Noelle Kocot
3:30 a.m.
I never thought I could feel this way,
As the moon stretches out across the tundra.
My early life, in all of its bleakness,
Leading to this final eclipse.
There was a geometry to be crossed,
A bout of desire across bent space.
I was I and yet I wasn’t
And all that was occluding
Me was like a horse stuck
Between my teeth. The toppling steel
Cities overshot the traffic, see,
The tiny bugs in your eyebrows
Didn’t belong to anyone.
That bitch is furious.
If I could make this go by faster,
If I could try harder to keep up,
Someone’s eyes would throb in sympathy
When I used to say the world.
5/30/06
Every day can’t be Christmas,
Mon cher. We are tires
Without spokes, so silver
When the day is silver, too.
Every day we walk
With trees sprouting out of engines,
We wait for some clear answer
Funneled through our sacred
Wants. We want. We can’t.
But who is to say that candy
Will not fall through our hands,
Take what we’ve spoken
In hushed voices, streaming silver
In the blighted day. I never knew
You. Or, I knew what is loved
So dearly, a knitted sweater
Wet and hanging from some
Mangled hanger, without any
Chance for burn. You told me
Once that our lives were stolen.
I know now that our lives were free.
Damage Control
Quiet, I am a machine
With emotions.
Exposed, I forget who I am.
Cider eyes have sunk
Like punctured rocks.
Did you ever unfurl
Yourself beyond the scribbles
And whisper to the shore?
We are sentinels with
Our ears torn off.
You cannot ghost me
Into pixels. I’m on
My own here I guess,
Like all the times before
The starry threshold
Of two alarms sounding
Became one. Only one,
But one