tremble and rot

you know how it is, the devouring season

[thedevouringseason]

i am placing all the books i meant to read

(overlapping like the shittiest jigsaw)

into a suitcase, an apology to

borges and carson and all my unread williams.

this is the first poem i’ve written in

something like a year and 

it is a terror verse. howsoevermuch i gnaw

the concept, tomorrow is still rehab,

and if this is my last drunk let me just say

that i will grow around my ruins like a hundred years of vines

and kill everything that was fractured and wrong about me

un til i am re claimed. 

[thedevouringseason]

checking yr twitter like

a pulse; before i met you

i believed in the antique

and although you begged me not

to, all tragic and unselfish, 

now i will live in this century. this

isn’t what you wanted for me,

but it is all that i can bear alone. 

[thedevouringseason]

your absence has a presence.

it is as real as a cavity,

or hypoxia. it is everything and empty,

immaterial and bright as a candleflame,

as weightless and felt as a -plasm. 

it lives in my braincase and i feed

it your songs and pictures and words.

i think in some strange way i will

miss your absence when we are

together again; it has been a quiet

roommate. but know: you

are unforgotten

[thedevouringseason]

a being and a becoming: for josie gray. 

in time i came to understand a family as

an animal of correspondent

exchange. many-

bodied, many-hued, of pelts and

feathers manifold,

but singular in action; awake

with the same blood

and humours, sharing health

and fevers. it dens

in a dozen households lit with one warmth.

it is atemporal, comprised

of and impervious to history,

a chimera with a chorus of voices. i, you,

we all, a new and collective noun, a

[thedevouringseason]

going to look at that again tomorrow. goodnight

[thedevouringseason]

yr face inflects my speech as

automatic writing. i touch ivory

and discover it in loose tea and

the wending of birds; like niobe i could

become stone and bookend 

a frivolous age but it is too early

and street preachers make too much sense to join

and i understand it when they elide the last two letters

of god and in the tumult of passing feet you can see

a certain mystery undone like yr first bra clasp 

with all the attendant glory thereof and each day i remember:

if heaven’s throne is empty we must

ourselves be holy.  

[thedevouringseason]

its like that ache between your

knuckles when you’ve hit something wrong-

regret subito, a comedy of eras, spit that should

have been spat ages ago

or not at all. you can’t unsay damage. wrap your

fists to keep the small bones of the hand in line;

clench your teeth to keep yourself well. care

for your loves is self care and you should keep

your woe in a cauldron close to make warriors against

only your enemies 

[thedevouringseason]

trying to recapture health

under the bony gaze of the sun

(meanwhile in my regard

you flush like the moon)

[thedevouringseason]

you were sketched

in the margins before

i wrote a word

[thedevouringseason]

i’ve been remembering

the azimuth and zenith of

a smile. plotting, of course.

[thedevouringseason]

some ppl ferment in your

stomach, some others bite

at your fingers, but most ppl

burn your tongue as if you

tried to kiss a candle 

[thedevouringseason]

all is in code, 

and language is a daily wedding

we hold between the signed and signified

at which we swear that the forced air we

expel is enough to keep us whole and together.

we speak of dead and dying tongues, 

of ciphers without living heirs, and we

guess at them as if we were at war

with death itself. using frequency analysis 

to carefully (carefully!) walk backwards

and fit our feet to the imprints of romans,

greeks, peoples much more forgotten, 

as if we could run right back into the sea

if only we knew what was written! if

only we knew what was said!

[thedevouringseason]

last night i dreamed my bed was

decorated with broken glass and somehow

when i woke up i forgot to bleed? and yet had

passages of sleep-cant etched all over me 

in a way that seems important but defies remembrance. 

i’ve been sketched on. i’ve been signed and signified. if

only ink is my aegis i’ve already drowned 

[thedevouringseason]

do you remember learning lachrymose? 

that “chry” that crunches like good bread. 

how it was always the first word excavated when

you cried unbidden. no? was it me?

maybe it was just me

[thedevouringseason]

i can corrode

my history. remorse is all

firecolored and beneath it

im cratered as the moon and

as flush with stolen sunlight

[thedevouringseason]

i hope i die soon. 

w/ luck i don’t live to know myself

as i will be presently. 

i live tomorrow, and tomorrow, 

and tomorrow, and that’s

prophecy 

[thedevouringseason]

w/o apologies to elbert hubbard:

life is two damned things,

each after the other.