papers shuffle, pens sigh

honey i confess
i stole yr heart

last night hiccups became the ultimate evidence of my failures. "earthquakes of lung& diaphragm...all empty and pointless. i begin to sound like an unconvincing french nihilist. just avarice. i will surely roast in hell."

i want to go
to(o) far
away places
but momentum makes my head
ponderous & heavy

today i registered with the System. for my pains i receive a cut: one hundred and thirty-eight dollars.

i thwart my dreams by getting up early for breakfast with the girls this week. i don't really want to know what it is that i'm filing away endlessly with imagery.

shoving syntax into braids for this page. i want to be delivered. so i'm gone gone gone.

misshapen, lumpen.

[sun falling across my eyes in this bed
like a hot cloth, a warm blindfold]

-

what you want is the branch-dancing wind
to come through the window to you,
with that staggered thrash and dip of limbs

you want a hand of winter wind to reach in,
jove's chill palm
freezing the flesh from you

pale finished chrysalis,
stale moth's shell;
a hand to push down the shelf of ribs

to the jut of hips and
empty the bowl of your bones
(upended pitcher

dry river bed,
abandoned nest in a high tree,
spindle of cold)

you want wind to scatter self
like ash from an open flue,
a flickering immolation

on this sun that pierces, pierces,
impatient vividness,
brief and heatless winter light.

the genetics of weakne[e]ss

it's not the tendons. it's no obscure muscle. it's not the ligaments or the connective tissues. it's the cartilege. i have little or no cartilege. when i run, that pain? is my bones pressing together like panicked folding hands. fervent prayers.

my grandfathers both take glucosamine condroityn for cartilege repair and protection. they swear by it. hunting is now possible. ice-skating is now possible. this after years of grimacing knee-free activities and crutches and threats of knee replacement. i wonder if i am altogether too young to take their funny drug? or perhaps just too arrogant.

i can get humble. just don't ask me to bend down on my knees. please, please. don't let my cartilege disappear, don't leave me a limper on the corner. let me run & run & escape this body.


o pathetic.