the fossil record

You ask me to write you a poem

with muscle. It makes you feel so good

that I can turn my soul into words

that make a kind of unusual sense.

I write, Remember

my bone-white lashings,

my sun-slanted ribs. You tell me

I'm a genius, you tell me

I'm lovely,

you tell me

 

You send me

one million telephones in the mail

with one million still-warm mouthpieces.

Each envelope housing each telephone

is sealed with saltwater. You swear

it isn't tears because real men

don't cry

 

I ionize the tears and stack them

on top of each other. They dissolve

in a glass of water.

Water molecules holding hands.

I crush the salt and snort that shit

with my expired driver's license.

 

I like being your little hunger-bitten

poet, pirouetting my inmost feelings

to the page (they are mostly about

you). Your eyes are dark as a vampire

french-kissing my ankle: my feet

on the bed, dazed and immobile.

You like being my little melon-eating muse,

my distraction, the flame spurting out

of opera candles.

 

The tiny, ethereal substance

flickering across a stick:

spelling danger

 

in an instant. And still I hold you.

Poison, beautiful, capable

of destroying communities

of forests and yet---

something as simple and clean

as water can dismiss you.

 

Candle, I blow you,

the force of my breath

won't be enough,

so I place you

under my faucet.

 

The wet wax you sit in

solidifies in the shape

of the water that hit us

pillowing up in downy layers.

Your dance, always fleeting,

bete noire at its finest, I will

taste your tears

and remember