Canisia Lubrin

                                               & these hours where finally

                                                                                       we demand

           the fucked-with be unfucked-with

I’ll go back again, is that a return

And when they ask where I’ve been

I’ll have gathered enough miles

In the muscle of my tongue

To give no answer quite so satisfying as life, you know

But to say I’ve comeback

From knotting myself permissive

From leaking enough around my hard edges

From the give this back, I do now wish to strike at it again

This life, you know all of its lamped days

To have it all come back sweetly

As thankless time in mileage

Making every revolution a raze

Of Dennery Heights

What could you call that?

I pull off I’s toes and leaves them near the sea, I’s sea,

back to the sea as before, yet an hour’s drift from

Manzanilla, which is no place but a word I loves,

I knows what begins the act of saying things, what is lodged there

a promise of some life, not unlike this coal-grey sky, not unlike

the not-good marching band a street away throwing madness

out with I’s lonely discography, I says “please,” without toes

but what about these feet now that they are not ceased

in their act of making things, disappeared things

things given over to the gesture, the method, to the field

awash and undertow, what is love but the hand returning

to claim the dust red, white, black as a coal-swept evening

I am held within these claims: that I have kissed unlucky

things, buried pets, eaten sugar-free ice cream, endured a first 

blood test, made friends without benefits, and lost them

found new ways of saying what is not ever enough to say 

ways to fish, to drink, to park, to burn, to burn into 

something new, with this life I have been careful

too much, disciplined to the extent of (dis)remembrance 

infrequent colours pissed into the wind, I don’t remember 

when I decided to fold into my self, or when walking

foot before foot to the feeding ground of murderous birds

became the way to admit that words can be a giving up

outcome of years rearranging a subterranean scar 

 ***

and I have been called many things late at night

greener grass, scientific utopia, dream of ancestors

what about rainy weekends, what about poltroons,

the doomed cults full of hyper-rational people

who’ve miscalculated the heights of doors, how many 

stairs are left, and when stood up from a tumble

find polite applause, find the romance of liberal 

consumption on the news, anyway, any sharp

thing is a short distance from possible to voluble

father, what about a foot laid down hard on the gloss

of the business-suited, the testing birds that remind 

me I am just as committed to expression as to freedom