- “Lost in My Mind” – The Head and the Heart
I stare at my reflection every day—long enough
tonight to realize that face is my face.
I am contained behind that freckled face.
Have you ever looked long enough to feel
unfamiliar?
That’s
me? For a moment, imagine the freedom of possessing
another’s body.
- “Every Other Freckle” – alt-J
I need to confess something.
I have never had a blow job—I promise, but
the sun sucks me off every time I leave the
shade—tickling me up to an celestial
sneeze.
We begin with soft kisses—you and me, but
the sun climaxes in a slow, blistering
work of drawing up festered mounds at every
pore through my ginger skin between
every other freckle.
- “Bible Belt” – Dry the River
this man was homeless
I think he rubbed his own
shit between his pants.
his belly billowed out from
the stained shirt that groped for
the waistline of his weathered khakis
my eyes were peeled from my menu.
he stood exalted with our undivided disgust.
I had no choice but to inhale his putrid aroma.
the smell was so unbearable
that it pried hands from forks and silenced
appetites as every savory scent was unclothed.
he stood there confident in his refuse
until we gave him our corporate
tithes to rid him of our conscience.
the stench still lingered in my nostrils
I gagged in the bathroom and
wondered if anyone else was, too.
- “Resonance” – Home
Brains are bewildering—how they store
sounds down to the specific note, frequency.
The unique creak of every stair, faithful like
the one song I know on the piano.
My father’s beckoning whistle, a voice
piercing through the strongest wind.
His trumpet found my ear through a thousand
pines in the whine of my motorbike.
The siren that dove into the dusk’s flaming
shot-glass lake to pull me from my boyhood play.
If ever my heart finds itself out of beat,
put the defibrillator away.
If I die early and when I am buried deep,
It’s like gravity—I will have no choice but to live.
Just tell my father to whistle.
- “On the Shore” – Slow Skies
He cranked up his boat before dawn
on a stormy January 5th. The crappie
bit best in choppy water. He drove
through the rain to his favorite overpass
on Town Creek by the state park.
They found his bass boat face up in
the middle of the lake. They found
his body face down, backed in a slue.
The overpass bridge was twenty feet
from the muddy bank.
He hardly ever buckled his life jacket.
I’d seen him carry out this ritual many
times—hooking the boat to the bridge.
The shore was so close. His hand was so
cold in his casket.
I held his tattered bible wrapped in tape and cried
Lord, let me be a man who doesn’t leave the boat.