I see you, rattling
in the dead end of that hallway. 

You have bruised your face. 
That is not the way out. 

Face forward, go along the hall 
to a courtyard where the sun shines.

Even on you, even you can feel!
Say yes, for myself, I will open. 

And open your throat, you might want to say thanks. 
Do you know what you looked like in that hallway? 

Demented and sad, friend, 
demented and sad. 

Liquid faces behind each minute 
An unexpected friend at the door, 

The water of birds gathers around the house. 
Happiness is theirs: they are birds.

A bird cannot be happy, only birds! Can be happy
Receding from the dead and their roses. 

The bark of a lonely dog 
Or a bent sob, self-smothering, 
Maybe I will see another face. 

 An instant, we seize 
The wave needs the arm of a starfish 
for an instant

Then, contracting regret, we retch. 
Unable to ride contact. We wretched- 

Perpetually- but everything is possible in the morning-

And this is it, the frost protecting a slush lip 
The sky scowling, here they are, 
As mythed, our penny days

Everything between us can be counted, taken
But yet something forms, is gained
Witchcraft on the mountain, fencing on the moor

Sparks! And another tooth lost... 

Something made up and vicious flows beside us in the river
Who is that carving a canyon with a stack of days? 
And when the water comes it's bitter, the bitter water of a polluted life. 

Why hope to be pure, why hope to purify? 
I hope to thrive, even in irritable murk, and I don't mean win. 
I can offer this full moon, this glossy once. 

The rupture rupts, and with effort 
I can turn the anger into a clever fish, 
Letting the mermaid's tail exit the day. 

Outside the MIA with a headache so overdone 
Can barely reason for words but here boymoding 
the twisted skin brown oak 
art oak 
the cicadas beat the odds 
still kicking 
the crickets start in early tonight ushering leaves to their seats
leaves surrender 
dim the lights 
everyone's getting a move on 
"the living need light
the dead need music*" 
and the feeling needs a table to carve 
the sun is a coin falling between flats of clouds 
the students in hair that precedes them 
knotted to each other faces' close as knotted shoelaces
the shudder and the break 
outsider, something is wrong
a shadow on the lash, 
a splash disrupts the waves in space
I feel myself opening again
dance with fluid the sharp 
marble whittles my headache 
into a round stone 
why shouldn't I throw it? 
I feel myself opening again 
came last night to the image of myself, 
round and huge and beautiful as the earth 
self rounded to a stone 
why shouldn't I throw it? 

the quote is reference to the film “The Living Need Light / The Dead Need Music” that took many people to make, but was written by Sáng tác and Trịnh Công Sơn. Full credits here https://www.the-propeller-group.com/thelivingneedlightcredits. Showing at the MIA in Minneapolis in fall 2022.

for Rose

I am whole. I tap my elbows. Ethics is slow

She got off the bus at dusk 
outside the child prison 
Turned her back on the cages 
Followed the bats
The revolutionary girls compacted, herded with slurs behind her. 

I hold myself. 
My mother at my back, 
My overnight baggage, my backpack. 

She came into the forest with open hands, with no data and no contacts
The pine needles hung like rusty whisks
A knife in the cinch in her belt. 

The soggy bread splashed 
against the cell wall 
like milk from a raped cow 
empties into the empty dirt, beyond the pail, 
the urge to laugh when crying.

She points out black butterflies 
And blue moods at the mother tree 
She said, this is the only place I can be me, 
I could never abandon the dancing caterpillar.

She asked me to straddle, stay.
The concrete lamp shot out with a slingshot. 
The creek runs rash. 

Ethics is harm reduction. On the way home, it’s true: 
I can’t. I don’t have enough love to feed you all.
This makes me whole. And rewilding. 

It's been headaches abrupt as sunrise since you 
Casually clarified you're not a homosexual 
and in the verbal static I quit stroking your hair. 

Counting the days til we relocate 
Cities apart, we've had enough. 
Eggs agitate to hatch. 

What are we full up of, measuring cup, to enough? 
Intentions doomed like foam whinnying
In language seeps, all bridgeward. 
 
But you are an adventurous hour, 
A wonderstate of shedding loss like screaming Fuck you too at trains
I'm responsible to you as I'm responsible to myself. 

You taught me prayer breathing
Which I use to find my small animal belly,
Which my first born will die of 
And come from, my hips an open nexus 
Like I could wash them in moonlight, 
Like my tipped tendons could catch rainwater. 

 
i can see words thin                                                                               
greasy crackle of onion SKINS.                                                                                                  
toes in cold                                                                                   
bathwater          
ARE sensual organs.
                  
DYING pants with coffee grounds                                   
pummel of undernail oranges.
                     
SOFTENING into surrender                   
which is to embrace environmental cutlasses.
                        
EVERYONE going to smoke           
on their respective timelines. 
                                               
all pelvic prayers 
butterfly, 
toes SANCTIFY
HESITATION as it's breathtaking, 
it's unsure, new butterfly blood

creases fill with creases 
if we spare a day 
we spare another 
reaffirm IT 
FEELS GOOD
         
 

Vigil wax pourover monarch wings I 
Flutter too, I zilch. Like so I’m sealed to the desk 

In the preparation: unaligned pelvis
Compelled crossly to bear like an unticked timeline

Ritual oil of greens 
Rituals of smell basins
Rituals of chewing consideration 

And casting off nails rituals of debasing 
Based mucus like which calcifies the virus 

Rituals of shedding blood 
Onto cotton, useful blood. Some people believe in families 

Some intimacy believes 
We need need, each other, unfolding protection in mucosity 

Human insides. How can we hold enough
Back, how can we protect 
But say enough to say yes? 

Manifesting. Now
Let the people come 

pulling nuance from our breath 
as light teases a prism 
into revealing itself 

falling and rising 
worried wings melt down 
to arrogant wax

waxing and falling 
relaxed resistance 
as one examines another for tears 

I will make happiness fall out of your ears  

(your dwelling) I am here 
I am here (your dwelling) 
I am here!