sweet-lipped boy your wrists writhe positively serpentine
and somehow you find the light in me, i didn't - i forgot - i lost
the map to my god, my poetry - i lost the fucking guts in me
but watch out now, birds of prey coiling black feathers fanning
o u t and around my heart - a beautiful cancer

"In her happiest days, she was covered in paint. From her hair to feet, in punctuated drips and dollops. Those hours, life consisted of swollen poetry and words yearning to become true. The everpresent beating of a heart waiting to be born into being. (The thump of dreams hitting cement The tick of decency decidedly stepping aside The whack of realization that nothing is innocent or naive or pure.) We know what we're doing and we love it. We know, we know, we cry and pray and fuck harder than hungry whores. We watch the world pass in twisted eclipses and wonder if the sun is ever truly on our side. In her moments of bliss, she thought of this. Staggered breaths of a dragging age. The gaping abyss between here and anywhere. When life tasted like rock candy, and there were always kisses down the spine."

it is her birthday, and she cries and smokes.
she relies too much on the weather.
the sky is black as burnt muslin, clumsily extinguished by rain.
today she is twenty-three. nothing momentous. but still.
it seems that it should feel different. special. marked.
but it is an audaciously ordinary, albeit exceptionally gray, day.
no midnight transformations. no radiantly new self with renewed spirit and gusto and all the spring flowers popping from the earth's crust and life feeling like it was always supposed to feel- like a motorcycle ride or an oceanic wave or the longest kiss of your life.
but life just feels like life. and we drink too much and cut our hair and ignore those who love us and . . yet, we survive. if the drinking or cutting or crying doesn't kill us, we endure.
rejoicing some of the time, sobbing some of the time, but living all the same.
it is her birthday, and lessons arrive in strange shapes and vessels.

sometimes, the wise ones say, shit just needs to be moved around.

actually i have no idea what the wise ones say. if i did, surely, my head would feel better. my moments would fill will calm, and rest safely upon each other, like new leaves opening.

not this nagging unrest. a primitive village at civil war, inside the body of a person.
not to deny its thrills, which are both bloody and wonderful.

that's the heart of it though, i'm sure. sometimes shit just needs to be moved around. weather and geology and religion and cocktails and love. has to be shaken up a bit for optimal effect.

a January wind

can shake your firmest resolve.

will bring tears in a second
and it'll take years to figure out why.

there is nothing like the wind of the new year.

a beautiful whore with jagged teeth.

oh, the places the mind goes . .
when you think
she's out for a smoke.

down the block and across the rows
of persons lost, written.

in rhythms inhuman your heart discovers
that maybe, baby, you were not made
for this show .
and then the music is loud, and you're aware for that moment
wildly and a little bit
forever
(one hopes)
in colors that bleed like you can
never quite capture again
in slurred rain and
slow hand
it always begins again.

Let the rain come.
let it come.

for all the times i couldn't give a

goddamn

the problem is
that i already know the answer
and for once i
just want to be surprised.