what I saw, I saw perfectly

When no pleasant thing was lacking, what I saw, I saw perfectly

I ask him
“do you know the name of Psyche and Cupid’s child?” 

rain bathes the backdoor, exhale smoke
it’s Pleasure
like the sound of water
falling over a stone
classic

in fortune good or bad
this is how the tale
came to pass
***
First
when accused of thirst 
I don’t deny desire
pools
***
Second
your aim was perfect  
but at last instant
wounded yourself
on your own shaft
***
Last
past night’s darkness
the always night of you
this is the only rule

I can’t see 
the you of you
***
Warnings were decreed, I didn’t believe
I asked bring me to the rock
to claim these several legacies:

temperences of hallucination, grace, luck, repulsion, cycle through and through a wheelhouse of habits and tricks, softest sins, platform heels on a kitchen floor, enemies singing my name, mania, despair, patience, rapture, tongue running against any sharp object, let me wear out sincerity
***
forget language
as I laze-- heavy
in your sound
***
what was it my mother taught me
how to touch an arm
make the eyes sparkle
laugh like a room
set aflame
***
I accept my strange destiny

to fall in love, in all 
its social constructs
***
is it a decision? 
***
a man with a horse appears
in the center of a dirt road

you ask me so frequently: 
what are you doing here?

I no longer ask it myself
***
confronted with the reality of a personhood
return to the classics: love’s 
mingled with violence

light’s abyss, garlands betrothed in garlands
angels chasing moments of torment or insanity
tousled doves, hair hanging like gates 
of hell or heaven between us

you and I in the grand tradition
of pros and cons

so long as you will always speak to me
I’ve become simple in my need
***
when you come 
on my face
a rash appears
***
you know the moment it happened, you say
you pulled up in the car ordered
one walking toward the other
I had my hands on you like braille, you said 

now, now let’s be reasonable

imagine falling mouth first 
into the dining room table

slick wood grain tasting
only in spirals of lysol

I no longer know what was said
or what was dreamt
***
Some things are set by cosmic wavering
by the hand of something 
that had always already come

it was expected, you say
a coupling divined by law 
of attracting and repelling

stars and planets have gravity
one pulling toward another

and I claim I’m not possessive
***
light undulating
as we slept rippled 
a wreath of daylight 
***
you’d be adding pine trees to vermouth
I’d be using all sixteen glasses
smoking a cigarette over sauté
sinking rosily out of my dress
I tell you in reality I am a simple woman

you throw away two typewriters
say you’ve done a lot of picking up

extravagant! though I don’t adore 
a slow sort of death
***
I know there is a melody
of loving me 
but I can’t hit the note
***
what if love is only
affecting a regression

the sun falls in disciplined slats
***
you say you can’t accept
it takes this much energy
just to be decent 

I refer to wifedom
which I have known and 
known and known
***
perusing two liquor shelves

can’t you claim I don’t lie?

that’s true, you say, but you do act

a sense of play and drama
doesn’t make it an act!

I don’t lie either, you say
I simply omit 
***
if love’s always a projection
then love’s a fantasy

so why’s mine so ruthless?

to fall in love with a voice
revolving any single word

any single phrase
***
stay and you’d buy me anything 
so long as it’s a home appliance
***
at five am you wake to ask
do you doubt my love?

I answer in half-sleep
no, you doubt yourself
and let doubt cast its shadow
over me
***
renting the many rooms 
between us

I long to own
***
at your stupid table
at your stupid chairs
I am so sorry
to repeat myself

dropped between
institutions, industrial complexes
hospitals and detoxes 
ground into hardwood 
diagonals of grief
***
forget the day I cried
until language no longer knew me
***
walking soundly on invisible structures

I invite my sisters across the valley
up to the mountains 
to visit the palace our love bought

but where is your husband they ask?
how can you love a man who’s so unseen?
***
what’s the use of thinking
I’d been waiting in a constant state of languor

fall off two chairs backwards
forget a cigarette dropped to carpet
let it be known! 
I’ve not forgotten how to party!
***
I call upon the ways
romance was constructed in me
***
fucked like a city on fire
I soften the back of your hair
after want of an entire tarnished sky
***
you say am I not good to you?

but since deciding to become delusional
my expectation is raised significantly

I announce a parade, emergency!
to declare my ecstasy
singing our names in bells and roses
as I’m followed by a pack of stray cats
hyacinths, hyacinths everywhere
a mere few watch
but I demand a parade back!
***
no one calls anymore 
I have nothing to say

the chorus abandoned themselves to grief
dawned by ants that form and set to gossiping

baby, she is lost
teetering on a milkcrate
offering out pamphlets
that read only his name
thought I was reaching for a limit
without disintegration of self
to clarify how blank is purity 

but dissolved in vicinity cleansed
to whose wound is psychic of which

I keep manufacturing emotions
sometimes it’s as simple as saying it: 
I am unstable
***
you say you respect me
I ask 
respect me less
***
pick up my arm, how easily you could break it
***
each time I hear your voice
my body finds eternity
***
you speak of discretion 
I spill my drink and wish
I’d been recording this

a pregnancy test comes up blank

rain is torrential
it suits the whole affair
***
that singular me
that singular world
whose foundation lays in two

we’d be perched on pillows, sunning ourselves in spiritual clinginess, arguing first of all until first of all was hilarious, tawnied with kitchen cabinetry, we’d be sharpening objects with our backs turned, we’d be saying this is going to be like a real lesbian experience, door open to the rain, inhaling crystals in smoky liquidity, the length of night sculpting our bodies, we’d be giving birth in the shed, spilling all ten drinks, creating little theaters of sunrise and justice, waking up with no hangover, miraculously, cherry freshener hanging from the rear-view, bathing in the wide open ego, inventing new luxuries, praying for advice from the warmth of a street-lamp, when a song could shift everything, implicating the dead, when all that was needed to express ourselves was every song ever written, we’d be dying upwards, polishing our livers 

but if love is a site of complicity
lie to me 

tell me how we could exist
outside this
***
I jolt awake, think what the fuck am I doing 

in you are two labyrinths of winding ways
so cunningly tangled and twisted
that, once inside, you could never
find your way out again without knowing 
more than 
fuck or death

I look into your waking 
and in me, you look back

radiant in your hurt 
as spring, as sun, as any being
who could spout immortal wings 
This is where the story ends in memory:
love sees itself in the other
and love flees 

let the moon into my cavities
flayed by the averageness of living
bad luck vibrates through limbs, senses
each waking is a delay
my thoughts aren’t hungry
sleep weaving its form 
to limitless lowering

but when I get on
to hear your name weighed
in the voice of someone 
who knew nothing of you

to hear mine in yours again
and again to believe an echo 
could continue without end 

even if we never again met
I am betrothed to accept 

what I wanted most
was my body taken from me

we’ve still not begun*

I put away my spell today
and level with myself

when has one not killed
what it is they love
by virtue
of loving it

I know I said here lies
the disillusioned
the disintoxicated
those who’d hoped:
never again

after midnight in the grocery store
with a sudden longing
for each fluorescent aisle

in flow from sleep to day
following where the path
has been laid

each man kills the thing he loves

I could cry

but when I contemplate you
as you contemplate me
it’s like hypnosis
in that I use only positives
to hear only yes
my body, the body
of a lake

uncry for me
what does it look like to be there
what does it feel like
I want to feel how you feel
not know how you feel

how many have begged

I write the word to call upon it
pleasure
turning it over in my mouth

sex about sex
or god not about god
but sex

returning to air
to mouth
to same
I repeat its name
same

together we build a bed
greater than all of the beds in all the cities
I ask the universe, airdrop it to me

I know love is a construct
I know body is a construct
but you can’t tell me
so please now tell me:
when have I not
killed my loving

like how I think I am the fucking ocean
wanting to give endless resonance
using my song to amplify yours

No doubt, I rise and fall
I rise I fall and rise and fall

*this poem was originally published online in ‘dirt child vol 1.5, february 14, 2020’