Created by an unbalanced particle in the primordial white noise and a vaguely foreign sounding last name Executive produced by a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation – formerly a logging company – before that, white ash trees surrounding a clearing where people used to fuck each other's brains out, bash the same brains against rocks while the next generation watched waiting their turn, told “when you're old enough” Directed by a drug-induced gut feeling. Directed instinctually without editing. Directed by asking random people on the street, “Do we make conscious decisions is art a way to give ourselves choices and feel how being human should feel?” Produced on a budget well below the poverty line.

This is the beginning of the story, when there isn't a story. Pages haven't flipped like seconds no longer ticking. Was there comfort in the sound? And then you're rolling downhill. dirt cold as shade, cold as wet fingers and rocks flying everywhere. you were running from the descent of your boulder, from your perpetual zenith. You'll feel the stone against you again. I promise. I'll see her again: I used to want to every day. a cold sunrise every morning, it was just so much light in a window. I almost fell out of bed to meet her. I fight against entropy. I laugh and stay angry. I fight and argue with myself. I shout a poem in my living room, burn it in my kitchen. I leave the exhaust off so that smoke will stain the walls. I fight against death and feel nothing, becoming a dead thing myself, blank-faced at the funeral, the quietest one there for months, I lie in the softest inertia until I can only see the end but keep going just faster the stone spins on a finger. It wobbles as it slows. it starts to feel rough against your skin like you were waiting for. It'll drop. In the end there's no story. Nothing is learned. A papercut. Flip the book over. Tear the pages out, press them into rocks.

So i waited for you to learn what being stood up feels like because a canceled plan never leaves the house because i can stay alone for hours and no one wonders at the empty chair So i waited for you fantasizing about small talk, our smiles and silences, learning the kinetics of disappointment the translation of potential energy to awful stillness. So i waited for you hoping you'd show up unable to ignore the pedestrians in the window as every car that passed made me wonder what kind of car you drove. So i waited for you if just to be disappointed if just to feel something if just to be able to write this poem i left it on the table, with the second coffee i didn't drink. the crumbs that i played with and flattened drew pictures i asked them to leave it all there waiting for you. i had an expensive meal, i wanted to leave you the bill I ended up paying up front. i left a big tip. i picked up this poem from the table knowing you'd never see it.

Listen: in the meditation of the breath the nose talks noises to incense a jasmine prays, swaying in rapture and exhales something like “amen” closed eyes tasted God, tasted the soul like wet grass, the back of the throat look: i was shoved by divine intervention standing in the street reading a bible and last night i forgot to be alone. i talked love and history with a garden. i drank the wine of morning dew, broke stems as my daily bread. leaves and leaving: i felt the holy presence reaching for itself. i felt whole as roots entwined through soil, embraced across statelines.

–For S.S. I haven't thought about suicide since the last time I thought about suicide – two days ago, I fell in love with the Doppler effect: incoming traffic blue-shifting the red light, the frequency of the sedan's approach ricochets between me and the bumper, and the aluminum sky caught my eye like everyone I've ever loved I stayed still and pretended my attention away. I've been happy before – I know what it feels like. I'll be happy again – I wish I believed that. I'm always so tired, always running a circular track in my brain. Frantic pacing erodes into a trench, a feedback loop and sound doesn't travel, frequency upon frequency upon (I'm not going anywhere. thisisbullshit thisisbullshit thisisbullshit i'mbullshit) I can hear my own voice bounce back at me distorted into an anxious buzz (youstupidpieceofshityouuselessdumbpieceofshit youworthlessholeinbarrengroundpieceofshit) reverberating as I approach, following my footste- (no one will plant flowers over your grave) When people don't hear from me for a while they clear their wardrobes, pick lint from their blackest suits. When I tell someone to put the gun down, part of me wants to take it from them. When I tell someone not to jump, part of me forgets I'm afraid of heights. When I tell someone not to overdose, part of me loves getting high. I guess what I'm trying to say is this body is nutrient-rich and bullshit. The part of my brain that loves itself is cracked – full of it. Someone called me cute today and I kept seeing a smiling stranger in the mirror. His teeth were crooked, but he tried not to lie to me.

"True, a great work takes up the question of its origins and lets it drop. But this is no great work. This is a sketch sold on the strength of its signature, a sketch executed without a trial." – Ben Lerner, The Lichtenberg Figures my writing has lost the element of truth in it capital T. the strength of a fire at night, the weight of a creation myth. my writing is cold, the way the Earth was before blankets, planning so much for the trip the actual departure feels like travel photos. this is the element of self-discovery in poetry: i'm never as happy as I think I am, i'm never as in love as I think I am, i think too much and it distracts me. embers tattoo my arms and i only notice scars. my flesh burns with an animal smell but i pretend not to drool. the detritus of biological machinery survives the post-apocalypse. ghosts in the machine are sloughed by nuclear fallout and some intuition makes me raise my head, sniff the air, watch mushroom clouds sprout like fungi as I try to rationalize. ashes whirl like a herd in migration. i appeal to logic, i appeal to thought's attempt to explain itself, the head's attempt to join the heart: calling after the herd as it leaves me, "Do you feel me, people Do ya feel me?"

The most powerful works of art are born of necessity a cartoon bee sells erectile dysfunction medication in the commercial break between a mini-climax and the powdery sketch of an overdose a handgun is pressed into my solar plexus a black face mask revealing only eyes and mouth as if eyes and mouth are all that are needed, I believed the urgency choking his words, as if he were pleading but im choking myself to feel a pulse a sloppy heartbeat against the moment of a poem. Drugs can't help me get it up. my self-consciousness is a flaccid ejaculate smears the honest release of poetry tells the disappointing child “We planned for you but I love the accident of your brother.” i promised myself into silence, remembering the economy of language. the absolute, unthinking calculation of a bullet's trajectory and the lyricism of my nervous babble. i broke the silence to tell a joke. the punchline emptied me.