Across the water
A train moves slow against the trees
Like the bow of a lonely violin.

At my side a child
Is begging her mother for milk.
The mother is a broken staircase with fresh paint.
Someday, the daughter’s dreams will fall through
And I will turn my chest into an elevator
Right before she tells me
That she’s claustrophobic.

For now I say, ‘Listen to that train.
It is full of milk.’
The mother grabs the daughter by the sleeve,
Pulls her down the beach.
On the shore the daughter finds a pebble
the color of a wedding gown,
puts it in her mouth,
crookeds her teeth,
is no longer hungry.

I dream I am a prince
Or a knight in shining, removable armor.
My love’s last lover is a sword
I keep falling on.
I think too much when I kiss.
If love did not exist,
I would be so goddamn sane.

My poems would be billboards.
Suburbia would be enough.

I would not have to gut myself to find my spine
Crushed into powder
And brushed on her cheekbones.

My hair would not be a hummingbird’s nest.
My mind would not have to move so fast to rest.

I would not be in North Carolina,
Tearing flowers from the motel flowerpots,
Searching for a love-me-not.

I can drop like a guillotine
On my own galloped chest.

It is incredible what kind of mess I can make
With a nine-hour drive and an unanswered text.

Yes, that's me,
Crying to the tollbooth man.
I say,
'In the ghost town of our love
There is a player piano
Trying to prove it can make music
Without being touched.
My fingertips
Miss her
So much.’

He hands me no change.

Tells me there’s a Laundromat down the highway
That is also a bar.
I could make a clean getaway.
I could fall of the wagon and catch a freight train
Right to officially, clinically insane.

I could at the very least, wash my clothes,
So I could for once in my life know,
What it’s like to have control of the spin cycle.

What’s it’s like to know
What the yarn knows of sweaters, you know,
how to hold myself together.

And love, I know, it is not sexy to make-out
With someone who so constantly
Has their foot in their mouth.
But remember, I am also the one who told you,
I want to feel you like the lifelines on the palms of Jesus
When the nails went through.
I want to make popcorn with you, with the lid off.

Yes, that’s sexy talk.
Yes, I’m freaky.
Yes, I heard the bartender say

It is not holy water if it doesn’t burn going down
And you are hot
Enough to keep me sober
On a Saturday night on Bourbon Street.

I told her, ‘You have a heart of gold.
I am kneeling in your bloodstream
Panning for the only thing that has ever felt like home.’

If this drives me crazy,
Make sure the straightjacket comes in purple,
So Prince will sing her favorite song as I sleep.

So that rifting guitar, is all she ever hears.
A runaway train on every string.
Her name on my mouth,
And a falling star, that never once fell.
We never fall.
We always jump.

We always
Jump.