JAMES DIAZ

JAMES DIAZ

EVEN SO

I've only become this way

to keep myself from strangling others

I cope by quarantine

the first fifteen years

of my life I watched my father explode

like a rocket to mars

he hit every moving thing in the galaxy

including me

and my mother literally threatened

to pluck out my eyes

and bury them in the pit of her stomach

so it's not you I'm afraid of

it's myself

I know how awful I really am

so I get soft in the heart real quick

lest I destroy a few planets

of my own

on my way down

but I wager some of it is true

my love and my brittle heart

I have scabs, scabies even

but I sit well

and match the furniture too

say please and thank you

and people trust me

because they see what I want them to see

not what I keep under the cushions

knives, rotten fruit, wacky motives

dreams of annihilation

it's just--- I know how tempting the ledge is

that I back off every time.

THAT'S HOW IT WAS

I read constantly

to keep my brain

away from the window

they're burying bodies out there

I think

but it could be dead animals

could be buckets of money

tax returns

orange peels

soapy water

heavy - hot

I was afraid of closure

so I opened up a few wounds instead

goes well with the wall paper

stained

daydream fisherman's wharf

I'd stow away

but I have a complex

never travel at night

never fall in love in bars

cut my skin

so my insides can breathe

all this music of the spheres

the angelic, the fluttering eye lids

bashful complexion

scabby powder face

so I don't stink up the room

settle all my debts sonic-ally

crooner sissy

pout in the corner

ever see Diner?

I remember Mickey Rourke

saying he hated every character in that movie

including his own

because they all had an easy life

and his had been a complete shit show

hard on the knees

the brain

I understood him

like in my bones

when I'm at poetry readings

I want to hurl

into my own lap

and shout see what beautiful poems I've brought you!

if you had found me sooner

we'd have nothing in common,

it's because we were both broken

by people other than each other

that we're such perfect doppelgangers

you and I

these poems sticky between us

no crack pipe

just our mad veins

pumping blood

and getting close

to the sun

a high pre-fixed in the back of the brain

reefs spun round the legs of the dock

what if we just went

the two of us

stowed away

on that boat

salt sick

poems in our shoes

our vocal chords

hopeful again

like insect light

like paper torn and taped

and blank

I would hurl a sink

for you too

twice over

tell your demons to back the fuck off!

I wouldn't leave when it got tough

I'd stand watch

be sturdy

ready for anything

landslides, mud coughs

Kerouac wanderings

motels with no names

shadows on the wall

the world coming to an end...

WE ARE SO FAR FROM GLAMOROUS

penned psychic vows

of friendship

here on the wall

where broken winged birds flock for memory

a taste of the divine

under the seed-

earth pecked

open like a wound-will never close

how did I go so wrong

for so long?

I too have a monster

lives just beneath the skin

tells me I am ugly

and no good and

on my way out

but you called me kind once

and I tucked those words away

for my bad days

almost every night

I lie down with a stranger

which is to say myself

spirit poems barnacled

close to the bone, ready to ravage

the space between the door's edge

and the rug

with my prayers

to a god who isn't home

and worse, never was

I was so evil once, like everyone else

a hole of ruby verbs

rainwater absolutes

blood promises

deep bruises

but now

I take this oath

with you

and trust

the place

we are going

has enough light

to illuminate these words

this promise written on my skin

for no one else but you

and the night.

JAMES DIAZ

JAMES DIAZ is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018). He is founding Editor of the literary arts & music mag Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared most recently in Occulum, Moonchild Magazine and Philosophical Idiot. He lives in upstate NY and occasionally tweets @diaz_james.