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.

social beings

in the dark,
we begin as strangers,
light upon light,
stacked all the way to our eyes
until they spread into beams.

in the dark,
your beam
meets my beam
and then we walk
in some order
that only you
or i will understand.

in the dark,
we walk with the dexterity of a drunk,
hand upon hand
hanging onto this glow
until
there is nowhere left to go.

anti heros

sometimes
we get puffy;
watch a show
and imagine plots
that never seem to end.

we want to win every once in a while
and be lean as a hero.

but
when the credits are written
we are scared shitless,
like baby worms before grown birds.

it's then
that we champion rewind
as just another category for survival.

anchor hitch knot

it's a tiny ship
constructed from a beer can.
you take a breath
and place it in the ocean.

it doesn't sink.
it follows you along the shore
and you have dominion
over the wind,
over the water's edge,
over this construct
that doesn't seem to end.

you look away
towards the surface of the land
and everything it contains shimmers.
the sound you hear
is just a lullaby
from an empty belly.

you fall asleep.

you wake up.
the ocean is still there,
but all that is left is the rope
from a life preserver
that isn't there.

design and review

we are all patterns
of the same junk.

we are strung from
the same clumsy hands
that result in
the design of knots.

we are wretched.
we are brave.
we are blind.

the wind
kicks us in the teeth
and all that we have left
is sharp bone
and the calcification
of everything that remains.

before there is light

we enter this life
on the back
of a box of matches.

everything is dark,
and that's silence enough.

we search for a sound.
we search for any speck of light.

we search for the comfort of shelters
where we can slip inside
as we wait for the friction
of god to occur.