I are help you.

Please to words good.

Occasionally, but not often,

I allow myself

some

 

unpleasantry.

 

I deny calls without a "sorry I missed you".

I ignore texts without a "been busy, what's up?"

I let feelings ooze out

and it looks like that video

of a clam eating salt

 

(and They are

the salt).

 

Especially her

whose face I see in everything.

Every coffee. Every bookmark.

Every photo

 

dancing

away.

 

She shakes her hips and I enter

the ocean.

She thrusts her name through throats

of folks I'm glad not to know

 

and when my lips turn

white

 

I know that it's passed

and I need to start answering

my phone

again.

Here's the thing

about

Elephant Brain

forever remembering

ever

y

thing...

 

The feelings inside moments,

the ones destined to bloom and

die

 

do not

 

they come again

quick as I can summon

 

the sweetness

the madness

the stars do not

 

fade

 

They grow old

and what's worse,

they ask me

for

 

Things.

On one hand,

I need to live in the right now.

I cannot see your

bigger plans

your broader peace

your grander schemes.

 

It's too big for my mother mind.

You have one too

even if

it operates a little

differently.

 

On the other hand,

I need everything

to boil down to

nothing.

 

And that is only achieved by

zooming

 

out

 

far enough we are stupid

specks

 

(mine a little w(h)i(d/t)er

than yours)

We have spent the better part of the last decade

walking away from each other

or rather

walking in the same direction

but only sometimes holding hands

or rather

walking while you run and I

almost lose sight of you

but I never

do.

I had an idea for a poem while I was in the shower. 

And I told myself to make note,

but I didn't,

and I forgot.

 

How many poems have died unimportant deaths

waiting for me to invest in a phone like

the one I am currently holding?

 

I'll remember it later

when I unwrap my head

and it oozes from the seams

like a dumb dirty diaper.

My brain feels like it cannot breathe.

Like it's underwater

and there are frightened sailors

banging the glass behind my eyes.

I can see the shape of impact.

I can feel the bubble move.

And there is too much work,

too many things to do,

too many chores and bills and bills

and bills and bills and

food for the boy

 

to think about leaving now.

 

It seems more likely I'll just pass out.

When you write the report,

don't include this entry.

Again.

My brain is inflating.

Again.

Again,

I can feel the event

like a squid,

pulsing and breathing 

stealing focus and air

through tentacles spread apart like

a magician's 

fingers.

 

But he's talking again.

Sort of.

I mean.

He's talking enough to let me know he's not 

dead.

 

And I should think that'd be enough for my brain,

but cephalopods know so little

about love.

I know, I know

you've already told me

 

the word 'love' offends reason,

sticks fingers inside your eye 

binds your arms with piano wire

burns your skin like

hidden sin

 

suddenly, the link is severed

silently, you carry on

 

and I know, I know

you've already told me

 

but here I am, loving you

without end insi(ght/de)

 

your silence.

"As the call,

so the echo"

 

There are rocks beneath my feet.

Tiny pebbles like baby teeth

chewing the fat with every thing

that comes along and asks

to move me.

 

There is death hung in the air

as balls are launched over

the fence.

 

Every half-hearted swing that lands in the seats...

we sit in silence, no sense in cheering

when we don't know what it

means.

 

He is finding his way back.

Seeing something new like

light.

 

If it is true, then I'll walk with him.

 

"Live on time,

emit no evil"

It seems neverending.

The worry never lightens.

The feelings never deepen.

The wanting points itself

in whatever direction seems

most receptive.

 

It sounds like constant crashing.

 

Feels like Dorian ashore.

 

Nobody knows what it is they want. 

They can only prove that what they've had

meant nearly nothing

to them.

When did this series become notes

folded like tiny paper hearts

stuffed inside the shirt of a man

who no longer addresses his

laundry?

 

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

 

It's one of the few things I can keep on saying

without it losing its meaning

after a while.

What are my New Moon wishes?

Shiiiiiit....

 

I wish I could forget that we

get along so goddamn well.

I wish I could laugh with anyone

the way I laugh when we are close,

a joke about a joke about a movie

no one saw.

 

I wish I enjoyed Anyone

the way I enjoy your full fool's lips and

absurd

balloon

tongue.

 

I wish I missed you less.

I wish I enjoyed people

more.

I think of him sometimes.

With his coarse black hair

and eyes like the strike of a gavel.

The emotional things were never there

n' I was always glad for that.

 

Even if we weren't in love,

I liked that after we were done

doing this or 

doing that,

we could carry on like

two friends.

 

It's as close to love as we ever Came.

Woman,

it has taken me 30 years,

but I am walking back

to you.

 

You, who thinks knees 

are the cursive z's 

of the human body.

You, 

who cried her eyes out

for a season finale of 

Grey's Anatomy.

You, 

who sometimes daydreams about

wearing something other than

jeans.

 

I promise to be more kind to you.

We're all we've got, after all.

And when I want you,

I think

always

of the niceness of your hands.

 

How they resemble

five closed books atop

a slab of sun-warmed stone.

 

How they destroy the things that hurt us.

How they protect the things that don't.

 

When I want you, I want them to

grind my bones to make your

bread.

There are few things as bizarre

as hope.

Steamed broccoli? No.

It's just me.

All that vitamin D

stuffed wet dogs down my shirt.

I treat my feelings for you

like weed in my car.

 

I treat my feelings for you

like a rambunctious teen

dragged to my door by his

ear.

 

Often, I pretend

I've never seen you before.

But now

 

as our brains start to really feel scary...

 

Fuck it. 

YES.

 

Those are my drugs, Officer.

 

Of COURSE I know

this boy.

Look here, you cynical buttstuffs.

Professional wrestlers provide a service

as valuable (if not more so)

as whatever thing you like.

 

What was it you liked again?

Not important.

O'Doyle rules.

Sorry, guys.

My tummy ache at my entry.

I was falling asleep just now

but I remembered I needed

an entry.

 

My son danced to Hall & Oates before bed.

 

And for every moment that I feel

like I have no control,

for every moment when my son

cannot be consoled or

bargained with,

 

there are a thousand little moments

that are almost too pure to witness.

I watched him dance and became

a sugar pillar

of proof.

Today was rough.

I cried a lot

and drank a little.

I'm wanting junk food, and music,

and hugs by calm, collected men.

My son, you are not some

chemical compound.

You are not statistical likelihood. 

You are more than the sum of our parts.

You are doomed to repeat nothing.

You are free to resemble no one.

 

Men who wonder why you don't wear their last name

will wonder if you are afflicted.

They will search your eyes for shame passed down

like a pocket watch with all the wrong 

tics.

 

But you are like nothing, child.

You do not owe them damnation.

 

Whoever you become will be molded by love.

So you see,

you are already winning.

"What's wrong with you is good

for what's wrong with me"

 

If you are pocked,

I am lumped.

Pressed together we could make

something smooth as undisturbed 

water.

My man-made mind splinters.

The soft shell around it

resembles a child's drawing

of tree limbs.

There is heat between 

fault lines.

A gross awareness of

self.

 

You have never felt further away, love.

And for that matter,

neither have I.

My brain does this nutty thing

where it pictures your words like cascarones.

And inside each written text bursts

the confetti of your laughter. 

I collect these fits like quarters made

before 1964.

Let me pretend for a moment

that we are complete sentences

joined together

by a semicolon.

That we are everything we need to survive

individually, but

we keep each other around because

we like what we bring

to the end of the

world.

 

Let me forget that we are fiberglass.

Let me forget that we've been robbed.

 

Let me keep you

 

if only here,

darling.

 

And I'll bring enough canned bacon

to see the return

of everything those monsters

ever stole from us.

I need to shoot pool soon.

And with someone who knows how.

I also need to fear significance less.

Love doesn't like it when you threaten

to beat it up all the time.

My ovaries would prefer to sleep.

My brain flaps its angry elephant ears,

says If You Don't Come Out,

We'll Smoke You Out.

The medicine just wanted to talk.

But it wore a bad mustache.

Didn't know I was crazy.

The brain put a bullet in its well-meaning skull 

and now, I wait for the smell to pass.

 

What war inside my body.

What struggle inside my mind.

 

I am nowhere far. I can prove it cause

as I was changing Herb, he said he loved me.

And the shooting stopped.

Everything stopped.

I haven't told him yet.

He's too busy pretending to get help.

Waiting around to die feels worse

when you keep getting the text that says

"Here".

I want to return

to sweetness.

Kisses like trees

in a Robert Ross landscape. 

Happy and little

and happy and

endless

and happy and happy and happy and

My hardboiled nature has raspberried my eggs.

Thusly, I resolve to Soften

Up.

 

What does softening up look like?

Well,

 

Your mind that I pretend to be

platonically in love with?

 

I want to twist our stems like good duets twist

country singers.

I want to stand in awe of every storm that barrels through.

 

It is a dangerous place; I'm only sometimes afraid. 

The children blink and are no more.

The dying do so silently. 

The injured take up arms and rain their fists on

evil men.

 

Standing this close, ya catch a few

that glance off their intentions.

 

And tough guy me usually swings back,

but softer me would rather see

how the injured say

they're sorry.

There are three ways to spite love.

Either

 

You ignore it and treat it like emptiness.

You remove it and treat it like nothingness.

Or you shove your head so far inside it

you can taste who it's having

for dinner.

I'm ready to stop writing love poetry now.

Starting now! you colorless

burning odor wood 

balloon.

 

You starving tick.

You thin twig.

You fucked fake. You

short straw.

 

The(se) words bury themselves

and for a moment, I feel something.

Not love. Not hope. Not want. (never want)

They slither through my body

and reach a place of

(grand/under)standing.

 

We exist in misremembrances.

We love hearing ourselves (b/t)alk. 

 

I'm all done writing love poetry, but

we can still argue over 

who it gets to mean 

the least to.

I am two for two with guys who don't

remember I remember

everything. 

"You're a catch!" is one of the strangest things I've ever been told.

"Men should be clambering to put their hooks in your mouth"

is what they mean to say.

Dumbly, and in the way that girls do,

in the way that girls must

because what the

fuck else are we

for

 

I have offered the hurt ones

my love.

 

My husband (ex-husband)

locks horns with the mirror

takes wide wild swings at the ghost of his

father

 

and I love him so goddamned much

I could puke.

 

I love you, you bastard. You moron.

I love you.

 

But love is a trick to dry up the wells.

Love is a lie to keep the bottles for my

self.

 

My best friend stares hard

at a tangle of hoses.

Or a pistol. Or a camel. Or an overpass.

He's too shitty at math

to know how far he needs to plummet

for the diesel to explode

and take everything

with it

 

and I love him more than anyone

has any right to lovin' anyone.

 

But love is a story people tell at the bar.

Love is a hose that never

ever tangles.

 

I am drunk against my mother's wishes.

Because love is not enough.

Mine, least of all. 

What is it called

when you hate everybody

including yourself?

 

"I don't know. Why?

You hate everyone?"

 

Yes.

 

"Including yourself?"

 

Especially myself.

 

"You hate me?"

 

No.

I mean.

I hate your wiring.

 

"What does that mean?"

 

How you're wired.

All your dumb wants and needs.

 

"I want you. Is that dumb?"

 

It is especially dumb.

 

"What am I supposed to say to that?"

 

Nothing. It's my shot now.

Why don't you grab us another beer?

I hate, from the pit of my stomach Hate

being a woman.

I hate the look. I hate the feel(ings).

I hate the things a woman's body 

must do

in order to maintain its

factory settings.

 

It's not to say I'd prefer being a man.

I hate those soulless bastards, too.

 

I guess sometimes I wish I was a desk

or a mailbox

or a piece of salami bobbing

in a happy bowl of

puke.

The body reacts to tragedy.

Tears free themselves at uneven intervals.

Fall casually like sap

from a warm sap tapped tree.

Flow forcefully like a killer

with his weight against the

bathroom door.

 

Bleary-eyed, the body weakens.

Noises invade. And then the shakes.

It needs to sleep

but in its grief

closes its eyes and forgets

 

How.

I am poorly postured.

 

Love wipes the blood

from its nose on my

sleeve

 

says if I think This is bad,

I should see the

 

Other Guy.

 

Love, many-mouthed, 

walks away

suffering.

 

Hastily.

Hand in mine. 

Lacking one identity

 

walks away

and I slouch

 

toward

it.

I am slow to concede our sameness.

The Labrador Loyalist in me

curls its lip and snarls.

Guards its litter of grunting pups.

Glares its teeth at

been-born

 

anything.

 

But I sense your mouth.

I know your scent.

 

You are of me.

And so,

I concede.

We'd be alright, I think.

Spend our lives giving each other

what we cannot give

ourselves.

It is undoubtedly poor business practice,

but I don't like to rush out the door when

Herb is waking up. If he begins to stir as I'm about to leave,

I like to stay with him.

 

It is not always a slow process.

Sometimes he sits right up and says,

"Chock-rocket? How about a popsicle?"

Other times, like this morning,

a smile creeps across his face,

displacing yawns with

warm, giggly grins.

 

He stretches, balling his masa fists, 

then relaxes,

letting the air flow through his fingers.

 

I watched the entire planet be born all over again.

And so, today

 

I am running late.

What does pap mean? I asked.

It's funny, the nurse said,

I'm not really sure.

The doctor walked in

and proceeded with the exam.

 

Oh, I thought. 

It's the sound it makes.

I don't want to be bitter.

Inky, maybe.

Dark tasting like

ear wax.

Disgusting like bleach.

 

But not bitter.

I won't grant him that.

Today has felt like pushing a stroller

through thick mud

with smooth shoes

in August.

 

I feel sick

with worry.

Sick

with wanting.

 

And I don't understand

anything.

Buk, that sneaky bastard,

he knew what he was doing.

Getting old, writing poems 

for the ones who couldn't

hack it.

 

His truth and my truth,

though horribly reversed,

smell the same when you consider

we were destined to live.

 

He loved himself more than he hated anyone. 

I have always loved someone

more than I hated

myself.

Forget page 198.

Write it down on rice paper

and eat it or toss it

or inject its haste

in a too-soft

gummy bear.

 

Supple. Yielding.

Something like

warm flesh.

 

Let your teeth sink into them

and keep their bitterness

away.

Let them jump if they want to.

Let them scream.

Let them shiver.

Let them slice themselves thinly

and bemoan the sting.

 

I house no room in my heart

for them

anymore.

 

And the only person affected by this eviction

is me.

My son, I will teach you to be brave.

It is not being dragged

towards whatever thing.

It is calming yourself

and walking there.

 

I will teach you trust.

It is Not being dragged

towards whatever thing.

It is reaching for me

and we

walking together.

 

I will teach you love.

That whatever is dragging you

it drags me, too

and we will calm it together,

we will walk

together.

 

I will teach you forgiveness.

It may be many years

before your father walks back.

You will need to show him

what you've learned.

I've perfected the art of

soft words with

hard landings.

 

My love cramps their styles.

I am bored and

Uninviting.

I clutch this love

like a prayer against

the ghost that continues

to do this to

us.

 

Your skin loses color.

Tears and labors

endlessly.

 

I tell you that I love you

and I mean

every inch of it.

 

A good dad reminds me

that I believe in love

because my mother loves me perfect

and I love my son

the same.

 

And this love that fixes

everything.

This love that doesn't say

anything.

 

It is a power that I wield;

it is a power that he

 

does not.

I do not want to date you.

I want to curl myself around the feet of your madness.

I want to bury kisses beneath the hole in your earth.

I want to name every Sunday

after a corpse in your heart,

and I want to tend the dead

and write songs for us

dying.

 

I want to calm you, tempest.

I do not want to date you.

Brain Ticks / Heart Skips

 

The men, they are purple

attached to my brain

stomachs swelling with things

they're sure no one else

knows.

 

They felt it, they say

that night we kissed

and they suck whatever meaning

and fill with purple

incorrectness.

 

I am so ripe with new blood.

Overripe.

My brain swells.

 

Why pick them. Why

squeeze and risk 

getting 

some back?

 

They can keep it. Tell their friends that they

brought peace to my middle (east).

 

I butterfly my brain

hold the backs of their eager heads

leave them with purple smears across

their nothing, needing faces.

 

They

Can

Keep

It

 

The heart, however. 

It is so far removed from those 

bobbing skin tags

that I struggle to accept my

complacency.

 

My heart resembles my hands

cupped

 

the way you might illustrate a firefly 

to someone in daylight.

 

And there is room enough for three human beings.

Just three.

 

I fawn over them. Their softness. 

Their warmth.

Their gentle buzzing when they fall asleep.

 

And the rest of this body can be thrown to the wolves.

They can take every piece

from me.

 

But my heart?

It's not an attraction.

Although there is a line,

these three humans

are allowed to

 

skip it.

This love is like radium.

My teeth hurt.

I am glowing.

I get sick of people, sometimes.

The sight of them.

Their voices.

Their needs.

The way their eyes search mine

for something they have no right to expect.

 

And so I hide when I can,

and more often I can't.

but I could today.

 

And it's crummy, and I know it,

but I feel better

 

all the same.