Hope
I found a spoon in the road, the handle
bent up and over itself, the bowl charred
on the bottom from flame. When I put my ear
to a junkie's spoon, I hear waves
swallowing themselves.
In case someone had tossed the spoon away
to implore a clean river to return
to their veins, I gave it an honored place
under the sycamore where our cats are buried.
Some nights the spoon eats moonlight,
some nights, rain. Every day I try
to believe in angels, and every day I fail.
Logic
When someone says they're all ears, I know they're not
without looking, I'm a detective like that, but imagine
if this someone who is all ears also said, I love you
with all my heart, they'd really be saying, I love you
with all my ears, which — setting aside the dilemma
of how an ear could say any of this — would be wonderful,
a love of one hundred percent listening, at least
on paper, until you start living that love, when like
twelve minutes in, or a month, a year, tops,
you'd be tired of the sound of your voice and want
at least a few of the ears to be mouths, or tongues,
mouths and tongues, since one without the other
is harder to imagine than rain without sky or peanut butter
without spaghetti right next to it in the cupboard.
My goal is to be thirty four percent ears, zero percent
fists, thirteen percent hydrogen, six percent sass,
twenty two percent "tell me more," and seventeen percent
a man who helps war statues climb down
from their pedestals and walk to the nearest swing set
or sea, whichever they want when I convince them
there's a better way to live. How? That's
a good question. You must be twelve percent
scientific method, which is terrific. I was thinking
if we all wore t-shirts that read, Roses Are Red
and Violence Is Stupid, it would change nothing,
but that sartorial unity might be the spark
that brings us together around the vulnerability
of flowers, which is not that different
from the vulnerability of otters, which is a cousin
to the shyness of your shadow, which reminds me
how easy it is to break a person into halves,
or quarters, which sounds like I'm making change,
doesn't it, rather than begging for it.
One thing pleads to another
Bad shoulder, I say, hoping that will fix it.
It just cowers like a dog scolded for stealing a car.
Maybe bad dogs in my neighborhood were different
than yours. With bad knees and hips too,
I'm some kind of rotten apple or a xylophone
that's lost its way. These flailings at saying
what a person is, even one as close to me
as me, are more enjoyable when I know
there's orange jello in the fridge.
All the stirring involved in making jello
hurt my shoulder, as did digging a grave
for my shadow, but the idea of a place
for everything and everything in its place
gets too much credit for keeping nuclear missiles
out of the pantry. What if I want one there?
What if I like cutting my thigh with a razor?
What if I'm disappointed I'll never have sex
with music, cunnilingus with what Chopin
was getting up to, etcetera? In other words,
can you help me or can I help you? Can anyone
help anyone or everyone, since I like
a bit of ambition in my sincerity? Fuck
my shoulder. Seriously. I think a little sex
would help there too.
I don't need to watch, I'll turn my head
into a rose or a lighthouse
to give comfort to those
lost in the fog. I'd kill to be
that sturdy and useful. To have stairs
in me. To get all that time alone
to gossip with the sea.
