if play our lives backwards

the bright swan between us rises,
a falling star in reverse,
low tide of our shining origin
exposing the trash and treasure
between where we stand and stood
the moon slow-talks its blank verse
makes us repeat it back:
blink and long, the stretch of the sand
how the sea licks your name
licks it from the earth, the damp relief,
the mouth of it

You Can't Put That in There

When I was 37, my partner came into the room with a handful of sticks. He had pulled them out of the garbage disposal. “You can’t put that in there,” he said. He thought it was I who had done it, rather than my 8-year-old. 

When I was 8, I was alone in the house and the phone rang. A man started asking me questions. Questions that made me feel uncomfortable. I thought it was my dad’s friend Ken, who ended up in prison. Maybe it was. He asked, “Would you like it if I licked your toes?” I laughed politely. “How about if I put my tongue in your pussy?” 

You can’t put that in there.

When I was 16, my brother’s friend Jeff came into my room while I slept. He laid on top of me and forced his tongue into my mouth. I fought him for several minutes. I fought him with my body. I fought him for my body. I said no. I said stop.

You can’t put that in there. 

My partner thought I had put the sticks in the garbage disposal. What would and would not go down? How big could the sticks be? I cut some flower stems and put them in. A couple hours later, the machinery stopped working. I told my partner that the garbage disposal was broken. I had a puzzled look on my face. He took it apart and then brought me the flower stems he’d found inside. “I think it’s from these,” he said. 

You can’t put that in there.

When I was 24 and working at Home Depot, my coworker Angelo asked me to go out. I went out with him on New Year’s Eve. He made us drinks. He pulled down his Murphy bed, and kissed me there. I wanted to leave, but he wouldn’t let me. He got on top of me. He removed my pants. He raped me. I said no and Angelo raped me. I said no. 

You can’t put that in there.

Ken. Jeff. Angelo.

I said no.

And I would feel guilty if I said their last names. 

You can’t put that in there.

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.