Third Attempt pt. 2

We’re going out of entrances
because he who waits despairs,
hopping here and there like a dumb
bird on a branch - but if you’re going
to be up there, at least climb the tree
and get me a real coconut!

We’re coming in at exits on a high
note, growing ‘til it reaches the heavens,
and if it isn’t a violin, then it has
to be a cello. Put out your claw
and start talking about happiness
staining the ceiling - scream about it, even,
until night isn’t just a dark thing,
until it actually acquires the light.

Third Attempt pt. 1

What do you think you’re thinking?
That the world is just a sphere
and we are too many?
The last time I did that birds pecked
out the eyes of my dreams,
and I remembered a wayward
stash of crows jutting out
of the trees like a taunt.

Screw up your courage ‘til it seems nothing
to think of night as having a sunrise in it;
can you actually look at the glass?
what is the color of your darkness? No, screw it
up until you can scream “this is happiness”
to me from across the ceiling.

Poetry might be a mysticism
but every time I approach it
it flirts away awkwardly
like a bird that can’t fly
and I’m afraid to pounce it
for fear it would confetti
itself like a fucking dodo.

Why am I even talking about poetry
in a poem? My head is empty,
so empty, and really I’m trying
to be cool like an asymmetrical
shirt tuck. But I worry because
asymmetrical wings lead to crooked
flight, and asymmetrical oars lead
to floating in circles, sort of
how your asymmetrical lace

makes me want to drink
my nerves away like they’re sea
sickness, and asymmetrical drinking
has me spinning around
your straight face, just like
an asymmetrical face is risking
ugly, and asymmetrical teeth

are a choking hazard, which is caused
by asymmetrical genes and that could
be a death sentence, but
an asymmetrical noose ain’t
gonna kill me as good
as we did the dodo.

I know futility is the size
of the bird in my heart
whose wings always celebrate
the arrival of a now

My weakness is that gravity
accumulates in seeds
blowing about the street
until they pile to a paralysis

There is no flutter
a noun can’t mend
into a pile of paralysis

I hear the wide world
spins itself into a pile of paralysis

I also hear you get caught
up in chants til you’re tossing
their corpses, dumb founded

I wonder if each month
approaches like wound clock
Or is that a womb?

Boy, that was sure surreal,
passing around envelopes
full of inconsequential stonings
of love through the sky —

I’ve stepped in it thick —
I think I lost

my breath a few times
and tried to mask it
with whiskey and now
I hiccup up and down
the whole city thinking

but what I really
want to say is
sueño contigo

I will not take this jar of ashes.
The simple things rest for a moment
in our ribcages, they come back to us,
twist the heart notches backwards.
How is it that they fill?

Clouds, the TV with slight chances
of rain, the small miracle
of rain in deserted summers,
lists of names unfurling up
and down the stairs, our favorite
words stamping themselves out
in ashtrays, maniacs and clowns
asking us coyly about our vanities?

But there’s the truth, no? Dragging
along your carpets, crawling up
your walls, sliding down your banister
with a giddy smile and you wonder
what that’s like because you’ve never
had a banister in your life. I wonder
too, but let it be, hoping
it returns to the top of the stairs.

If it returns, I’m not sure we should
listen; if it stays still, we should dance;
if it burns down its smoke signals,
we should wave them high;
if it murders itself in its own skin,
we’ll recreate ours. Remember to
underline that last part twice.
One day we might cart it around
in our backpacks as poems in a slice
of stone, asking us, “Who are you, really?”

And we can say, “Right, okay, you got us,
our hands are up, but now we’re going
to have to crush you.” Or, “come back,
come back, come back!
We haven’t heard you yet!”