In the space between waiting to say goodbye and saying goodbye,

I can fix everything

Seeing my heart from its broken place

From madness

From holding on like fingernails to air

What made us seem unnecessary

made my irritations feel like justification to cut me off from you.

I rejected your desires

They were not my own

You rejected my desires they were never your own

We lived side by side in fantasies

Jealousy, yes, that you reached beyond my flesh to our shared fantasy

Only to get off on what was not in bed with us or next door or on this planet

Not our own beautiful brokenness, suffocating from lack of

touch

Never belonged here

in your desolate capital with you surrounded defensively

by family and coworkers to bet with and talk about asses and

play golf defensively as if all that could be taken away from you by my desires

I slowly began to find footing

people to wave hello to, to dream with maybe, a landscape to know.

I am weaving here beside the capital what I know how to do barely weave

You tried to convince me that I was not alone,

Around drunken tables and chitchat

About conquests always in my face

your family gave us looks that said “this will never work”

yet tell me again how I should love them and trust you and they love me

I am a person with two pair of feelers, you forget, I feel

And at times I do not use my legs to hide from what I feel

Boiling barrels of poisonous acid water,

Blue phosphorescent in a pool

He went down the stairs to find out if the sink

Still turned on to get a drink of a clear clean sip

She went through the hallways of the desert, sand stuck in her chest and to her lips

what she saw behind the sun was it a puddle

At the bottom of the stair at the end of the hallway

a woman bent over a bucket was

sloshing a wand in the mud she’d made

of clean water and cat litter sand.

matted animals gathered around, dying of thirst, begging

for a sip of the divided drops of water that was clean

or clear

A crawling bewildered infant, no longer staring for some

thing clean to drink

Haunted by knowing so little about each other

you'd stand at the cracked door like Paul Mescal

smirking enough to save me, a bottle of your third bottle of red wine in place of expensive japanese whiskey, swinging

slurping

and volunteering to decimate me/you

here comes the bomb

anonymous protector of your soul

accidentally keeps mine in rubble.

many words everywhere everyone talking making themselves so dizzy

hear yourself

hear the bird

I want to leave

this place

Can you breathe and not feel it?

not leave on an airplane.

I'd rather walk into the sea

where children

not only mine

are wandering in a fog whisper-wailing "how did we get here"?

Remember the before when we knew the world was wrong but we acted like it wasn't?

now some people compare the state to a natural disaster, a wave that will pass, a mother in birth pains, an old white men's death rattles

pain is the poison of pretending seeping out.

to force out the baby rebirth of a better society.

To extend a pretend,

return to the cat, rat, hedgehog, bird, dog and goat

to tv

or wed

to a goal any one that will keep your nails hanging to the boards before drowning,

turn your head into something

Up a steep hill, sweat to get there to another door to another door

to a closed store

Students live in Victorian bones unwashed skins and sit on porches

communing with the lice

Nearby there are empty store windows, behind duct taped cardboard a random unsold object and

down the street a selection of ethnic food options

Dad sits mostly silent with his college son in one and eats a big piece of bread scooping up the lamb. Proudly unfurling the wallet, he pays the bill. That’s a kiss.

I wonder if my friend at Columbia saving her poet’s ass by doing a doctorate ever walked by

Mahmoud now hidden under a precipice dangling over nothing?

The thorn in my side has been plucked

By poppies in the midst of the swirling disasters of the everyday..

Student building Victorian bones unwashed skins and porches with lice nearby a selection of ethnic food options.

Up a steep hill, sweat to get there for nothing

For another door to another

Dad and father

pays

proudly unfurling the worn black wallet

A friend at Columbia saving her poet’s ass by doing a doctorate does she walk by

Mahmoud

Mahmoud where are you hidden under what college precipice?

Mahmoud, can we get to you before they do?

The thorn in my side has been plucked

By poppies. I cannot keep my eyes open in the middle of the chaos.

1.

Lover does not know my name

he is happy to see me

and I, him.

2.

I want to leave

this place

like I left before,

3.

can you breathe and not feel it

4.

my lover doesn't know my name

or even who he is

5.

not on an airplane.

I'd rather walk into the sea

where children

not only the one I gave birth to

are wandering in a fog whisper wailing "how did we get here"?

6.

baby berceau

beyond in no memory of mine

held quieted

7.

Haunted by knowing so little about each other

you'd stand at the cracked door like Paul Mescal

smirking enough to save me a bottle of whiskey, swinging

slurping

and volunteering to decimate me/you

here comes the bomb

8.

touch rough not love anonymous protector of your soul

accidentally keeps mine in a bubble.

9.

many words everywhere everyone dizzy looks for a moment silent

hear yourself

hear the bird

do not look

never look

at the landmine.

10.

We stand together smirking at our

kitty kitty

sit here no here.

I don’t believe in marriage Toasts the mother at the wedding to her daughter’s eyes closing Get a tagline Get her tagline at the wedding shouts the boss at his nephew to get one morsel more of gold from her

To make his business run

Little tousled nephew is at her heels to keep his new job

Until after all night, she turns around and fucks him sensing it in her body

It looks friendly

That’s what I was telling you

it

IS friendly

Daddy

You know what I think, sis

of your plan?

I think it is shit.

Heal

No

Babies say no

before they say anything else

Say no

And then say yes

A is for align

You can leave knowing you will not die if you do

Chopping down the forests

Refusing aid

Casualties in

I ask you to commit I have your shirt and wait

Boiling barrels of poisonous water

An experiment for which I am paid

The cubicles are not for us

Blue phosphorescent water

You sense the end in your body and other bodies do too and instead of comforting in the dirty water they break off into little islands And die.