i am friends with the floor and
deeply do i know her
her cracks and her grooves
and the way that she spins
and she moves
i know i’m going there
i know i’m going there
i know i’m going there
to see what lies behind her
when i feel the eyes
staring dull-ly at me
or tearing away

you can become a word
or a word can become you
never quite fully stretching over your body

not expecting anything but the changing of the seasons

and in the other room are all my dreams coming to life

i will weave into existence
the piña shirt i will wear
for the rest of my days
made of all the things i should’ve been
words, acts never realized
hemmed with promises

we will dance like fairies
as paradise burns
waking after the passing dawn

autumn dreams remember
the memory of the sun

what makes jerusalem a special city

in the second semester of elecromagnetic fields,
i was asked to solve maxwell’s equations:
for the magnetic pull of scattered places, changing places
for the wavelengths of violet light, passing through calloused fingers
for the electric potential, built up charge between father and son
for the current density, always running back to mother
tomorrow i will not show up to class

so tell me, are we immigrants or abductees?
i am a stranger on stolen land
i would be stronger in my home land

it's you, a warm robot beaming jubilantly in the corner,
livening up my life in empty thickets.
my delusional beauty decays from my scalp and drifts off in the water,
i wade into the swamp to chase it, forgetting to go where you can’t follow.

in my lockbox, i have stored a parcel of yearning

why do you let me live,
passing me like trucks on the freeway?
all i know are the streams of lives i glimpse into
which will not fit around my waist

your voice cuts like a radio on the wrong frequency
"i remember
you were a boy
grow up
i want to be a writer"

when i grow up, i want to be
neither a fox nor colder.
i want to write a remedy
which sings the world bolder -
a bright, brown or gold, glittering
stain to ruin your whitened wedding.

i've never seen so many roadkill coyotes before,
pink like bare mesquite branches, rickety like a promise.
our texas is an ocean, deeper than the moon;
i will miss your company when the sea rises to applaud.

soft-footed whispers on the cold tile,
drowned in the seismic tremors

choking me with your smoke
at the dinner table

coveted reunion of a fragmented people
with their messiah, drafted a soul only to die
to martyr for the greater lie and lessen
the burdens of idols of grass and gasoline

all the women of my life, singing
"merry christmas" to dead men.

jesus never grew up in a broken home

so you fall asleep wondering if angels struggle
speaking in tongues their fathers and mothers
cannot speak

we eat off dinner tables donated by our dear, diligent dead

a few tears ago