helLlord

I have scars hanging off of some girl’s ceiling fan

I grabbed the tea kettle too many times

this is how I learned not to touch things

your body always
always makes me want to break that

I could build you a house if you let me learn how to, if you’ll
help me hold the nails between my teeth. I am searching for dirt
to stand inside of. A mountain to whistle on. The field that will scream
gold so loud, the heart will stop talking so much. Take this one of mine.
Touch it. Poke its soft walls. It may jump back at first. But it wants your
hands to come to it in the night. It is something that was made for that.

and in the morning we would all sing the same song
look out the window
and pray the mist outside was just a fog
and not the ghosts we had made together
trying to come back to us

it’s okay to run
I learned that long ago
I ain’t been still since
it don’t mean I don’t love you
I’m just trying to catch up to my heart
I’ve let it out of my hands too many times
I have to learn how to hold it tighter
there are hungry birds that fly around us all

I know that there may be wars inside your head on some days
and how
some of them
you’re gonna have ot fight alone
but I pray that if the darkness comes big and too big and sharp
I’ll see you down there
brother of mine

or perhaps at that age I could just tell
that when people are filled with sorrow
even if it was just a donut
I didn’t want to feel like
I was taking something else from them

I lay in the dust and waved my arms,
made dirt angels for you.
I’m trying ot leave this earth behind
but my pockets are filled with it.

everything I own reminds me of something else
I need a new skin
this one’s still uncomfortable

I’ll love one until
she loves me so hard that I
want to be alone

you hold my body like a ghost
left foot in the grave
right fingers in heaven

there are moments where it still shakes me
but there were times where the night
sat beside me on my bed
quietly
like it was a big man
who had to do what I told him to
he was too dumb
or he loved me too much
either way he had the same smile
I ain’t never been stung by a bee before
not in my whole life

me and mom went fishing in the park
I caught two catfish
and waited for them to die
they swam in circles inside the refrigerator
because I had never learned how to kill anything

I haven’t found a higher power to trust
more than equilibriums.

I haven’t found the solace and order
that should underline the chaos of my life.

But when I think about the
molecules that went into your body,
I count my blessings in exponents.

The second someone passes,
they write their way into poems that aren’t theirs.

Granddaddy steps into a chicken car, waving. Giggling.
The day someone dies, you worry much too hard about

whether or not they’d like what you’re writing, if it would
bother them if you wrote about someone else.

You wonder if they can see what you’er doing, writing,
thinking. You wonder if your worrying disturbs their rest.

If you are sure you don’t believe in these things,
you wonder why you wonder about them.