This will make a great poem

I tell myself

through eve carrying gold

to swaddled breather,

tucked like a loved infant

beneath the edge of a distance

that feels closer than it is.

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

behind a garden-stained altar

as I play the piano at the sixth funeral

in three years; the black and white

is all history, all unequivocal

(at least).

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

as her lipstick bites my cheek

and her tongue tells me

we were born to feel good,

to be nameless, 

to come, to flee

and repeat.

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

when laughter opens my breast

and my friends put the stars

between their fingers 

and put the sunlight

between their grins

and put my body 

between their limbs.

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

after midnight wounds

sip their coffee at dawn

while I consume 

the cycles of mornings

until dusk brings her own feast.

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

while weather falls

over my nakedness;

sometimes I am cold—

sometimes I am hot—

sometimes my skin rots—

sometimes my skin is a bouquet—

(I’ll get my apparel ready).

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

during conversation:

four lips, heavy teeth, 

and two brain-heavy skulls commencing

the massacre of silence—

Everything unspoken is left

in gore. Everything unknown

has a bare tombstone.

(There is hope for heaven

and for a poet to play the piano at the funeral).

(Seventh time).

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

as I lie with loveless lover,

as I let strangers become more (as more becomes less),

as I let them return to strangers (with a shirt on my floor— how strange!),

as I get lost with inhale,

as I collapse with exhaling gaffe,

as I regret the mirror,

through shrug and humor,

through brevity and another meal,

through blunder, question, and 

something I’d like to call romantic.

This will make a great poem

I tell myself

or at least I’ll be able to laugh about it :)

-Iris