29

it's official

summer is here

I baptized everything

at do-it-yourself doggy detail

the proprietor is a giant man with dredlocked dogs of all sizes

he said, When you shave a dog like this, 

and we look suspiciously at the collie,

You have to go at it like you're scraping ice off a windshield

it's official

because Nickey made us a birthday salad

like she made last year, when I turned 28 

& discovered bulleitt bourbon

Everyone cries on their birthday

& I was in love again or still with someone I'd loved 5 years before

and I left the bar alone

so the bar could be alone

so I could be alone with my middle-aged present 

& my maudlin I-miss-you past

we drank the bourbon with salad sap,

rhubarb syrup

we took it to the river with us, 

and a shorn collie

and our beached chairs

and I climbed into the river, under the water

and while I was inside her for those seconds

the hard seconds, my being very much aware of how

soft & warm

my innards are

how they're encased in a thousand knives stabbing you all at once

not to beconstatly reaching for titanic quotations, but

it was a bliss

a true moment where I wasn't terrified

because I am 

soft & warm

at least inside, still.

and I surfaced, gasping, mouth gulping sun

my wet seal hair long down my back

the droplets on anxious tired flesh

trying, breaking, popping 

in the light.

When I'm 29 I will police my emotions

I will make arrests

I will cuff me

I will throw me in the back

I will read me my hurried rights

I will put my heart on a leash

in a chokechain

& demand it next to me

legless, dragging along

taught tether,

slack tether.

that water was life-affirmer

my river hair, passion-confirmer

vehement future-asserter

(The other day she asked, how do you pronounce that word, vehemence, and we said it aloud a couple of times

I don't know that I do anything with vehemence, I said, and there followed the scoff of the century.)

When I'm 29 I will write down the names of everyone I've been in love with

and the list will crush the planet

the names will fall into trenches

into little graves

with headstones in ornate decay

How many people have you been in love with

Are you in love with anyone, now?

I used to ask two questions

when I was falling in love with someone, I'd say

Are you in love?

and

Are you an alcoholic?

It used to be that I'd turn away when the answers were yes

which they often were

but mostly I'd stay. Else how would I keep it all so relevantly destructive?

There are new questions to ask

like,

Do you love

or

Can you?

How many people have you been in love with

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9

or

1,2,34

or never say forever, and never forvember me 

nevember me forever

sitting casual before bedding true enough

prettylittle 9 - 14  

       

He just sitting casual makes me from parts into a whole

within windows & radiated anymore.

Enjoying I think the condition of being so collected.

Yours and maybe you I want,

if I should ever be to commit here in the light.

Ahead of it this anxiety-feeling I’ll just call of hostility

while in a daze for you.

Mine is to see & feel ecstatic,

to make awake to be whom I will,

immediate.

An attack, killers to kill each. Obvious. They are, prompt, & being. You never see, actually. 
In response you are awake & throwing still. Probably never I can see the readiness & you suddenly feel that too much. In my life from where I’m sitting formal, suddenly into sleep.

To talk to him… I only think I see speech especially. Your wisdom okay for that truth. Why aren't you oratory in nature? I remember that there is no reason to talk, to please. I want to make: that heat running me up & down. 

Now forget that plans for us wait. Denoting the talk, he... I. 

Love bones. 

People exist for this. That contains, it will get hot enough to have. 

Of course I’ve the upper teeth to blow through

it’s fun to won’t, 
it’s black, 

with you a consonant through at me. Get in bed

and for that, just for us to foam on our tops. Pronounced when my head reaches to. 

Enter tip of tongue, temperate as the gazing fact: 

I’m sitting alone, at or on or near this ridge

the sun. And the hands on him now be large. 

Ameliorate! the sun, hips to go against, 

I keep thinking to make something care. 

Waist, neck, and everything attempting. Someone will see better. 

I’m sweating myself a finger behind the ear. 

At just this moment find me. Amity explosive. 

Stroking a stubbled chin it would be interesting. 

Grease congeals me cleft to lower myself to myself and 

begin anathematic. To this and then that, 

the most useless of positions

strange & heated.

Relating. Spills drips down goes away and 

he shouldn’t be given me his conversation. 

Something me, onto me. 

Remember me with me. 

Vehement, hurry, before I bed true enough.