you can’t just do it, you know. something has to stab you electric through the side, or in the brain, or to the throbbing in your chest. something has to sit heavy. something has to shake you dizzy. something has to eat you a little wild, incite your crazy, infect your wounding, itch. you can’t just get up and do it, whatever it is, you know. except sometimes when you have to. and the having to is the itch. the need is the pull, the weight, the sizzling strike to your stubborn spine.

we’re immobile, didn’t you know? we’re immobile until animated. until licked and inserted to the sputtering socket. we’re marionettes, we’re wooden. we’re hung on invisible strings. we’re the effect of a billion buffeting factors, we’re the shape of our stacking conditions.

and you can’t just do it. you can’t just break that, you know. the puppet doesn’t cut its own strings. the puppet hangs limp. the puppet is dumb. the puppet is a blank stare, mute. the puppet is the whittled design of a knife called excuses.

the puppet needs its lightning, needs its need. the puppet needs a thorn pressed through its rough-hewed wooden side, pressed to its brain, pressed past the carven chest: something heavy, something sharp.

something – fire, rusty nail – incite my crazy, redden the wound, itch. shake me dizzy, eat me wild. pull me, flatten me: be the knife to shear the strings to free the limbs that tingle with this shock. something so far outside it’s from inside, rise and taunt me, electric provocation.

we’re not helpless, you know.

say i was just a soul inside a bubble and
the only way i could communicate was through
text written across me.

say i was not human.

say i was a bird, or an idea.
say i was a cloud, or lost at sea.
say i had no words except the words etched in my skin.
pretend i was a sign then would you read me?

in any of those situations would you
still talk to me?

say i was an ocean, or an island, or
pretend i was a sound. a sound
but not like speech
but not like fickle spoken words.

pretend i was a whistle, or a sigh
then
would you hear me?

i’m pretty sure i know your answer.
i’m pretty sure i’m pretty high.

i’ve been thinking of getting a tattoo.
what i want written is “resist nothing”.

some times i get tired
of fighting this, of drifting, listless. of flight.

i think i’ll be a body again; i’ll try, i think, to be human.
i think i’ll let it take me, let it hold me, let it
root me to this weight.

i think i may not run.

The shop was a hive of lazy bees.
Earlier, the house was a shadowed den;
later, the effect is slightly altered.
At work, the minutes pass like rain beneath
our greased and sooted palms.
On my bike inside a morning yet to dawn
I watch a headlight push my shadow
to a figure stretching tall:
twenty feet or more of this new
effortless companion, silent ghost.
At the shop, tall doors remained closed,
sheet metal eyelids, slow to wake.

my dear, don’t be misled; i only do this when i’m completely alone:
writing later now in words like haughty vapor castles.

tonight is not for making vows to any future,
there will be no passing words to ghosts of time.
there will be no quiet hope, or cautious plans, or thoughtful waiting.

tonight, we exist for the burgeoning, riotous now: this single, glimmering instant.
tonight, we pluck at apples in the sky, shimmering diamonds, and we eat them.
no saving for later; salvation is now.

now, this gawking moment.
now, this reverberant pulse.

tonight is the face of a mountain for climbing. tonight is the edge of a cliff.
tonight we will walk on the moon of our longing.
tonight, as the sun drips, we’ll

write our stories in the stars, on our lips, beneath the skin of our trembling hands.

we’ll think not of forever (when forever is now, strung eternal);
we’ll fear not for tomorrow at the neck of today.
we’ll twist out of our clothes at the water’s cold rim, and we’ll jump, naked,
splashing.

shuffling coals, we will find there a spark. we will breathe it.

the night is a slate, dear; your feet are the chalk.
come, walk with me.

i say i’m defeated
but i still keep on trying.
anything to say that i have loved
anything to be loved in return.
but this is a wind i chase
on feet chained to mountains
on weary feet slung to anchors
sunk to rust on ocean’s floor.
love is only sleight of hand and
i’m nearly disillusioned.
can anything so sweet withstand
the brutal test of time?
can something so invincible survive?
they say love is the ultimate force of life;
i don’t think that i’ve seen it where i’d hoped.
i say i’m defeated, and i am
but i won’t be.

when the wind blew
at the top of a mountain
i spread my arms wide for flight
but never met the sky.

a lonely Sunday breakfast:
scrambled eggs and toast at
the black granite countertop,
a glass of cranberry juice;
wind, music, and
the black snapping curtains.

i can watch nothing happen
and enjoy it worse than most.

the minutes passing open up
and swallow me to
the yawning void
the cavernous discomfort
the roaring black of this quiet
the ache, the infinite space
of zero.

this being alone, i don’t like it one bit.
this being alone, i don’t like it at all.

i know the look of the
creases in my face, the
liquid of my own brown eyes,
the slump-shouldered weariness,
the slow breath, the dull gaze
looking through the
thousand solid things into the
raging sea behind:
the ocean, the fire,
the aged wheeze of a lonely god

sleeping.

why can the martyr not find happiness?
the martyr does not find happiness; the martyr creates happiness.
for others. at his own expense.
yes, at his own expense.
is he, then, slave to those around him?
he is free, and alone. desperately alone. and always afraid.
can he never be satisfied?
he cannot. he is empty, he is free.
but never satisfied.
never.
is he angry?
he is not.
is he sad?
he is a silent cloud of heartache in a sky of careless suns.
he is made of sadness.
he is made of sadness.
but how can he survive it?
he cannot.

i am seated. i am seated on a chair behind a desk. we are not in an office. we are not in a house. we are in a field. the chair, the desk – they are made of wood. i am not. the field, it is made of dirt. dirt in every direction. nothing but dirt until dirt meets the sky. the sky is a canopy. the canopy is empty.

the canopy is empty. the field is empty. the desk is not empty. there are pages on the desk. pages and a black ink pen. the pen is in my hand. my hand is on the pages. the pages are not empty. there is writing on the pages. the writing is black ink.

i am seated. i do not speak. i do not sigh. i am not empty. i remember things. my hand adjusts the pen. words appear. a wind unfurls. the wind is strong. the wind takes the pages. the pages take the ink. the ink, it takes my past. i do not turn to watch it go. i do not speak. i do not sigh. i bury the pen.

this is the way i see it:

i walk into the room.
they say, what do you want to do?
i say, anything.
they say, anything?
i say, yes.
they say, why?
i say, because i want something new.
they say, why you?
i say, because i am interested.
they say, but you have no experience.
i say, that’s the point. i want it.
they say, what if you don’t like it?
i say, what if i do?
maybe they laugh. maybe they frown. maybe they shrug
and say, ok.

i can feel it, the shock
of instant pain
against my knuckles
erupting a thrill inside my spine,
electric tingle:
the slow-motion crackle
of plastic and glass
as my clenched fist shovels
lightning
through the screen flashing
numbers, letters, code.

this machine, the next;
this unforgivable boredom;
the paced passing of hours, weeks, and years;
the thunder of dispassion, of this war;
the knowing that i can do more,
and better;
the voices asking, why?
the voices saying, do something else, anything;
the voices screaming, RUN.

standing on feet
made for moving, inert -
i can see it all.
eyes locked on
the green characters
of a black screen blurring,
the voices are all my own

as the fist remains shaking at my side;
as the screen never shatters;
as the spine waits for signals it will not today receive;

as the thunder of inaction rolls vicious in my chest.