I'll chain-smoke
to write this,
to polish the lies
I've fucked and left
locked to the doors
of black
churches.
I'll tune it
and strop it
so my voice is
a clever.
begin with your sight
of my smoke in your breath
swimming
Saturday night
over songs raging on
under skies
falling down
like a minute
in our destitute bliss -
a dozen cigarettes,
four cheap laughs,
ten moments to feel complete -
and you closed
your blue eyes
like a feather's slow drifting;
you closed your blue eyes
to hear out my hymns
of those beautiful,
pallid lies.
remember the form
of a clavicle bound
from an amative finger
to the clear summer moon
and the fire in shadows
burned through the blankets?
or the whispers
that dwell
and boil your madness;
your wounds
forged from pieces
of my broken, vain promise
that I'd hold you
to save you,
no matter the cost?
I'd meant to say something
more suant and more scared;
to be rescued by your smile
and to kill you with mine.
I'd meant to stir blood
in one dithering exhale.
but when we met I was false
with such drugs of despair -
summer lust sunk
to an autumn forlorn,
just smoke until sleep
to shut out the wind
of those bitter-
cold dreams.
Just beating a path
toward the black and red-light
of a small exit sign
from fated fool's misery
while those whispers
had gathered in gutters
and storm drains
to warn you with weeping
that rain was the primer,
the blood-life and movement
for this afflicted canvas.
but what I meant
means nothing
now,
what I meant
wasn't what was.
so I'm charging
the cobwebs,
hammering the walls
of my childhood room
until rubble
is dust,
until lies
are made truth.
I'm stretching the lips,
unwrapping the tongue
to tear with the teeth
through trapped smiles
in dusty photos,
through letters
signed with fidelity,
to down the perfumed poems,
the ticket stubs, the memorandum
of nothing.
I was never a savior,
I can't save myself,
but I lied that I was,
and I'm so fucking sorry.
I was always afraid,
I am always afraid,
and you more than most
left me terrified:
your quickening passion
an asteroid at dawn;
and I couldn't tell you,
I just couldn't tell you.
I was never a seam
assigned to a corner,
I have never felt safe,
and I couldn’t with you,
I was always alive when I knew
that I could be, that freedom
in life through accepting my pain,
but you can't accept it –
it runs down like rain
and plunges to greet me
like a shadow in lightning.
I was never appeased
to hear your side’s say.
you tore from the corner
with three words and a sigh,
you were the honest
and I was the frightened,
because I was never a poet,
I’m simply a liar.
I wasn't attracted
after that week,
but I lied that I was
because I lied
I could save you,
because I wanted to save you
because no one can save me.
I was never the movement,
I was never the dance,
I was never the music,
and never the chance
to make the rain clear
to make your eyes bright
and show you the new
inside the decay,
but I lied that I was,
I believed that I was,
I failed, I am not,
and I'm so fucking
sorry.
end now, with this kiss.
a last given goodbye,
my one hopeful tear
without expectation:
your beauty is pain,
your pain is your passion,
you scream in a music
that lives in your breath
swimming Saturday nights
in a life without death
with your hair cast out
like a net on the moon
you draw in your air,
you draw in your hands,
the stars and the streets,
the smoke and the sounds,
the lovers and lonely,
the murderers, first-born,
the forests, the wild birds,
you inhale and they're gone . . .
there is nothing . . .
you exhale . . .
the galaxies.
and you continue,
and you continue,
beautiful, true,
always
so
true.