Three Poems

earthworm

when the world was formed, my mother bled
when the world was cheap, i bought bags of concrete
when the world was still hovering, i killed a robin
when the world was filthy, i laughed
when the world was a breeze, i wondered
when the world was physical, i bent like gravity
when the world was mist, i inhaled its essence
when the world was a jar, i smashed it in the gutter
when the world was slow, i wrote letters
when the world was a bank, i didn’t eat
when the world was a flag, i stood still
when the world was drunk, i locked my door
when the world was hungover, i used furniture
when the world was a warehouse, i rejected the inventory
when the world was a hut, i burned it
when the world was tiny, i called my father
when the world was a slave, i held its hand
when the world was forgetful, i remembered
when the world was no good thing, i had nightmare strength
when the world was a crib, i hid it in a basement down the block
when the world was an airport, they searched my body
when the world was a jail, i evaporated
when the world was that bridge, i slept under it
when the world was a museum, i vandalized the walls
when the world was a ghost, i respected it
when the world was an orbit, i broke it
when the world was a peephole, i looked
when the world was deformed, i got uglier
when the world was over, i left half of what i was here

tomorrow is a

tomorrow is a false pilgrim: broken legs or a pogo stick
tomorrow is an iron twig: fresh or rotten sugarcane
tomorrow is snow or ashes: the study of unnatural light
tomorrow is that dusk: on tiny crutches
tomorrow is a hidden nerve: a lost freckle
tomorrow is your recovery: a band-aid
tomorrow is jello: wobbling
tomorrow is whiplash: back and forth
tomorrow is froth: dripping from your red lips
tomorrow is a toxic saddle: don’t move
tomorrow is a bus: real or imagined
tomorrow is a deserted never: mind landscape
tomorrow is a fire hydrant: woof
tomorrow is silence: mummified
tomorrow is those bandages: soaked in adrenaline
tomorrow is a microphone: and a ball-gag
tomorrow is whatever: they say
tomorrow is a walrus: bow to its fangs
tomorrow is a cactus: adjust
tomorrow is a porcupine: in an eagle’s body
tomorrow is an eagle: in yours
tomorrow is waking up: too fast
tomorrow is a membrane: slow down
tomorrow is no aural significance: serial boredom
tomorrow is a card of incessant greetings: from the morbidly unfriendly
tomorrow is a donkey punch: their haunted hurrays
tomorrow is piracy: a ski mask or a red-white-and-blue flag
tomorrow is surgery: on or under the table
tomorrow is another hospital: ouch
tomorrow is the necessary meat: you’re its dinosaur
tomorrow sniffs you: as you bleed from something else
tomorrow is an ashtray: for an urn
tomorrow is a cardboard roof: what you’ll use as candles
tomorrow is that little light: still mattering
tomorrow is a scheduled eclipse: off
tomorrow is rape: in the dark
tomorrow is pulling on your umbilical cord: feel it
tomorrow is a bib: wear it
tomorrow is a rattle: succumb
tomorrow is a reverse disco: stay stiller
tomorrow is a cornfield: it doesn’t matter
tomorrow is a washcloth: spit on it
tomorrow is a financial urge: strangle it
tomorrow is a huge tollbooth: pennies could mean violence
tomorrow is the interest: your signature or your life
tomorrow is a magnet: hold this
tomorrow is an x-ray: zap
tomorrow is radar: aligned to your doubts like astrological terrorism
tomorrow is weather control: brr
tomorrow is a library of satanic research: shh
tomorrow is a misanthropic calendar: tattooed on your pancreas
tomorrow is santa a bunny a pumpkin and a leprechaun: now nap
tomorrow is that lullaby: that screeches
tomorrow is no umbrella: but your skull
tomorrow is slapstick: an unprovoked punchline
tomorrow is rollerskates: and mountaintops
tomorrow is that mirror that says: no
tomorrow is a shoebox: how to conquer a secret
tomorrow is the house its burning in: with no electricity
tomorrow is a humiliated peacock: look away
tomorrow is its last feather: pluck
tomorrow is how naked you’ll run: for food
tomorrow is your chances of ever coming back: go
tomorrow is that fence: now electrified
tomorrow is the sweat: you didn’t account for
tomorrow is barbed-wire: and barking dogs
tomorrow is the idea of fascism: bottled like cologne
tomorrow is actually wearing it: proud to smell like sulfur
tomorrow is a skunk: to be hunted
tomorrow is tomato juice: amen
tomorrow is none left: a hiccup and more forgetting
tomorrow is microbiology: the exploration of germs and organisms
tomorrow is a greenhouse: for spiritual incest
tomorrow is that bad of a touch: reality-pinching
tomorrow is a coma: this is its trillionth z
tomorrow is a dead rooster: sleep forever
tomorrow is a bigger monster: all neon
tomorrow is a farm: growing more loneliness
tomorrow is an obituary: a human lottery
tomorrow is a weak loophole: the domesticated will
tomorrow is a gorge: sweet yet paralyzed
tomorrow is all of this: none of this

relapse

again is your smallest heart | biggest heart
again is the eggnog of feeling anything in the pea soup of pollution | radiation
again is the struggle to drink it
again is what you’ll leave behind due to your perception of time
again is your family in fast supercars, their births and funerals inside those 4 doors
again is an adrenaline spike, your wallet flapping like a bat in a grove
again is the casket you use as a couch
again is the fact you left it in a subway | airport with your umbrella
again is that debt times 1000000 registering in your bowels
again is 13 frozen diet dinners being delivered to your bunker in a giant green tank
again is 13 frozen diet dinners not being delivered to your bunker in a giant green tank
again is an astronaut even starving, an allegory
again is friendship with some pretty destructive forces
again is a lion | tiger | bear | vulture | cobra | rhinoceros
again is a landmine in whatever anniversary you’ve planned
again is a trampoline without mercy, a pure recruiter
again is a gun to play good | evil games with your anxiety
again is a blanket traded for something worse
again is happening too quickly
again is a chainsaw that wants to build a seesaw, but
again is tired of this playground | death camp
again is very little music coming from the gills in your neck
again is a failing submarine filled with 199 breaths
again is great camouflage for obeying again
again is not your father | mother | uncle | sister | brother
again is the roulette wheel you rode in on, an engineless engine
again is smiling sideways standing by the conductor
again is every possible allergic reaction stuffed into a mayonnaise jar
again is manufactured fruitlessness, x amount of citizenship for x
again is the y and z of each corresponding nightmare
again is flypaper, an antler, a broken thermometer by the curb
again is the mercury in the fillings in your teeth
again is a list of symptoms that match your personality like a horoscope
again is a corkscrew through your private parts if you violate their traffic laws
again is a sweaty soldier reinforcing their curfews
again is already lying to itself
again is veal for anything smaller than a wolf
again is a jugular expert, an assassin of light and redemption
again is a 1-time factory | 3-ring circus | 9-life scenario
again is a meltdown of your basic chemistry
again is pills afterward and pills afterward
again means spending your entire life as their specimen
again is a lazy albino, a premature settler, a pig
again is a cutthroat with no throat, a vortex, a premeditated triangle
again is the noose left behind on that oak
again is a contract written in acid rainwater by the forefathers of this glowing mess
again is the uniform they designed from government-funded textbooks
again is closets and closets of your very worst boots or of your feet finally skinless like chickens
again is any skeleton before it was meant to be that
again like furniture is more recognizable new
again is a star nobody wants to wear
again is a thorn the size of a forest graveyard, a chestnut
again is a gambling machine, a warfare device you wouldn’t call a weapon
again is any excuse when you’re ready to be manipulated
again is a light bill, a water bill, a gas bill and shoveling costs
again is a landfill with more land than the farmers dying in its avalanches
again is a cancer for idiots who smoke and get it again
again is reoccurring rape if you’re sexy enough and don’t lose too much weight
again is a bleeding chameleon, a loss-collecting, acrobatic, silence-jinxing reptile
again is a bath in its excrement if you don’t find some perch
again is that mandatory grindstone, a tattoo of your dna
again is its likeness to their suspicions after they match your eyes
again is who you are | will be when they’re finished
again is that shallow of a chance when the stores attack first
again is weather control in an oasis because you can’t borrow from a snowbank
again is the veil before the bridge by a nuclear river
again is your baby floating in that river
again is a raft where you least expected it, a binary dictionary of your ifs, self-immolation
again is when you’re your own lullaby-maker (again is that lullaby)
again is 1 note stretched over 1000 worthless winters
again is the translation nobody else understands
again once used a guillotine just to cut its sandwich
again is nutrition turned toxic, stretched and re-stretched
again is the absence of immunity to anything
again is falling and falling and falling
again is a parachute that doubles as a tent when the rent’s due
again is a schizophrenic wall with god’s name on it
again is a shuffle and a sizzling sound
again is a step-by-step death march through a rotten cactus jungle
again is pumping your legs with what was once called adrenaline
again is homicidal psychology, seatbelts in ovens, bruises for antennas
again is furniture in your primordial cave
again is the renouncing of all prior acts of vulnerability or weakness
again is their voluntary cosmos draining yours
again is a flicker | energy crisis
again is the same problem in the same world it’s repeating
again is always in danger of again