Whenever I speak I am speaking
in tongues; it is awful. Mick Jagger

 

is beautiful but you wouldn’t want
his mouth; a ghost mouth

 

speaking to you, no through you,
from the past; The British Invasion

 

is a respiratory infection
love cannot cure.

 

My whole world, flattened like flowers
drying in a copy of Jane Eyre.

 

Still brighter years––
Panasonic mouth, super-sonic

 

life, and John sparking triplets in my brain
forever; drum-roll, I am speaking

 

to you & also throat-singing. Right now I inhabit
a song––dial me in; image of the sky jellied

 

around us. Moon-roof, paint us a picture to get lost in.
Lost speaker, speak to us and say somethings gotta give.

 

And it gives, and we take, and it takes. The car becomes
a matchbox; the tall-grass becomes a gang of matches

 

swinging low in the striker-tarped night.

In this cold rocket I am shattering
space. My onesie is tight. Peanut butter is floating;
I try to catch it on my tortilla,
like a tennis champ at Wimbledon.
I am a poor player, a poorer Astronaut. 
The beepers beep at me sadly.
I wish I could beep back.
The levers ache for a fine maneuver of the hand.
My fingers yearn for the fine art of levering.

 

I have failed to be
A dangle of debris and everything
Tracy, I’ll never get to tell you how
when you appeared, I–– totally tangled
in your frock after volunteering at the after-school
craft workshop. In this ship
I stop thinking and then I start thinking.
I will be buried, suspended
between dim watts
A sad ornament
in orbit

 

I have a plan
that doesn’t require a plan

just some pencils.

Do you like
being alone in things? Subways,
buses, memories. I heard you

 

say, oddly enough, I like not being
alone in this––by which you mean we,
as I'm tied to the base of a Pine tree

 

with ecstatic-orange
polypropylene rope; my captor

 

will come home soon, to this damp,
where he does what he does

 

as you flash
like a saw-blade above his scene.

 

In a charcoal wool coat, carefully
tied––I am ready.

 

I am steadying
the maroon-stained Liston.

 

I am trying to say goodbye.

I struck out into the damp with my splitting maul, I thought
cleaving Douglas in two the right thing to do. We fell
into a blackberry bush, disturbed its daughters.
The father-stalk swung round us.
Gazing through thorns, the sky associates
to our eye, you and I, all the while I wanted to die.
The real way.

 

A tide holds the hull, feeble grasp realer than
hope––fell into a well, voice echoed like the man who spins
she predicted God & life leapt––out of him.

 

I refuse.
            A trick is a trick.

 

I stubbed all the wicks in the house––my small fists, clamoring around,
hoping––dreading the news of father’s death; he left three
weeks ago, alone––the horses snuffling––indifferent, indignant company.

 

I studied books. Could barely touch life itself.
My mother’s heart launched, pitched into rib, as Thunder
sought a false-threat with his newly trimmed hoof.
I need to die. I intend to.

 

Father is drunk, frozen-dead in the wood.
I close my eyes, see an animal leap
from the prow of his head,
plowing life into dark––,

 

As the boat in the harbor floats listlessly.

 

They are no longer waiting.

The boat dreams.