no interest in our backs
i've grown so tired of shelling out for glimpses
when there's an entire oceanful
of treasures silent on our shores every morn
and every time i see you on my phone
like dappled ocean foam
i cry wee wee wee
as if to say i've found my way
all the way home
your standards 9-20-16
only you know your standards
only you set the space
of what has to go right
of what you must be, mind and face
it's a finite set of time
energy and attention you're given
and when the course starts to differ
from that opening sense of driven
it's really a choice from there
how you improvise how you behave
you can reset expectation
or let it make you its slave
but regardless of what goes down
what trophies on the mental shelf
the lastingest thing of all
is how you treated others, and yourself
scar tissue 3-8-15
no linguistics expert am i but every word
for beautiful starts with a burst of air
from the front of someone's mouth
put that against the several words for sever
with snakelike starts
and it's like looking at an open grave
with a tree growing out
and i'd climb every time onto those first branches
of besottedness with a burst of air
in my lungs big enough to float
the glints of beauty are
strikeswift hammers that beat the brain meat
the perfunctory glaze on a moment,
they're seeds on a bagel,
and either fall off into nowhere
or give a forgettable texture to the inevitably
bigger
but scar tissue is a whole nother story
there are as many kinds of scar tissue
as donuts in jersey, as regrets in vegas
and interesting like thirsty, and quiet like records
it's certainly meaningfully besoughtlessly possessed
i feel like i linger once flesh filled with ink
in some primal propaganda i'd once swear was identity
but thenbliged to scapel the whole damn thing out
and not knowing which was greater the pain:
the nerves in prosaic alarm and defense, or
the being unable to anymore claim that to be
what once was me, was once what me
maybe i was just as fresh green and stupid
but i used to fight for a word with a bird
whose feathers not a displacement of symmetry held
o these days i'd trade conversation in a heartbeat
with a heart that knows beats whose trials scars do meld
there're hands from jumped fences
in reckless precarious & whimsical chase
of the breathless enchantedly new curiosity
from someone so soul-saving there's no time to waste
and years thereafter in the stillness of a chair
it's the quietest smile from the scar of life lived there
i've known the remains like a flag of survival
from a country surrounding the vitals and breast
it was years sacrificing when she should be flying
it took everyone's cells it took every last breath
but you see stardust sacred so damn meant to be living
with encirclements of hands like kid people cut-outs
and suddenly in places where bikinis
lend mundane status
there is vulnerably gorgeously human-fought-bout
so while i gouge out my former identity
and slowly climb higher in this dusty old tree
i know that the difference between
scar tissue resented and scar tissue beautiful
is forgiveness
forgiveness
forgiveness
in me
partmeets 3-28-16
to climb into the recesses of memory
where i store your sanguine soul-saving face
perfect in its listening moon eyes
and flush from earnestfelt loving
i can encapsulate every thrilling forgettal
of time
