#theoetry

[berrystrawbs]

sestina 02

Three street corners down a boy is hilarious and the laugh in his chest feels something like fate. He chokes over the sound of his father, axed timber, shuts his eyes and dreams of life. Another new beginning. A mouth opens in his chest, cavernous urge to clarify because running cannot be the only option, safety is not a lost, lonely option. Because children find cowardice hilarious with eyes black and empty to clarify  that some shut-eye on tree bark is certain fate. The goodness is coming. Don’t stop beginning. He cries wax tears and ignores father. Timber- wood falls in the forest and anyway "Timber!" will cover a sound, if there is one, (an option to end or keep living), a beginning,  unkempt and he’s heavenly, hilarious.  Scream and the echo crawls back, slow fate muddled touch. He’ll beg: "Answer me. Clarify." He joins Mama in the kitchen, early morning to clarify (wear a lie) he wasn’t out kissing boys last night, just timber like daddy, machine-cog turned eye-to-eye back to fate. “You’d say, Mama, if there was another option?” She laughs and he smiles but it’s not hilarious  and there’s a new feeling like a disease beginning, huddled deep in his chest and it’s only just beginning to rain. When the water’s gone, fog-windows will clarify what it is to ache when a boy calls him hilarious with a smile in his eyes, sunlit dark timber  or similar. To wonder if this is an option, for a boy to look like he’d swallow down fate, like he’d exhale it through a sigh and fate would see to it that he leapt, ending beginning. To test if he’d do it all over, given the option. Or if he’d be honest with one chance to clarify  that forest-felled favor splinters into ax-hewn timber. And he’d laugh like this boy was someone hilarious. His voice fighting fate, two-to-two to clarify: this is his beginning. Silent fallen timber  will scream an option. He’ll smile. Hilarious.

[lovesdisrepute]

i went outside tonight even though it scared me; maybe because it scared me. we were floating on our backs in the water and abba was playing in my head. i’m not sure what was playing in yours but the sun set without us really noticing, too caught up in whatever we were avoiding / in each others’ eyes. we were thinking different, living different but we both looked up at the same second. both of our breathing stopped for a second, i think, just a beat. not enough for anyone but the cicadas to notice. we looked up and maybe even realized together why people thousands of years ago thought there had to be something magical about them; why people now are eager to figure out every reason for how something beautiful can naturally exist. how we can claim to be at the center of anything when obviously we are cradled by their light but not crowned.

[lovesdisrepute]

sestina 01

his starlight reminisces a foreign skyline buoyed by salination: seaside boy glances up from a computer and the library windows are dark now, it’s too late for a boy of your age to fall out of words sink beneath midnight canopies, to  fade into azure, too early to  learn something new – fear the foreign! isn’t it true the sooner wretched ships sink  the more glass there is for you to pocket by seaside weeping bells in the stagnance, your mother for  your locked doors of the library  you are His, not this library  no books, shelved spines cracking to  attention, ink pressing forward an aria for a dictionary, translation: the foreign  act of admitting there’s life past our seaside there’s more to the world than toy ships in our sink  and you, do you sink? you, boy of the library  with shells in your marrow from her seaside life lived of knowledge, what is it to  dream? is joy such a raw foreign  thing spoken in darkness entombed for  overused ecstasy, melancholic for  melodrama, boy it’s easy to sink into spaces frightened and foreign  run now! you can escape this library  clear your mind of all He attends to  draw stick-shapes in sand at the seaside crack your nails into chipped rocks of seaside  whispers, easily it’s lost, for  your carrion fields are closer to  bile diluted in a public restroom sink  blink and he’s back, blue-lit in the library  how does familiarity manage to be foreign  little deaths by the seaside, blow a candle ‘til i sink  come forth for getting this library  boyhood: a lapse to become, unto himself, foreign

[lovesdisrepute]

sestina 03

coastal town kids make it easy to fabricate a life, create something to inspire! last week a teenager jumped from the lifeguard tower. they didn’t fall when they landed, hard & flat, can’t die here, kid, it’s not your property and the paperwork would be a goddamn nightmare.  god, kids these days, what a nightmare. step into the sea prepared to fabricate  freedom of existence and abolished property. claw for instant gratification to inspire more sand dune runaways to pull up flat- pressed newsprint by the lighthouse tower. turn the latch, we’ve no room in this tower for open-mouthed children inhaling a nightmare– what else is there? they’re ground underfoot, crushed flat before they can find history, whisper and fabricate  a life of their own. god, kids these days suffer to inspire, they aspire to something great, aurum’s property burned into skin and left on school property. trust seaside children to sit idle in their tower, reach out the window and grasp flowers, inspire a sleep, lyre hymn warm without nightmare, night there is cool. no care forgetting, fabricate  content misery, storyline unforthcoming and flat. when feeding a frightened animal keep palms flat to re-treat regularity as new-possessed property. properly check, please, they’ll even fabricate how there was a lifeguard in the white wooden tower, no fugitive, good lord, just man christened nightmare. countryside kids will call liar, no kid can dare to inspire like a life washed up on shore, lacking air to inspire. lighthouse beam a white house dream in B-flat   major liberation kids, god, talk to a teen nightmare, sixty-nine shot-down, kill all gays on the property it’s never been yours to desecrate anyway, flip tower gas canisters over the garden brick wall, fabricate ire and fail to inspire, Blue’s on the property to strike a kid down off the white wooden tower. god, what a nightmare this will be to fabricate.