from Dear God
Just between you me and the lamppost I pre-edit
everything I say I haven’t danced sober since 1996
I’m either (a) terrified of you or (b) terrified
you don’t exist why I insist on telling you things
I know you know I don’t know I think
you return to me a sense of moving past them
I think somehow your tin ear endears me
I like you like I like nature art in waiting rooms
talking to you is like having dinner
with every mom that’s ever mixed chardonnay
and Percocet you don’t listen to the answers
to your questions or answer any questions
you char the pork with love and propane
your silence will only incriminate you further
▼
What are the chances of a guy like you
and a girl like me getting together maybe
making it happen it’s like the elegantest
solution to the painfulest problem
it’s written in scrolls of April foliage
the still unravished birch swelling from root to branch
to stiff green sheets I fill with decent imitations
of Keats and Whitman it’s Spring and even
the hellebore’s got hips the forsythia’s sucked
by heavy bees is it just me or does
new black mulch give you a raging hard-on
does your face go slack like Spanish moss
I can’t see you being overtly verbal never
has your mouth mistook its pleasure for a word
▼
Forgive me for I’ve gone a-whoring from thee
I come around smelling like burnt wire and Wellbutrin
I have to find you hiding in the pines through panes overgrown
with spongiform frost do you ever just suck back
a dozen bellinis and sleep-watch complete seasons
of Who’s the Boss what’s your self-care regimen
I don’t know it yet but you’ve got plans for me don’t you
you tell me feeling better starts by feeling
you speak in tongues of fire and water
earwigs and silverfish take shelter in your mouth
I’ve got this theory people who dust a lot
are least prepared to decompose but you dust me
on the inside you chasten me with solemn whales
and burn the drapes with nothing but sun
▼
Other days you hang your mazy face in the clouds
like a big QR code connected to my heart
and the matte brown field is pierced with green needles
and the doubt I nursed like a cavity
and the bloated carcass of my pride are hauled off
in the night by birds of mercy and I think
I’m falling in love with you and I think
nothing this good could be this easy
like glass and mallards it’s as ordinary
as it is miraculous you cut the night to length
and rip the sky in strips steer the crow
and drive the maggot tell me where it is you hide
your baggage what was in your magic batter
what’s your secret password password?
▼
Like light and bleached-white trees you smell like copies
hot off the Xerox I like the way you smell
I like spacing out with you obsessing over style
putting product in your secret hair and sculpting it
in cardinal directions I like your vines
and mosses your thick sods and climbing ivies
the din of bees behind the force field in your pants
I like how loving you presupposes and includes
reciprocal sums of equal or greater value
the way your eyes get wet but never spill their drink
I like the dark carpet in the theatre of your throat
all those silent gorgeous films I’ll never see
I’m like a blind man reading lips you’re like
a good poem all questions and no answers
▼
I tried to love you with my brain but the decision-tree kept branching
into fragile effects with fragile effects until what it was
was a giant baobab shading the plain of my central nervous system
coded machine instructions buzzed like locusts in the leaves
you asked if I knew the Tupian word for cashew
“nut that produces itself” there was the uncanny feeling
I wasn’t creating the information I purveyed I wasn’t perceiving
the information I received something delicious and uneaten
was always steaming between us it was the latest establishment
to establish itself as the oldest-looking establishment
we could no longer be excused for being young honestly
I longed for teriyaki chicken from my hometown mall
I envied our nonexistent teenage daughter programmed
for high-risk high-reward behavior finding all our flaws
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Have mercy on me for I’m concerned with how
I seem I’m like that weird kid who mouthed words
back to himself in secret but everybody saw
talking to you is like hitting on a sunbeam
nothing I say is even close to timeless
it’s like Galway said Love is death’s wages
and it’s true I love doing little things for you
leaving little notes on the mirror I’m here
in perpetuity to crack your back defoliate
your artichoke and melt your butter you like
a hard fuck and a bouquet of dried baby’s breath
before breakfast at night the road dies
and bats come down for bugs so close I think
I hear you spread your news like paper wings
▼
But so this is where the analogy ends
and your measure begins the mown field
remits a month of vetch and aster cider apples bombard
the hills of Onondaga you’ve been out beating back
the woods and chewing through the bush you file down
the days and pile up the nights shave your head
and send the pricks to penance I think how much less
you think about me than me escaped me up until
this very second I should be grateful the absence
of expectation however brief allows the love it does
from now on may vowels of thanks scour my mouth
thanks for giraffes and trapezoids sumac
and mitochondria mornings like blades you harvest up
my wild mind and hold your peace between the meanings