WORK FOR LOVE volume 1 poems from an undisclosed southern rural location
the universe was an accident
I have lived
these afternoons
of afternoons
where daylight
was heightened by day
and days came
arrested and past
unplanned
it isn’t like I planned it
naked on my side
and away from you
I give you the self
that I can’t see
God,
if all that’s romance were
how easy it would be!
***
face-down on the bed
like just another
of your girls
No one can have
a body or a baby
you can only raise it
raise it right up
heaven heard
through a wavering
branches of leaves
***
in your bare room
I say listen
to the melody in your mind
to what you always knew
when what I meant was
I want us to run together
free
where what is between us
is given to be a given
on spring-softened
sun-drenched sheets
unnamed love in current abundance
as if the most natural thing
profound in the silence
I broke
love’s name
but I wouldn't fasten
a repeated falseness to you
I wouldn’t glance
at a distance gliding past
a hundred parallel trees
interchangeable from a vehicle
in thirty thousand
imagined eternities
***
the way light falls across
a vacant floorboard
I feel your presence
constantly highlighted
by absence
as if thin wings
were to be caught
as if I’d want
you anything other
than unpinned
forever summered
I don’t use metaphor
to compare my love
to anything but
what’s in the air
the same of which
we can finally breathe
so here I am
naked like anyone
in all the disquiet
of a human body
***
love does tend
to be faded
but I guess
I heard it like
fated
***
I say listen
don’t say it back
until the weather
has cleared
but if love is always
making a bed for a stranger
here’s is unmade
and I’m undone
light and disheveled
in my dumb utterances
if you fear money
you make money
your God
and if I fear love
exhausting my satiety
well, I’ve decided to feel
enraptured by my fear
violent like this
liberated by this
like how you said
it happens naturally
in violence’s aim for beauty
zero to oblivion
as if pulled by gravity
I gasp, I suck
and breathe
like any animal
gracefully
spitting in hand
hand in face
it was my mistake
thinking I had my own body
thinking I had my own name
this was supposed to be easy
claiming to be free
then coming around
with this want
and this need
like god
like someone
help me
who is the maker of their own good
who is the maker of their own evil
who is the maker of their own
anything
somewhere a seagull cries
it’s mournful!
it is mournful to think of it
how any animal
tends toward comfort
making a bed
in a nest of leaves
come to me
come here
come for me
this was
supposed to be
sleep in nearness
this year I’m sick of thinking
in all the structures of my dreams
in the largest New York City of my mind
I don’t have an answer for anything
so what I bare my ass
weather myself like a milkmaid
as if to recall butter softening
in atmosphere of accelerated intimacy
under quarantine
isn’t the path that would unfold
naturally you’re my enemy
by collision of air and butter
apply pressure
pregnant with pure expenditure
each instant lolled in non-fixity
I am here to drink
in entirety
every time I fall in love
eat shit lose weight
so what the moon
waxes it wanes
I write in your bed
I’m you now--
consuming the other’s likeness
as if glimpsing one’s own visage
who can measure
in such proximity
I’m dumb against it
everything beautiful in its falsity
you say you hate the word want
I say what
in root of all suffering
stop being a narc, you ask Siri
outside neglected foliage
ripples in possibility
the passion of your revulsion is funny
call out emergency!
ever uncertain of my certainty
but even if the gods said so
I couldn’t leave
ashamed of my nude elaborate theme
It’s spring in Mississippi
It’s spring in New York City
open up cry out
a faucet left to run
to the bottom