He is named Vincent. Maybe 80.
With a voice carved out of cigar smoke
And skin like the bottom of a couch.
He sounds like broken accordion, with hints of beauty
That are subtle. Always subtle.

It has been two years since I started burning the edges of my rope

In the impossible fear it may unwind

But I’ve only ever learned knots that are
Impossible to untie

Today I
Wore the sun like a heavy wool on my
Long Island back
Remembering
That I am California childhood. mountain-painted, looking
like a seismograph chart and
bleeding grass blades between my toes
In any shoes that aren’t
bare feet. Feeling
the impossibly dense thickness of
Sunlight Bursting
Through my back and out my chest as I
Also radiate light, coming
through my fingertips

(and sometimes from them)

For Kaitlin

You were
My moss picking monster angel
Ripping stagnation bed sheets out from under me
And starting forest fires in my nest hair
I spent three months awake because of you
When you gave me nets and told me to catch the moon
And I never did
But I drew constellations on your back
And for a while
That made us the first two astronauts to reach mars
And it was all ours
To make beauty of
And even though we both got dust underneath our nails
And on our palms
And staining ours clothes
We still etched designs into its surface until we covered the whole thing
And
You built wood around me until I was a treetop canopy
And you were birds soaring past my sky tall head
Bringing me back stories of the places you flew to
You beautiful winged monster angel
I should have known
You could have only stopped flying for so long
Because all of us dirt walkers
Don’t move as quickly as you
You never didn’t know where you were going
I’m convinced you’re at least half wind
And have a hard time believing
We exist in the same world
Kissing you
Always hinted at something impossible
And your easy laughter
Always echoed longer than I expected it to
You made me marathon legged
When I had built barriers to keep myself in bed
And though I came out of it all
Out of breath
Your laughter still plays the triangle sometimes
It sounds like a wink

You and I are made of different worlds entirely
And our brief collision
Was in no way any miracle
But there are days now
When I try on your laughter
And teach myself smiling as wide as you
And some day I expect to catch sight of you
Making sculptures out of clouds
And catching the moon

To Mckenna, Sean, and Audrey

I cover my whole face in shaving cream now
Not just the area underneath my lips and neck
Remember
When you used to beg me to shave
My awkward first facial hairs
I remember telling you those hairs meant
Soon I would be a man
On nights we named after ourselves
As we both tried to burn paper with our minds

I can hold my beer now
You would be proud to watch me play masculinity and
Other new games we used to talk about as if
They were world important deep secrets
We were burying inside each other in
Those early mornings we used to claim for ourselves
But
I sleep on my back now
And you don’t know that
And my late nights aren’t always claimed mornings
Sometimes they’re just lost evenings

And still
Even though I can reach the top shelf
With arms that have known now how to hold hammers
And women
Still
Though the stories we wrote once
On napkins in backyards
Are now etched in walls that I actually live in
Still
I can not man-make myself in the mirror
And suits still fit me like
A scarecrow on a city bus
And I never button the top of any shirts
In an actual fear that I will choke
So
I don’t think I’m jumping into the brunt of my 20s with my head on straight
Because I still try to knock over cups with my mind
And sometimes
Get scarred at night

I just want to remind you
And myself as well
How unimportant it is, at least right now

Because there were nights
When we really wanted to
That I swear
We could make fire in our hands

Always walk 

On the right side of the street
And on the left side of a woman 

You walk on the left side of a woman
Because 

In the case that 

Water splashes on you

It will splash on you
And not on her

You walk on the right side of the street

Because it makes you feel safe 

The left side of the street
Makes you innately uneasy 

And you can’t explain that

You are 

Innately uneasy


If you had the time

To rest your legs 

You would cut them off
Wouldn’t you 

If you had the time 

To soak your feet
You would drown them 

Wouldn’t you


If you had the time 

If you had the time 

If you had the time you would connect a helium tank
To your belly button
And expand or explode or inflate 

And any of those would be a okay 

Wouldn’t they


If you could be glass
You would not be blown 

You would be lightening on sand
Crack and shattered as essence
If you were a train 

You would be derailed
But you would not stop 

Only faster and faster
Crushing bushes and whole towns under your wheels
And you could not stop
Could you
And if you could, you would not 

Wouldn’t you


And if you 

Could blink more times per minutes
Or rub your eyes with more ferocity 

The things you imagine

Would be more in focus
Than the things that are actually there
And in fact 

You confuse those often

Stop blinking your own existence into alternates
Stop listing the universes in which you live
You are singular
And if you are not you still appear (at most times)
To embody something
Here
So embody that fully
Please
Stop blank staring windows into static
And pretending magic finger tips during long silences
At least long enough to remember
You
Exist here
And have responsibilities to that end

Remember
There are people outside your own doorsafe
Take a moment to feel the hardwood against your feet
Exist here
Speak to them



The deeper I pushed you in to my pockets

The more tangled you became
And

Every time I would pull you apart
There would be an increased level of frustration

Agitated

To the point

Where I was pulling
With scarred fingers 

And no regard 

To how much tension you could take 

And 

Although I always know 

Phone right front pocket
Wallet back left 

Keys front left
Love 

Always gravitates from different pockets
Throughout the day 

See 
I don’t know where love fits 

In what otherwise
Is a logical system of organization
And there is no designated spot
For my headphones
But 
I never leave the house without love 

Because I need something to distract me 

From 
Monday through Friday’s 

Mundane walk to campus
I have used love 

To drown out distraction
Just as often 

As it has been distraction

But my headphones can not
Drown out love 

And believe me

I have tried
I

Go through headphones

Bi-monthly

Losing them 

Easily 

And often feeling a pang of guilt
When replacing one 
I have not lost
But will not look for
I have found myself
Loving three people at once 

And some days

I put on a jacket
With that many pairs of headphones in its pockets 

I can be that haphazard
With where I place my love
Sometimes 
I think I’ve fallen for
An entire airplane’s worth

Of women 

Who I will never talk to 

My headphones
On my last flight
Were cheap and not useful

And until I can invest in love
I will not get the quality of music
I want
But I find myself 

Addressing my letters 

Just as often as I find myself 

At radio shack 

Which is rarely
If ever 

Because I know

That the moment I spend more than 20 dollars on a pair of headphones
I will be in constant fear
Of breaking or losing them

“The first time I put on the black silk panties, I got a hard-on right away”
-Julian Beck

I would like to spend time as a Drag Queen
Sing I’m so pretty in the mirror
There is a beauty in a façade
And kiss myself right on the reflection
Leaving red lipstick stain

I would like to tuck
And tape
And support, support, support
Six rolled up wads of socks
Underneath wonderbra
On wonderbra
I would like to lie
About who I am
And be called
Beautiful
Or sexy
Or atrocity
Or abomination against nature
I want to be freak
And hey mama
Or
Get the fuck out

I want to don the mask of the drag queen
And hold my persona together with nothing
But a thick cake of make up
Turning
1 am at a sleazy bar
Into fireworks
Using nothing but sequins
I want to be that threat

And when I wake up tomorrow morning
I want to be so still drunk
That I mistake 
my black eyes for make up
I want to create
The entirety of who I am
And wear that person’s heart on my sleeve

I want to be

A drag queen
For just one week
Maybe a month
I want to step out of this body suffocation
And be the pearl earrings fur coat
Grandness I cannot embody
And though I am not made of bright lights
If I
Age seven years in a day
So be it

But if I disappear
I do not want it to be
Gradual and subtle
Just one flash bang
Blinding week
I would like to be
Grand

I wore slacks for 12 hours today and
costume changed my tie once for
a nicer occasion that required a thicker knot

I sat with my back more rigid than it knows how
And did not cross my legs or
put my elbows on any tables and
I refrained from using the word “bitch”
Even when the lady was being one

I was napkin lap charming
Speaking only softly and
Always peppered with compliments

All the while

I was quietly counting
The oddly growing number of
small rough blisters
On my fingertips and hands

Break brick wall me right in the chest like gods own bulldozer
Make me many windowed
So I can throw my dusted moon caution
Towards the wind and clouds
And watch it catch night sky in staircase pattern
Meet me halfway
Between my windowed chest
And my big yellow moon silence
Look me right in the storm eye
The calm inside the restlessness
My moon unmoving lips
And bring me home

Stilt walk me skyward on tree trunks
So I can catch you meteors
Or at least set rocks on fire
And throw them as high I can
Teach my legs
How to dance gently on sand
So I can spell you poems as graceful as
Salt water at your feet
Teach my hands
The violin curve of your swan long neck
My grasshopper music could use your accompaniment
When you sing sunrises
Before your lips ever know it
While I leg scratch melody
With the jittery anxiousness
Of the nights last ice cube
Shaking in the cup of
My moon chalked hands
As they master silence
Again

 

I am made of storm eye and powdered moon
The silence in the emptiness and the calm inside the nothing
I reflect sunlight
With the white brilliance of opposite ellipsoid
I hillbilly smile toothless whistle
Like birds painted on cloud undersides
I too blink existence, just look up

Next to me on the ground
Lay, singular amongst the leaves
Half a cigarette stump
Crushed four minutes in

We may have also
Had three minutes left
Your bright lipstick also
Stained me red

I want to make bread of my stomach (hungry one).
It has been 40 long years in the desert, and it hasn’t rained manna once.
I have been the sand, and you have been the wind; shaping me in to dunes.

Our puddle has become an ocean.
I want to make umbrellas of my arms.
Your arms are kites.
There is a rain cloud between us.

I want to make a train of my sidewalk.
I will ride it to my neighbor’s house.
If I can lay the track correctly, I will ride it to Brooklyn, and visit you.
If I cannot lay the track correctly, I will hitch hike, and visit you.
(I have strong thumbs.)

I want to paint my hands green.
Sometimes I lose track of them, and forget what they are doing.
Sometimes, I want to call you. Some days, my phone is a gun.

You promised me 50 kisses once.
Please write me a gift certificate, so I can find somewhere to spend them.

If I was a store, I would sell funny birthday cards, with monkeys on them.
I would be next to a train station, so that people could bring gifts from me to the people they were visiting.
I would give them all the friends and family discount.
I would have a guestbook at the register, but I would never call any of them.

If you were a store, I would make myself in to bread, and sit on your shelves.
Then, I could say, “Today, I was part of 7 families’ breakfasts.”
I would not make my hands in to bread though, because they are green.
And I would not my make mouth in to bread, in case I decide to call you.

I once swallowed a bucket whole
In an attempt to gain a better understanding of what it is
To produce fresh water
Having subsequently spent 10 hours in a well
I emerged with damp socks
And an intimate relationship with both darkness
And mud

I still have not dug deep enough inside myself
As to hit a fresh spring
And I have yet to successfully summon rain from my fingertips

I look for new ways to give life

You are not the mountain
Or the trail
But you footprint cliff face
With such pride
Like Jesus of three minutes
Before you’re wind washed away
As dandelion pod
Make no mistake
The mountain will forget you
And the rocks you threw will roll back in to place
Remember
In this cavern
You are the echo

At a gas station
That after a brief look over is decidedly not a rest stop
The car breaks down

The dog is shivering like he always does on road trips
And no one knows why
So I go inside
To buy stale chips and weird tea
That I drink on a stone wall in noon’s oven sun

Relief comes
In the form of a glaring skull tattoo
On the scarred arm of a too old man
Mustached
Like the 1940s factory hand
I imagine his father to have been

He speaks in broken engine
More rasp and growl than I can comprehend
I don’t speak this kind of poetry
And cannot gesture calluses as eternal as his fingertips
His sandpaper handshake with tooth enough
For the few missing from his easy smile

He puts one arm up on his open car door so casually
I know he’s told this story before
He met his wife a lifetime ago
Towing her broken down car
“Now, men always going after women is bullshit,”
He tells us
“She
invited me in for the drink

And it’s been 24 years
And she won’t let me get a third dog
And you know what?
I think I’d rather trade her for the third dog

You know”
His smile suggests that he wants for less sincerity
“I’ve put two kids through college
Step kids

And I still never got my drink”

If I could make your name
Mean anything more than stranger
I would do it
And I would own it
If I could memorize your shapeless face
Any harder

I would paint it on every wall

Lest any one not see it
You would be


World
famous


And if my hand was a mountain 

I would crush you