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Letter From My Heart to My Brain
Its okay to hang upside-down like a bat,
to swim into the deep end of silence,
to swallow every key so you can’t get out.
It’s okay to hear the ocean calling your fevered name
to say your sorrow is an opera of snakes,
to flirt with sharp and heartless things.
It’s okay to say, I deserve everything,
to steal the things you need and mourn
everyone you did not put your name on.
It’s okay to bow down to this rotten thing
that understands you, to adore the red and
ugly queen of it, to admire her calm and steady rowing.
It’s okay to spill into a company of wolves,
to break the plates and bite your hands.
It’s okay to lock yourself in the medicine cabinet,
to drink all the wine, to do what it takes to stay
without staying. Its okay to hate God today.
To change his name to yours, to want to ruin all that ruined you.
It's okay to howl like a tower of blood,
to feel like only a photograph of yourself,
to know the pavement craves your angry bones.
It’s okay to need a stranger to pull your hair and pin you down,
to hide your love beneath a blanket of teeth,
to bury the map of your body inside a pocket of soil.
It’s okay to want your mother as you lie alone in bed.
It’s okay to eat everything that sings to your hunger.
It’s okay to brick to fuck to flame to church to crush to knife
to rock to rock to rock to rock to rock and rock.
It’s okay to wave good-bye to yourself in the mirror.
To vanish into The Sea of Silent Prayer.
To say, I don’t want anything.
It’s okay to despise what you have inherited.
It’s okay to feel dead in a city of pulses. It’s okay
to be the whale that never comes up for air,
to love best the taste of your own blood.
Letter From My Brain to My Heart
This house is dirty, but comfortable.
Behind each crooked door
waits the angry weather of a forgiveless child.
I cannot help but admire this horrible
power of mine, how each small thing
can become a death: the lost house key. A spoiled egg.
A howling dog. There is no prayer or pill for this.
It is a ruthless botany. My mouth might as well
be buried in the yard. I have no one to blame.
Not the mother who sang to an empty cradle.
Not the Dog of Spite who bit my hand.
I have nothing but this long-legged sorrow,
who trails my every joy like a dark perfume.
You have my permission not to love me;
I am a cathedral of deadbolts
and I’d rather burn myself down
than change the locks.
