i guess poetry can be used
to inspire optimism
and make people feel good,

but i'm looking for the kind of poetry that
eats the air
from my lungs and
sifts my holes
with a fistful of dead flowers.

let me yoke to you.
twist mine into yours.
***** me in at the hips.
lift me into your if's
and have me, present.

our torquing bodies
charging each other,
holding back the

bloom of darkness.

yes, it is true:
we are
closest to the dark.

but we are also
sown to the broadest urge
that wrote us.

this ebb is lit with written poems,
receding into the lightness of dense being.

so,
jot me
into this

and i
will
exist in
your margins,

like nice little notes
that mean everything in the world.

this is the first day that
my grandma
didn't
get to live
since a really long time ago

what can i possibly say?

i want to curl up inside my own fist right now
like one of your old matryoshka dolls
that i used to play with
and put you inside me so i can make it all better

i wanna recall all the thoughts
that once were yours
i want to know you why didn't i get to know you better

i stayed away im sorry im strange i get sad a lot but i loved you still

she had once
been
a person
but
now
she isn't and
i can't stop shouting these rips from my eyes

She tossed the kindling:
twigs, dried leaves, and an old piece
of tattered fabric,
at the base of the bridge.

The wind whipped her lace dress,
as lightning flashed,
and she gave a secretive grin
before the thunder raged at the night.

She hummed something;
not quite a song,
but not not a song either
while she longed to laugh
like the people in a painting
or cry like a widow on the news.

The flames danced gracefully
under the angry sky,
and she danced too;
small feral motions,
and twirls,
as the structure smoked,
and more dancing,
always dancing...
until the lovely ruins smoldered,
and all that she was left with
was a faded memory
of what the smoke
must have smelled like.

blind from birth, she
could tell the difference
between the odor of chrysanthemums and tulips,
and remember her first whiff of both

she could identify
the scent of her brother
in a groping group
of sweaty brutes

she knew
her nose was her biographer
collecting memories, visions
her eyes could not

she studied biology
only to discover her compendium
of smells originated in a space infinitely
smaller than a fly's eye

a few molecules
devoted to identifying ham,
the rich smokey meat
of her first Easter

another clump to help her hold
the faint smell of perfume which lingered
in the room hours after
her mother passed

and who knew what atoms,
what cells, what curse of chemistry
forced her to recall, most of all, the sweet scent
of her newborn's hair,

the few seconds she held him,
after his heart stopped, and they took him
and placed him in a smooth, cold box, where sight,
sound and smell were locked forever