my lips are dry
i wanted to tell you how dreams are like this
in a sense, glossolalia, and barren catholic birdhouses
a packaged american adolescence
with converse hightops kissing the gravel under
skies that are cloudless and sharp, just before they’re not
it’s really nothing more than setting the stage for the long-con of adulthood
an alluring ramble punctuated by wildflowers and fever ramblings
an unapologetic chain of influences shape experience
you can hear life rusting
the sequences shift swiftly, smudging against one another
so confined they’re damned near obligated to snarl and bark and bite before backing-off
you cultivate a strained good cheer
shrug and grin, and wonder when the stubborn scourge of waking reality will return
the perfect drench and wreck of emotions
the parade of elations and carnival attractions
these american appetites lift us up, as weightless as a poem
severing the strings binding us to our waking selves
the high is this slow unravel
so vulnerable to misinterpretation
i suppose we’re beyond that now
you enter without notice
say how it would be a special kind of heaven
were I to kiss you
every time your lips were dry
in my hushed little surprised way, i smile
you’ve a playful reciprocity for me
{and two bottles of red}
laughing, we settle in to study the geography of one another’s lives
the past completes itself, crashes into this slow succession of presents
a tension and collision of space-time and things-words resolves
insatiable ouroboros
ironies collapse
i listen for snippets of conversation around corners
all i learn is that our bad problem has gotten worse
that we’re drinking for two now
80 proof nostalgia and a renewed desire for the dream ushers and urges
i love you
so
miserable
are those who burn their fire for no light and no warmth
unrealized potential is their ornament of grief
they brutally and ineffectively beg for the moisture of a kiss
to be awakened by the lasting seduction of a future they are scared they’ll never know
removed and distant, the words labia oris rush in
they sound profound, like i know something i don’t
i pass tongue over mine and lean in
the timing is just right for everything to work out wrongly
you whisper that we’ll never go to one another’s funerals
i don’t want to hold back
but i do
born of july flame, of the cancer.
when you live with a dancer,
you learn how to turn-out, how to show-up,
how to move between the cinders
how to blow smoke-rings in god’s face.
you learn of the discipline it takes to self-destruct
the kind of dedication that only grows out of desperation
to know and be known; we entered the ultimate frontier together
somewhere between nowhere and goodbye
between kisses and question marks
when the music stopped the orchard burned
a happy fall in a new july
we drank in that wet fat fire light
in a sense
we were both always concerned with the search
all the things that had been fucking killing us
I tried to mimic your moves, but a pas de deux just doesn’t work without you
I dance differently now, articulating left and right
first position and fourth
the *perfect* ronde de jambe
with no anxieties, no threat of the fist, no abandonment, no withholding, no denial, no more fucking vodka, no insecurities, & no ambitions
only a steel resolve to follow the heart wherever it may lead
i always hear the music; i still miss the dance, the devil’s grin
