(set my spirit)

in their form

forsaken

live and die in disorder

my friend

my friend

eternally

you have been done no favor

the lark

hovering in the air

mild and damp

only sings to remember

the sound of her voice

dew-dropped seeds

dropped from her beak

under the blade

you are fed in the mud

and the lark

hungry

sings to remember

the sound of her voice

it is not appropriate

it is not proper

or suitable for my situation

but i am not appropriate

my friend

i am obscene

this is obscene

the clasp of terror

my friend

holds us in its sweaty palm

wet not from tears

but the porous skin

that its infliction is woven of

to whom does the heart of hearts belong?

there is a vessel

hollowed-out marrow

carved out the bone and

slathered on backs to slaughter

my friend

i remember you

eternally

even when i cannot see you

you are a silhouette

in your form

never forsaken

fed under the blade

my friend

i am beat

i am beaten

whilst beating the front of my chest

to keep the music

that still plays for you

from drowning out in screams

alabaster

i feel it so tenderly

i feel it so quietly

writhing with the worms when it rains

i thrust my bruised organs into the pavement

the glass only splinters

can you hear the music?

geese are gentle things

the gray dog is calling on the hill

the sore-thumbed child cries

a warm-bodied bird unaware of the seasons fleeting

declares itself a state of emergency

i have nothing to give you

the earth would freeze over

mother’s nipples seep mud and dirt and shit

as if to thaw

there are lines on my hands

they weave trails

down the backwoods of my first home

forest floor littered with jelly beans

on ancient grounds

the redwoods in their possibilites

recluses in their ascension

course obsolete

i am no ritual

no known artifact

look at me

spears like daggers in a pale frosted blue

there’s vomit on the bathroom tile

i don’t know what i am

my fervor tremors

it seems

as if for nothing

what can i hold that isn’t myself?

is the gray dog crazed

was the sore-thumbed child left

the earth would freeze over

the warm-bodied bird slams into a window pane

why feed that which you cannot protect

the warm-bodied bird

bloodless

threading a needle and string

through a spear

to wear around my neck

call me a killer

call me unnatural

call me the end of beginning

and start over again

and again and again

and again and again

and again and again

and again and again

and again and again

and again

what do you know recluse

when you close your eyes and the stain glass

of a hundred cathedrals

appear without form

until breath itself demands

its mutating into a learned ritual

what would you do with my supernova

what can you promise me when my spine shatters

into the corners of an alabaster tomb

without a name

carved into its side is this fractured ivory

carved into its side are the muses and the deities

and the heroes of my situation

they are complicit

what you can hold

i wouldn’t believe you

i meant to tell you in the beginning but i forgot

i wouldn’t believe you

i wouldn’t

i feel this so tenderly

the ache to return without suffocating

writhing worm on the pavement

take me to the dirt

i knew a mountain once!

i feel it so tenderly

i feel it so quietly

i wanted to touch you but i didn’t

we shouldn’t talk about serious things

as the salmon spawn

i imagine my contexts as if they were stories

stretch plastic cotton from my pillow case and wash its legitimacy as if it were wool 

it is to insulate and sustain a never-changing state of comfort and ease and space to contain 

as its taste exists to me 

my bladder is full 

i inhale whistles and chimes

the wind, laughing 

a row of hanging songs parallel from the orange wall on the balcony that faces the field Mohammad would kick a soccer ball 

to opposite ends  

and i was first taught the difference between heaven and hell 

at the slaughtered goat in the front yard whose blood trickled down the well our cat leaped into seeking shelter from the pastimes of boys 

only to soak in crimson 

innocence spilt 

at the hands of men with knives 

i imagine my contexts as if they were stories 

so when my actor transfigures into the son within me 

i am parallel to the shore to keep from drowning 

i have energy 

there remains a will 

if nature could affirm her struggle 

we could unify 

unruly weeds would grow over and into me in the depths of a trench 

as if to inherit the void of being unknown 

for the goodness in me

can only be found at the mouth of a channel 

where the current knows strength 

and i am the soft bedrock 

of a natural earth 

it is only the weather that erodes 

my only god is the moon 

i wake up to chapped lips 

half-dead on the rocks 

where i could reach the water 

if i could bring myself to turn over 

if there was courage to see the day 

i am expected in the morning 

the veil is thin

there are flies in my eyes 

here at the gate 

my present transforms into mythology 

where there is light

i am imagined 

where there is light 

there comes a draw 

i keep out the tide 

an act of preservation 

as the salmon spawn 

green

what if 

my spine were to rotate 

so that my rib cage faced away from you 

durational is my softness 

memory an attack 

i was humiliated to bleed 

i do not wish to tame you but understand 

your hand 

wrapped around my neck 

as if breathing were a privilege and i was second-class 

humiliated to bleed 

though we could be kind 

and green and good 

build me a house 

by a creek in northern california 

with a bridge made of wood 

that will never rot 

so that i can go home 

knowing the road is everlasting and green 

trace the lines  

trace the lines 

trace the lines on my face

knowing you were there

we could be kind and green and good and everlasting 

real estate

there is a house that i live in

it is empty now

save for the layered blues and greens

muted under the lamp light

of layered rugs

and lazy writings

this twilight slants through me

you do not track mud in and out of our home

no

it is the pulp of wilted petals i grew in the garden out back

tracked

bruised and torn and bleeding onto my father’s persian carpet

in the living room

what about contentment?

i fear that if i am not careful to tiptoe

across lines of linen and cloth

hung

the inevitable return

will grip me before i am ready

my ex-believer

could have emerged from the dirt

in beads of synthetic fertilizer

a sign of the times

limb by limb

a skull molded from steel

chipped at with two front teeth

my dirtied fingernails scratching at the glory of you

animal beneath sheaths of keratin

now

teething on chapped lips

in all of this

full disclosure:

i have not opened the windows

i have not covered the mirrors

i have not saged the bedroom

i have not emptied the glasses in the sink

i will you to linger here longer