i love this song!

it bubbles under my nipples,
pastes lips to my sternum,
sets sparrows zipping in one ear and
out the other, melts birdcages
and glues feathers to my arms

when i hear this song
i perform an arbutus striptease
peeling back my layers to reveal green
skin emerging from heartwood -
a dancer, composed of sticky marrow
and new breath

when i hear this song
i fuck myself
and spin the orgasmic orbit of empty space -
empty space transforms my voicebox into a vacuum
absorbing the warbling
out of every corner of the universe -


this song.

not “this song,” but
This Song

the song that mismatches your socks
on awkward sundays, or whatever day
you think is full of holes, and teaches your feet
unexpected dance steps

the song that sucks earlobes,
gives armhair a hard-on,
seduces dignity and makes the dawn
blush -
that makes you shape-shifting puzzle-piece,
makes you rattle bones until they stick
against skin,
let it go see if it comes back again

this song lures you into gardens,
baptises you with original skin,
feeds you knowing fruit,
licks the sap from your lips with a rough tongue,
and when this song licks you it feels
like needles fitting a groove
like playgrounds where children still hurt themselves
like pit bulls on laughing gas:
your chin bobs its head.
your pinky toe discovers a sense of purpose.
your right brain brews thunder
your left brain weeps uncontrollably
your vital organs flower
into an orchard.

everywhere inside you, pollinators drink
hard cider and buzz
a choral version of sexual healing

this song is not your sex life.

it might make your crotch feel
really good.
and move around a little.
like a concussion


this song might remind you
that you are skin and bone and blood,
blood cum and sweat,
sweat salt and passing wind

it might spin you a vision
of lightning firing clay
sparking song out of silence,

of a flightless buzzard
with trees for hands
and amphibious feet,

when i hear this song
i hear last breath’s first kiss
and the mud between my grass stains

i hear my heart beat
taste my iron
smell what i musk
feel my primate

i see why bonobos would laugh
at the question of clothes, then gesture
fig-stuffed mouths, lice-plucking fingers,
the tickle touch and murmur
that binds blood

and it reminds me of the way we stood around
the side of the house party
passing fire mouth to mouth
when i heard her voice exclaiming
i love figs!
they’re like ripe testacles
that explode in your mouth!
saw her feed a smile to anyone
with eyes, and couldn’t
get the taste of figs out of my ears

I think bonobos how our smiles sat together
out on the walkway, soaked through
from lost hours of chattering downpour,
protesting the bodies huddling on the porch
and their offers of jackets
and dry skin under shelter
grooming, breaking boundaries
and erasing time
with the slightest touch
head scratch
belly pinch
hand brush
a glance shared
with a treeful of others
or stolen
wondering if primates have such beautiful eyes
the better to become lost within

the way some hours passed
squeezing words around the figs
stuffed in our cheeks,
letting the rain stroke our faces,
making fingers in our eyes
to run through one another’s fur

the way some hours passed, or something
happened, as chilled skin tangled with blankets
on a hardwood floor, and we fed pieces of fruit
back and forth between our tongues
and eyes -
and all from the slightest touch
before there were words,
a glance, in the rain, as smiles danced
in the mud, figs ripened
in our eyes, branches trembled with chatter
and bore witness


in moments like that
i feel we are all composers
sight-reading eternity

all basslines and beats
and scattered verses interweaving

we are notes flying off the page
flowing one to another
sliding and breaking
suggesting and surprising
fumbling and fucking

and i would go so far as to say
we are all love songs

but not love

not LOVE

not a candy cane soap opera
or a sweet and sour sugar glaze,

not a shot of butterscotch,
or a toffee pudding after story,

nor a cheese-dip yoga pose,
a cocoa buffet,
a meat strip slather party.

no, love like a sweat stain.

like a drunk rabbit dodging cats.

like a pickpocket handshake,
a jalapeno slaughterhouse,
a blood-stained high heel.

love like a barbed wire massage
and nothing but sore muscles,


a cook-fire
a four-pronged tuning fork
bent out of shape
a ravishing wildebeest
an atomic bomb
whispering the only word it knows

love the way we didn’t speak for two hours
only looked at one another
after i handed her a note reading
if eyes were lips
when ours met there was a furious make-out session

love the way my youngest cousin pauses in my arms
resting in bass notes
as i hum northwest passage
and bounce him to the rhythm

love the way i made a pact with friends
that whosoever of us dies like an idiot
the others must piss on his grave

love the way my mom used to tell me
we’re family - and you LOVE your family

love that longs to be a memory
and a shoehorn
that slides my feet into your shoes
or yours into mine


out of such love
i have taken to building
my niece a bookshelf
and i’m really excited about this project
so i’d like to tell you how
i’m building the first shelf out of a memory
of nights her grandpa sat on my bed
and we read aloud to one another
from a book called
kevin o’connor and the light brigade
a beautiful red hardcover,
with skeletons charging on horseback
under a navy blue sky
on the jacket.

there’s already books on this shelf,
red fish blue fish, and hop on pop,
and a book of paintings, and few words
telling the life cycle of salmon

the second shelf, i’ll build from pocket-sized poetry
books her grandma kept on the bedside table.

here there will be sonnets, and haiku
that aren’t too revolting,
every living thing and whatever stories of myth-time
call her attention,

she might sit on my knee
as i sat on her great-grandpa’s
and hear the music of speaking
when the words call forth her voice.

the third shelf i’ll make from the masking tape
holding together my first copy of lord of the rings
and here she’ll find her way with a golden compass,
riding sandworms with beowulf and odysseus,
or she might travel to the moon
in the shell of a giant snail
and learn the language of trees
or she might dive into a pool
find herself in another world
where all that moves has words.

the fourth shelf i’m making from the bindings of old
journals, so here she’ll learn about free enterprise
and ceremony, bad teenaged poetry and ravensong
rising into thin air -
everywhere being is dancing on this shelf,
the book thief goes trainspotting
and finds the kiss of the fur queen
where some birds walk for the hell of it
and orange is not the only fruit of american gods.

by the time she's tall enough to reach this shelf,
she’ll be old enough
to do as she likes with the books.

old enough that when she asks me why
the last book on the last shelf is
oh the places you’ll go
i’ll tell her
‘cause that shit’s fuckin timeless.

inside its cover, she might find a note
reminding her to see a bookshelf as a garden-bed for stories,
to learn the greasy fingerprints, the watermarks,
the dog-eared pages,
the rips, the tears, the notes in the margins,
the musty scent of aging paper, the missing bindings,
the broken bindings, the bindings that open to hands
like the hearts of old friends,
to learn the books made for generations of fingers,

explaining that i built a bookshelf
out of a memory and a dream
that someday i might hand down
a red hardcover under a navy blue sky
with the words
take this book into your hands
and know you are holding your grandfather’s