The Moon’s Account Of Doomsday And The Girl Who Flipped The Switch
I know the girl
god used to make molds from
when he needed to start a war
her wishing well eyes
will never stare as hard
after you sheath your sword
and she only listens to bloody lips
whether it’s from holding your tongue
or your latest kill
don’t pipe up unless you’ve got
organs between your teeth
‘cause the first time I said anything
she sent armstrong to put a flag on my chest
and I was there
when they tested her in Valhalla
she slept in dandelion beds
until she awoke to the sunrise
of polished breastplates
and with only the infant irrelevancies
of a girl who is part scratch off
they fell on their swords
to avoid her worst
now the history of man
is a bedtime story
the earth
is an empty roller rink
and all she will do
until cultures need cleansing
is line her bed
with the obituaries
just yesterday
she was building a stilted playhouse
over the atlantic
to map all her secrets in the kitchen
before she burns it down
to tell me
the flames will flicker out
once we start falling
and as the earth inhaled
our burnt clothes and ash
glowing red, she said
“there’s no water on the moon
don’t lie and say you’ve been crying
don’t eclipse and call it a favor
you’re just getting in my way”
and like a masochistic child
trying to break her favorite toy
you beat me until I looked like a paper weight
laid me on your late fees and bible studies
and waited for forgiveness
something I used to pray for
dying on foreign battlefields
in a war I had woken up to
I gave her reasons to believe
that i didn’t redeem my sins
with just repetition of prayer alone
that just because I wasn’t foolish enough
to cut myself
when the enemy was under my skin
doesn’t make me any less a warrior
baby, i’m a fucking juggernaut
i was the riptides
before you were washed up
and i left Aphrodite
before you stole her blush
so don’t tell me
you aren’t afraid of the dark
with a pocket full of comets
and stardust under your fingernails
continue worshipping the static of baby blankets
hide in the clouds
and try light up this beach
with your pocket gods
see what happens
when lightning strikes
a sandcastle
give me a reason to break
more beautifully than you ever
imagined breaking me before
I don’t want a hairline fracture
for a smile you’ll know is broken
even though you can’t see it
start at the jaw
tear the conviction from my throat
let this poem sound like death throes
and wear it like a iron maiden
so they won’t know who to feel bad for
right now I am
a million miles away
watching you push the front lines
closer to home
while the fight swallows your throat
it isn’t taking long
for the pulp to make you choke
but you won’t let them build over you
there is no glass ceiling crowning
your head underwater
dive deeper
this is what you were made to do
the great wars that have come and gone
were just handles on how to get vacation time
Nagasaki stunk of your perfume
that August morning
and Hiroshima has your puckered lips
burnt into the drop zone
you could make the earth emptier than
a vietnam lottery tumbler
if you really put your mind to it
but the silence makes you sober
and you know it
you know
you can’t just go bar-fighting your way out of my chest
without a guilty chaser
there’s evidence in the sky
where it’s dark all the time
she started counting stars
Joseph,
Gina,
Robert,
Jared,
Andrea Andrea Andrea
she said:
aren’t they beautiful?
yes.
but aren’t they dead?
to me, they are.
I told her they must be stars
bright until they’re not, planets until they got too small
and then they disappear
but we don’t all explode when we do
some of us…
fizzle out.
I watched you run out of gas
while hitch hiking out of the craters
he smashed into you
and left my umbrella there when i did
tell me
when God gave you the blueprints for clouds
was it coincidence or neglect
that lead your first and last words to me
hit like a hurricane
tell me
when the earthquakes came
promising to suck the earth under stone lips
didn’t you grapple my eyelids
pull me from god’s jewelry box
and say
fix the gravity
fix these scars
fix the stars
spit out the blood
suck it up
keep me here.
didn’t i turn my cheek
didn’t you fool me twice
how could you call the gravity between us
love
when you were lonely, and
a consequence
when you tried to get away
while her house was becoming a lean to
the glass canyons had melted
the static lungs of the stratosphere all knew her by name
and after the sun set
on the gravity buckled knees of Poseidon
and Pangaea was a single swing playground
she ran out of eyelash slack
and floated into space
looking down,
I landed in the city
barely bright and no longer keeping track
of the stars I’ll never again see
she watched me flicker out like a neon vacancy sign
and turned quickly
she hid her sharp tears
that have become our meteor showers
so no one knew she needed saving
for another thousand years
