lightfutures

[lightfutures]

August

hot bothered

youre bothering me,

long road trip to nowhere

hateful for no reason

60 iterations of the same desert,

and I just keep writing poems about my lover

big eyes like a deer in the night,

gazing, grazing on my thigh

wants to be a truck driver, she says,

i thought about that on the 50 hour drive nowhere

up a mountain and back down again,

up the next mountain.

i promise im not bored of this world

but the one inside you is much more intriguing to me

love is more interesting

so i quit my job

angry at men

always angry at men,

i think i was born like that probably

a cat, tattered shelter dog like

6th sense about them

dogs never like men

because i swear they are inhabited by the souls

of battered women, i knew

so keep all of that away from me,

cant look them in the eyes

i dont really drink anymore, only because i got bored of it

and thats the best reason i ever have for quitting anything

and she called me a quitter!

would you believe that,

she's right..

her like, my old nightmare friend

who i matched with on tinder

we dated the same guy, roundabout way of dating each other

silly, i thought about it then too

she drove me home from swim practice

every day in her wet bathing suit so,

bought her a nirvana special edition

magazine, no one even reads those anymore

and then she's mean to me on twitter

i throw her the guy that's been biting at my ankles

he's hungry! feed the wolves,

we eat french fries from the mcdonald's drive through

its all i can afford, babysitting (for)

the guy my mom is fucking,

turn 18 and he's at my ankles too

god can i get a break.

well, here it is

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Something has been taken from me but I didn’t need it anyway. Something has been taken from me but it was of no value. Something has been taken from me but I can build a better one with my hands.

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“We have to articulate the world we want to live in, first”

Ocean Vuong

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how do i learn to love

the self

the self that does not

sit still

the self that is fragments

fractals reforming

my body aging before

my eyes in the mirror

a tired mass of

cells dying and blood rivers

running dry

how does one

hold on

like a snake

eating it’s own tail

i devour my self

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it’s just a body

a body a body

i have one and you

and then they’re together

until i am blue

with bruises, untethered

it’s just a body

and a body

and all the bodies moving

the sea of bodies

in motion

i am just a body

and you are just a body

i hurt until

i stop hoping

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I am a flight risk in the morning

In a sleepless haze

watch the dawn swell

to listen as birds begin their weeping

i won’t float above my body this time

I run with a dream of love

Until all the dust settles

and I start sweeping

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I am the stagnant water in the sink and the fruit molding in the fridge too. I am the heat wave in the house and the ghost. I get everything I want, knocking over glasses in the kitchen. Mysteriously emptying bottles of liquor. A draft slamming doors and disappearing rolls of toilet paper. Yes I am a wound and I am hollowed out, more exit wounds than entry. But when I sing, it reverberates against the walls. When I speak it is echoing out into the world, a reminder of my own electricity.

I get everything I want and it is always a mirror. I tell myself no 12 times a day. I tell the world no just as often. Desire is a compass that will have you circling yourself in the dark woods, dizzy and confused. But maybe I love the rush of being dizzy and I love the unknown just as much as I love certainty. I will give it all up over and over again, if it means I get closer to the truth. Chewing on the core of the apple, getting high off of poison seeds.

All the fruit in the fridge rots again and again. I open the windows, let in the sun, and watch my domestic dream buzz with fruit flies. This is not it, this is not its final form. I got everything I thought I wanted but I don’t want it anymore.

I will not run from myself this time. I will find a compass that works. My body is not the cargo, my body is the ship, my body is my vessel. My body is my vessel and it belongs in the world, navigating choppy waters and still seas. I will not lose myself in my dream of someone else.

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maybe i will be lonely forever

somehow, it is my calling

i know what to do with myself

how to be an atom

how to be the keeper

of my own heart

but then i go out

one night

and all the bodies are clashing

i become flesh entwined with

all the other flesh

and it is brilliant and hot white

heat

heat holds me

and i lose the I

in my individuality

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Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook”

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Natalie Wee, from ‘Least of All’, Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines

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i always say,

tomorrow is the day!

tomorrow i will do it all

be better and more focused

and when tomorrow comes

it finds me slow and aching

tomorrow always witnesses me at my most

tiresome

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i have to say that this must be beautiful too

in some demented way, my purging is poetic

my womb like a dying hummingbird

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The whole of me is yawning again,

told myself to be my best friend

and i trust that,

but it always feels so fragile

not real real

like the confidence

i get from sitting all my ducks

in the neatest row

or swallowing the blue

pill at the same time

every morning

my orbiting moon

am i the burning star or

am i the rock spinning

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winter is over

winter is over

and now it all comes back to life

my dreams and the sky

clouds racing after the rain

the weeds on the sidewalk

my neighbor got a puppy

he’s a shadow of a thing

fast and sweet

i heard him cry for hours this morning

i think he is without

something

like touch

or freedom

or sunny sunny sun

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that’s the trick, to love somebody you have to be okay with becoming them. it is a mirror that changes you the longer you look at it. your eyes start to widen, your mouth gapes, you’re rounder now. here in the sink are the concessions i’ve made, hair clogging the drain. the fridge is empty and it is okay if it stays that way, i am full. yet i am hungry for plants, something that grows and grows with the sun. you are so still, not even a drip leaks from your faucet. still and stiller. i remember when the house flooded and you stood in it, socks drenched, unmoving. i carried pots of murky water back and forth to find a drain that actually works.

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you’re too close now

my eye is twitching

last night

i tried to consume you but

couldn’t fit it all in my mouth

i always wake up stomach

growling

then i sprawl out in the sun

pretending i am a solar panel

which is just a plant without soil

oh,

i am uprooted too

crawling up to the ceiling

to look down at you

like a spider,

while I weave a trellis

hoping to catch a bite

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the inside of my head is like a xylophone today. all sounds cascading.

a pinball blurs past me and out of the room

and its busy and busy and growing

my stomach yawns

i am hungry for life again

i lose my appetite sometimes,

but it always comes back to me

then i can smell the kernel of something

i shove a handful of seeds

in my dark mouth

and i wait for the perfect spot

to spit them out