UFC - April 22nd

UFC at My Brother's House

The fight wants to be
in my head like a movie montage.
Two muscular men duking it out
in a cage like total fucking morons,
like men.
I guess it would be intercut
with a breakup: punches, verbal
blows, blood spraying, crying.

No, that's not the movie. We're not fighting,
there are no punches. All I see are two
mostly naked people grappling;
there is no violence
in the calm moments. Faces drained, they look
so scared and sad. I'm having a beer,
my first one. I wish your lips were here
to share with me, the moment, the beer,
our disgusted looks at this pointless sport.
If I don't finish this drink, does it still count?
If I never fully experience something
new, can I still share for you?

I will leave every bottle half-full,
make it to the next round.

Teeth, one - April 20th

Teeth

Your imperfect
teeth in your mouth like a guitar
over a bent knee. Yeah yeah
I know the music of your clicking. Okay okay
I know the way they strum when you run
your teeth across them. I get it, I get it
they're so perfect, you're always
reminding me with smiles. Goddamn
straight teeth have no grooves like yours.
Where the hell is the music
when your mouth is miles
away and I'm left
with smooth enamel?

I have one tooth, slightly
askew, on my bottom
teeth. My tongue avoids it,
the note now feels unharmonious
with your teeth's harp.
I remember when I was the pick
and you gnashed me
between your teeth.
I want your music to cut
my gums again. Infect my mouth
with your cold teeth chattering

tune. Listen, listen
I'm only asking to hear them again,
I don't need to be the lead
in your orchestra, I'll sit second
fiddle to anyone just to have
a closer seat to your performance.

Lily - April 19th

For "Lily (My One and Only)"

You're holding the Future
Islands album I had just heard
under your arm like a book.
I ask if you've listened yet
& the questions ping back
& forward for hours.

We talk over Baskin-
Robbins scoops, not small
talk. Almost immediately
we make it clear we don't like idle
chat. I uphold the same decision
I made two years ago: be open,
bloody, crying, laughing
smooth, clumsy, myself.

I explain myself through
characters, round out who I am
besides my tastes and interests.
You've never seen Adventure-
land, the movie I practically star in.

All of this before we spoon
our first taste of ice cream.
Neither of us know why
we're talking. I frame my words
around my ex-girlfriend &, you,
your ex-boyfriend. Both of us

lonely? No, we're not
talking to each other, we are surrogates
for the missing. I am him, you are her.

"Don't let anyone tell you your sadness
isn't charming, Kyle." You make me feel
like a Smith's song. "If I'm Morrisey,
then you're The Cure."
The unfinished ice cream is a puddle
on the bottom of paper cups.

Before I know, I'm following you
to your place, listening to Naked
by David Sedaris. He's reading
from a story about an erotic book
he found and gave to his sisters.

We watch a version of me kiss Kristen
Stewart & work at a theme park.
I cry, you laugh. It's a great movie
with an enviable ending. I'm on the bed,
you're next to me in a chair. By the time
your television goes to screensaver,
we're both on opposite sides of the bed,

facing each other. I'm talking to the silhouette
of the only other person I've ever been
in bed with. You say I'm not attractive,
a rejection I have to reacquaint myself
with. You're not my type either,
we are both not the people we'd still love
to hear compliment us.

Then we're arguing over what poetry is.
You'd think that this is poetry, I think
this is garbage, a journal entry to keep
myself from overthinking and dismembering.

You ask me to close
my eyes, something I've avoided, to contain
the welling to the top half of my face.
I feel like Molly Wringwald in Sixteen Candles,
but don't try and tell me she didn't feel heat
from birthday candles and worry over burns.

You tell me to close
my eyes, say you're doing the same.
"Pretend we're talking to who we want
to talk to." As if you haven't been
replacing my features with his, as if I
haven't been tattooing your skin.

Suddenly, a kiss on the cheek and apology
for still wanting to touch him.
I feel nothing from it, except
bad because I didn't listen to you.

You wanted to be her for me, as I became him
for you. Just for the night. Sorry,
but I can't replace her, Lily, my one and only.

We listen to the album quietly, it's late.
You lay your head down on my legs
and look up at your smooth ceiling.
I miss the popcorn ceilings in the rooms
I slept in. This whole event: the meeting,
the ice cream, the drive, the movie,
the arguing, the goodbye peck
meant for someone else. Start to finish,
a relationship in a day.

I'm glad you found some closure in me,
Lily, if you did. My healing
might come in other forms later, but thank you,
for the moments I felt my voice
reaching far away ears again.

You walk me to the door, an act
I'm familiar with. We don't exchange
numbers, don't know our last names,
won't connect again unless by chance.
An unspoken agreement, we don't know
what all of this was, we know what it isn't.

The door shuts behind me like a hug,
I get in my car and am promptly
lost finding my way back home.
Finally spit out onto a road
I vaguely remember. Already writing line
breaks in my head for this poem
for you Lily, if any of this had happened.


— — —

Messages (unfinished draft)

The mornings when I open
my eyes, don't let it sink in
that my hands can't write
and my mouth can't call
just to say I'm glad
we're both alive. Even
if it's only half-true
& I wish I was still dreaming
about the versions  of you
that hate me, are cruel to me
but ones that are still
looking in my eyes.

Except on that night
when I dreamt you blind-
folded me.
I could hear you dancing,
the shifting of fabric.
Unseen, I still know the sounds
of your undressing.

Voices - April 18th

Are You A Sprinter? Because...

Just thought
of your voice: made me come
back to all the parallel wishes
we had: wanted to shut up
the stupid way we talked,
regretting the trembles we hid
in our words. Wanting, waiting,
for the people at the front of the line
to hurry along, so we could ring up
these ingredients and start cooking a new
meal. We stood too long by the magazines.
You stole one, said you'd be waiting
in the car, empty by the time I ditched
the bags to meet you there. Left
with a stack of magazines with covers
torn off.

Just remembered
your voice is in another
ear, no longer dumb
for each other: Briefly considered,
deleted before it could finish
installing, dating apps. I don't think
either of us knew what we wanted there,
but we both know who would get swiped.

Just recognized
your voice in my poetry: a muse
losing their pose. Dragging
across a blank page, an inked
fingerprint will eventually run
clearly. I still feel your hands
graze my pages,
leaving no marks, like a phantom
limb. A painting of ghosts
left pinned on my wall.

Just think: Do they haunt
or watch over me, tuck me in
with leftover caresses? Trust you,
either way, to always be there
in half-remembered whispers & fading
fingerprints.

— — —

Zest

Sweet Boy makes you breakfast
Sweet Boy annoys you when you wake up
Sweet Boy kisses your cheek too much
Sweet Boy holds your hand too hard
Sweet Boy can't make coffee
Sweet Boy buys lunch
Sweet Boy drives around
Sweet Boy kisses your lips too sweetly
Sweet Boy rots your teeth
Sweet Boy doesn't want the way he talks
Sweet Boy kisses you the same anyway
Sweet Boy tastes something new
Sweet Boy waits around
Sweet Boy is too shy
Sweet Boy knows it
Sweet Boy will always be sweet, but dies finding
Saucier lurking inside you
Saucier is playing with your hair
Saucier is flirting with strangers
Saucier is confident in shyness
Saucier fucks better
Saucier moves to LA
Saucier opens a bar named after you
Saucier doesn't have time for dreams
Saucier is busy with you
Saucier kisses from the world
Saucier is wanted around
Saucier gets chances to be
Sweet & Sour for you. Now,

Sweet Boy is every flavor,
going untasted, spoiling alone,
sweetly wishing for another taste.

Ash - April 17th

Ash

I'm not sure why you hid
your smoking from me those last few months.
If you had asked me? Honestly,
I missed the taste on our lips, dirty,
unhealthy, intimate. An added taste
to your breathes' palate.
I couldn't kiss another smoker,
not without the taste of you lingering
in my throat. Let me inhale again,
I wouldn't breathe out this time
with you, this last taste. Let it seep
in my bloodstreams, turn my cells
into ashtrays. Blacken
my lips, put your cigarette out
on my tongue. I wish you scarred
your habits onto me. Missing
the way your mouth was warmer
after a smoke, please smoke and kiss me.
Kiss and tell me you need a light
again. Kiss me down to the last smoke
in the pack, let me pick you up
another one.

Waiting - April 17th

Reel

I saved all the tickets
from every movie we saw. Collected
them in a tin, like an urn for memories
burning away. The way your feet tapped
the chair in front of  you told more stories
than the films. Like when you
had to pee. The way you crossed your legs
when you were bored. Your feet restless
over annoying theater-goers. Your feet pushed
against mine at anything scary or tender.
The two things that could drive your feet to mine.

The encrusted floor couldn't keep
you from walking away. The ushers
clean up your footprints before I could
follow anyway. I'm left with a stub
to a movie I didn't even know I was watching.
Stuck with the credits, seeing your name
appear in giant letters, scroll up and blip away.

— — —

To The Sad Cal Arts Student I Talked To
On The Chairs Outside of Jamba Juice
While On Break at Work

When you looked up and smiled
in my direction, you probably thought
we locked eyes, but I only saw the piercing
in your septum. The way it moved
as you sniffed a "Hi."
My own nose felt heavier with a piercing
thought of all the ways I am
an uneventful, unlived person, on the bench,
outside of Jamba Juice, writing to myself.

The steel half-ring curling back into my nose,
all the boring things,
not a single pierced hole on my body.

Leave them alone, it was a simple Hi,
Said the septum to my head.
Fuck off, said my heart to the septum.
Hi, said a boring guy on a bench to a stranger.
What are you working on? I said to the writer
who noticed me.

Samantha with the septum ring,
talking across a table with someone
who only looks at your nose. Who talks back
at the piercing, not the person, noticing
how similar it is to the ones that labeled us
dud humans and ditched. Noses sniff in the cold,

the septum raises and lowers.

To Sammie's septum ring: thank you
for letting me show the piercing
that "boring" changes when given
second chances. To Sammy: forgive me
for using your nose. To Kyle
from Sam: sorry we both wished
we were talking to different people.
you are not a drab person,  no one
on these benches writing alone is.

we each wanted a hand
to help us up, not pull
the bench out from underneath.

Dreams - April 16th

Clearly

Dream I

I was at work. A real shit
UPS worker ordering some balloons.
You were in the supply closet,
whispering to me how much happier
you are without me. You were straddling
a mop. You smiled at the very men-
tion of being with someone else.
Somehow this dream is less
bizarre to me than what really happened.

Dream II

I'm at my other job, before I quit.
You're a coworker, it's your last day.
I guess you've still broken up
with me. We avoid each other,
well, you avoid me, I try
to find excuses to talk to you. You look
like the Lyndsie I remember. By the end
of the shift, after you say goodbye
you leave, but I don't let you go
without hugging you. Suddenly your hair
is green. One eye is green,
the other is bright white. Somehow
this version of you is still as beautiful
as I remember.

Dream III

Still broken up but now
I'm at your wedding, why
did you invite me, my sadist?
"You wanted to come, my masochist."
This is the Lyndsie I want to remember,
one that cries with me. Feels bad
for how it ended. Let's me off
the hook, says it's okay if I'm not there,
if it's too hard. But we both know that
I have to be. Somehow this friendship
is one I would take if we could both
wake up.

Hip(s) - April 12th

Hips Like Cinderella

The Pixies didn't really like hips,
or so it sounds; they'd probably be a fan

of me, hipless, an obelisk. But
I don't always agree with music I

sing along with. My hips were beautiful
in her underwear. Her hips were full

in my hands, a part of her I always held
tighter when she gripped my waist

bones like a pepper grinder; twisted
in sheets like separating liquids. I knew

the curvature

of your back, your neck, your lips
when you screamed Pixie songs.

Could I still find the way around
our hips, now air

has no lyrics? I've got my hands

on the one hand but I don't know
where to put them.

— — —

Gaze Away

I was that guy who felt
responsible for showing you
how beautiful your hips are.

As if you needed my maleness
when your own bones hugged
your midsection, covered you

like an avalanche smothers a mountains'
blemishes. Even now, editing these words,
just ways to impress your hips

with my gaze. Cut out
the previous stanza, Kyle, what would she say?
Make a switch to how you made my hips

feel when you caged them
in your sight longer than I expected
anyone to ever look at me longingly.

My obelisk hips molded in your fingers
like white, wet clay. Did I make you
believe our hips were each branches

from the same snowflake,
bones made of the same calcium
we absorbed from shared glasses

of chocolate milk?  Lips
shared the same calories in kisses.
But what about her hips, Kyle?

What about your hips? I thought
I could freeze an image of you
dancing in high-waisted shorts,

but the hips are the first thing
I forgot the shape of. All things forgotten
are just hips. The hip of your laugh,

your nose hips, the hips in your smile,
the hips in the way you scolded me
for cuddling too early in the morning.

The hip of the road to your room,
the hip of your fingers, your cigarette
breath hips, the hip of your company.

All just beautiful curvatures I can't grasp.
Even your hips will change
in the embrace of a stranger, a gift

I want to return to you, but can't
make your hips any more perfect
than they already are to me.

Rose - April 12th

Jack & Ennis

Call me stupid, but I don't know
the difference between dead
roses, rose buds & roses that are closed
for the night. I found out there's a term

for flowers that shut up nightly: nyctinasty.
A bit rude, I don't think it's all that nasty
myself. Maybe in a grotesque way,

like the way Michelle Williams' mouth
scrunches in Brokeback Mountain
when she boils a truly great love down
to "Jack Nasty." That downward, smell-
something-gross lifted-nose grimace
of a pronunciation. Those are buds I know
to be dead though, unless maybe...
Maybe she's right. Maybe all roses
are nyctinasty loves waiting for the sun
to bloom over the horizon.

— — —

Rose

I found that a floriculturist showers
flowers that close up, respond to coming
darkness, with praise of love & evolution.

The folding in of petals, resting of limbs and leaves
benefits growth, so they say. Ask me though,
I'm familiar with running away. Flowers

shut in because they're afraid of the dark.
They don't trust the soil they're planted in
to hold them firm, remind them they are safe

under moonlight, stretch out petals longer.
Ask me tomorrow morning, flowers blooming,
getting ready for the day, put on their best

unfurling for any light they can grab. Not the soil.
Penetrated and used, just happy to give it all
to the roots. Ask the soil, it doesn't know

if the sun will rise the next day. The flower dies
every night, trusting the dark to leave; the soil
can only love the flower the best it knows how.

Moon - April 11th

To the Moon

You shone brightly between Phelan

and the 14 freeway that one drive.

I turned off my head

lights for you to show me

the desert night, just a moment.

She hated that I did it

without warning, told me 

never again.

Did I ever switch them 

back on? I think I only need you,

but on the waning nights,

the roads are blind as I am

until you're new and I wonder

are there even roads back home?

So I'll just keep my lights off, waiting

for your waxing, waiting for you

to be an empty jar of fireflies;

maybe you can show me all the miles

in my rear view, all the road signs

I can choose to follow or decide, like her,

never again.

— — —

Moon

I thought I was the one,

the only one, that noticed the moon

when it was caught between palm trees.

Thought it looked like a bright punctuation

between two dark sentences, telling me I'm an idiot

for not noticing the pauses.

I really thought I was the only one

that wanted to tie knots

around bungee cords and palms,

slingshot to the moon.