it is the gap between should and is.
That there is something out that door waiting
at the curb who snuck a backdoor, asking
us to smash our mirrors into cash and coin,
rebel against our bodies,
do soul violence.
We poets stack envelopes into planks,
we're stringing them up and we're making a bridge,
from is.
Throwing paper airplanes at should.
Telling should to come closer.
I tell should, should, my arm doesn't
know how to work a pen like that.
teach me
or come closer.
but should is a distant relative of isn't,
who is 3 for 4 on doesn't,
and should doesn't.
my finger gymnasts have stretched,
felt the opposite cliff's edge breathing heavy.
I have even rested my palm upon it
like a white candle in a crowded room.
But from here, the ledge appears a court report
of slap craters, or the graves gymnasts thought into being
when their muscles were brought to knees.
Most of my poems look like that row of marks, and
How it feels to daredevil across God, stuffing an alarm clock
into my parachute bag.
I have woken up every day since birth,
with five exceptions on a short list called coma.
Every one of them my brain hissed into a liferaft
inhaling all talking room
yelling commands like a gagged
blind closet-locked officer
to dormant soldiers beyond enemy walls,
or camping across a canyon.
That circus of nervous tissue looked
hopeless on every absent face,
seeing fish wire never laced
to pull them back into the room.
No scream can pull fingers
from a trigger's bed.
All the animals and carnies remembered something
about history that first morning, perhaps it was
the fact about hands.
Perhaps they remembered their first fall,
and the concrete hard as a math book,
or maybe how Rome was truly
conquered, and many men have chased
storybooks at the bottoms of graves.
The ringleader may have imagined
their headstones to read
men should instead love
their families,
and,
one should be thankful
for the ground under
one's feet.
but when he removed his dream sized spectacles
he felt two lines singed into the folds of the tent,
bridges are eroded by history's torrent, and
gods is a four letter word.
But from here, the ledge appears a court report
of slap craters, or the graves gymnasts thought into being
when their muscles were brought to knees.
Most of my poems look like that row of marks, and
How it feels to daredevil across God, stuffing an alarm clock
into my parachute bag.
I have woken up every day since birth,
with five exceptions on a short list called coma.
Every one of them my brain hissed into a liferaft
inhaling all talking room
yelling commands like a gagged
blind closet-locked officer
to dormant soldiers beyond enemy walls,
or camping across a canyon.
That circus of nervous tissue looked
hopeless on every absent face,
seeing fish wire never laced
to pull them back into the room.
No scream can pull fingers
from a trigger's bed.
All the animals and carnies remembered something
about history that first morning, perhaps it was
the fact about hands.
Perhaps they remembered their first fall,
and the concrete hard as a math book,
or maybe how Rome was truly
conquered, and many men have chased
storybooks at the bottoms of graves.
The ringleader may have imagined
their headstones to read
men should instead love
their families,
and,
one should be thankful
for the ground under
one's feet.
but when he removed his dream sized spectacles
he felt two lines singed into the folds of the tent,
bridges are eroded by history's torrent, and
gods is a four letter word.
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