Lyricizes

Here.

Take this.

Break this.

I must hear it

shattering.

Now.

Stand on it.

Grind into it.

Make the goddamn

dust sing.

my hands
are not big enough
to clasp
these prayers,
my tongue
not loose enough
to grasp
them either.
the world is just too full
right now

I knew a boy

who puffed and passed on the roofs of higher education

with women who did no good for him,

who had his open heart shat in,

who then faked it because it was just harder to be real,

who dreamt too big for his head,

who did too crazy for us all,

who grew up

to become a father.

a belly swells only
with a yearning.

a list of names
full-stops on a stain.

I put poems

in your pockets

for you to find

when you are cold.

A ponytail
of messed up brown static,
green eyes a little less red
than her nose
but just as watery,
and even on that day,
she was all
the beauty I wanted to be
at eleven-years-old.

In blue pinafores
and gold collars
and ribbed stockings,
we were uniformed as equals.
Yet she always had my head on tilt,
upward and upward;
my neck sick from the angle I worshipped her.

Once, I heard her say she’d never
touch a boy she wasn’t married to.
Because she was perfection at her worst
and therefore wise.
I agreed.
And me with my awkward everything
hunched down by the weight of short-sight,
granny-cut fringe and boys who said I was fat,
I figured it would be a lot easier
to walk purity anyway.