oliver: wild geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

getting it together (new work)

mix

the memory is mine from nashpop on 8tracks.

You're too old to lose it, too young to choose it

ww: everything has beauty

am I unkind?

I miss you.

When I miss you I have these intense dreams. Fragments of books I've read and movies I've seen. The part of my life that has yet to come true, mixed with an existence as real as marrow. We cannot survive without marrow you know? We, like I mean it. We, like you'd say it.

The bitterness is not lost on me. And slowly, it is washing me away. Just like your blessed sea. Or maybe it is pulling the past over me like a security blanket. I'm not sure. Eternally speaking, the past is the present. What we lived then is what we live now; married within a distance nothing short of the greatest of space.

I'm going to go back to setting fire by poem, and stalking without apology. I have no shame for my wandering, or illusions about a past I was not strong enough to keep connection with. Not content, but filled with a moment I've known over and over. I try to kiss you, expecting you won't let me, as if the rejection has been scripted. And just as I've given up for lack of resistance, you push back.

I can almost conjure up the pushing all by myself.

myles: sorry

I can’t remember the 2nd
time I hurt you—

it was dark & someplace
in that darkness
was the thing I did.

You weren’t the target, I
know that, though
you might’ve been the bow
& the tension
I really think is love.
Nothing ever sends me away.
I’ve got your pain
in my pocket &
it glows in the dark

and in the light
it’s the softest kind
of singing woman’s voice.
That’s who you are. To me, I mean.
Let me hold your shoulders
back so you look
arrogant & beautiful
welcoming me into the warm
sad party. Let this
be the unfortunate hat
I hang outside the door
if only you will
allow me to come in.

carson: I am asking you to come back home

I am asking you to come back home
before you lose the chance of seein’ me alive.
You already missed your daddy.
You missed you uncle Howard.
You missed Luciel.
I kept them and I buried them.
You showed up for the funerals.
Funerals are the easy part.

You even missed that dog you left.
I dug him a hole and put him in it.
It was a Sunday morning, but dead animals
don’t wait no better than dead people.

My mamma used to say she could feel herself
runnin’ short of the breath of life. So can I.
And I am blessed tired of buryin’ things I love.
Somebody else can do that job to me.
You’ll be back here then; you come for funerals.

I’d rather you come back now and got my stories.
I’ve got whole lives of stories that belong to to you.
I could fill you up with stories,
stories I ain’t told nobody yet,
stories with your name, your blood in them.
Ain’t nobody gonna hear them if you don’t
and you ain’t gonna hear them unless you get back home.

When I am dead, it will not matter
how hard you press your ear to the ground.

nsfw

this seems like what we are,
didn't surprise me,
tasted like eating a raw hot dog,
and made me want to attack somebody with my bare hands.

let's pretend we are strangers.

neruda: if you forget me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.