you shouldn't let poets lie to you

grenade comes from pomegranate & now two boys make a bomb

since twelve i can only open 

sidewards, widen like a wound, stretch any way but

out: when it rains i beg the water to splinter 

across the roof instead of my hands

tell me what to do with all this bloodlessness if not stare until it rots— by lamplight, i ask god to show me a boy whose hands are riper than yours; too cup faces like water, and wonder how many are listening.

___________________________

because i know to forgive is to reconcile truth with longing and that

separate tooth & tongue, spine & mandible, liminal & physical.

unbraid the fabric of your soul - like a season shift – hungrily, but so so soft

look beyond the words on the tip of your tongue (there's poetry between the letters) and find the tenderness in memory. & let it leave.

know this will not be beautiful – there is never warmth in the leaving

try not to blink.

try not to be misremembered when they don't immortalize you on ceilings & tile // leave some love on the table & in the pictures

don't stay in the unfinished sentences; the margins. don't stay in the dark between the stars. that emptiness like the one you see in lured fish, mouth agape and waiting, will keep you waiting.

let words be words (let the words go)

let the leaves fall

let yourself in

you feel the way all skies do in the summer: 

rusting bloody at first, then paling; white-hot; sun bleached.

you feel this all of the time.

there is no innocence here: your hands are not empty like they are

when you have nothing to say to spineless gods

or exhaust your ammunition.

ii.

your entire life, you have learned to forgive.

you reconcile family and violence

like it is your birthright.

you hold your words like a weapon,

like a father.

iii.

you are molded from ashes: phoenix feather blood and fireproof skin,

name carved from a language too foreign to pronounce,

tongue shrivelling at the salt of each syllable.

you cut your mouth on every sound, sharper than metal

and you bleed

a little.

iv.

you know you are not a body, but the idea 

of a body.

the kind of beauty painted on ceilings.

the way a dog wishes to hold the sun