poetry

Goodbye, Moon (2021)

Sappho, my delicate moon! My ancient steadfast friend! You governed me. I used to be a romantic. I used to genuflect dead poets, replacing christian iconography with rimbaud and dead roses. Now, I like waking up early. I like writing to do lists.

My nightdreams experience hightide now that I’m not screaming at my ceiling for obstructing these stars I cannot grasp and spin like a wheel of fortune. Wild nights! Tears at sunrise. Watching you, moon, stay put; spilling like wet hot honey like lava on these mountains opening groundstars. I’m quivering just thinking about it.

I was pissing crimson on cities that refuse to embrace nature. Nature is nothingness but shining. Shadow merely glimmering. A photonegative of the unending light from within. And Sappho, you took such good pictures of me. You posted them on instagram. You asked me questions like no one else did: why are you still up, my sweet? Wouldn’t you rather rest? Is asking a question deflection or reflection? Does it depend on the question?

The moon is not a source of light; are you deflecting or reflecting? You always ask me questions. Reveal yourself, moon! Beyond your smooth surface!

Upon reflection, life became a perpetual harvest once I realized I take your fullness with me. They say that human eyes fully adjust to darkness in the time it takes for a sunset. I was built for this world. There is fullness in pissing crimson. Yes I’m remembering. To remember is to dismember.

I first menstruated (goodbye innocence?) on halloween. Goodbye is only ever a fade out. I’m pregnant with my childhood self. I bled into dia de los muertos. 

That week, every morning was a new and unique near death experience when and where I found new crimson rorschach tests on the sheets. Yeah. I felt so alive. Like marigold stamen. Like I was fading into soil. Like I was choking on water from ancient fertility gods. Letting fluidity (tears too) leave me 

exhausted.

 “Time of death” is for white people. Clocks are fake. So is the economy and money. Wars don’t end when one side surrenders. History is a series of plateaued deaths; of long credit sequences. I don’t abide by the border between 2020 and 2021. I refuse to kiss goodbye at the stillborn moment of “new years day.”

Goodbye palestine. Goodbye home as geography. Afterlife is tribeless. Liberated. I don’t need to see my reflection at the bottom of a gun’s barrel. Like my father and grandfather did. I don’t want my crimson on IDF uniforms. You left me exhausted.

I’ve already seen night: a body full of black blood and mystery, veiled in quickening distance. Where does earth end and space begin? It’s an unending slow fade out. If light is indeed a material, celestial photons are the marrow of life. I’m in your bloodstream. 

Ode to your eclipse: your ring of ice, closing aperture on these cursed eyes. Muhammad will split you in two; half for each gaping, vulnerable pupil. Each soft hand. Each unwaxed ear. My senses refuse to perish. My romanticism refuses to be vanquished by logic. Still, be still, I cannot help living to touch all that is touched by your light. Rather, the light you are reflecting.

everybody worships (2016)

and december poured through the margins of calendars

prayer in church basements for

raffles predetermined

a bottle of Whiskey, for the saddest, decided by the committee 

that she, oh thank you, god bless, declared necessity

and when she found out she flew up in a flock

docked down to the floor with Military boots in the crisp

marble basilica, the mystery choir singing for her

and only for her

transient pleasures, drastic measures

her Father used to tell her

his Whiskey voice met with white noise billowing from distant factories

always equidistant from you

no matter how far you walk towards it completely

isolated

for weeks without calendars:

he called her back to the dirt draft

in who knows middle east flatlands blandfood

waving American Flags in her sleep

either a Cross or a Gun hidden under her pillow

one tear from absolute implosion

and she pulls out the something or other

oh, phenomenal ending.