#lukecohoon

[lukecohoon]

YEAR OF NOSEBLEEDS

in winter, you can still smell the fields burning. there’s a trail of dirt through your hallway, leading to the shovel you hid in your closet. maybe I invented you, frankenstein-like, took all the parts people had left behind and made something monster. love isn’t always easy. this is the poem where they’re laid to rest; let’s take these old darlings and give them peace, an unmarked grave. a ditch in the side of the road. lay down their bodies and cover them with salt. no ghosts will rise tonight, the dead stay exactly buried.   this year, neither blood nor body count will keep me still.  

this year, my friends tell me they’ve never seen my hands so clean.

[lukecohoon]

iii

this time you don’t break them; resolutions – hearts – the skin under your wrists. you stop pouring your minutes into wine glasses just to watch something shatter. no longer worshipping the religion of the bruised knuckles. in this poem, the hanged man is playing himself. he’s halfway through January and planning what comes next; January is an ocean but you’re both done with drowning. he says maybe I needed you like the gallows needs the rope. in this poem, nobody dies; the bough breaks, the ropes aren’t used to holding all the universe you have growing inside you. in this poem, you won’t ever love yourself to death.

[lukecohoon]

EMERGE-NCY

let’s start with “are you okay? everything’s burning here.” and let that mean, “I’m sorry you survived me.” this is a poem about a name crossed out in red, a name spoken only in toasts to the dead: that closed loop of a person finally gone. I’ve been waiting for winter for so long now. summer finally ended. slow hands with sticky fingers pushing through my hair. now the porch swing is empty and the windows closed, now, I won’t find you in-between television static and refrigerator songs.   thank god for small favours. i’ve been trying to unlearn how to hold all these knives, but they’re the only shape my hands have known. let this be the winter of   learning how not to kill. teeth, tongue, hatchet, heart, all these sharp objects I’ve collected to defend myself:

buried.

[lukecohoon]

BELLADONNA

i’m speaking these words into life like lightning. quicksilver tongue; I could have been feral for you. a hunting of wolves with no carrion left to feed on. you will miss me like something physical. the wound that refuses to heal.  (the blood was staggering) gather ‘round, interrupt this meeting of witches. heart hotter than a campfire, heart a campfire to conjure ghosts and visions. the spirit doesn’t have to ask itself how to haunt: ruin is mutually exclusive with flesh. so we shed our skin for the full moon, invite every demon our mouths can name. broken porch light: banshee song: the murder of crows is growing. morning light. i am tired of being  soft. wash the blood off my sleeves, my hands my teeth today i am ravenous. 

[lukecohoon]

ODE TO THE TWO OF SWORDS

so you practiced burning and the curtains caught fire;

you had memorised every detail of that motel room,

the identical bedspreads, the stain on the bathroom ceiling,

the sound the ice machine made at 3am.

you haunted every room and hallway

(is there a difference between a body and a crime scene?)

so you named every sharp object in every drawer after yourself,

names whispered to you in the dark, names shouted at you across the street,

names like blood in the kitchen sink.

(both can be red with love)

so you ascend from the rubble of that place,

baptised yourself in dirty water

and started thinking yourself as something religious.

let’s call it loving yourself and hope the mythology catches on.

(is there a difference between angels and ravens?)

 so you’re through with throwing bones over the august asphalt

to try and figure out what happens next. now,

I’m listening to what the tarot tells me. we name this pain,

call it a fearless summer this year, come into the light.

(they both search for carrion)

 the motel in ashes, the angels are flown, the wolves have left the yard.

you didn’t just build a bridge over this,

you built an entire city

and crowned yourself King.

[lukecohoon]

ODE TO THE MOON

the motel room again,

in poetry you say you love yourself. stumble back

in neon hallways. so many empty rooms

with open doors. the dining room is

deserted. a single bottle of soda

sweating in the dark. your mind is as quiet

as the hum from the backroom refrigerator.

why did you want to be holy?

the angels still wait for sunrise to open their wings.

wolves surround the building. they’re howling at the moon

with you. you are something between fang and claw,

not quite blood drawn but red all over. you need

something unspoken like bones need skin.

the angels are still waiting.

gathered outside, a parliament of crows

wait for you. 

part of survival is letting yourself be devoured

when necessary. you thought

you weren’t worth the bandages, the antiseptic,

but this morning,

you’re rising with the sun.

a collaborative project with @teamcaptains  

[lukecohoon]

THE REVISIONIST

Let’s give this an ending that’s easier to digest, today, this isn’t a story about what’s devouring me. we buried every ouija board hoping the dead would stay quiet. now we’re done salting the garden, burning sage in every room, shuffling the tarot cards. maybe honeysuckle can grow from this homicide; it wasn’t love, but I had no other name for it. You’ve been defining that four letter spell without me, lie to me: make it sound like my name. I’m done sleeping on a bed of swords, this house I made is never empty anymore. my body is telling me a story that I read at night, I only grow the good here, my hands like roots,

grounding.