I am going to ignore the alarming news
and sleep until the apocalypse.
Right now, in this dark, gentle moment
The sun is out and clouds are to the south.
The full moon is touching me.
And before you know it the rains will come back
and our laundry and lunacy will be ruined
once again.
The sunshine never lasts here–
like you.
And while I hate to use the word fail in a poem,
Who are we kidding anyway?

By Allie Buck

I can no longer write to you
you took all my words.
Counted them,
reread them and filed them away.
My vocabulary is too limited,
I use the same words over so much
that they become grimy and smell bad.
But now you have quite the
collectors edition
of my broken epics
disjointed, subluxated
dislocated
love songs
written for no one in particular
and eaten by birds.

I like the early morning
The way it looks and feels
and tastes in my mouth
before it is fully formed
and is still goopey.
There is no longer anyone to impress.
Only the mosquitos are still here.
Every fabric has forgotten its ability to get dry
And I can’t ever decide if I want to stay or go.
I am just a soft object for raindrops to
land on
This is my only purpose here.
I wouldn’t want anyone to hurt themselves.
The monsoon has talent scouted me.
It has need for my fleshy body.

Smash the scuttling doubts with a book
thick with pages of presence.
Wash their voices down the drain
with sand from your body
and oil from the polluted Earth.
Make nicely your green monsoon bed.
Turn up the volume of the storm
to drown out and drown
opinions
unasked for and unwelcome.

The sun has drowned,
gone to college
and died
But this has always been the case.
The sun has not seen the horizon for many years.
They have been separated by
wars,
pollution,
your own selfish desires
and made up needs.
But now,
now they have let you and everything else
wash away.
Tonight they meet again.
And we will watch.
How will they greet one another?
Sun arms wrapping around any part of the horizon it can reach?
Or
will it waste no time and open
with a passionate kiss
that tells more than words can ever say?
Timeless, sophisticated, classy.
I would personally like to see
a handshake
sincere, friendly
but with full power eye contact
that leaves nothing to the imagination.
Where you can feel the years of pressurized ove
almost, but not quite
bursting
in eachother’s gaze.
Truthfully, unfortunately
I didn’t bring
anything appropriate
to wear to a sun-horizon reunion.

You have eaten too much
coconut cake
and samosas.
You have become
too fat for me to carry.
So I set you down here
on this wet, mossy rock.
While it stems from my own
weakness,
I will call you a gift.
An offering.
Well endowed
and bleeding freely.
Goodnight
and good luck.

It was dark, before sunrise–
or after sunset.
the days are so short now.
The bread man was squeaking,
but he had nothing to sell.
He just wanted the attention.
And
In the dim, saturated air
I mistook you for a tree
old and gnarled.
I leaned against you think frame
and wept,
or laughed
I can’t remember which.
Now that the sun has risen
the power has come back on
I am more than a little embarrassed.

There is a strange smell following me
Tearing down roofs
and leaving general destruction in its wake
swallowing feral pigs and cat-faced dogs whole.
Just when I was about to tell you
everything–
even about the dampness that has seeped into
our thoughts–
you left with the smell.
Now I am only alone with the damp.
Odorless and enduring.

When you journey to sleep at night
you can know with assurance
that your presence
unearthed
some part of me
buried so deep
that sunlight never reaches
But
the jungle vines always reclaim what is theirs
eventually
ultimately
Your footprints are
already
overgrown
as are my toenails
Easy to remedy.

If you could write me a letter
that I will never read,
Would you?
Would you do that for me?
Stop with the looting,
put down that lamp
and write.
Everything you didn’t say
just so I know,
what could have been
is now captured.
Endangered butterfly words
prinned to paper with ballpoint
pen
ink.
Now take the scrap sheet of paper
and shuffle it into
the forgotten corners
the maid never cleans.
Meanwhile, I put my letter to you
ironed, framed
in my recessed alter
with a fresh mala
offered everyday.
Coconut?
I knew you would decline.

Ok, It’s true. I love you.
I’ve loved you before time began
when clocks ran backwards
and the sun was just an infant
rocking in the cosmos.
But no one was watching.
Have I always known it?
Yes, of course.
Some pocket of knowing must have been in a fold of my body
this whole time.
But I was too fat to see it.
I only just realized it this evening.
Watching the sun sink all the way down the sky
To meet the horizon for a much belated
reunion.
And here I am before you know
–knowing.
Fully, with all of my being–
to wish you a good night.

What are you going to write about now that your heart has grown back?
Yesterday, the other day,
I was in the garden
and saw your heart
I thought it was going bad, so I plucked it off the branch.
Now look at it.
It’s sprouting in the glass on my kitchen counter.
You are so irresponsible with these things.
If it weren’t for me, your heart would have rotted from the
inside out,
infecting the rest of your organs.
Do you promise to take better care of it now?
That’s a girl.

I wake every morning
with an orange-shaped hole
in my ribcage.
A small void.
The grandchild of a black hole.
I eat bowl after bowl of
my mother’s famous– infamous–
rib-sticking oatmeal
but nothing fills the abyss,
this hole in my chest
and it will consume you and everything
else that gets near it.
Please stand back.
I’ve ordered a warning sign– in orange
but it hasn’t arrived yet.

There is an entire universe
in one raindrop.
While that may be the case,
there is also a Dog Ball
in my sitting room.
Do stay for tea
The clouds have broken their backs
and the entire cosmos
is falling around us.
You may have to stay the night,
but that is really just an excuse
For you to tip-toe up to the
front stoop
of my heart
and – hat in hand–
ask to come in from the
tsunami.

I am a mermaid and life
affects me gravely.
It imprints its events into me
like epitaphs on a gravestone.
I lift– rub– these words from my skin
and put them on paper.
As if they need any more documentation.
It’s not fun and I don’t do it because
the crowd calls my name.
None exists.
I do it so my body odor will
remember me long after I am gone.
And it can tell its children about
the female creature it once knew.
Everyone said she was too young to die,
But no one ever said too pretty.
So thank you.

I can feel when the full moon is
eleven days away,
when a mango is about to fall
off its tree.
In short ,
I really feel that I have grown,
not as a person, but as a lettuce leaf.
Yes, I am really starting to take shape.

In my past life I was a tiger and
I peed on your grandmother’s leg.
So I guess the score is settled.