I am going to live for a very long time
my heart agreed to this, several beats ago recycling one’s systoles is an art at which I am fine
as is avoiding arrest for being murderously shy I’ve often craved those who provide a perfect dose of disregard but when the neighbors muzzle their autistic daughter before allowing her to climb the sequoia, my diffidence disappears “hi guys” she tries to scream it’s taken me years to get from here to there when saying hello I nailed an apple to her tree there are all kinds of teachers I laid my books beneath its boughs Les Miserables, Pilgrim Bell, And Then There Were None my question: what does one really need to stay alive
I’ve eaten butterfly bones, licked the sap from a broken limb learned that beauty can cost a lot of memory openness can make stuff fly those are prayers I scratch into myself every morning, watching for signs of healing hunger and scabs keep me unspecial
self-esteem gets boring from up here and I hear music in the way things hang I have renamed each star in each constellation and I am writing sonnets for all of their monikers
it’s hard to find enough words that rhyme with love shove the dove above sounds like a liturgical broken record
I’m ok with that because I am ok with that because I am ok with all of these phrases that keep saying ok ok ok it is you are
and this is why I am going to live a very long time you should try it that is, if you want to keep finding your heart hung on a tree, bleeding little towns of blessedness Hillsboro and Amarillo and Ogalala and Snohomish and I could keep naming all the villages I could keep peopling them, too, but that’s an entirely different poem and process and I hope you’ve already heard the way that you hum I hope you know what a civilized breakthrough the borough known as your body is how its engine runs on wubba wubba or whatever sounds you need to make to keep yourself ticking
tell me about your sounds, and I’ll tell you about Joseph who made it to 110 even after life in a well, in a cell, and lots of weird dreams I’ll tell you about the time that I was so sick, I thought I would die then, the title of a poem came to me, and I wrote it down
I am going to live for a very long time