Listening To

Listening

To the air produced by trees
Sounds, eaten green
The wax of leaves clogging lungs

To the thoughts
of dark men
insecure and sweaty, frenzied

To conversations pureed
I don’t understand living in tiny boxes
without life, Separate

To ghosts eating coins
while we try to keep promises
and straight spines

To all the breaths
borrowed from some other being
Shallow and sincere

To solidarity
fossilized by past efforts
in the hopes of being heard

Space Travel Haiku

Sweat mixed with iced tea
Perched on a sphere, on a sphere
In space and topless

Paper Flower

Waxed paper flowers
Skimmed over lines
Dutiful tokens of an economy
of care
Saved from the floods
for reanimation

The desert tells no jokes now
We all pray to outlast the sun
If we stare at one another
our blood can reroute
Flowing in the same direction

Overlook memory
Past the rains that became salt
Past those accidents
Trunks of waxed paper flowers
Washed up and hidden
Wax melting phosphorescent

Paper flowers laugh forever
Just bleed a bit more
than you think you can