets

cheap and flickering

and flashing

away

but I will not hide, and you will not come in fear

though your blood moves for centipedes, sometimes

as mine to yours, crowding

the felt trigger of those mouths:

I AM STRANGE OF LOVE
YOU WAIT NOT ALONE.

new york

i know i have sang so loudly of snow patrol in these months, but, there is such reason.

this song is calling to your bones, taking what is held back.

impossible, and always

Still, we rise as the impossible children of summer, but cracking our bones behind our backs, those wishes once wry, now broken.

(we wait—we wait—we wait.)

But my hopes do not—that you stand to contain that which bucks, that rebukes these stars. No, my hopes are both horror halves and blessed-on-flames. They are as loud as the passing, that ears lick to blood, that comforts are thrown, that strayness must throw back.

I need not create for my hopes do take arms, and whole ghost pictures, they will live.

If only till you turn—away—passing—last—eyes—now.

If only for being told some shot bird of truth.

(ragged, that betweenliness.)

My hope is that you finally see me. I hold want of a small chance, a paper cup of an infinite.

And this is banished!

And this is whole!

But my hopes are juggernaut, till the last gnash of the clock, till you hold to take a body, and I fold a tarot card in half.

That is a truth, however smacked with shrining.

That is not a truth, but I give it breath.

please don't go too far.

please don't go too far. i am still here, still falling short. sometimes words are not life and life is not here and here is not then. sometimes then i close up my night sky and pack my limbs in. (the truth is always simple, safer here: i simply could not hear it, strung from ear to the fingertips of my mouth.) and i said falling short? that pure truth, but of my own will. i am basking so cheaply. i am fattened on chemicals, light bulbs, less than what i should.

but always rising up, if not messy (whole years step to their toes, as the perching of crows), if not the song i wanted you to know. but i do not think i could move so far out in this skull of autumns. i will... (loosened up, all the lovers and leaves, shuffling and easy as they)—still, just a noise.

i am building love, but never will it become real. those splinters show, and hiss of tape.

saw the graffiti

graffiti


(how we met, flashing paint to my lips, summer heat by numbers, all want and jarring)


rooftop


(I am moving through, swam by a lightness of your breath)


skyline


(the whole city knows this song, and listens warm)


sunlight


(are we not invisible in this?)

what is going on