Trenches Our Hearts Have Dug

Before this
I was just hands kissing pockets in the night,
Before.
Just a restless junkyard piano dog,
Fuming like a declaration of war.
I was just
Dead life,
Killing time,
Before.

And then it was the horrible shame
Of losing eating contests,
Punk Rock and Frank Sinatra,
And the moon,
Being itself again. 

It was flames across the room
The size of the Brooklyn Bridge,
A bit like drowning.
It was the prettiest war yet.
A plane, an open hatch,
A falling bomb,
And a cloud shaped like a mushroom.

It was
First kiss
Apocalypse.

Time was you'd find me in a moonlit bedroom,
Swirling drunk with your scent,
Keeping warm at your body,
Furnace that you are,
And every inch of skin, a bullhorn,
Screaming for touch.

So be my strings
And dance me.
Dance me steady like waves.
Dance me hard like street.
Dance me slow like honey-suckle.
Dance me crazy like straitjacket.

Move me in clock steps
With star-pasted eyes.

Because if seeing is believing
Then touching is the altar where believers worship
And when I touch you I feel religious.

Some days inscribe themselves to your parts.
It's as if they autograph your bones,
And there’s that workshop clamor inside your chest,
The buzz saws beneath your skin start to spinning
.
Behind my eyes it will always be:
Scarf Grab Chapstick Kiss.
On the bottom of my mouth:
Tongue Swirl Cinnamon Taste.
On the inside of my wrist:
Run Scream Laughing with Belly Ache From Funny
All Umbrellaless and Wet With Sky Water.
In my gut:
Humble Beach Knees
Praying to Sea Swallowed Ancients.
Chest like a chalkboard
Scrawled with my conquered heart,
Your Holy name.

But I've run out of legs to carry me now,
So I will sail on, until I sink.
And when the shadows fall
I'll grow me a sailor's beard,
Leave these rotten cliffs
For the companionship of the sea.
Bring your fanciful tridents and let me sink!
I'll find my death with watery eyes,
Blink back the whole of the ocean's salt tears,
Sucker punch the moon
With a brass knuckle gaze,
Dream of you dancing on Churchbell Sundays,
All mud and silk,
Swimming through cornfields
Like a last kiss that desperately wants to happen,
But never will.

Because you and I, we are running from always
And we will spend the rest of our lives
Trying to catch our breath from the rooftops,
Hearing unexpected music,
Noticing the flowers that remind us of each other,
With that feeling in the guts like running full speed downhill,
And the sky tilting slightly to the left,
All the while wondering
If we were ever truly
Awake.