you owe a debt of love to everyone,
even the nameless beings who wake at dawn
to facilitate clean, endless water.
You can pay it back, or
agree to suffer a perforated solitude.
-
Regardless of anything you hear
You remain a man
And in your ears you hear the words
We must test you to limits to see how much we must love you
But how many do you know
Who have not bent but broken
are dead with no history
You know the names the moment I said those words to you in this poem
This poem where you have finally heard something you’ve been waiting to know for sure
Now you know poetry is where we keep our secrets
So be a fucking man about it and listen
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_guy I can only fall in love with wings
flashing between the pews of a funeral,
divorced from keepers,
testing a scab against The Ward’s lightbulbs,
call shy at a shotgun wedding,
unwelcome awe in the rafters,
I volunteer to handle them,
throbbing with fear tapping the glass casing,
what if there is not even a single poetried music in still air,
or rest from the fear of unrelenting madness?
There is wonder in preening missing feathers,
where tattoos glisten mistakes like sweater sleaves didin bed within them,
no threat, my sweet, ghostly company
I learned the peripheral shadow kept in careful vision
pet like an animal, if I was one
my mind trained on the chestpin released,
wasting no time to leave with the breath of fear
underwing like the lamentations of the mama
preferring caged songs to grieving bodiesCan I become a thing that flies?
remove the liminal body taught to me
by survivors of survivors of survivors?
Is it resilience that comes with a map of the heart?
Or the potential memory of violence that genders us?
yet still I am more like the wind I was before I knew them well.