pioneertown.

Don’t Look Now

I:  

If I Want To Love

In falling water, I take it here—you’re holding open stars
out along the floor. Alone in my bedroom I am a satellite
revenge along my spine, brush dry. Run for morning worse,
breathe a little deeper. The moon is a promise—so sweet 

for another martyr, my American tongue served in a t-shirt
on another night for another song. I’m drowning the quiet
in our blood, a natural disaster, the end of heaven and heart.
Here are candles burning out, pretty bones on the concrete. 

I bleed the sky into the ceiling, a storybook queen climbing
thorn on thorn into writing. There’s an earthquake in my body;
I taste the sea on Sunday, drain my arteries of flowers. Rain
is an end to dirty resignations; levitation is another way to lie. 

Our envelopes find truth in the witching hour, our shadows
a perfect sign that we are part of the ruse, the sun in our eyes.

II:

Zero Hour

A perfect sign that we are part of the ruse: The sun in our eyes
is the sky falling. Look—cracks in the floorboards taste of secrets
and metal. I know flowers and blood, know how to open arteries
for biology, know the poison of my bones. I run along the roots 

of this world, the truth on the back of my hand. A bite is a curse
for the concrete; a rain is forming inside of me, a haunted sky
echoing down my heart. I keep on falling faster, keep the stars
in a little jar by my bed. This is a war and I poison the sea— 

another revenge for my martyr tongue. I take roses underground
drain my spine of the years. My resignations can be arrows, a sign
for a pretty street. I find a penny and leave it. We can pretend
to know when time runs out—I’m licking heaven from the moon, 

my every mistake a bizarre song, so perfect. With your shadows
I leave the neighborhood to breathe disaster—a promise.

III:  

Wake Up, Run

I leave the neighborhood to breathe disaster, a promise
to come spinning down the sky, flowers in the ceiling—
a natural death for bedroom lights. Born into my arteries
is a Shangri-La of curse and quiet, bitter in the nation’s rain. 

I’m a blood moon over a bed of arrows. Look: I breathe
roses into drowning bones. Let’s bite a little harder—suffer
heaven another martyr, envelopes of morning a new truth
for Sunday. We run, we run, weeds and blood on the floor. 

Here is my storybook; everything’s erased—in the dead
of night I was a minefield writing over your love song
burned out and gone. I get to sleep somehow, let God
be Television, some psychic tongue, water for swallowing 

all my storms. In the cracks I leave my silent light, a ruse
in falling water—I take it. Here you’re holding open stars.

This is a found poem. Source material: Foo Fighters. Concrete And Gold. Roswell/RCA, 2017.

Bury Them Deep

I:

Things I Can’t Repair

I pretend to light the candles in my last familiar dress—
there’s no way back with the hourglass in the ground.
My skin is somewhere to hang resolve, confess my place
and sink into the other saint. Here I show you my hand. 

Another confession: Under the bombs I lose my breath,
shiver into the fire of the miles, the pleasure in yesterday.
I know what to resist, when to pretend into dirty truth—
this is my touch, my dress to push a bruise in goodbye. 

And I run into trouble, hang under the song, the sentence.
End over end, we sink and come to deliver shining bones
to the eyes. Now my name is kept alive in a revolving fist
ready to touch ghosts, to shiver over skin, spinning visions 

Sweet decline is a promise in night—one last memory
left in a room to believe or divide: I’m on my way. 

II:

You Know I Did It

Left in a room to believe or divide, I’m on my way
to the taste of bombs, seducing beautiful with my bones.
This is how I thunder: once tonight with buzzing goodbye.
Hell is the breath of the guard, a saint, the deepest down— 

and fast on the ground. Born in clean I sacrifice blues
for dirty, the killing choir shaking my shining trouble.
Dancing down chandeliers, they find I’m the line to cross
dropping confession to check dead for electric farewell. 

Your sentences begin in faith, the sweeter ghosts
beating a promise like familiar night. Still. I go under
and it’s happened again: The heart is just an hourglass,
grains echoing into the sweeter miles. I need more. 

Sink right in. I’ve stained my dress to burn this peace;
something bit beautiful. And I trust that promise.

III:  

Echoing

Something bit beautiful, and I trust that promise—
I found a saint living in my prayers, fighting memory
and I gather hell in this divide, resist a sweet bruise.
I know we die: Our eyes end confession, D.O.A. 

I find my faith in the ground, push into thunder
where my heart is holding your choir, the night skin
of skies where I’m dying in name and in your care;
I feel circling voices, hang chandeliers in every room. 

Dancing is breath, the muted ghosts of simple farewell.
And I sacrifice miles, the hourglass breaking a song—
something good to honor the bones in my chest; I heal
alive and I’m left to refuse the buzz of a deeper line. 

Here I deliver me from hanging wonder, take blues;
I pretend to light the candles in my last familiar dress. 

This is a found poem. Source material: Foo Fighters. In Your Honor, Disc 1. Roswell/RCA, 2005.