Call me by my many names.
Take me into your bed.
Call me by my secret name.
Hold me in your arms.
Call me by my girl name.
Whisper love in my ear.
Call me yours
And make me yours.
Call me your everything,
but let me disappear inside you
like nothing.
Call me beautiful
and kiss me.
Call me by my many names
and tell me I am yours.
The role of government is to take away “no,”
leaving masses in the streets to chant,
“More war! More war!”,
leaving women to kneel and say “yes”
regardless of their hearts.
freeing lovers and children and friends
to call the police at will.
The writer’s job is current truth,
which later the editor redacts,
the historian improves by deletion,
and the fireman washes in flame:
All of these bathed in sound logic,
toweled dry with rough terry
and kissed on the cheek,
before slouching off to their dreams.
Two IPAs in
and I can feel again
All of the ache
and anger
and desperation
that have calcified my heart
and grafted to my bones
so I move like nothing
inside me is broken
melt and surge from my eyes and mouth
You should be walking toward me now
longnecks in each hand
to celebrate the improbability of finding each other
with late-afternoon buzzed lovemaking in this sun-warmed grass
in our farm’s field
But three bottles in
and I have rendered myself sober
I sprawl in the grass above you,
so many feet of dirt between us,
and wait for the rocks poking my skin
to harden my insides again
(Lessons Before Ayahuasca)
What if I meet God?
What if God’s taking notes?
What if God remembers the things I promised to forget?
What if God reminds me?
What if God reminds me of all of us?
What if I shouldn’t have run from God?
Or myself?
What if I shouldn’t have come here to go inward?
What if I go in and find nothing?
What if I go in and find too much?
What if I go in and never come back out?
On your twenty-third birthday
I think of Tu Fu’s ancient poem
longing for his family, hoping
moonlight will dry their tears.
Today after your long slog
from work to apartment,
body chafing under the D.C. sun,
six months of independence,
you eat most of your meals alone,
save for the next date at the zoo.
Your secret self-assurance
will carry you back home.
“Snail tracks,” he says,
smudged across
the edge of my left eye.
The doctor points
to the screen
a watercolor splash
of green, red,
orange cosmos.
“A type of lattice,” he says,
and explains it is like
my retinas brace
for liftoff.
The flashes I see,
lightning in a dark room,
are like thrusters
fired for the journey.
I wonder if there is
a secret, alien garden
growing around my periphery.
I wouldn’t be surprised
if star-dotted leaves sprouted,
joined in swirling webs
across my optic nerve,
nebulous kudzu to change
the world I see,
slow me to a snail’s pace,
and breathe.
I
am
in
no
dan-
ger
of
mis-
tak-
ing
you
for
a
hat–
in
fact,
I
have
no
con-
cept
of
you
at
all.
Teacher greetings;
delivered by toe tag.
Students sit in odd rows;
hushed heads of melon bloat.
One holds his hello behind himself;
it presents as air cannon.
He cannot take it back.
Most swirl around and smile;
susurrate like pattypan squash.
Some of you potato guns
use your quick-and-skinny hurt-and-stun.
Rat-a-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!
I will aim my words like ninja stars directly at your chest.
You have thrown the gauntlet
But I don’t wear gloves and I don’t leave fingerprints
You are a knight in your imagination
But there are no damsels here.
I am the Grandmaster.
And you
and I
are out of luck.
