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.