WHEN YOUR SMILE FADES

When your smile fades,
it's like the bleachers
giving way in a stadium
of overcrowded capacity.

LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT

I thought about writing you a poem about the colors reflecting off of the petals of the lavender plant. I'd've used simile and some sibilance to cement the conceit in its place. But it meant nothing to me, so I wrote this:
You,
walking on the dark sidewalk,
so close to me
that I feel the swish
as you change feet:
left
     right
left.

STILL LIFE

The car, leaving a wake of swirling, invisible exhaust, presses us toward the back of our seats, forward down the road. Our hands make warmth of friction, sliding and holding and letting go and grabbing on. When you write those things on the page and when you say those things to me, I become stilled, and I feel the whole of the world, all the people and the winds and the cars—I feel them moving.

SCRAWLED ON NAPKIN: ALL THE RULES TO WRITING:

1. Fucking write. 2. Use commas to push back the enemy & for no other reason, unless the enemy finds pleasure in this. 3. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind and don't follow leaders; leaders don't make you write. 4. Grab all of the people. Love them all. They will all not love you. Find love in the space.

SOMETHING LIKE CATHARSIS

I can't bear the crushing quotidian. I am a permanent emergent. I study my own emergency. I study my own impermanence. I pulse with a lifelike desire to move and not stop moving. I lay myself down and breathe her in when she lays herself down beside of me. I ruin myself with a distrust of cycles and of tradition. I ruin myself with drink and with smoke. I call, at obscene hours, people who don't want to hear from me, and tell them things that I ought not tell them. I demand they write me things. I ruin myself with a distrust of those I love. I can't stand not being wanted. I am wanted. I spend hours doing nothing and chide myself for it. I spend hours using my body and still don't sleep soundly. I break things that matter to me and make things that I love stop working. I build things. I build massive things. I use my words to build things bigger than they ought to stand. I love you. Then I knock them over. I can't bear the crushing quotidian.