carrier

In the backyard, I wait

For the clouds to kneel before

The moon. I have stood quietly for hours

Where the workers go to catch their busses

In the rain, fumes spewing past stacks

Across the highway, where the flames arise

Within the web of machinery but do not consume.

So few know where to keep a heart.

Not me. Is it beyond Malcolm X park, after the rusted tin

Of the dome and used needles buried in the grass?

Or where Haverford meets 58^th and the whole

Road system turns on itself drunkenly

While an obese woman does her oldest daughter’s hair

While her son looks on, squinting into the sun?

We whittle our thumbs away

At plastic bags and the scribbled screens

Of cellphones as the night comes,

As the night ends, as we face the day

With red rimmed eyes. Is it there, in the thousand thousands

Racing along to get –

Let me be specific.

This world is broken,

But beautifully so,

With windows in the earth

To all that we are, and all that we could be.

I squat down close to the pavement

Bare feet on bits of mica

Just outside the two windows I spraypainted,

And the light goes out,

I smell gas from the grill and the sweat in my

hair—today was 13 hours of grueling reaching,

Today was untired hoping,

Today was quite alone,

And we should say it over and over—

Certainly today I felt swollen and alive

With all the grass and unwashed uniforms,

With all the granite built into countertops

And bones into necklaces, with all the children

Still awake in their tents of linen,

And foxes licking matted hair,

And buzzing flying things circling their little lives

And all the tired hands of bartenders grazing

Glasses, with all the skin calling to other skin,

And all the hearts beating alone to keep the damn thing going.

Sometimes the waiting is more.

No tears come.

Tonight it is more darkness than moon.

over and

This room hasn’t seen itself in a month,

Mouth open with no curtains staring down

At trash in the street. Caught on the edge of

Two cities, the wind screws its

Face into snow while I work.  Make space

Mimic the soul, make the soul make

The soul. Where do memories go

To collide with whiskey slithering

Down the throat, hushed confessions

Of desire terrible and falling on deaf ears?

I am not the one you’re looking for.

Angel’s harp on the one, the one I am not

In any shape to be getting on here--

When you’re drunk don’t hitch, like a child

Stay still in the store of whirring toys,

Know someone is coming to get you.

But out here, west Philadelphia rows

Going down to the hospital noone knows about,

Past the church with the red doors

And the church with the neon signs

And the house with vacuum cleaner advertisements painted

On its ankles that now is a drug store--

When the city grunts and groans and heaves

And keeps giving birth to kids in braids overflowing

Polka-dot tanktops, and lean bodies surging out of beaters

Crashing over each other and hitting each other with cellphones,

And a loud sax hiccupping over sissing sissing sick sicking

It should be known I am not the one. I’m

Starting to know it too.

february 4th

I found the letter you wrote me

In the smoking wreck of my car

On the side of 95.

There was a light rain

And I was reaching around because 

No one knows what to do

When that happens.

I heard the sound

Before it almost collapsed to a point

And the front tin of the hood

Scrunched up like an accordian

Whose notes can kill you

If they go too long.

It didn’t.

You wrote that you would fight for us.

I didn’t have a proper jacket.

I was 3 hours away in white plains

But still, I wanted to curl in a ball

And feel the breeze on my back,

Let the rough voice of that towtruck

Mumble into nothing.

february 13th

Shaking like the holly in winter,

Spines under snow, red lips

Lingering—there she is

Every morning. Dreaming is

Supposed to be solitary, you say,

Already late to pointless appointments

Where the world has already won.

Show more of yourself. Grit your teeth

While they take the white and dance.

You try to rid

Your body of its power, like the 2am

on your knees shuddering,

But it’s in your blood.

You go out to piss in the backyard

Moon with a shadow over its face

Looking at you peculiar

As if asking

What species of heartbreak is that--

That takes the time away,

That rolls the days down a hill

Into memory without your ever moving?

The city trees bear their bones to the wind

And run out to the violet sky like some

Very slow wild thing skittering through the air.

You wish you believed in the sky,

That last free thing.

Something has drained out;

Now you are like the oak leaf in winter,

All desiccated veins and longing for spring.

january 30th

Crying like a bike tire,

Moaning like a bird.

I’m listening to femme-punk

Letting the light shine in—

Almost. All the dust goes

From my hands to my head.

In the shower, everything crawls

Down to the drain as if

It hurt to be alive.

Keep your body strong,

Iron riddled with brown scars from rocks--

Keep the work,

Positive attitude and open heart ready to be shown to anyone in a black scarf grabbing a bus--

Keep the house warm,

Where a hookah lit and couches dragged and windows plastic-wrapped make a home--

Keep going,

This one is self-explanatory, don’t stop

Keep laughing with friends,

It’s why you carved a heart, don’t stop

Keep dancing,

keep dancing, Damn it, don't stop

hot and late but at the end there is just a quiet bed, don’t stop

Don’t you let it down,

Pull up! Sid’s hand on mine, don’t stop.

Someone else beside me,

Come to the open air.

Let's hope

There’s a seasonal fix.

Juke move. Spin.

The space opens up

As if everything is expanding, like carl sagan says

And there isn’t enough subject matter

To fill each moment, and suddenly

Where before you were pushing a grocery cart

And listening to joanna newsom while you looked

At the man behind the deli counter who seems to have had a bad case

Of acne as a child and you were wondering if that was hard for him and try to be extra nice because hey it doesn’t cost you anything and the world should be a place where we can do that for each other, now, suddenly,

You are just alone.