Wild as Ellé

XVIII. Living Dead

I.

that summer the reservoir receded baring her skin of stones and weeds underneath

the humid breeze pulled resinous pine tree air through the grey hover —

there won’t be rain.

have mercy

II.

pull the shirt over my head summer bruises & freckles

the marine layer seeps & curls salty speckles clinging the air —

heart sounds like waves beating a far-off shore.

if you mean no harm                                 XIX. Take me As you Please

burns away the cold

the October sun yawns gold through coastal brushes and oaks before slamming bloody orange over royal blue waters and black cliff arches

green flash chasers: bound to the 1 until Big Sur

much later the thick forest night absorbs the car without hesitation.

you arrive with the trees, stand with the quiet, while the fire eats away at the logs in an encrypted pattern. i think it’s high time for a hike to who knows where.

i didn’t know i was waiting up, but when you stepped by my side into the darkness

for just a moment i could have sworn it felt right.                                XX. …Slowdance on the Inside

check every knot and strand for frays careful now

careful as ever beware!—this one will taste a bit reckless.

smell ozone lingering the grey hover, waiting for lightning,

gamble or play the odds, this bleeds like betting it all.

watch me try my singed best to save the rest, what’s left

XVI. Daylily (pink cloud summer)

rolling cotton candy fuchsia sunset prism billowing gunmetal thunderheads storm brew cauldron

cumulo cumulo nimbus nimbus

in a flash—

sheer

showers of daisies. alternates

greyest of rains, puddles collecting in the worn out

asphalt.

beneath a hoodie she rides

griptape cliffside skimming the sidewalk

noctilucent.

listens to the waves churning

against the black coast— looks out

for reasons to stay.                                  

XVII. Atlas: One

i. 

the straight line isn’t level.

even. consistent. or straight. enough.

the list gets longer                       ii.

in a flash—

go fast and fast and faster—                       iii.

to sing a song worth singing

i watch you sink beneath the mounding pile of

octave. key. pitch. rhythm. tempo. arrangement.

don’t forget to breathe--                       iv.

fast and faster—

stokes rolling deltoids, gastrocnemii

pounding wolf heart,

puppy eye gleam

a delighted hunt for nothing

but movement                       v.

never dilute your best.

but.

grace requires

XI. Let’s cook us some breakfast and bounce

Golden hour forest meets grey seas then looks away

In the bat of a lash

The quail scuttle across the road swept under the tall grass

Like secrets

Fog hushes the redwoods looms over the trails

Visible: the ground at my feet

My feet on the ground how long how long

Do I got do I gotta wait                                                 XII. 

even though

the Lone wolf snarls she still cries to the trees

Promise me

Someone somewhere

Do I get to come home someday wash my dirty sore feet in warm water                                  

XIII. Burn

the heat shimmers off the flames the world behind veiled,

hazy             feverish.

bony pages of all the lies            piled high.

Don’t let the skeletons in your closet they said.

but what happens when one’s born there grows taller than you brews bourbon-barrel aged lies,

demands rent?

said nothing about how to sit down define,

regulate             talk it over.

spit that metallic taste —

that fear             a bit in the mouth.

i want to chomp it to pieces i want to leave.

i want to just burn

                                    XIV. God, Drugs, & Sex i. 

i sigh with incomplete sentences. If—

How can He— He, Whoever?

could i mean anything to Him Whoever? does Him Whoever mean anything to me?

and is it loud enough to drown their chanting — VALUE IS A NUMBER & YOU ARE VALUED

quick—tattoo it to your forehead! so no one forgets.

Who dares to fill out this grand blank space?

Who dares to offer an inheritance?

who dares to accept it?                         ii.

pinky promise: only the greenest curiosity.

after the carrot top white dragon wrestler spewed his smoke,

he simply handed us a crumpled roll-up. well.

it would be wrong not to smoke it, Stecker said.

it’s pretty weak he said — what do i know,

i giggled a lot at the ice cream shop. no need to worry but —

are you gonna stop loving me after you read this?

how we camped on the apple orchard hilltop and coughed until we fell asleep under the moonlight next to the dog?

promise: every regrettable decision i made i chose before the first sip.                          iii. Sex

like a dog sniffing intently at a crusting wound, then licks with a gentle tongue—

how can you ask me in the January air, while my hands grow stiff from the cold —

O where did i learn to love? maybe you don’t wanna know

no matter the amount of arrows in her side, a Starving dragon is a starving dragon —

the glass ball held up between us falls, shatters on the asphalt —

the shards look sharp enough to cut me to pieces. i fear you’ll walk across them to get to me.

i fear you won’t.                                                  XV. Hydra 

i sink my teeth like a fruit bat

and just as blind — sugar rush hunting

needs not patience or bloodhound senses.

see how

the pomegranate juice runs down my neck

ask me.

he sinks his teeth like a vampire bat

turns the blood to honey —

it oozes over his hands.

see

how my Heracles breaks my bones.

why do you ask me

where i sink naked crouched in the grey?

do i fear you or do i just fear losing me —

see

how each sentinel head sprouting from my spine

shouts a different name.

you ask me a third time

as you clean the kitchen sink

wipe the bread crumbs from the counter —

but you know you know you know.

see

how my love   breaks my bones

X. Rapture

you wanna dance? i’m an addictive commitment kind of animal.

when you call my name

VIII. 

leaning away the hill cuts the horizon line at 45 degrees

well i lean forward.

pawing the ground the clydesdale urges its carriage with a sense of duty

i drive these pedals down.

dragging all these corpses mechanical advantage multiplied with spirit

my bones and sinew will move on.  

emerging red from the mire           gasping I’M HOPELESSLY HOPEFUL

i claw the suspensions.

                    IX. Divine Spark

1. your ears perked up when i said

THIS BROKEN THING NEEDS YOUR HELP HELP ME FIX IT

never mind a little grease we can spend an evening messing things up a bit

you can disassemble so long as you promise to put it all back together again

this vehicle lives as a hinge like the place between body and soul

compresses the verb DRIVE and TAKE ME HOME

2. driving the kick drum home

this red muscle never skips a beat it just goes faster and faster and

i don’t think i want to know i’m worth saving or fixing i think i just want to know i’m worth something at all

i look at you across empty plates and say—

the good news is not realizing you have something to die for the good news is finding out you have something to live for

November drains the sun from the sky: a little bit of starlight

VI. The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows

i thought you were singing along

sullen blood brings fang and hoof together— hear the lions and the lambs in chorus chanting:

keep the blood in your head and your feet on the ground—

they’ll drop dead together.

ruin the veil. you lied so well

singing halleluh                                 

VII. Translate

see the color leave my eye—

          Nevada puffs blotted grey           code name: Stares Out of Windows

         Idaho sunset blood orange          i just want a better look

         Wyoming rolling green          let me wander these open spaces

chemicals that don’t align—

         Yellowstone babbling shallows teals          find a meadow to rest these heavy eyelids

         Geyser Basin geothermal phthalo blue          feels like walking an alien planet ready to explode

         Lamar Valley bison chocolate          nomadic & sunburnt

see an all familiar face—

         Teton snowy bosom prussian          nurturer of lightning and woolly hooves

         Jenny Lake granite cobalt          brother tucks wildflowers in my hair

         Jackson Hole antler arch white          warm rain slips quietly through the air

feel forever out of place—

         Salt Lake City sidewalk slate          my answers aren’t good enough for her questions

         Ben Lomond windshield dahlia red          always driving away into the night

         Hihn Street high forest vapor          never safe to say these things out loud

just too hard too translate—

         Capitola asphalt black          i don’t think i knew how to lose you right

         Scotts Valley redwood gold          trying to feed all these scrawny foxes in their dens

V. I Was Scared & I’m Sorry

i wondered if i’d ever break on Christmas Eve running like sand through my parents’ fingers

running through sand felt like it was getting to me just like this nightmare i dreamed in high school

where i found myself in an arena with my track team and someone released a panther fast as a blue plane

to chase down and ravage the slowest contender running through the deep sandy waste—now

i’m awake to these voices screaming Don’t you dare leave us alone It’s your fault

you’re alone It’s your responsibility to find someone to fuck before you die

alone—never could arrive completely to either of the two the fucking or the dying just kind of fell into paralyzed instead and what’s wrong what’s wrong

what’s wrong with me you’ve cut your body into too many pieces and spread them

over too many bedsheets let the bucks into the garden

to shake the trees with their antlers and eat all of the blackberries

they won’t ask if you feel scared they won’t ask

Is that a broken wing they won’t hear you say Too fast or

No they won’t think of you in one piece. so tired of feeling scattered

so tired of unable to fall asleep in my own bed so tired

of cutting myself apart

I WAS SCARED AND I’M SORRY

when you wake up in the morning and feel the cold floor of the cave

do you wake up mourning for the light enough to crawl towards it? do you wake up 

and take inventory of every single rock and which ones

will help you climb and hold your feet or which ones will make you stagger? i was scared 

and i’m sorry but i think this is better than feeling hopeless

i woke up mourning the light enough to crawl towards it i woke up

mourning the light enough

III. Mock

fade all input except for beat and mock i pretend i don’t want to ask any questions

the timing never did land right i’ll wait until you leave

before i yell at all these ghosts little vampire bats flapping through the echos

roosting in the little red crags between my ribs they couldn’t see me screaming

HOW DO YOU THINK THAT THAT’S OKAY?

watch their little teeth they suck at my blood

but they never know how to love me.

                     IV. Have Faith in Me

I. Applause

Send it!

—my brother yells into the air whack your adrenaline into motion warm wings flapping in the summer sun

burns this overcast till the water flashes evaporates

right off your skin leaves you salty from sweat salty from surf

heaps of spray launch skyward Send it!

—such applause. just look at that Minnesota smile. even though the world is a long day

applause my lungs, still breathing

i think i’m ready for more ready for now?—with both feet like you want to yell it

Send it!                      

II. She’s Out of Her Mind

whoa.

the jagged edges of black nail polish will continue to chip away with steel held in one hand and a fistful of dirt in the other;

no sense in aimless tumbling through just to be stone smooth.

i oscillate between spikes and watercolor and frays and lavender flowers—

listen:

this song requires to play loudly kick up your heels HERE IS THE SPACE I OCCUPY;

because anything that involves loving necessitates a refusal to hide so—

come kiss my crazy she said we all have a crazy lady living inside of us,

and she comes out one way or another—

i mean we all just want to be loved regardless of something or another the way i need to hear you say,

I DON’T LOVE YOU LESS FOR THE MISTAKES YOU MADE

I WOULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE IF YOU HADN’T MADE THEM

hear you hum Whoa i’m in deep with this girl and she’s out of her mind basking in this runny eyeliner jungle

Shaggy: Zoinks

Scooby: Ruh-roh

Daphne: Jeepers

Velma: Jinkies