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you are always
talking to someone
even if they’re not present
or a chrome-faced apparition
assembled in your digital living room
for the sake of rekindling exuberance
from the 2010s, a period before I had a body
of work to hold me to embarrassment
in the face of my own words
conjured for the sake of others
who can show me the blood teleport of my bruised fingernails
from flicking Krazy Bones
as a child I meant
to kickball captain myself
whom I’ve grown to distrust despite having no doubts
about how good and stable I’m doing
though I feel near-to-no-good
or stable in poses of doing
that halves me every time expressive
to sharded happiness facing the mirror
my life grows to reflect
slow motion wit
only registered by rhythm and melody
the shape of all loops
making our laughter overlap
for the sake of the epigraph
a me me me suspended
and ached out 30 years of incongruent
designs for disobedience, failing to philosophize
any art I haven’t taken back from the world
for fear of finally mentioning the daughter we aborted
that I promised to only tear up for
when the permanent calla lily was pressed to my arm
in Savannah, Georgia that we talked about
colonizing artistically
by being a bitch in the negative space
by syncing up our walking with music
and abandoning ourselves to the aesthetics of reading
the damned damning and dreamlike
elaborators of our apostolic living who once felt
brave enough to disperse
regret that seeds the tense unconditional field
that cynics harvest
to feed the families they killed everything to dine with
