I stood on the top of a snow mound
at eleven, hands without gloves
cold from the climb and face red
in the late afternoon light and I
watched as three boys made their ways
to the top where we would grip one
another and try with might and leverage
to cast each other down the mound
to hold the peak for a few seconds more
until another challenger summitted and
made their case to reign supreme but
not one of us had gloves and most of us
had rides home coming but I had walked
to school that morning so I would last
until the final bus had pulled away and
I would rule a minute more until my
beet-red hands started hurting

you want to
eat the eiffel tower

you want to eat
notre dame, the grand canyon
so you can fill your
brain with images

“go outside and breathe in the crisp air
and smell the city”

but for what?

for myself to keep?

you think you live to eat
i think you live to kill
and shit

the colors are already
inverted for me
and i just have to
live like this

so that i won’t one day
find myself

in someone else’s brain
trying to tell them
what to do

I fell for you
and I think you fell
for me,
too,
maybe eleven
years
ago

we did our best
to fuck that up

and it worked
so well
that I
stopped
calling

***

You can’t answer now
even if you
ever
wanted to

but I’m sorry
I never remember
anymore
to miss you

somehow,
though,
I don’t think
you would
mind

at least i’m in wichita
and one of
maryann’s cousins can’t just
towe my car

at least i’m wichita
making over 50 thousand a year
and my mom can’t
yell at me

i’m not back home
smoking mids
behind a gas station
with some kids i went to
school with

rob’s dead
a lot of shitty things have happened
(and continue to)
but it’s fine
it’s fine

what takes me out better be
something
not like falling in the
shower
i’m too self important
for that

i want to say thanks
for the cold air
and thanks for the
moon

You are a white-hot point in space
searing through my retinas as I
stare and I
am clinging to this moment
trying
so
desperately
to
hang
on

but I know how this ends
even as you burn as hot as ever
I know how this ends
because it’s the same
every time

and it will be no surprise
as my fingers tire
my grip slips
and I am flung through nothing
and I am incinerated in your
holy light but I
am clinging to this moment
trying
so
desperately
to
hang
on

but my clothes
are already
burning

you are but a fruit fly
born into a garbage can
it’s so hard to understand
there’s nothing to understand
every night you go to sleep
in order to wake up again
tell your family tell your friends
make your little stupid plans
get all fucking stressed out
eat and breathe and play pretend
there’s nothing to understand
it’s so hard to understand

i dare not speak on
lake skaneateles
the silence
is for me

and the clean water
and
the birds chirping
are for me

i don’t want to
think about
the muscle men
of wichita

or the land lords
or the
hit-men

but i do make noise
and i do think of them

and i vomit and
vomit bile
the entire time

all over the
eagle’s nest

muddying the
blue water

all over ed and marie’s
pretty little cabin

as i become the soul of skinny atlas himself

straightening my spine
and readying
to shoulder this
globe forevermore

for those who toil
and think to build
onward, to the foot of niagara
where one shouldn’t go (but wants to)
a billion pounds of water crushing down
be it for the sharing of ideas
and these planks of wood
i am baptized by the gods of america
uncertain and raw, in my natural
state

AND I STILL SEE YOU SOMETIMES
DANCING EVEN THOUGH YOU DON’T MEAN TO
LAUGHING WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED

YOU REFUSE TO SMILE

Please don’t make excuses for me;
If I am to die in this sphere
let me die by rights,
I beg of you

i kept those letters you wrote to me
for twelve years in order to
read them today
when i finally cared to wonder
what you had to say
and i’m not sure why

i try not to cry as i hold
love letters written from my
fever dream-girl as i begin
to wake and wipe my eyes to
realize that you were real
all along

i bury disgust in my queasy stomach
my selfish, selfish queasy stomach
that i was born with such hunger
for the tender loving words
of a girl of maybe fifteen

i devoured you in waking dreams
but you were as real as me
and wrote love letters that shake
now in the hands of a man
and i’m not sure why

it is not enough, i know
there are lessons to learn, i know
in between the lines
of the young girls
who once loved me
and i will learn them

oh thank god for the twenty four seven
when you’re gone i can’t live with myself
the sunflowers i can’t even see on the horizon
i bet they’re not fucking real anyway

oh, renee

gonna write you a million lines just to
fill up the dead spaces i
didn’t even realize they were there
like a little boy left in the car

oh, renee

take me way o’er the rolling hills
i keep my heart beating for you

my fireworks travel across your nerves twixt your freckles like the constellations

our feet are in the reflection of the sky and dance cross the surface of the ar-kansas river

let’s get married. can we get married? i want to get married; to you.

you are a stretched out stock image in a powerpoint slide
your gait is the struggling of a worm on drying concrete
your breath is the rot of fish clogging a dam
your voice is a diesel engine whirring through the night
your smile is two particles colliding in the vacuum of space
your mind is made of ice yet dreams of being iron
your heart is the laws of the universe, unreasonable and pointless