little phantom trip

Someone has invented this sinister plan: a return to the archaic gaze, a going toward the expectation figured by two blue eyes in the black dust. Silence is temptation and promise. Finale of my initiation. Beginning of every end. It’s of myself I speak. It happens to be necessary to go only once to see if just once again you’ll be granted the vision. We die of fatigue here. We’d rather not move. We’re exhausted. Each bone and each limb recalls its archaic sufferings. We suffer and crawl, dance, we drag ourselves. Someone has promised. It’s of myself I speak. Someone can’t take it anymore.”

-Alejandra Pizarnik
The Galloping Hour

poems for Pedro

I

it crept

II

taunted by my submission,
hopeless sin love,
I smiled it awake.

III

“almost done”
( ^ nope )
said the woman to the men
carrying the tufted leather couch
to the top of her
glittering
highrise

IV

he took so long to come
but now every capillary
is red and pulsing

V

can’t imagine seeing you
without words
I would want it

VI

everything breathing

VII

she is all I see in an eternal orgy
her face faces eyes
while he’s in her
he, a mystery
but she is me

VIII

he was beautiful
he’s still in me

IX

seashells he brought for me
stained with my ankle’s blood

X

it’s just
sun on a page
until you look away at another man
with a suitcase

XI

as soon as I drank him,
I went into a trance
and knew exactly what to do
oh no my pages run up quite soon
didn’t know he’d take up so much space

XII

let
the
bug
go

XIII

everything else
the ink leaves out

XIV

slowly
he took
his time
with me

XV

doesn’t matter
what I do
it will go

XVI

he wouldn’t want to rush anything
all these weddings around me
a man sprints past
a woman poses
a boy in Doc Martens shamefully stuffs
a plastic checkered picnic blanket
into an overfilled trash bin
a little girl screams
“FLOWERS!”

XVII

all the leaves
I can’t collect or recollect
still fell

XVIII

two men on their way
with a gallon of cooking oil,
preparing love

XIX

eye contact with a skater
as he bombs the hill I climb
it’s all happening in front of me
while I’m busy writing it down
XX

back through
the same alley I entered
of course I can’t breathe
with my nose plugged

XXI

he gave me a poem

choking tropics

waiting to depart                                     the room we arrived,
uncertain which gate                                 screens won’t update.
she said it was                                 not a cultural experience,
the maids,                                       the service with a smile,
the menu,                                          prices in U.S. dollars.
excess                                            overflowing the absence
washed-up onshore,                                   discarded at sunrise.
you can have it all      on this island       in the middle of everywhere.
cloaked women                                              sweep our trace
inhale smoke                                                 blown oversea
what a miracle it would be                        to make it out breathing

 

in/to

Mental diagnosis felt like an act. A script I shouldn’t have played into. Some do. Some need to. Those whose function cannot find place. Like mine at the time. But I was passing through—turbulent heartbreaks, growing pains, clashes with Hims—and mistook role for reality. I overthought my relation to it, that joy and suffering, and tied it to a being beyond. I regret that now. Or at least can see it as it was: seeking, clenching, grasping. Am I nothing more than a need to reach? Maybe. I’m human. Some childlike essence that shows in contours when ignoring and blurring details of pores. Take off my glasses and focus on the obscure. The fuzz. That uncertainty between me and it. Subject in/to object. Still disoriented in space, lost along the way, I may trip a few times too many, but that’s okay. Because it’s only and not me at all. 

heart of glass

A teary night. Heartbroken morning. Put on some tea and sat. Forced myself out the apartment. Biked to the studio. On my way, I noticed a smashed vase in the gutter. Like broken bubbles. The sun hit those curves and even the sharp edges reflected softness into my eyes. It was just a brief glimpse. Thought about stopping to take a photo, to capture the feeling—shattered. With puffy eyes that glistened like all those pieces. But I was late, so I sped past and thought I’d return later. I practiced. Got coffee with some others. Listened to them. We spoke in and out the night before. Removed myself from it. That thisness. And then, as I smiled and waved goodbye, I decided to bike back to that glossy mess and take a photograph, but by the time I returned, it had been swept away. Only one shard remained.