highku

she gave me a choice
her or alcoholism
I chose being drunk

Un Tren! Un Tren!

I gave up experimenting with
train sets when
the breaker wouldn't stay flipped.
It's hard to move on track
when electricity doesn't exist.
You aren't
impossible,
but loving you is.
I let the Pacific Ocean run
up the rocks to
slap me a life-awakening.
And when my glasses got
wet, I saw water
prism bricks stack
up and mortar
themselves with salty breath.
I don't have patience like this.
Come down from blimp-clouds.
Trickle through bed rock and
basalt. Clean
the crops.
Promise me a rainy season
so I stop these ankle-
extensions dancing.
So I quit praying at 60 mph.
I wonder if oil would make
you thicker, like
feathers,
or slick.
And the smells of rewound tapes
leak out of our arguments.
Next time, you have the fight
and I'll read
the transcript. That way I
won't set fire to your
repeated mistakes. I'll just
love the way
your cross-examination makes me
feel guilty for moving my tongue.
How many stenographers did you hire
before you found a deaf one?

Train tracks rust in
the cuffs of my jeans.
This great escape led me to
a spine stronger than mine.
I performed the transplant, and walked
back into you upright.
Rearranged your veins until your
heart could finally beat again.
A shakey-handed surgeon with
ball point scalpels and morphine
in my touch but it wasn't enough.

Your Colosseum held peanut cans
filled with springy snakes.
A defense mechanism for those
easily afraid of a lie.
Thank your god I was born with blind faith.
Thank mine I was born with round legs.
Lay railroad ties and I will
dream up steel
pace to keep moving through
these dried-up jerk towns.
There is coal burning in the
back of my perseverance.
I study medical dictionaries
in the headlights. But
she's running me down and I
haven't found
the chapter on terminally empty.
I'm out of time
and I'm sorry.