Carlos 4/52

That was a world where everyone's Death lived with them

Some of our deaths were birds of prey

Owl, eagle, falcon, vulture

Or, if you were lucky, something tropical or a bird of paradise

with plumage the color of fireworks 

Rarer still were the songbirds 

chickadee, sparrow, blue bird 

Less like an alarm clock 

more like an appendage 

the birds were with us everywhere we went

and so we made space for them to perch

In the office, at the breakfast table, on the subway

It wasn't a world ever numb to Death

Imagine a crowd of strangers, 

dull grey condors and buzzards perched on each shoulder

and among them, one parrot with bright red and blue 

feathers bright like oil on water

bright like a holiday

Imagine the long walk home through the rice paddies

the sudden startling flock of magpies 

a hundred at once all flying homeward

which is to say away and upward

Imagine a quiet bus ride

the city, a monotonous forest of grey and tan

the rain, a television static 

maybe you'd forget about your bird for a moment

and then you hear it

the blessed whistling of a rare songbird 

something beautiful and easy to wound

What would you whisper to your bird, then? 

What of you would you train it to carry on its last flight

away and upward? 

Oh Shit! (3/52)

Oh SHIT!

Steve’s here.

Quick—

Everyone take out their books.

Yeah...

there.

He’ll never suspect a thing.

Your Kiss (2/52)

Your Kiss



white glitter
piled over the bushes and flower beds

shimmering

silver
underneath the obsidian blue
winter night

each step
snowflakes waft into the air,
fall like fireworks
and fade into my ankles

the powder melts
between my toes
and freezes again;
each bone
an exposed steel beam
covered in frost

I inhale

the door latch
gasps open

light pours
a gold silhouette
over me

I step
inside
the greenhouse

a cliffside hot spring

squeezing orange juice for breakfast

lying face up in a field of freshly bloomed daffodils

the iron behind me
shuts
and locks

Carlos 3/52

Dispatches from the Future : 2018 Retrospect

That was the year the mirrors threw up on us
and likewise the self facing cameras collapsed into deep hibernations
and so it went, that the only way to feel beautiful
was to do things to make ourselves feel beautiful
was to find other people who would stare at you in a way that made you feel beautiful

That was the year the alarm clocks all leapt out the windows in unison
and marched down the streets and sang in a chorus
lead by the twirling baton of the Doomsday Clock
We started waking up when other people started calling our names
and if we were alone
we had to learn to listen to the sounds of our passions
stirring into a board frenzy
ripping apart our newspapers and throw pillows
begging for release into the outside world

That was the year of countless midnights
crawling out of the water
draped in plastic
fishbones windchimes rattling in their hair

The year our heroes and constellations fell like dominoes
and the night was dark dark dark
It was the beginning of an age without stars
and sacred cows
and so it went for a while
that we had no Gods or idols
That was the year so many of us set out
to scale the mountains and become the new beacons

That was the year we started to starve the algorithms
The year we unplugged

Of thousands of maiden voyages with no destination
of kingfishers in constant stampedes across the skies

It wasn't the year we broke the shackles
But it was the year we cataloged them
the year we went into our basements and opened up the boxes
dust, filling our sinuses
the year we went to our knees
to overturn the rocks
to sift through the mud to find them 

Steve 1/52

Shoot me into space with a weekend's supply of oxygen.
Bury me alive beside any TGI Friday's.
Tie me to my recliner on the sidewalk and set it on fire with my lighter.

The strike force has already come to disappear people.
The council has already decided to cut power in our district, and still,
the universe is so great that I could choke.

holding you is like... (1/52)

holding you is like...



the shiver

after putting on a new hoodie

indoors

while it rains outside

in the desert

millions of raindrops

swallowing the city's chattering steel

as they charge into the pavement

a tipped well unmooning the sky

the parched dirt 

sighing in relief

as it drowns

in blood

the palm trees' spines bent

clay

in the hands of the howling wind

Carlos 2/52

I stuck an ocean between me and my friends the funeral went on without me I guess because we can't go back in time and you're dead I blew the dust off my guitar  I went skateboarding  I drank wine at the bottom of a stairwell I watched videos of people getting punched in the nuts I started growing my hair out again I did the best I could to live like we used to

those furious summers of laughter

I got an email from you it said,

    Hi Carlos, This is           s mom,            . 

                                                                                   Im not sure if you  know, 

but            died on                      
If you already knew 

                                           Im sorry                        
.

and I didn't know what to do but keep on going with the audacity

of thanking the missing

for reminding us of all the wild possibility we are captains of

Carlos 1/52

Winter stole the Witching Hour's dark from midnight

The cold collapsed the sun by 5

Our cars became warm huts of laughter and mix cd's
sliding around iced slicked corners
roads towards anywhere that was somewhere else
from those homes with beds where we could see our breath
thick as clouds
rising into the pale shallow terrariums of our bedroom ceilings

Bics kissed the tips of hand rolled cigarettes and spliffs
But nobody went home smelling like smoke
because we kept the windows down
Even with the roar of the highway passing through
every layer of every thrift store score
so we smelled like cold wind
like skies turned orange from the snowfall bruised by streetlamps

If there are ghosts that haunt us
spirits that stay long after the going
because there was something unfulfilled
a grievance begging its tithe
then, this is probably a wonderful haunting

to feel the cold, rattling its chains inside my teeth
to know I would always be from this
to know I could never go back