Angel

two steps back

bitter, cycled trails to track

how can this pain

still linger now

why is my grief

stuck here somehow

when i tell myself,

‘it’s fine, it’s true’

‘i’ve grown, moved on,’

‘i’m happy for you’

i know you don’t care

if it’s through gritted teeth

the simmering acid

our music will never cut out; only whisper when tides are low and chips roll under a table built for fools who prefer wobbly legs

gold in a nutshell was a standard for jittery squirrels when railroads were a concept and hiding your nuts was eighty-five percent of a lost criteria

You have one foot in high school

and another in your grave.

Which will bury you first?

I've defended you

in rooms that turned you away

while you shivered in the monsoon

but you've set the universe ablaze

and now that room

is all the remains.

Everyone else

is drinking to what never was

while I'm sad

for what could have been.

You've spent your life

writing manifestos

in what you claimed was ink

but the words have started to run

like the teardrops

of the wounds

to which you refuse to tend.

I wanted to dedicate

the world's lingering misanthropy

to you

but when I see you

jumping

into infinite landfills

while screaming "victim"

like a child yelling

"fire"

to feel love,

it would be akin

to dropping an atom bomb

on a village

just to get rid of

because my muses lie in the night. 

with the moon. in a darkness that

puts its other senses to uses i can’t 

understand. want a love that will keep

the lights on. revive the wings that 

settle dead in my stomach. i want 

to be happy enough to be away 

from the notebook.

Shivering in cool breezes scented with sweet oranges and the tingle of mint, their shadows stretch and curl into waltzes across your face.

Light refracts in your white-fogged gems, and sometimes I doubt if I can actually see you.

My mind blurs when I look you head on. Consciousness shivering between realities, yours and mine, disconnected. I see your side profile from across cloud-bridges and from behind feathered edges.

My fault, though.

When I look at you only from the corner of my eye, from my own little island. Floating amiss in the darkening blue sky.

And when I stare up from under half-lids, eyelashes cutting the world into wedges.

I hope you know I wonder about you.

About where your wings take you when you're relaxed.

About how you see the world, is it hidden by your gemstone veil? Or do the facets act like magnifying glasses, bringing everything into bright, near painful, clarity?

About your murmured sentences, drifting on the wind, I'm sorry I didn't catch them all.

One day, I'll show you the silver fog that floats off the grass when I wake up early enough, and I'll point to the way the stars chase each other across the galaxy when they think we aren't looking.

Soon, I promise.

When I'm able to read the curling cursive letters the fog paints across my chest, and the stars allow me into their game.

For now, I'll listen.

I've heard them say --

but a dog would love me

like I put the sun

in its sky,

even on my worst days.

When a dog wants to play,

it's like I'm one of its own --

just another friend

to jump and run and pull

with.

Even when a dog is mean,

I know it's afraid,

or has been hurt, before,

or has something

that it needs

to pretect --

A man would love me

for only as long

as i am what he thinks

he wants.

A man plays with me

like I am a toy,

and discards me

when he's worn me out,

or has lost interest.

A man is mean simply

for the joy of being cruel,

or because,

heaven forbid,

I give him not

whatever it is he

feels he is owed --

Men are (not) dogs.

I can trust one of the two

when I look them

in the eyes,

and i find the other so often

has learned, well enough,

how to pretend to care --

I never have to question

the love of a dog.

Men are not dogs,

and they are not filled

with enough majesty

to be called even wolves

in the skin of man --

They are men, and, to me,

that often enough

is reason to be weary,

on its own.

"Thank god I love women."

poetry is the only thing i can’t

do in a hurry. force myself to sit. 

to think, for a change. the words 

are a melody. a slow-moving river. 

a meditation of all the thoughts i must 

write slower than i can speak.

awake? february

potentially

twenty-two or twenty-four or

23rd

or

4inthemorningo’clock

(this vape hits like a sissy)

or 5:17 a(nte) m(eridiem)

mercury soon in retrograde

(like i care)

dream-glazed Aztec hair

bespoiled empires, how common

how painfully american

to die of cancer or gun violence

scylla or charybdis

coke or pepsi

(both taste like diabetic urine)

i’ll take a cold glass of

data center backwash

river-fed, a note of mountains

off the nose, and undertones

of corporate slavery and

neo-fascism

(as though this shit was “new”)

just the same old re-packaged

re-branded re-funded re-justified

tribal bullshit

‘my oh my!’ my ganna

would have said

‘someone woke up in a mood!’

in her southern belle drawl

but she died in the side bedroom

those thick glasses probably

threw little rainbows on the wall

from the bedside table

mist in the sprinkler

a spectrum of harp strings

suspended, frozen in childish

memory, (nostalgia is hopeful

poison)

i am only ever now

(worse luck)

and fables made of then

(self-indulgent bildungsroman)

woven by an

unreliable narrator

(christ, I’m bored,

a thief may have said

as they hung waiting)

samsaric tedium

(death and re-death)

we are only ever now

(although i do wonder

what her mind projected

upon that hideous popcorn ceiling

as she lay in bed that night)

or did she simply ask

am i awake?

am i awake?

am i awake?

until she simply was not

(this strain recedes like a coward tide)

why why why my oh my

(a poem about my anxiety struggles)

I'm pissing what ifs

into my holding cell.

I will drown

again and again

yet I will always

grovel for oceans.

My personal conspiracy theories

are graphed out on the brain.

They pierce the skull,

they pierce the world.

Three decades

without autumn or spring;

the summer startles to winter

then back again

without a chance to thaw