Beautiful boys and girls sip water out of mason jars
Cuffed flannel exposes the ease of dark haired wrists and brown knuckles
Sitting on a picnic table
Laughing like they’re gonna be this perfect forever
Perfect being this relative thing ‘cause they haven’t washed
Their hair in like two weeks
But they’ve got hope strung up like fairy lights in the bedrooms
Of that person they loved first
They fall into each other
And I’m jealous of these bodies next to bodies
Because the moon is falling in love with them
At the exact moment that they’re falling in love with each other

A pale mouthed boy with freckles and a chapped nose
Is humming Amazing Grace
Their feet start praying loud
But then amazing grace turns into a back pocket harmonica solo
And I’m thinking it won’t take long before they drown
In the happiness of it all
I can see them choking on it already
But that just makes them want to love harder
Because they’re not stupid and they know that it can slip
Through their fingers so quick
And because they’re kinda stupid, they think that wishing
On a picnic table will make it stay

Funny shaped knees poking through faded cords
They they wore so carefully threadbare
Fabric so thin you can see their souls
The indecency of showing what matters most, like it was nothing
But it makes them so wickedly cool
That, and the fact that at least one of them can play the ukulele
And I’m blushing like it’s the first time, thinking they must know everything
But then they start talking about the world like it’s a joke with no punch line

Until one of the girls with feathers in her hair starts crying
She does it like poetry till they all wish they’d never been born
And somehow in the carelessness of tragedy
The harmonica got kicked into the dirt
So I start humming Amazing Grace
And they’re looking around like maybe it’s coming from the flowers
Because why wouldn’t the flowers start singing
When the moon’s out loving you so good.

You say we will pretend our drinks are sea water
and we will drink to our records and that bitch
who did the better butterfly.
Your brother’s car smells like rebellion,
our hair like chlorine.

The car hits on your side.
I see your neck break on the dashboard,
a wave crashing on the sand and I think,
I’m sorry you never got your first taste
of something other than seaweed and fish eggs.

We are underwater as they lift me to a stretcher.
I see your parents until I realize they’re just strangers
on the street, watching you, watching me,
like they’ve never seen something like us before.
Salt burns my scissored skin.

Our breasts wash up against the lips of a scalpel,
the silver metal shimmering through our blue blood.
The surgeon says I’m lucky,
I’ll go back to being who I was before. I look to you
in your hospital bed, see your heart monitor run dry.
I know better, we have lost our tails.

As if some little Arctic flower,
Upon the polar hem,
Went wandering down the latitudes,
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer,
To firmaments of a sun,

To strange, bright crowds of flowers,
And birds of foreign tongue!
I say, as if this little flower
To Eden wandered in—
What then? Why, nothing only
Your interference therefrom!

I want to write a sad poem but I’m not sad.
I am less than sad. Negative sad. I am looped
television laughter. I move through the trail
cloaked in bath water & the water never gets cold.
I shouldn’t be sad or sleep all day, I should lie
under the floorboards of our wagon, tell the spiders
to mind their distance, just swallow the poison.
i want to wrestle the bear that haunts your dreams
& eats our children. They are beautiful children,
in their hiking boots, climbing hills like they’ve
done this before, like they know why we sleep
on top of each other, so preious all of us humming
last spring. I want to lust for lust & your tongue
over my shoulder blades, but all I can think about
is building a snowman with your face on its white
frame. Your teeth look the best when you’re naked.
I close my eyes, count to ten thousand. I close my
eyes & forget why I closed my eyes. On the trail
everything smells green. You tell me I always want
to smell naked. A thief comes in the middle of the night,
leaves wild fruit, a note that says he found God
in a Wal-Mart parking lot. When we’re older I’ll lock
the front door of our house so tight the calcium
in our bones won’t be able to get out.

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.