Oh, you

City of Concrete

of bumstink

of bad traffic

and no parking

barking with laughter

the whole way home

from the bar,

City of Linking Arms

and hollering after midnight.

You

of constant wind

and cold summers -

late-harvest Autumn which wraps us

all in sweaters and slanted light -

falls on the golden glow

of a comfortable front stoop

ringing fate's doorbell

only to bail at the first chance.

Someone called

you

The City of Love

once,

but never again -

still, all the hopefuls

come back

to

You -

Goldrush of the West

your jasmine perpetually in bloom,

though its soft scent seems lost on

the hard-soled parade of your sidewalks -

all VC fanfare and ticker tape -

City of Step-on-your-Mother's-Back,

City of Slip Through the Cracks

City of Soup Kitchen

and Instantaneous Drone Delivery

City of Bright Bridge and

privilege and real money

conjured from thin air

you

no longer

wear flowers in your hair.

You

no longer

seem to care

for such trivial things

as this.

The hills were on fire then

and they are burning again

all bluster and smoke

updrafting breeze which crumples

giants to knees, tumbles

mountains to foothills

And maybe it was all just timing -

a tidal wind broken on rocky cliffside

at just the right moment to carry a spark

from safety to circumstance,

chance blaze of one little cinder

fated to bring all this old growth to ash

But maybe it's better to ask

what might come of all this?

What fervent splendor might birth itself

from all these broken bows, resprout

from this newly fertilized path

on the route towards civilization?

In one to five years

you will marry a woman

who is my photocopy -

a little less colorful, maybe

a little softer around the edges

a little less defined.

In one to five years,

the two of you will have a baby

who looks like me -

except printed on a finer piece of paper.

Your wife will love you

in a very ordinary way.

It will all be black and white

and you will like it, alright

It will be all right.

Everything will be fine.

1. I am sitting in a breakfast cafe, alone, as I am always alone, when sitting in cafes. The sun is shining on my back, etching the beach on my shoulders and you'd think that this is the setting to the perfect morning, but it's already one pm, and I am feeling ungrateful. My cup holds the slight taste of dirt, or salt, or something more sinister in it's brown depths, and I can't get over it - still keep on sipping. Chewing over and over on the fact that there is no apple pie today, that it is the anniversary of something dark, suffering immensely over my own minor indecisions, or moments that could be let go easily if I would only loosen my breath. Like the second when someone simply pauses, draws in, hesitates over whether to blow the fluff from a dandelion - to be loved, or loved not.

2. All of the best poems happen in the shower. Maybe I'm singing along to some old blues song, or getting high on the iridescent foam, but something strange spreads, like steam over my own obscured reflection, something in my stoppered ears triggers a waterfall of words, and I am repeating the title phrases, pressing the names of poetic zygotes into my palms, trying to capture their features until I can press pencil to forehead, and draw them to paper… An open reply to the wrong lover's letter. A missive from all the spurned suitors of Oedipus. I'll remember the first line, or last - never the whole thing. The phone always rings when I'm wrapped in a towel, scribbling with a finger in the mirror’s steam.

3. The last act is always the hardest. Curtain call on a lover's affections. She can always feel it coming - he is merely the harbinger of stories, chapter book of her own sorrows read out loud and backwards. He will help her sound out all her most egregious mispronunciations, but it will always be too late - the sentence now altered by the context, and she knows that honesty is always a soft heart's undoing. With all this bruise inside, she is still too slow to pull the punches back - she’s just a fraction of a second off, these days - but what an impact a well-aimed word can make, still...

4. All the best ideas are stillborn. They merely sail on the seas of romantic summer notions - brush by our world, never touching the shore with both feet; their toes always bare. The sand always sucked from beneath them at the last second, all contact ephemeral, dwindling to sea again. Backsliding into the fear of becoming, they submerge in primordial oceans, rejoining the subconscious mind. Here, they shed tears for our faults. They dissolve into salt.

I write when I have no one to talk to. When it’s late at night, and the wheeze of my own bones is keeping me awake. When there seems to be a lot at stake, but it’s really just my own insecurity tearing me down, crumbling my aspirations, mud-sliding my countryside into the wide plains of non-existence. There was never a fence around our circumstances. There was always that crushing weight of the lightness of being. There was always a fault in our stars, and while you’re in the bars and I am at home, I am lost in a book. Or at least, in a story. My grandma would say “only boring people are bored" and I pride myself on proving her right - but sometimes forget which one I am. I write at night. And whether its the soft shush of pages or just dribbling ink, I write when I need to think outloud to myself, because I am probably the only one who’ll get all the inside jokes, all the repeating thesis statements of my own emergency - you know, the urgency in my own voice still surprises me sometimes. It is the clanging bell of evacuation, breaking the vow of silence I make every time I cross my heart - hope to die - just not tonight, dear - just not tonight.

Charles says

Dating is no longer

about finding forever.

You have already met your soulmate

and lost them;

stared down the road to forever

and chosen

a different path -

realized that all paths,

eventually

lead back to your own heart,

in which lies the small dream

of a comfortable death.

says Alan.

And, every person we meet

simply exists

as a reflection of our inner selves -

so it’s best just to improve

your own insides, first.

So, I’ve spent the better half

of a decade

chasing my own flighty truth, dowsing

the watery sky for stars

while swallowing

feathery platitudes, when

Sofia says,

What she leaves out

is, eternity shifts

just as we do.

Forever’s face ages

alongside our own dubious features,

evolving to greet the undivinable

climate of human nature,

as if it had always

intended to do so.

So when he asks me

I tell him

Which is to say, truly -

But I leave that part spare

to preserve his smile -

hoping

that I will have left him

in fairer weather

for holding him kindly,

because a wise meteorologist

once said,

I can tell, immediately

by the photos of your friends.

They are all straight

proud smiles

and good bones -

clear

unlined brows

and smooth skin

and not a wrinkle

among them.

Not a single

blemished nose

or fatty - and

they have been smiling

for the camera

since birth;

bellies full

of good cheese

and organic beef - they

are red-blooded Americans,

born to wide horizons and sunshine

all amber waves and good breeding

all tanned legs and cheerleading.

There is nothing blue or bruised

about them.

I would never fit in.

Sure, I could slip

into the midst of them -

slide on my cigarette pants and

canvas slippers,

bind my wrists with thick bangles

and cut my hair in a proper angle

but I will still be

just a pretender.

I’ll still walk

everywhere. The way I move

will give me away.

I’ll still wear

the shifting slump

of a prisoner - even

on the other side of the wall.

You know,

you just can’t fake

that kind of upright.

It comes from a life

lived

with no weight.

To reduce my suffering,

you will place finger and thumb carefully, lay

the strong crook of your hand

in the vulnerable valley below my windpipe

applying the same pressure

you would to the neck

of a champagne bottle - releasing

the stuck cork of my fear gracefully

a tiny flourish

in your final thrust,

before we both spill over, frothing

in sweet dissolution.

To reduce your anxiety,

I will cradle thick fingers between slender ones

guide your hand gently to the bottle -

because you don’t drink

anymore - but we both know that

you want to.

We both know

all the reasons why -

even if we do not speak of them.

We repeat our lines as often as needs be

memorizing roles, while slipping

into character; we don the costumes

of our past selves.

And, we can replay this scene

as often as needs be -

your hands, violent criminals

my throat, a helpless victim

this body: perpetual crime scene

and savior, both. Always

both. Always

reborn

in our own aftermath.

And, I will pretend death with you

as many times as needs be -

while you still refuse

to kill

the black widow, spinning

over your bed -

you said

she wasn’t hurting

anyone.

Your hands, no longer anvils

smoldering vise grips.

My glass backbone, molten

your blind fingers trailing

through braille history - stippled skin

beneath your calloused palms

while we relive the past

as darlings - ghosts

of all the little deaths which happen

but do not happen fully;

vessels which burst and bruise,

but also heal -

a dry toast

to our own survival.

The alarm goes off and I wake up

to perform my critically acclaimed

sentience in my morning posture

I seek to achieve the impossible angles of a bird

lying dead in the road - with its head and wings

folded down into the asphalt from the vantage point

of a crane shot.

To make direct eye contact

with the camera is to move the perspective from

the watched to the watcher or to present an emotion

as a publicly observable signifier,

a voyeuristic experience -

The Feel Good Movie of the Year

was my nickname in high school

and as is cinematically compelling,

I brush my teeth for he duration of sand

moving from the top of the blue plastic hourglass

to the bottom. “Look at this existence.

This pathetic, fallible, wonderful body,"

you can say rhetorically, sarcastically, or earnestly

and still achieve death.

Look at me falling in love with fallible bodies.

Look at me performing emotional labor,

my arms are strong enough

to work a tract of land:

The impatient man calls me

a bitch at my place of work

and the upward movement

of my facial muscles causes

my eyes to wrinkle, a smile.

This is a method of intention setting.

I seek a husband

with broad shoulders and a symmetrical face,

a hard worker, whose value is in the width

of his chest. I do not want

men that can teach me. There is nothing

more that I want to know; free of want,

I can’t use men in the same way

that they can use me. “Give up

on art and love," you can say rhetorically,

sarcastically, or earnestly, and still achieve death.

I wouldn’t be a good wife,

but I would be a wife

in a way that was cinematically compelling.

In my dream last night

there was a factory farm

that performed full body castration;

I went there

to lay with the women who wanted

to find a calm somewhere.

I became a body

and my sentience became someone else’s

problem as I awoke thinking,

“Where is my value?" as if I had misplaced

my lipstick again.

here

is my unsubtle origami

all scrawled up

with the bent words

of feelings

incapable

of folding inward

a wide-winged, flapping

swan of sentiment

you are an envelope

of secrets

a private letter

inscribed to your own

insides

I am every postcard

ever written

a bold-faced book, left

flung open

my cover

so easily

catches fire