Bone Dust

             every part

             down to gristle

             where meat attaches

             to bone—leaves hollow

                          having pushed the world away, we call it back through language

                                                                                                                               love thyself

              thy sternum tight like a cage

                                                                        W., R. & T. drop acid and go to a

                                                                            bar inside a grocery store

                                                                                   I absorb this information neutrally

                                                                                           move toward the scary

                          We slipped

               into the crowd escaping. We were first in line to escape. We were trying to fit inside coolers or buckets, get lifted out.

                                                                            They mandate

                                                                            show us a video

                                                                            try to prepare us

                                                                            (we are teachers)

                                                                            to respond first.

                                                                            I know I must not be the only

                Saw it coming and didn’t say anything—why?

                You should always strive to emit positive vibrations to others, earth, and self.

                                                    sun-filled

mouth breathing

woodpecker

in our bed

                                                                            and I think he is those things

last                                living form

on earth

                                                                                      (Hard to write a poem and let it fail)

What kind of life to not be engaged with desire up to the very end. Isn’t that what dying is—to no longer be in proximity to want?

                                                                                     I wrote, trees and non-binary (it was a typo)

                                                                                             & source of positive vibration.

                                                                                                     hear flower say no

                                                                                                     accept and do not pick it

                                                                                                     bringing back the dead

First it was the leg bone. Then dark wet owl pellets, fur and bone, tiny skull with bone so fragile it flaked into bone ... dust—bone, soaked

in bleach, bone on the back porch, bone of water, bone of light, good boy bone, bone I asked permission for, may I always be ready to

hear no:        I offer bone as offering, I shake bone around to anyone good who may be listening.

             What’s mine is yours even if it’s only bone dust.

                                               We live openhearted and without fear.

         In the triple-X fantasies,

I’m the puppy. I bring back the dead

          a sign of—what?

Surrender? Having, out in the wilderness,

         thought of you?

Invoke your

proximate sanctuary, string antidotes together like beads.

             cat piss—rancher—rearview spider—wasp nest

             dead dad blanket for the coldest nights—mountain pass—

             antelope—taking a shit under a rainbow in a field of ponies, in Oregon           (how that actually happened)

I know your secret

I too have dropped entire         days into my thigh

Nights and galaxies, termites     of testosterone week after

week slow as money even slower when it               crystallizes. I think you are

            beautiful                                                         in me

                                             small shocks I did not know I’d                    bottom for,

                                             which is not a secret.      Sometimes I imagine shapes behind

                                             my head pouring me into wood chips: me alive, me proximate

                                             to want, useful as a body for some animal part unashamed by its own rage.

                                             Why your pouch fit my jaw like that, why you only smell like that after lightning?

                                             Way it sometimes hurts how bad—desire to be bred.

                                             I close a motionless fist, forget to call you by your other name—

                                                       small pink flag waving in the wind.