just another suicide poem
you don’t want to read this.
untethered and still in tangles, some words
should only ever be sung at song’s end.
for some hurts, there are no words.
here. put your finger just…
here. where it pulses.
feel the slow.
red-black, it giggles
as it drips from skin to
brick-l(e)aden sheets.
you don’t want (anyone)
to read this.
they’ll take away your shoelaces,
your plastic knives.
but then, what’s a razorblade
when all you need
is the will to stop
breathing?
for some pain,
there is no air.
i know these things,
the giddiness of a dripping
pulse. trust me, i’m
a doctor.
here. they’ll take away
your shoelaces
and you’ll walk barefoot,
without dignity.
but they won’t let you
leave. you’ll walk hobbled,
in small circles,
barefoot,
broken.
like poetry.
your story
on some stage far from here,
another bleeder.
here. as it gushes.
trust me, i’m
a poet. feel the slow,
the red-black breath
of forever
a single, beaten tomorrow
that will never
be yours again.
read barefoot,
untangled,
how it gushed
(in the end),
how they wouldn’t
let you leave.
broken, the whole world
will applaud, crying in the end (;)
you don’t want to read this.
reflecting as we turn from the water
there was such hope
in this morning.
there were springs
and summers all
jumbled up in our eyes.
there were poems
scrawled in neon, winding
between our fingers:
binding, not bound. now
they slog through wet
descent, flailing, &
here we are at the back
of the notebook, a single
leaf remaining
before october ends.
cold settles in
like a low fog,
like tequila hung-
over, like
responsibility.
the river keeps rising,
and i will miss it.
there was such hope
in this morning.
& i am waiting still.
on tuesday at fourteenth and v
a poet might just save your life he
nodded, knowing, the truths spit
out from wine-red lips onto the floor
like that bottle of rioja the waiter
spilt that night we sat
in the corner and heard the priest
argue for equality
of ordination; you said
it was the candlelight
on my breast that caused
the contention; i said it was just
capitalism. it was still
raining; we walked
through sad poems
to get home, umbrellaless& reciting
rosaries of glass tomorrows.
we drowned only
in standing water once.
poem ex nihilo
we burn
as the sun sets.
i am watching smoke curl,
feeding sticks into the flames
one by one by one, searching
the shapes of autumn’s shadow
for a metaphor fragile
enough to carry trust
in its silky, river-
fed palms;
for the words to drip
down your open-mouthed
throat like a benediction
and swallow naked, like a sword;
for the way silent twilight
fills the negative space
and becomes a poem
ex nihilo.
(between parentheses)
after R.S.
dear poet,
there is nothing
accidental
about this metaphor:
that we are children
reaching hands
in the hard calloused
eyes of the ferryman who
steers between the winks
of channel-markers
into gloamed twilight;
that we step
quietly on the creaking
planks of secrets and
drink in coastlines
like sweetwater;
and that we finally
follow stars hot
& hard as July earth
until each
reaches home again.
What has so far transpired:
contrails of cirrus
like kitestrings are flung
cross a June evening,
laundry lines of the summer’s
sirensong, a rumbling
in the stomach of my soul.
it nears storm season,
longing anticipated before
lightning even
touches down.
the wind builds
castles of our discontent, dust
scattered like glitter &
unicorns ‘cross the page where
we grub out with the back
end of a no.2 lead the lust
which would hang
us up to dry. do i
already drip? i cannot
remember how
the next verse goes.
my black marks
are wound like
kitestrings ’round
but a single wrist, tight,
untangled (and i think),
still my own.
This night, there are no stars.
watching sky darken,
we contemplate
words like leaden,
sultry, in-
digo. but leaden
is closer to
the slivered prison
of my rib-cage,
bars behind which
this ache pro-
creates. sultry
means barefoot river
afternoons and indigo
has always been
grotesque, except
on peacocks.
so instead i watch
raindrop veins
on plateglass,
think of melting &
the sublimation
of misted breath,
remember sweat
on glasses,
graveled chaos,
rug-burnt morning
sunlight before
the world changed.
but these windows
will not open and we
feel guilty for
our guilt, wonder
why the stars
stay absent. are
river afternoons so
different, now?
we watch and already
rain is slowing; veins
close & strand drops
in streetlit glass,
almost like star-
light. almost.
