vaporize (throwing back to blue)

i try to find a song that looks like you the palest underbelly of a vein drained of everything of substance of solidity i want you to be less ethereal than a cloud but paler than the color of my lovers eyes and the emotion when i remember that he is not beside me in the curves of my skin not when i lose it all not when i crumple and cry for then my tears are darker. no, you are the shade of consciousness in the back of my mind when a cog slips somewhere the hue behind the mien that moment when i have the faint feeling that something is missing that little bit of emptiness that swallows me whole. i stare at you before i go to sleep. i’m thinking about a poetry class in which i was told to envision a way i would be happy to die. the silver lake floods my brain, the bottom of the canoe, there is the black curve of the sky, the dappled milky way, the lapping noises, the night bottled up inside like an infinite wound of finality and i try to find you. where do you fit into this? i see my eyes closing, i see myself slipping, retreating, retracting, no light, no color, no words, no speech, no thought, no thing, nothing. and thats when i realize you are what comes after. you are the sight of the morning when i open my eyes.

New Recording 66

he's not been up here
there's no need to scream.

it is blue/dusty blue/just like you/and me too

i fall with the tide
fall with the orange ferry
the sky cherry red
not dusty not blue
not like you not me
not too red or rushed
we fall like the ferry
orange tide the sky
red don't want to die

will it hurt?
death is all around us
god jesus she says
a confused christian prayer
another she hangs up the phone
immediately i know something is wrong
her mouth mouthing the words badly carried
they barely are conveyed miscarriage a text
from her sister, I am so so sad. And amidst
this the need for death you had, the death of
holding hands in this audience, searching
the internet for pictures of our love that is now
dead. i once wrote of how like a car crash it
would cease to exist. i open up my palms
and the crumpled leaf falls
down like ashy rain.

gripping (a prayer for texas)

i take it back
i take it all back

not given a choice
in the place of worshipping
the holy, rose the fire

and all the children cried
not yet knowing the grace

of an eternal father

not yet knowing anything but
their hands against the pew

and the sweaty palm of a mother

before the somber stones
erupted in flames.

last night in the incensed hall
there were candles and the name

the word was spoken to my unknowing ears

and still like all i nodded my head under the weight
of an unknown tragedy, not knowing the little gripping fingers,

not knowing it was white bones that hung clinging to my bending neck.




May we all raise our Heads for you,
May we Never let you fall.

el día de los muertos

hoy no quiero vivir
hoy quiero sentir la muerte porque este día
me recuerda que la muerte es preciosa
algo que se debe honorar con ojos cerrados

dame tus flores, amores, amigos, de color rojo
de color rosa, de color amarillo, negro, naranja
y ponga candelas en mis orifices
(mi nariz, mi oreja, mi boca, todos son
cavernas apropiadas)

cuando estén listas
mete su boca arriba de mi boca
y dame un chin secreto
de cafe, de habas de la finca
donde las mujeres pasan sus
días debajo de las palmas
hasta las doce cuando se suben sus ojos
a ver los hombres montando en caballo
el sonido duro como trueno

con éste río caliente
adentro de mi garganta
atravesando mi cuerpo
mis venos sin voz

creo que tal vez
podría vivir, un año más.

(fragment)

my words are worlds away
they seem so young
the stretch of syllables, the turns of phrase
like talking to oneself on paper
the reader never thought of.
a monologue performed
without realization

common

on days like this, we sit
and hold our lives up to
the light. you missed a spot,
a grandfather with
black breath and
cigarette fingers who asks
to give some sugar, a brother
who doesn't know his
story, a father who lays
down the law behind office
doors, we talk about death
the bearers of our parents wills
the way we will conduct ourselves
our births, our hair, the times
that we remember, the hands we hold,
the faces that touch ours, and
all that we can try to hold
in common.

Harkness

the bell marks each coming morning, a death,
the beats, a palming echo, on my breast.

compline

if i were extinguished like a candle
in this dark hall
would you notice?

like wisps we float
out afterwards, but
i am not transcendental

poetic license must be rented
from the animal control association

a license to stand in this circle
to know everyone's name

i float out afterwards

thinking of curls and bitter
comparisons and decide in

the future, transcendental,
or buried in the ground

i will float alone.

Jealousy (poem from an old notebook)

I am the one you love
and you'll tell me in a
heartbeat
the future and the past
are separate entities
together
we
are a separate entity
we are not shaped out of our after
we are not carved from our
before

a convoluted mirror of my own

I am waiting for your words
warm and rich like spoiling honey
to drip down the insides of my bones
and pool in the middle of my stomach

sometimes i wonder what that would be like
to be suffocated from the inside with words, probably
not ideal, maybe painstaking, each

syllable a syrupy drop in the pit of my stomach
that left no ripple. And my words, where would they go?

would they spurt out of my mouth like a fountain?
delineating themselves in the sky, each letter falling
and hitting your upturned face, one by one by one

would you stand shocked? frozen with surprise? as my hs
broke on the bridge of your nose, and all my ssss hooked themselves
like fishhooks on your plump lower lip, my os like rings
encircling your ears. I think maybe you would look beautiful.

or would you open your mouth gaping and swallow my words whole?

would your eyes flicker with a sour flame and like
that game of stacking mangled chairs would my letters
lay confused, janky, and jutting in the pit of your

own body? a convoluted mirror of my own.

the last words written in an old red notebook i find, next to a doodle of a tree stump 'STUMPED' (4.10.15)

I'll be your friend
forever

is that comforting?

to lose you
and then be friendzoned
forever

I cannot tell

ducklings

down by the docks we find a duckling

cason hands it to us in his palms
miss he says do you want this?
it shivers in my fingers

grace and I swim it to the rocks
the four boys on the shore watching
every move, the paddling feathers
amongst the sea waves seem
incongruous, jagged like the current

what do they eat? kyle asks insistently,
as the small bills snap up floating seagrass
bread? aaron ventures

I tell them what I was told—that bread isn’t good for birds
it expands in their stomach, popcorn is better.
aaron laughs and chastises himself,
I guess I’ve been watching too many cartoons.

we name the ducks taylor and alex
names for both girls and boys
(aaron suggests donald and daisy
he insists he can tell the genders
by the tuft of hair on one’s head one is yellow yellow yellow
the other is black—that’s how I know)

when kyle asks which one is bigger?
cason thinks it’s the smaller one—
small things can be older he says wisely
like me, I’m smaller than you and I turned eleven
last year kyle grunts, his eyes on the feathers

as grace and I float the two birds
swim around us in figure eights

miss, can you take them with you?
toes dipped in the water, cason asks again.
the boys’ upturned faces are like
unfurled flowers, vast expanses
present in the small space between ear to ear
endless seas, infinite blue

we have to leave them here, we say
we have to let them learn to live on their own

the boys think within a second. can’t they get eaten?
kyle is worried about them floating away,
justin sits on the edge of the dock eyes wide.
what if they float out there?

for a moment, i look out to the waves and try to imagine
our little ducks above the sharks, above the coral, the boats
that crisscross this bay, their smallness in infinity

they can get eaten anywhere I say, but they’ll learn,
they’ll learn to defend themselves.
the harshness of life is too harsh on this island
for a moment too harsh in this small shallow cove

how will they learn? how will they not get eaten?
aaron presses me, his eyes red from salt
four gazes covering every inch of my skin

i try to think of the best way to explain myself—
do you know how some birds learn to fly? they nod.
They step off a tree branch and they fall,
the learning, it comes in the falling.

aaron nods again, i saw that on TV,
caston says he read it in a book.
the four boys let the ocean whisk between
their toes, grace and I tread water to float,

and in the space between us
the warm bath water that threatens
to gulp us down whole,
taylor and alex keep swimming.

musea #1-3

through the window i see the endless blue
beneath the surface live so many things
beautiful spell names i could tell you them if you'd like
i could whisper your name as you wrapped yourself
around me, as you engulfed me
and everything that was alive inside of you floated
through my ears

--

submerged in the wonder
i know that if i go too deep
i lose my color amidst your depth
it isn't something i'd learn
through experience, i'd remember to
hold my breath, to surface
before long

---

in the morning when i wake up you are a dark dark blue
your face your body your hands your heart your soul
i'll hold my breath and take you all in knowing

that by evening you will be orange
and swallow the sun, whole.

----

should i push them away
or draw them in deep
i don't know what type
of company to keep

manchester by the sea

don't let that movie
dig too deep
it might hit upon something real
that red underneath your skin
it might make you think of what you did
behind closed doors for months that turned into years
and the way a hand feels on your bare chest
and the smile you might have not noticed with eyes closed
and your dream from last night in which he appeared fully formed
and you were shocked to have him so clearly remembered
i bet you're ready to stop hurting she tells you in her tiny room
she couldn't fit her chair in and so she put it in the living room she rubs
your back as you cry and leave snot stains on her pajamas but as hard
as she soothes she doesn't understand

may the fifth boy you love
kiss the inside of your belly button
clean out all the lint
with the tip of
his purple scratchy tongue

the fourth boy never washed much
and so you never did either

and i don't remember
the ins and outs of years
until i sit and waste my time
reading them back
and realize that its not a waste
of time at all

your music make me sad

i can lay in my bed and trace
the way from the train station
to your heart
and every time i think about it
it i break apart

without a mouth to speak the words
i want to

sing to me in dreams
my hair across your pillow
kisses at the seams sunken to stains
i want the taste of your skin
hunger from the bottom of my mind

without a mouth to speak the words
i want to

can't give myself the option
of opening my mouth
don't want to see or say
what might come out

can't give myself the option
of reaching out to touch
the inside of your lips
I've loved too much

without a mouth to speak the words
i want to

in blue basements, red hearts
dusty in the bedsheets
laying in the park
under greying buildings
we pretended worlds were ours
the closeness of our skin, obscured the passing cars
the closeness of our skin, above the summer stars

without a mouth to speak the words
i want to

without a mouth to speak the words
i want to

hearing your voice is still too much for me
the way you say my name 'soledad so-le-dad'
i'm jolted when my itunes delivers it to me in the amalgam of voice memoed songs
today i called my bank in frustration and once i'd given
all the information to prove I was who I was the teller said my name on the other end of the line
"Soledad?" he slipped out of his customer service tone into a different voice.
"yes" I replied eagerly, automatically, though he couldn't see my head nodding itself
it was only in the second afterwards that I thought about how lucky I was to be
that wash of warm water, that breath of tropical air, how lucky I was that
that "soledad" was me

loading (a poem on onewords from five months ago)

loading her boxes
into the back of the truck
the skin between her jeans
and her shirt
is visible

raw and
pale

she drops a cardboard
prism onto
the pavement
and it

unhinges itself
papers and pictures
splattering everywhere
like paint

her face and the faces
of everyone she
loves
flapping on the
concrete

a good day

can start with the way the sunbeams touch my face
warm
and a dress that covers just enough
skin to bare to bear the golden
touch and think
how wonderful it is to be warm

to play one's guitar in an empty room
and sing to no one
to notice in that moment
small kindnesses littered all around

and at the window
the sound of bells and spring

and while we go on

and while we go on human lives swing in the balance
twirling on tenuous strings waiting to be dropped
and still we call our mothers about forms
and worry about money and think
about the rooms in which we'll live when
some would like to live in rooms at all

and while we go on people eating our lunches
talking about fruit and places far away people
in hospital beds thinking how did i get here
thinking oh how will I go on

and while we go on writing poetry to try and think
these things away and brothers are angry at justice
mothers tell us into the receiver, it's touch and go
they tell us, touch and go on

i think that sometimes
i don't think at all
this urge for solitude
like wilderness
hungry trees that stab their
arms into the stark sky
and wolves that howl in loneliness
we want to be embodied in that pain
in those stories
we want to be deliciously
alone
we want to be seen
to be deliciously
alone

none of these words make any sense
and i don't care

you're sitting four feet from me and
i'm pretending that you mean so much more than you do

that i like you so much more than i do

that this is all so much more than it is

because really it's too much
because really it's too much

you said that you couldn't see any cracks
now i see shortcomings littering the faces
of the boys around me, caked on their skins,
in the way they speak I hear the tone that tells
me that this is not quite there

even if blinded, even if because i had just learnt to see
i miss thinking someone in this world was perfect

maybe you don't have to fall in love
like falling off a cliff
maybe you don't have to fall in love
like a fuzzy sock and a conductor
like a spark in a dark room
maybe you don't have to fall in love
in a way that consumes you
in a way that makes you never
breathe when you're apart
maybe you don't have to fall in love
so that you don't remember what
it feels to sit alone and tell your
story to people you do not love
maybe you don't have to fall in love
so that every inch of your skin
has touched the mouth of another
so that every edge of your mind
you think that you have surrendered
maybe you don't have to fall in love
so that you would scoop yourself out
so that you think every moment about
the consequences so that you are so
completely more than one
maybe you don't have to fall in love
at all.

i decide i like you
because your smile is effusive
and i can see it spread across your face
whenever i take a glance

you tell me that you don't write poetry
but that you'll try
you let me look at the stars and
follow my fingers

try to fathom the big dipper and
ask me about my brother

i remember the names of your friends
and lose at pool

today we take pictures of each other
and i think that is a good sign

i decide that i like you
i try to forget

written in the inside of my english copy of one hundred years of solitude (circa 3/24/16)

If I touch you
in the light of my room
will you disappear?
and dissemble all the gloom

Skins a luxury
and I know I must act soon
but you humble me
with your eyes like the moon

light
beams/I cannot hold
my love/will not be sold
when distance/turns my words cold
I wish that/things won't grow old

If I think of you
will you plunge in like a knife
when in solitude
starve my stomach, give me strife

compartmentalize
is what they tell me, what they say
turn time into boxes
turn your cardboard face away

night-thoughts

blue blue
where are you
i am writing about you
yet not thinking about you
as a whole entity

in this bed
we lay for hours
i let you nap while i
lay awake you held me
in your arms

i wonder where you are now
i wonder what you're thinking of

i miss you until i remember
that people knew me before you

maybe i'm not an artist

we knew each other in second grade

by that logic lee
knows me better than you
do

and you have known me
as closely
as i have

been known. is it an

artists job to make it all make
sense or can we just be

millennials and whine away

marigolds (lyrics)

they sell flowers in the back
loopy bottles piled in stacks
make us spin in spirals
my neck wraps around around
cool curve of your check
oval of the softest sound

look down into my eyes
ask me if they sell marigolds
they sell flowers in the back
leave the petals on the floor
loves me, loves me not

they're out of marigolds
they're out of marigolds today

we drink the water
grey and cold
see yellow and pretend
that we're happier than
we were before

they're out of marigolds
they're out of marigolds today

take these thorns pushed into skin
hand them out to all your friends
you tell me you know how they've been
forget the stalks, forget the green

they're out of marigolds
they're out of marigolds today

they sell flowers in the back
loopy bottles piled in stacks
make us spin in spirals
my neck wrapped around around
cool curve of your check
oval of the softest sound

they're out of marigolds
they're out of marigolds today

they never sold them anyway
they never sold them anyway

it hurts
when other
people
relive
all the alternate
realities

with
disrespect
with the
closeness
that i knew
you wanted

and i couldn't give.

the snow (inspired by Molly from my poetry class)

is a blank page
perforated by
the tip of
a black lizard tongue
i want to take
the pounds of
glitter
at the bottom
of the pit
and throw
them on
The Biggest Canvas in the World.

The Biggest Canvas in the World
is splayed outside my window
each footprint
is a smudge
marked
name,
i wish it
snowed
for
months.

sometimes i wake and as i stand
my feet against the bathroom tile
a small piece of your mind hangs loosely
on my own and i realize that i must have
dreamt of you to have such a small a piece
of you dangling and though i do not remember
i wonder if in sleep i have found mourning

Rex Tillerson

oh sink in pools of oil
you men who
tell the world
the way it goes
to left to right
under your sausage fingers
that roll away and tumble on the floor
please roll
away and tumble
on the floor
and sink
in pools of pennies
stuck and black
to every
single inch
of your
paunch skin
and
change before
you deign
to venture
back
and change before
we all are
only lack.

tidbit

hush your sister is sleeping
in the grey light of her mind
she's been like that for a while now
so tread lightly please darling be kind