two
drops
of nectar joining

I go down on bones and stars and stones
I call down the dead and bring them to bed
I lay down with gods and beggars and frauds I go down in history like any good mystery

colonizer

we are colonizers

cannonballs
shot across the water
projectiles of pain

crashed out past
our own keening

who but desperation 

would pursue such
disruption

we come from
nowhere

we come from fire

we come from night

we drink the sea
as it pours
down
our
faces

This is your love poem.

It can’t get any worse, 

so we might as well be in love.

I hold you like language, gravity, sleep— 

the things that hold me back.

untitled 13

Standardize your child. Primer: Neat rows of square desks forsake the circle. (Passive-voice) lines are drawn between math and language, art and science, music and movement. Math is a living, breathing, moving mass of color, sound, and light. Find the stained glass window to the temple deep in your meaning. You will recognize it by the shape of your gaping mouth.

Correlate anything with everything. Forge philosophy in a fire, not in the upper stratosphere of academic ash. Fuck meatless metaphysics. Look infinity in the face. Take the gut-punch. Take its air in your lungs. Bellow into the depths and befriend worthy echoes. Pound for pound, this is smithery. We step over the homeless woman dying on the sidewalk.

Justice is the gavel in my heart, pounding when I see myself in the mirror of you. Register the demons to become human. Justice rests on our convictions. Parole the margins.

Let's count the things we know. 1. We are whole. 2. There is no land, so let's stop flapping our wings. Let's freefall through the winds of change. 3. Not a muttered shrug, but a diamond-eyed revelation: I don’t know.

Where the head reigns without the heart, walk out the door. Only read philosophy that holds up from the curb of a crackhouse. Wear an amulet against what? Be a selfless sieve, so ghosts drift through. Ante up. Be the paradox of taking ownership of no property: I have nothing, and I stake a claim on it. 

Pedestals make parallax. Evolution does not imply upward mobility or improvement. If you don’t build a tower, you can’t fall from it. We forecast our own future in the turnstile of oppression. Prescription: A sprig of thistle. A fervent blip from the vagrant who spouts deep, unbidden truth. Forge with your hammer a cradle that holds the old woman you will never step over again.

Poet, heal thyself! Form with your tongue a remedy. Every pronouncement, a decree. Your body will still become ash. Cremation is a cure. Until then, we break in fragrant throes, the scent of truth hot on our hands.

we are evidence of old magic
bodies are an ancient language
some of us are still alive
we are endurance artists

the brightest are the darkest
rainbows are broken light too
the oracles are convulsing
the dead are near

even the saints are fucked up
certainty is rooted in terror
some lies are honest
we are what we deny

we are enchanted pain
small tragedies are easier to grieve
black magic is self-harm
all of these are spells

we are the only animals who think there’s something better
we are fighting the sky
we are forbidden books that must be read in the night
we are fugitive clouds, destined to rain

Medical Sonnet #8

art by René Milot

Hear ye, humble followers: my image shall be held on high! 
Neglect hath shrunk my heart, a weight 
that moors us to the blackest sea, while I apply 
a golden gilt that fashions an alluring bait.
Depth of sight I haveth not, and thus I do collect
façades that shineth hugely brighte;
my biggest mirror is a wall, unfairest
since I needeth not to contemplate nor self-reflect.
I grant to ye my gravity from such tremendous heights.
What’s slick as oil causes falls, embarrassed
from the tower’s suite
(no room for anyone but me, for I, of course, am self-replete).
Revolve 'round me like I'm the sonne! I’m just as full of gas—
I lighte the way by leading with my egocentric ass.