2/279 old house.

(This poem was inspired by an untitled poem out of Pablo Neruda's book, The Sea and the Bells.)


Let it be said that these walls collapsed from fatigue,
that the crossbeams shook violently before unhinging.

This is not a suicide note.

Let the shingles burst
for all the sun in their veins
and the floorboards obituary report only two words:
One: Dancing. The other: starshine.
Let the ceiling be stitched of helicopters, and when
the walls cave in let them carry me away.
Let the district appraisal read Not Fit For Renovation. Let
them bulldoze a bonfire. Let the homeless gather to warm
their hands, and next to them, children clasping marshmallow tipped
sticks and next to them a GIANT graham cracker.
Let it be a graham cracker billboard
and let it crash like a window on the road
when no one is there. Let the police and ambulances come
and when the Seahawks game ends let the people leave their cars
to hurdle the barricade and hold the wreckage
like pieces of the Berlin Wall. Let them take it to the children
and see truly maybe for the first time people who don't
have an address and carry them
from the police's now obligated eyes.
This is a suicide note.

Not like a blindfold
like I have lived on this street for 23 years,
I have seen the bulldozers,
followed their tracks
to a church of black ghosts gathered to remember a shelter
who left prom in a hummer and melted it on an Iraqi mine field.
They do not speak fence.
They do not consider the market value.
This note says
I've been thinking about how the Taj Mahal is a tomb, how
you can tell cities apart by their skylines;
instead of having this taken from me I'd rather
give it away.
Rent costs us our days, and talk is cheap, but maybe
we'd have more space to breathe if we took the doors off,
and yeah, this could just be hot air, and these are just dreams,
but dreamings what I do when my eyes fall silent,
when I can't see my boundaries,
the fortress,
and in these dreams I shelf the newspaper, imagine
concrete as teachable liquid,
tell moat water to freeze,
pull constellations into chandeliers, but
even with the lights on, I hope that when I return,
I return to myself
as if to an old house.