arrhythmias is a long-form, multi-part autobiographical poem charting the movement from desire and devotion
through rupture, inheritance, memory, and survival toward a continually remade self

an exercise in clarity after blur, it asks what remains after intimacy and abuse, what can be carried without possession, and how to love what cannot be kept

in white dunes & red sands, in the midnight garden, in the sharp tangle of black hair

we fall into wanting mouths

porcelain tongues tracing familiar paths of hunger

so much of us is about this search

that thing that's killing us

at last, we crash into the edge, the penumbra of self

pretending it’s fate

pretending

choice dressed as inevitability

i still remember your lips

see the single-strand of saliva suspended between your mouth & mine

a looming silver complicity and the beginning of belief

where we learn what we can where we can how we can while we can

learn of teeth & tongues

of sweetness & salt

&, the cost of saying yes to those deep, fixed appetites

in a sense

i want to live here

want unflinching revelation

want to collapse & fracture into art

where every single thing grows larger than itself

before i can really consider it

you lean on your lessons, pivot & pirouette away

a faraway loon cries

all maps tear & tatter

&

for now, maybe for ever

i fight the urge to tongue my dry lips

hoping to taste american spirit

█

the thing about living with a dancer is you learn

how to plié

how to effect the perfect rond de jambe

&, the complicated give & take of the pas de deux

i fumble & stumble at first

the sincere awkwardness of vulnerability tills the garden

you meet me here, where i am

show me how good it feels to see

& be seen

with a teacher’s red marking pen

the most intimate of gestures are taught

… .. .

an arc - 4th position

an ache - 1st position

an almost - port de bras

your voice - the air

your breath - a ritual arabesque

animal hands & hearts

syncopation

dancing between cinders

over gasoline rainbows

until black & honey screams rose

& closed-fists broke

all that was

(… .. . sagrado . .. …)

the thing about living with a Cancer is you learn

you learn how to turn-out, how to show-up,

how to move between the cinders

how to blow smoke-rings in god’s face

you learn of the discipline it takes to self-destruct

how everything is curriculum

how july flame - a lifetime - burns in every moment

how to wear your sorrow quietly

&, eventually, how to let it all go just as it came

never you/rs

█

god & mother & father share a spine

like turrell like time like faith like the desert gloam

it glows in those kamikaze genes

i saw your father in sanitas valley

could almost smell your inherited hunger & hash

i don’t know if he recognized me

or if it was like that first christmas together where he couldn’t remember my name

maybe it was more like our final december

with your insta posturing & tito’s vodka & raised hands & gaslighting & the absurd spittle on your upper lip & your cold abuse & the absolute impossibility of your reason

if there’s a way for you to say “i’m sorry”,

to say you prefer circles to spirals

that “i understand”

tell me its name

i want to understand, too

i was raised to believe all those kids with all that long jet black hair

dressed in heels & spurs & adopted a thousand yard stare

just to prove they deserved loved the most

their warm wanting flesh under santa fean skies against gunmetal roads gave way to the comma of the eyebrow, the question mark of un besito

clarity is poisonous to those who live by the blur

without it silence becomes a violent throne

where you assume a casually cruel pose

damage moving through you like groundwater

invisible, ancient, & heavy with someone else’s sin

now fully yours

on a long enough timeline, memory always fails

but death often gets there first

still i remember entire nights i want to take back

to let go of Joy for the perfect symmetry of nothing

but back & forth is a way to move, too

fleeting & intangible

i have to remember only so i can forget

what can be - fixed

what can be - final

what can be - fanged

i remember what it’s like to heal

& i remember such teeth, my dears,

you have never seen such teeth

█

july flame

i know this desert, this heat, but just can’t place it

it feels like a lifetime ago

give me a second, it’ll come back to me

it’s right on the tip of my tongue

but my mind goes blank

wait, what i was saying?

where was i going with this?

i think we’ve talked about this before, haven’t we?

you have to understand that things were different then

i was different then, the sands & fires were different then

now, some days just blur & it all runs together

i can’t keep track anymore

but, i remember the good parts of summer

even if i try not to think about the rest

i blocked that out

or, maybe, i just forgot

either way, time & temperature just get away from us

i don’t know why i remember all this

i don’t know why i can’t forget

i guess it comes & goes

feels recent, feels unfinished, feels hot still

some days are better than others

i thought we had more time

i thought i did, too

i should have written this all down

something i could go back to

it wouldn’t change much though

maybe just a little something like

how to find shade

or remember when to open the windows & shutter the blinds

i want to remember perfectly

& to forget completely

we aren’t even a once a holiday check-in anymore

we’re barely the space between light & reflection

the calculus & color of distance

cheap & complete silence reigns

the quiet before during & after an aurora

the kind found together in under those wild & impartial desert nights

i can no longer find the words to name things

& yet

& yet

█

34 candles gutter at the wick

float between nowhere & goodbye

i find myself once more

the only animal in this ruby & black midnight canyon

everything slows & opens up, again

i run tongue over teeth in search of american spirit

&, just like i’ve been taught, allongé entire years into dry empty air

knowing how, now

in this world of flesh & teeth

we must learn to kill what we love

& love what can die