Sky meets everything makes horizon liable

 

for flight then plummets of grace     Surrounded by people   feeling nah

 

there’s chatter I can’t make out    half-listening to

 

the dead      The voices are calling & it’s rare when

 

I am even half-ready          Rain bangs

 

against forest to get attention back     Let’s not

 

ask about presence & breathe absence in deep

 

There are no trees where we live but

 

today we’re somewhere else           Amphibians talk

 

syllable by syllable in the pitch of dark     The sounds fuck

 

w/ the inner ear until composed into

 

communiqués for worse or for better          Wherever

 

we are let’s find a coastline to skirt alone      Some things

 

need to be said along a fluid border    

 

I stood still so long to protect

 

existing ground but now the distance travelled

 

from your voice to mine is

 

a space that cannot be ordered       Not like it’s smooth

 

Me not interpreting your oppressor

 

language in the way that you can’t process mine      Tripped up w/

 

straight ahead statements betrayed by

 

loaded syntax    there are so few clean springs

 

left when the best ideas have run dark red w/ slaughter

 

Heavy sure but forgetting to lift

 

is a recipe for ghosts

 

There are already too many to talk to       It’s hard

 

not to step on shadows from birds up there &

 

now I find I drink so much

 

since amethyst is gone        So much loss but I like the way

 

you smile when you catch me ringing death knells

 

It took another city’s festival to make me at home enough to show

 

heartbreak     Of course it is a place that isn’t a stranger to storms

 

 

This rising sign spells danger in glue & glitter     Chart’s

 

been sent & god is it messy     togetherness brief   the forgetting     

 

takes so long          Let us keep going even if

 

these shoes aren’t conducive to lightness

 

There are those who were thrown off

 

boats out there    others sealed under the ground

 

They are not the deaths that do haunting

 

I’ve named love the way I would

 

a housebroke pet so it would only answer to me     I knew

 

better but in the end it was me who gave up

 

& simply obeyed the commands                    That happened

 

So not the type to care about idealized pasts but

 

what if some woman was the father of your country    What if

 

someone else was the mother of mine     What if

 

we didn’t need this at all  & it was always just there       It was

 

Thankfully the crash of horrors

 

is interspersed w/ extended downtime

 

Once it cracked sweet by our friend who wished a sports riot

 

would turn into general strike             That didn’t happen

 

Back to the bells   you like the way it

 

makes me smile when you scream Out Demons Out

 

at the on-ramp for a bridge to an island

 

Now it is time for a swim            Reptiles in water don’t struggle to

 

get each other     Leatherbacks touch     Loggerheads

 

meet in the sea     Wherever we are

 

will remain unnamed     by refusing attempts to own

 

Crushes     comrades     gossip confidants       float on

 

where the sky starts      All we can really say is something like toward