Unhinged

I want it in the way that only I can remember. Unhinged a little on the edges, blurry moments snake-like swallowed, everything at once because it’s the only way I know how to move. All at once because there there’s nothing else to breathe and even though I’ll remember today-tomorrow it was all one fluid movement through. I want it in the way that only I can unlock, while driving, staring into the spaces between raindrops imploding on the windshield with the same lyrics I’ve sang a thousand times but always seem to change. I disappear for a few minutes at a time, taking it in. I want to feel everything in the way that I wanted your affection.

Things Remembered

My body remembers all the things I need to be reminded of, like why I keep staring, discretely into the lights waiting for a prayer to find me. Holy in half-time, present and accounted for with the tabernacle bones of my youth. Stiff white memory etched with panic prose, and the cracks of every other lifetime.

Avoiding

Today I’ll practice avoidance. I’m avoiding the sun, and even though it’s cloudy it was my decision. I’m upside down on the couch avoiding the green viper sliding through my dream. I wanted to hike but the internet said the rain was acid and felt like Ohio so I’m avoiding outside too. My dog stares at me, plotting, expecting, so I’m avoiding looking him in the eye.

I'm always falling into things..like the eternity between thought and action, suspended

Borrowed Body

There must be something borrowing
 my body in the low hours
  thru the dreams I never remember
Bearing mysterious bruises I never forget
And I’m always tired
 in a suspicious way
Like my loaned-out body’s broken free
 to run divine
the night streets

Heavy Halo

Slow lucidity, as I realize the black of the grain of the doorway. Answering questions about my identity in slow speech for the sterile inquisition, and all my answers fall heavy on the air between gasps, searching for my breath. My body is a liminal itch, simply leftover, in waves of coherent disappearance as I melt into fluorescent brights under a halo of hospital signs.

Spring Noir

I sat here to stare, and eavesdrop, six inches from the eastern bloc and conversations I can’t understand. Spy stories only. I shook my notebook open and a star fell free, with faint recognition for this dead-drop relief. A nod from the past, awake among Sunday’s dirty dishes, remembered in their clanging dirge. The plot thickens, bright in spring noir.

Lost Lines #8

Even at my stillest…
…I am running circles of suspicious intent.

River

I am the river, arterial
 I am the tributary
  twined with many others
   swift in one direction
    at times I overflow

Monday, Mid-Morning

Sudden debilitation on a Monday, mid-morning. I am not here. Staring into faces of the future as they appear in the ceiling tiles. Because what you think of me matters and I hate that about me.

Ornate Eyes

Ornate and open. Fixed gold on the wall, fixed faith aesthetic for all my secret freedoms. Fixed frame memory for all my screaming one-and-all’s, my sex and silence, tears and falls. My inhibitions, intuition, blaring blues and favorite songs, I’m angry, anxious, tired, small…and always there you are. Looking back, invited into warm voyeur. A reflection of quiet conspiracy and Delphic disclosure.
Mirror.
Mirror.

Lost Lines #7

I have loved myself only in the names of faces that have escaped my memory.

Night Chills

I was cold, but
  I couldn’t move to
    take the headphones off

for fear
  of missing a note

no minute, no
  melody skipped

just night chills
  in the drift, open apartment
    and this
    song, my open heart

I’m always falling into things, like prayers of old enlightenment, in dashed nostalgia to remind me it was real...left in the short space between my fingers grasping for air.

Deviation

here is a traveling noun
and I am a traveler
on little deviations,
options, adventures

through the inescapable
map shifting about the
carpet, laid
up close a thousand paths

here is a traveling noun
I’ve had too much
coffee, laid here
long enough
and I’m tired of traveling