Fire the Poem

who can fire the poet, she says

but i'm quitting all the time

i wanted to retrace a cause, spool into time

this measure of what i determined a quantum fixt sound

to be soul to soul bound of karmic disasters or what 

is measured as in relation, i found myself wrong

about more than i was ever right

i'm exhausted by left hand margins 

& a departure from

how cute the use of line breaks

while people die of easily preventable 

things like hunger and poverty

how much longer in the charade of scarcity 

of resources and wealth is our requited participation 

 

we aren't taking care of one another, she said

the day we took MDMA and voted

i have a right to be a happy citizen 

given that our time here is infinite

why all the anxiety about right & wrong moves

we misremembered parting and departing 

a different set of codes

 

the night sky partially a drowning of dead light

but drawn as we are to a shining, we pretend

how many ghosts are inside us now

i mean inside this universe and well, of course

this climate of mean observations

 

Random Disruption :: Contained Object

Border /
                      Line


i.

i want to show you the moutains
holding up the phone, the screen fills
with desert, your voice suspended, they are farther than they seem

            i know          about running out of space

 the world not wild enough  
  can’t we still get married, you laugh

       we can do anything            if it comes to cruelty
                       scenery slipping past

                   i have $20.00 left and nowhere to go and HIV
                     & echo: what kills us
   wherever you go, there you are

ii.

look, she tells me over the cards, you are never going to get
what you needed        
       i get on stages flowing over, what is constant
is the way i can’t hold     the memory of any sweetness  
   i forget that love exists in the absence of a body before me
       they call it splitting: the way i fold down between acts
                  i pretend to understand cues.    


iii.

you will turn on me or i will turn on you       & then time passes

     loneliness makes a small rip, then grows to erase even safe

     i know something about people who no one can love

         it’s dry and hot and cold at night   (endures)
            we are stuck here. it seems (untethered) the sun melts

i will never find you. and you will never see me.  that is what family means


iv.

                                 The observed cannot be separated from the observer.

i think i am beginning to understand              that we are not dependent on the universe

           as much as it is dependent upon us               to see it clearly        

i named every tear after a star. i tacked them to the night sky
above our heads and sang to you across death valley

           a barycenter contains an inherent two-body problem  
                                neither holds, either is the shifting space that threatens
a double star is just an illusion of light            it is hard to measure
      what any one person ever gives another person in this life
       
                     

       

Without motion

Shadowplay 

language is as close as i want

to get to love

it turns

me round

i wanted to run

into someone

safe enough to wing over

me, the air cold enough

clinging to this temporary

as near as i can stand

it’s fleeting, we retreat

control is about living

& for us, that meant survive

all the world did not give us

& then gave back its madness

i could read the pattern

of how we break, the body

that can’t relax hits a tipping point

written in hate, it was armoring

we had no desire to be the fire

put out, come for me

early morning before we disappear

back into lives, swallowing

of time under our fingers, fingers

you would trace the way i am

fingers under here, we be

this type of animal sheltering

in anonymous

you were the only
beast i could let go
underneath