it is 12:58 am and 
a cute boy in a mini van waves to me
as we both runaway  toward the blinking lights

i dont know you!
i dont know what you look like with your morning coffee 
but passing smiles back and forth 
is the most important thing to happen to us 
after midnight when the night is drippy and drowsy 
the car is humming heat and i feel your cheeks converge

we get ripped apart by the graveyard
leering ghoul giggles and tombstone teeth
toward infinity and the way my breathe sounds
in the visible spectrum

wow i am screaming about frida kahlo
and why you wont let me put flowers in your head
let me wrap you up: im sorry
shut up let me kiss you in our flower dresses
lets pretend we arent scummy and scared  
im never scared with you
even in the graveyard with tree branches tickling my neck
and my screams audible for miles  

ever think about knees so hard 
you do the splits and in a split second
i am holding my legs against my body
i will fall out of me when not all balled up
and clingy      a sing-free bawling of my smarmy eyes
surmise a drinking fountain and a way to live forever 
i am holding my knees together and
holding my breath with blinks and electric shocks just for you
i will lobotomize a view of the river from 
a balcony of defeat
my wobble knees, probably these
are the days i will make up in my head
these are the hunger and the racetrack thoughts
gone mobius      i cant find you on Brush street 
i cant find you on the bridge or the cut
i cant find your ferdinands or rosa parks’
i hold my knees apart on the circuit of bruises
switching on the systems between the sky and your fingertips
inching toward my cheek bone
i count seventeen black and blues
before you ask about bb king and my deep souths
i ask about your predisposition to palm trees
and we shrug simultaneous
these are my joints my points of arch and
rebound, i found my scabby knees
filling out forms for aid  and angels
ive only ever seen one halo
and it was just a smudge of candle ringlets  
remnant  of the rays sprouting beams
we balance on our knees one two three
is it the floor or the fauna we are praying to  

mumble me something 
sweetly tap your shoes on the hard ground
i am not yr sweetheart i am not
iiiiiiiiii aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamm m m   m
not worth talking and words
and i am not worth clouds
or moonlight
the song is skipping
so get up and fix it
okay the sun shone directly in yr eyes
and you are like ‘got damn’
as you walk inside and everything is dark
and fuzzy and inescapable 

everyone has worse things 
or more or less things

i have someone telling me im a bitch
and i have someone telling me
i deserve love

i am more or less a thing
and i can be more than
the last less on the planet  

cry about a song you post on facebook
hope you are thinking about me
but probably just about your own hands

there is a moon outside that you dont care about
how do you live your life
not-talking about the moon at least once a day

last night i screamed so much 
that my throat is numb
feels like rickety nostalgia
like becoming empty
i am an empty cicada shell
on your front porch

 

my skins all messed up bleak 
weak-kneed baby but all the scars are OK 
and i am Okay in the 
freckle wilderness and i am OKAY 
in the blue veins constellations 
continue my scabs and scared up 
blood streams i will dream 
on the milky way of glitter cheek bones 
and dethrone the grim prone greeds 
no need no need no need 
for your unhappy yapping i can 
take care of myself with this wealth 
of unsteady clapping and knee slapping 
please sing with the new happy happening 
please free the brewed up babbling 
i am the griping grape grasper 
i am the final gasp in this true sorrow clasper 

i’m going to name my daughter sylvia—
and by ‘daughter’ i mean
all the wild flowers of everyone’s hair

while staring at the stories in your veins—
vain vanes shift for the chill of your winds
and all the clouds are laughing at us

i have seen your touch become flowers 
in the summer and weeds in my mind

i have seen you call out to the broken record
but never expect an answer 

we fell asleep like falling off a cliff 
i was stiff and stubborn 
but you were okay fine  

my skull inhaled arsenic 
cynically you pressed my temples and said
youre fine you are okay fine 

but i have seen my thoughts float fluvial 
bursting from my foul body 
to a never ending cathedral