Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in
You’re the same wilderness you’ve always been
Slashing through briars
The bracken of your invasive self
So he said in a dream
But the rest of it—all the rest—was waking
More often than not
To the next extravagance
Each mirroring the other
Each hoisting forever upward
Don’t you know it
Don’t you know I love you
There’s an art to everything
How eventually even hunger can become a space to live in
How they made out of shamelessness something beautiful
For as long as they could
Halfway through being someone
I remember past selves
And call them back to me
To recite old lines and practice old maneuvers
All the while questioning if this is okay
If I am already past this life
Or if I am rediscovering some part of me I wish I never lost
It’s so hard to remember what is true sometimes
One single aim fired us
The urge to embrace all experience
And to bear witness concerning it
You would say: It is horrible to be so happy
Sprawled in bed
Yes we are happy
Zealous in the opposite of Zen contentment
See, I long for everything
And you young lady
You need to learn how to sit still and just be
No way mister
I will be sticky and wet
I will touch every precious object
Leave sweet fingerprints of purpose in well lit places
Your neck
How your back arches when I kiss it
Without shame
Without judgement
This is pure
But there is so much more
I want to draw every hidden thing out
To slowly wreck you
With patience
Carry you somewhere darker
Away from all the rules and ideas
Back to who you were
Before you thought about it
Must be a solar flare
I was a landscape in your dream
And all my mountains were on fire
A subtle kiss that no one sees
And a big trapeze
It’s funny how we're just waitin' on some sign
The drop dead dream
The Chosen One
A world unseen
A city wall and a trampoline
Cut out of the sun
Echoes knocking on locked doors
All the laughter from before
I'd rather live out on the street
Than in my haunted memory
Crumble, tumble, house of cards
Alright sir
Sure I'll have another one it's early
Three olives
Shake it up
I like it dirty
Titania laughed
And it seemed to her in that moment that she had two hearts in her
Each pouring out an equivalent feeling toward the prancing figures
And she thought
My life
The good old days
The honest man
The restless heart
The promised land
And as for my inflammatory writ?
Advice from the master derailed that
He says, "Hand that pen over to me poetaster"
While across the great plains
Keening lovely and awful
Ululate the last great novelists
An unlawful lot left to stutter and freeze, floodlit
So quick bright things come to confusion
We can hold a lot of ideas
We can hold a lot of grief
We can wonder if our lives might contain that other thing
Just for a moment
I saw then what I should have seen long before
Namely that our friendship had ripened
To a point when we had already become
In a way part-owners of each other
The day is almost gone and I have the shakes
I smile
His smile always fills me with something new
Ever since happiness heard your name
It has been running through the streets trying to find you
