if i kiss you where it's sore

when they kitchen sink your back, replant the volume inside unfamiliar music, and set a pack of dogs to sleep around you like flames, there will be no loss of emotion in you. your feet have memorized the steps, even if your head cannot keep up. you are a stronghold. there is a man in the boiler room, red faced and sweating, who keeps it all moving. his fingers are the size of staplers. his chest is a cardboard box. his biceps are the bulging roots of an oak tree. he pushes and pulls, burns his hands, and billows the fires to grow mountains, to engineer car crashes, to burst a small cloud into ten thousand raindrops, to bring my thumbs up to brush away your tears. you remind me of an old song i used to know, the way you get stuck in my head. i find myself humming the melody of your lips. it's the prettiest tune i know.

painting pictures with fire on flammable objects

the piano keys, they are running through my bloodstream, building monuments out of sound, translating the unbelievable fact of hammer put to work direct from physics to emotion. the waves toss my body like it is just a body and the ocean is the ocean, i am small. the sky can't see me, even when it looks closely. i rumble along on the air currents, as the secrets are whispered into my trapdoors. i know the secret knock that blossoms the blue doves into the open air like a door bursting open from a burning building, lungs heaving, empty thoughted animal knowing. i know the pearls that cage themselves in campfires, only to be set free for that dying ecstasy of a glance. it isn't here, that elusive answer. the waiting is what kills us, that spiteful thought that there is something behind the veil that we can't see. but when the sheet drops we discover that we really did know it all along, and we just could not bear to let ourselves believe. it is the not knowing that we shed our tears for. and the loss.

the building blocks of a ribcage

i spend the days stacking patterns crosswise endless through the air. the sweat paints itself out from my skin. it is a brain runner. when i sleep i can see it all. the colors are fluorescent, blazing, pointing into my eyes. the fans spin themselves chaotic. the rooftops watch the sky. and in my head i am somewhere else. the windows burst like a thousand sparrows and the words fill my throat with fire. i watch the sun turn itself soft and swallow the sea and i am learning history. and it is all a fiction in the face of the truth.

the string plucking nostalgia

feet planted like daisies in the bottom of a pair of boots, slinging toe tapping rhythms on the road with a thumb at the sky. ill be your blazing blue streak, death on two legs, sweet talking, tune whistling, traverser of these american roads. god bless it. ive got a picture in my pocket of the prettiest thing you ever saw. she makes houses turn gold when she walks by. all the birds know her name. the sky even tried to talk to her once. i got something in me, and it grows, sometimes it blooms and sometimes it sits. it makes me strong and crazy. it knows the shape of her collarbone by heart. it knows the taste of her. it presses its fingers against my heart. sometimes its not soft and i feel it furiously, bruising ferocious in one of those tin can afternoons with that toothpaste sunset blinking at me, but it always gets calm again. this human being stuff is exhausting.

machine guns growing from the hardwood floors

it is a thump thump thump rhythm breaking into my ribcage like arena rock and roll blizzard road show serenade. pump in the snowflakes, my veins wrapping ferocious inside wallpaper skin, all wandering houseplant decor. i dig your style. i have a photocopy of your laugh that i keep in my back pocket. i kiss it when i need to cheer up. there is the sand in my throat, the harmonica between my toes, the seashells in your eyes. i can remember the ocean in you, the rhythm of it, the taste. it has been too long since i swum there. my sneezes are my soul escaping my body to try to hold your hand, to kiss your collarbone, to fly a kite with you, to bring you soup, brush your hair, touch your shoulder, to sharpie your palm with "i belong to you", to sing to you the song that summer has written inside my bones. i will draw you a map. it will have on it all the places. i will sign it at the bottom. and when you are ready you can climb into it, and i will be waiting for you at the place where the X is. it is beautiful there. there is a bougainvillea blooming fuchsia and a violin that when you touch it's strings plays perfect back to you the songs your mother used to sing. i will be waiting with iced tea, and coffee for you, chocolate (and peanut butter), a string of pearls, seven avocados, two paintbrushes, the single wish of an oak tree, and my lips. when you get there i will hold you. i will hold you like a hammock, and we will lay there, swinging, a giggle factory, twin grins blossoming, the true love of the forest. and we will talk about all of it, until our voices are sore. the squirrels will laugh. i will bruise your lips with mine. i would like to get myself a new pair of eyes so i can see you for the first time again. that is what it will be like anyway. i miss you. i miss your fingers, the shape of your thoughts, your breathing next to me in bed. it makes me crazy inside my head. i feel like i live in an aquarium and breathing water is not so bad and i would give anything for you to be a fish here with me. we could kiss beneath the fake ferns, and sleep inside the castle. i have restrung my spine. it holds me up higher now. i am trying to teach it your melodies, but it is hard without you. i am trying to grow my arms longer so they can reach you. so far i've only gotten an inch. but it's progress. my biggest hope is that you know, that you know about the garden, the way the trellises stretch jasmine up, the tulips who nod, and the begonias waving at you, the treehouse with the sleeping bags, and the turtles i've met (they would like you), also the photo-booth that's latched itself onto my heart, and the way i've been teaching my skin not to get so sad because it misses your hands, and how all the rum on this island reminds me of you, i hope you know about it all, all the stuff i'm collecting inside my chest and saving for you, i hope you know.

all the doorknobs to the house are in my stomach

i am lonesome and psychotic. it is a helpless feeling, the waiting, the not knowing. i am frantic with it. the heat is growing palm trees in my blood as i porch sit and wait for thirty days to pass. i long for the gentle cave of her voice, and her porcelain touch. meanwhile i try to let the ocean soothe me, but i can feel the tears hiding behind telephone poles, waiting to sneak up on me.

bells furnishing the insides of your ears with music

my breathing feels like the tidepools. i can feel the ocean heave and my pulse is aligning itself with it. the air is thick here. you have to push your way through it, like putting your shoulder to a wardrobe. it hangs on you. tells secrets to your blood. you have to move it out of the way just to sit down. it is madness. my tongue is sweet with the fruit. my hair is filled with salt. i walk my feet barefoot, sleep beneath hurricanes, keep the best bird songs behind my earlobe. i shudder with the breeze, sit on the porch like i am a desert, and think about loving. this beating thing in my chest, it seems to be trying to escape. and i have a fairly good idea where it wants to go. but it has no passport and it doesn't speak spanish. so it is stuck here with me, while she helps the turtles to get living. but it misses her so. it really does.