Nightmare dancing moon-chant-rythms,
nonsense syllables assembled from lies and greeting cards and bone-set longing.
We’ve got some Cherokee, don’t we?
[it’s Navajo]
No, it’s Navajo and something else, it’s Cherokee isn’t it?
[no, I think it’s Chickasaw]
if I let my fraction drops of native blood lead me nation-side,
they’d look at me like sorrow eyed parents
hearing freight-trains dragging their children cry-first into “civilization”
behold the conquered son.
I know nothing of the nations fractions of my blood hail to.
You speak in tripled-troubled tongues,
and I can’t hear anything.
I can’t hear anything.
I am selfish.
I’ve got one song on repeat,
thought-lost and moon gazing.
she has to drag herself cry-first from wheel-chair to toilet,
she sobs faintly until, cry-first, she drags back.
I quote Arrested Development to make her laugh,
she repeats it over and over and over again,
because she knows if she repeats it enough:
[blah blah blah blah blah], it is nothing.
the transformation is hilarious.
(do you want help?)
{No, I can do this.}
I’ve got this shoe-cast gaze,
this hurts,
I want to run.
She is in pain, needs me,
and I want to run.
I am selfish.
You’re out there tonight,
You’ve got a joint in one hand,
and your love in the other.
[I don’t know if it’ll last,
but he’s the person I can trust enough to break down around]
your nonsense moon-chants are skin-tuned,
and should you want it,
you’ll be comfort-held the night through,
as you smoke the feeling from your bones,
until you forget to have nightmares.
I want this.
Tonight I want your life,
Tonight I want you.
I am selfish.
Maybe I am made up of hipster writer broken-backed cliches,
but there’s a handle of whiskey refracting florescent white through salivating amber,
and I want nothing more than to be sticky fingered and full of fire,
to be brim soaked and brined in it,
chanting nonsense at the moon,
touching my fingers to each other,
wondering at the numbness of the tips.
Anything to be ignorant again.
I am selfish.
I have it so good,
and all I want to do is forget those who don’t.
My collection of poetry Lets Get Drunk and Yell This Out will be free to download from Amazon until Tuesday at midnight.
