i grew you: duet.

i'm a little afraid
of my involvement in accidents.
what's happening is
that's me disappearing
when i need myself the most,

the fat that breaks my fall.

she buries herself past
reception, into
the winter, pretending
to be an iceberg
until convinced.

nobody
praises
there.

it's safe to be without praise there.

i am the satyr
whose scent she does not trust.
it's a shame this is the only hymn
i'll ever know.

tiny dancer.

possession is when: spirit sees
star power, targeting it- destination
supposedly the end
of suffering. being so serious a mission,

i understand there is no room for what was (me).

it makes me it. this is something different than
how i make others me. i am its room
is how it differs. dancer

teaching me how to dance, or, undoing my
taming. no funeral

for former inhibitions.

it lurks
underneath now, swamp monster
i suffocate, whose breath

i believe to be separate from mine; "i am the battery,"
all that uneven power dynamic crap.

often i try to reenact you.

until i come out of personal coma
you are shadow.

"i knew that as long as i didn't confess to murder, no one would know. there was incredible and increasing pressure on me to confess, so i had to learn to dismiss my own thoughts and emotions so i could stay alive. if i was strong enough to do this, no one would ever catch me.
"

auras.

cherry, the overfelt red,
is on
overdrive: "me and stacey

go everywhere together."

high hopes

that my lover, horizontal line, a
former paramedic,
will notice our son has his eyes. high hopes he will return.

tongue has left sesame street. not to say
i swallow
my young, rather, he matured past me, repulsed
by his relating to me, and left.

we put a spoon on his naked body to
keep him warm through

these harsh winter nights. it got me to stay in place, underneath, birthing a
new wild animal everyday.

“thou art not mine,” i abandon
each of them, each, a cop, upon

my ritual i've got worked out: trust fall to the floor
with a socialist salute.

i've learned to prefer the company of tile.

color wheel: black.

there are only so many animals
i can turn into
before all that's left

is revealing
real
self
as
monster

miss sees herself in prison, or
dying prematurely, for a future (your seeing being

many shattered pieces),

i know. female pronouns
dismiss the relevance of universality. boys can't connect today-

their cell is not mine.
i am the thing you're looking at. i don't know
if you know that

hibernation ends-
being sexualized, and being encouraged to
allow this, is

prison somewhere else. prison is
different here in heaven.

the tick on your head just called you grace.
catholicism says
this is an angel's name.

this next sip of lavender tea
makes you even more complicit
in changes your colors from wild

to sky blue
and saying
you know that already.

this smile
is one that's modest

a sign
of health, or, worthwhileness.

true blood and vomit mess, not
like how we believe

such to be;

this is a tattoo i regret. i resist
more happening to it

other than its own echo. a dream wife's religion

centralizes
betraying shape of expectation.

self portrait: going up in flames.

waste.

maybe i do not see god
as i expect myself to
today,

my relationship with the trees
frustrates me. it mirrors

myself the wall
that is the only thing i know.

the face of god changes even
into those whose medicine
i overlook:

i do not escape waste, not
this time;

succumb to being
a belonging. this too shall get something to begin.

when the sun comes up
all reveals itself as illusory.

sappho.

presenting a bowl of it, i offer
my blood to the gods. i do this when i breathe among others.

it trickles onto their feet, sprouting
a fungus out of their skin.

they go back to what they were doing.
i then realize

that my playing my lyre for them was
all in my head; her body

i tossed aside.