23/30: HAIKU ON PRESSING PAUSE
To pause Netflix when /
your loved one takes a phone call /
is an act of love.
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To pause Netflix when /
your loved one takes a phone call /
is an act of love.
I make a promise to myself, and like a law, I exist not to be broken.
Though I know breaking. Whatever the reason you have for going
where you are going, I think it’s best you leave an hour before sunset.
Time the drive home with the sun’s low descent towards the horizon.
Keep going into the sky. Take the long way home like an oath to remember
how far you have come. I’m running out of time. I’m trying to show myself
the meaning behind all my tiny moments. I’m in love with the miracle of detail.
With the way I tell a story. With the way a story begins with a voice and a purpose. Keep going if you can. I’m here at the end, and I’m miles and miles past worthless.
Bubbles play ballet in the parking lot
A little girl travels by her own breath
Down the street, the swing set is busy
Throwing laughter like a pendulum
The sun is everyone’s friend
The parking lot at H-E-B is full
No one is left at home today
Everyone is falling in love
Flowers at Home Depot
My mother watches me reverse
From the boy on her wall
And out onto the road
The tree in front of our house
is the biggest it has ever been
I trust my little brother
I’m getting better at hugs
Not quite a perfectionist
A student of mine once told me
She likes I’m not a perfectionist because
Perfectionism
Is just a hologram of ego
A-ha!
Look at all my substance!
Seriously, the weight of my heart is substantial
Watch, I can win arguments without raising my voice.
Watch, I can go a whole day listening
I’ve made up my mind
Life is a good idea.
Son, the first time you come
to Flavor Town, you will want to eat
everything. You will look
at your hands
memorize the size of
what you can hold.
Only fools rush in
so wait for the invitation
learn to love food
by the dance of heat.
A woman’s body is not for you to eat
not for you to pick apart
but to ask for the recipe,
to see what you need,
in hopes of being needed,
to be worthy of her kitchen.
I don’t care how hungry you are
you don’t get fed
just because
you hear a
growl.
Don’t just show up.
You need an invitation.
Make sure not to chew
with your mouth open.
Are you hungry?
Are you hungry?
Are you hungry?
Are you hungry?
Do not confuse
I could eat
for
eat me.
Do not confuse
I’m hungry
for
I’m hungry for you.
I beg of you. I’m hardly a perfect man.
But when the food is hot, wait your turn.
Just because your mouth is open
doesn’t mean you get fed.
When you hear
it is time
to break
bread,
think of your mother
washing your plate.
You don’t always
get seconds.
You are not even promised
first.
If she doesn’t want you
in her kitchen,
say yes, Chef!
When she says her body is out of bounds,
say yes, Chef!
You are, after all, a guest.
You cannot savor the dish
until she sets the table.
I am sitting under a tree when all of a sudden
form matters. The branches of my body
interrupt the sky so quietly, I cannot
understand how my
almond skin can crack into a thousand pieces
and still be enough to snap the sunlight
when all of a sudden I remember
it is Spring in Texas and I am a sap for
seasons that surrender and people that
remember how to
too.
On days when the wind is a wish,
it is impossible
to trace the blue in the sky without
becoming it. I kiss a bluebonnet
with lips light as fever and the entire state
begins again.
I set my sun hands against my body
and break into myself to see what
fruit is left.
I am forever
finding fields of lost treasure so most days
all I think of is the buried bloom and how this
must be what the earth feels too when we
consume her heirlooms and do not tell our
our tongues to slow dance in chew.
When Vincent Van Gogh saw Almonds blossom
he did not think of me. He thought of his new nephew
and of life, beginning again. Ol’ Vince saw almond trees
blossom against the backdrop of everything
we know as home and heard parturition
part his paint brush into
Have you ever wanted to
borrow the blossom of some other fruit?
I swear some days, I am a mango tree,
or a man made of mango, or maybe just some
other man. Either way
I’m familiar with being a sweetheart,
with eating my heart out of some other
body until all my blood cells gush gold,
and now I am better than I once was
the best of me is what happened when
the rest of me stopped sleeping in graveyards
and started digging gardens. Now all
the hard that once was
laughs on my lips,
the soft flesh of what is left
simply lingers like a first kiss
or a last breath.
My mother told me I was the first kiss of spring
so I know how to surrender my mouth
without unbecoming. I denounce the wreckage
of every previous season because all the winter
did was tell me what I was not. All the autumn did
was love me to death. All the summer did was
make my heartbreak humid. So, yes. I want
To be part of spring’s announcement. I want
To feel the flowers finally firework
inside of me without having to set myself on fire.
Can anyone tell me
What it means to see a beautiful thing
and have your first thought be
“please don’t ever leave?”
Can anyone tell me
what it means to see yourself
as a beautiful thing?
I have waited most of the harvest season
to manifest but only because
I respect the process.
I gave myself to graveyards all my life
but when the sky surrenders
itself to love like it does,
what else am I to do
but fall in love in with myself too?
Texting the girl who I once
drowned all the blood in my body
for, I type into my phone
my dear but the damn machine
puts my dead instead
and my stupid thumb hits send
confuses enter
professes epitaph and
now my bones tap
nail in coffin without knowing so
even my mouth begins
breaths impossible to cough gone
so many things
born to exit, is this what
makes love turn
my insides into
water slides?
because it remains
even when the river
tells it not to stay?
Anyway, I misname love
death and kiss the both
of them like family
because they are
because familiar is a fever
this brown boy boils to remember.
Even in the spring when
frustration falls pretty
out of blossom and the wind
wins your heart by
blowing the broken away,
even then,
the harvest will seem unremarkable
when what’s inside of all I do
are the seeds of rotten fruit,
listen.
I don’t need to be reminded
of the ruin. even when I make
it a habit to have it for breakfast,
I don’t always taste the disappearing
merely notice it the way it complements
everything my mouth has to say.
My dear, the way I die every day
is by loving this way and my dear,
death is the next best thing to
snapping
these sappy-ass
heart strings
which was inevitable,
of course, the earnest in me
like the rest of me
is a product of eventually,
like the all of us
who will not last
but love like we do,
and oh that is my favorite part
to love something to death,
you put a breath to both
and lose yourself in the
afterglow.
When the dance floor found out most of me
makes its living by breaking
and not busting
(or was it bursting?)
moves, the linoleum licked
the grease from my ankles
(or was it grief?)
gathered all its teeth to say,
Take this sad boy away.
I want to say this
happened years ago
but we all know I am repeating history
for no reason but to pass the time.
I am twenty-two and tired all the time,
but preserve the pity, please? ‘Cause
My favorite part of the day is
every. The gorgeous every
that eats things first, time
second and then, of course
men. How many men have
had their hearts for dinner
and not known it ’til the
exit? I expect morning breath
but morning beauty is a gospel
I still have a hard time drinking
along with my coffee, along with the
cravings, along with the music
I cannot help make sad, oh
the sad music I make my own
is just too gravestone to stop
playing. If I pretend I do not need
solitude or sorrow, I am not saying
love will save me. I am not saying
the rain makes me weak,
I am simply lying all my bones
across the dance floor like
fresh linen and there is a spring
in my step and suddenly,
I am bursting a move
that makes me
think I do not always have to
lose myself
in order to
love myself. So
will somebody please
take this sad boy away?
The problem is I’m wearing a watch that isn’t mine
and still checking the time like it is and suddenly
everything matters. Every second stutter steps
trying to say, “Hey, you sure about that?”
But tonight I am sure. Tonight
all my uncertainty leaves the waiting room
and gloom is gone for good. Tonight
I am in a ballroom with all my favorite people
I am all chandelier and sure I’ll pass the sugar
Which is me saying, tonight is sweet,
and your hands are careful cantaloupes
Which is me saying you are my favorite fruit.
Yes, you.
It took me twenty-two years to hear
the heart
doesn’t have to be sweet to be eaten. Tonight
I am grateful that teeth touched me without tearing
or taking the bloom with them. Don’t they know
I’m still arriving? That the days begins and never ends?
That when my brown skin blushes gold, I tell
it to stay? And sometimes it does
but sometimes the blood is too familiar
so I make a bushel out of the burning
and wish it didn’t ring like ritual. Wish it didn’t
ripple so sad ship like.
I listen to a song by Manchester Orchestra
The lead singer, Andy Hull
heaves anchors from honey
and calls it song. Sings
The invention of the ship
is the invention of the shipwreck.
So I am both the ship and the wreck
Should I start over? Okay. I’ll start over.
Hi, my name is Zachary. I am not a ship but
the first of me is the last of something
pretty.
So I am a shipwreck.
Should I start over?
A POEM A DAY 