exit

i wake up
and there is an absence of light.
i stretch my eyes
and blink.

i'm not naked,
but i'm alone on the couch.

i stand,
afraid to go back to sleep.

reaching for the brushed nickel
of the midnight door,
i pour myself another drink
and proceed to enter.

everything but the blanket

as i'm sitting
at the center of the beach,
trying to figure out the equation
of how it all began,
i'll be naked,
as the sun pours gasoline into
the dryness
of my eyes.

"my sweet lord"
will playing in an orbit
around the axis of my head.

this juncture of the day will be red.
the twilight will be a darker hue
of yellow,

and despite the length
of everything i cannot remember,
this is how i expect everything
to end.

communion

the shingles are falling
from the steeple on the old church
down the street.

for weeks,
they have sat on the concrete
like a congregation of discarded beliefs.

i see the dressed people
every sunday
coming in
and going out.

you can always hear someone singing in gospels
like the building is burning down.

almost every night
i walk the dogs by this church,
when everything is quiet,

but the other night
i witnessed some lady standing by the back door,
drinking a tallboy,
waiting
for something else to arrive.

the end of prayers

it'll either be the gods
or the universe,

one of them will breathe on us,
and it'll be all patterns and lines,
lines and patterns dictating us
until we go blind.

one of these days
we'll be made awake.
there will be scissors between our eyes
with some voice telling us to look up.

and when we do,
we will be pierced
by the circumference
of everything.

arrhythmia

sometimes
the heart jumps
out of the throat.

it becomes a thud
on the hardwood floor.

you're not shocked anymore.
you just wipe the outlines of blood
with a paper towel,
like it was a conglomeration of water.

you're just a stone statue
standing over this thing,
swearing to god
you're going to leave it there
until
it behaves.

but it never does,
and at this point
asking for a truce
is just asking for another war.

so you scrap it off the ground
like it's a piece of dried gum
and you swallow what's left.

restoration

this house ain't easy.
before you know it,
there are cobwebs growing in the corners,
and no matter how much the attempt,
the plants 
look like they haven't been fed in days.

in the garden,
underneath the weeds and 
the mulch,
lies the bones of a population
of prayers.

every one of them is there.

when it rains,
this roof ain't nothing but a leak,
and the buckets you leave
were never big enough
to catch all the water.

but goddamn,
even through it,
somehow,
we try to restore.

migration

within the measurement of breath
you grab hold of a baby bird.
you weigh it
as a matter of contrast.

you cradle it
within the palm of your hand
just to make sure it fits.

you convince yourself
that there are no mistakes,
just some personal facts.

then
like that,
something snaps,
wings grow,
eyes explode,
a nest is something that cannot hold
this heaviness anymore.

a trajectory has been made.