love song
These things you create, they sing
but why do the songs croon, managing such somber tones?
Like what is it that's written out of love to make all this shit so goddamned sad?
Dog always dies, best friend with mohawk, always dies. An overdose,
or kill every dog you see, no emotion — 'cept for love, love love!
Love the singing, love the signing with love at the bottom of the page that's riddled with blood,
better to have lived and have been killed or sent into poverty perpetual than to haven't lived at all and all the different pieces of my watch come apart and I forget what time
it is, time to eat, time to make love to someone I'll second-guess in the morning, time to wake up, time to fake
on love,
fuck, "hey, good morning, I'm making scrambled eggs."
not mattering as matter as mattering
I will keep reassuring you that, they won't tow your car, hun, up until the point where the sun says that it's had enough and pulls out a 12-gauge that would make anyone from Missouri quiver in their jeans.
We left your car at the welcome center, where at 4am, a couple, whom through my rear-windshield looked as far away as any real jaguar on YouTube or real life really, traded stances from yelling at each other like they could have or should have been to sleep at that point to
hugging
tenderly. As if they already were.
It's been about 12 hours since then, and I keep thinking to myself: where did the weekend go? Hiding in an attic as Monday MONday MONDAY methodically bands C4 all around the foundation with about 20 menthols stuck in his greasy smile.
and soon we'll meet that fate like every other day has an awakening that's reaped spiraling down to a moonflower wake.
and hun, I don't actually know if they'll tow your car. Maybe they
could. I choose to believe they won't, like I choose to believe that time is circular with
the exception that
it's the weekend until I'm well and goddamned ready for it to not be anymore.
And I'll yell that to the sun and keep it on the edge and I'll hug you and I'll hug you and I'll keep us both off the edge in the meantime.
I don't know if they'll tow your car, or if we'll make it to next Sunday.
But I don't know, they probably
won't. & we probably will.
Mm. Bluejays.
cheating on suicide
for Jinx
When paper and letters stop being worth collecting — a tumor in my lungs
I take a long drag, long (aloha), on a machine that allows me to bellow smoke like a signal
to pathways of old, to become a cloud, condensing and fleeing towards the ground
faster, falling
faster, and to unsafely inside I love
you
The alcohol pretends to be a strawberry and I am a cube of pineapple
The kitchen pretends to be a ballroom and I am no longer afraid of the acid in my throat
It burns away my wallet and I am fucking free
and I'm free faster and faster I am falling, dragging every second along the asphalt
my feet scrape and I remember every single time I broke skin
Falling faster and
faster I can utter the words that allow me to speak no further
I look with my silent hands, they reach for the wind at my face—the fog—and I cannot taste it fast enough
because
in this race to face death
it's that I found you. I keep
keep finding
you.
now and like the smoke, you appeared out of my mouth, building in front of my sight
with a swiftness that eludes every single bruise and cut I've hunted down
in the pit of this place, I get that darkness fails me or, I failed
it.
An organ, a belt. A bed, a place to live — Leaves.
Miasma escapes my nose and it is replaced by the scent of the earth.
I'm falling I'm falling because I was out of space
and it was fast
and it was hard
but easily said, easily held—
a register—the bell. seems that I find that I
just don't care anymore.
that —
that there's someone else.
we're going to Saturn and we're bringing flowers
there's something I need to say about flower petals
the parting of the lips /
I want you to powerwash me,
not with a hose, a showerhead that can't ever seem to be consistent,
but the way planets spill into blocks and then into ink and moans /
a flower petal falls onto your back and brings along with it the same side of the coin
that a gnat does, the petal settles upon your flesh and becomes comfortable in the same way that a gnat touches, lands, and explores us
but it's not the same, is it?
The wind sways away the flower, because we're always outside even when we're not, right? you can't escape the moon and the trees that turn blue in the breeze
— the hand swats away the gnat, because we're always inside even when we're not. right? you
can't escape the sun and the eyes and the wings and the breeze of all these things you could never bring yourself to expect, someone's breath
I want to tell you something about flower petals
the parting of lips,
once you pull them apart and peer inside, to see who it is that holds your cheek and kisses you like blowing the wish off of a dandelion, it's hard to put them back together the same way again
touch me, touch me, hold me, is it a flower, or just a bug,
or is it sweat from the rock that we've built here in the darkness?
, don't tell me, I'm close, baby — I'm close —
D.S. RandoL is driven by birds and trees, good music, and anything else with passion innate. He writes to measure a life and sleep a little better at night. Other than poetry, his interests include birdwatching, the guitar solo in Banned in D.C., and picking up trash on the side of the road. He has been published previously at the Cathexis Northwest Press and SledgehammerLit. You can also stay updated on further publication on his Twitter, @DSRandoL
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