vagabond

you sat there next to me
in quiet
and shouted against
everything

you pulled words out
of me with a heavy rope
they tapped on roofs
and sloshed though gutters
in the background

roll your shoulders
back and feel the distance
between steps
it’s forever and gone

you stand in all spots at once
behind your eyes and everywhere else
you travel worlds to reach anyone and
you are who you say you are

eat the bitter minutes
shape-shift with me

misstep

tripped and stumbled
leaning on the edge of one foot
waiting for a rhythm
to fold over
and sink into
the slipstream monotony
walking and thinking in spirals

nausea

my heart pounds morse code
my stomach churns and folds around a stone
sunken and solid and heavy
my mouth is arid and barren and
my lips cracked plastic
my hands shake and tremble and grasp
my face flush with a hollow heat
the world is ending and I am turning inside out!
I drank too much last night

storyteller

cast me up into
the stars and connect the dots
pull those strings until they
snap and hear it ring
out into the cosmos into

constellations stuck behind
the eyes and breath unfolding
in golden rays stretched too
thin to fill the universe

forget everything you’ve ever heard me say
it’s all just noise against the
resonant humming
of goddesses

those haunting, old songs
buzzing in an empty chest
luminous
just
warm

within (and apart from) myself

To what extent am I made up of context?
How much of me hangs in relation to everything else?
I am entirely copyrighted material with fingerprints and creases
and cardboard and
spirit strung up and knotted together taut with wire
plucked and prerecorded
all muscle and all breath
all of it inscrutable and sloppy and intentional and exact
eyeballs and advertisements and imitations
How much of me is you and how much of you is me?
it happened before and is happening again now
today and tomorrow, everything
simultaneous and improvised and correct, everything
stained glass and bubbles and visible light and vantage points all popping at once, through
pinholes and caricatures and comparisons and apocalypse
it's performed; eternal, until
swallowed then replaced repeatedly with perfect
replicas and written in screenplays

It all makes more sense framed and staged with a canon timeline and
a track-list translated
to everyone at once and it was rehearsed
for so long and it was perfect. It wasn’t random.

Even though the shadow didn’t match the shape and something happened backwards
it was tangible. I held it in my hands.