Jellyfish

She said "you are an astronaut clipped from the mothership
You are a jellyfish with no lips"
I said listen, shortstuff:
I skip my moon rock across your puddle dive.
I'll kiss your punches with my nose.
I bet you smell like butterfly

but I bet you dream cocoon
and I bet you never say the word 'fuck'
but we all know you do
My heart is a runway
I've been staring at this sky since my love took off

Will you be my friend?
Will you poem me a porchswing?
Will you punch me in the touch, just once?
I need to reset my bones
swingset my ribcage
so the next time somebody pushes me away
I'll swing right back to that chisel with my marble spine

Go ahead, build me
Go ahead, throw me at the storm like a fisherman's prayer
Do you ever think about God's ears?
Wonder if the levy broke a promise?
Wonder if the wrecking ball was trying to run its fingers
soft across the bricks
but its head was just too heavy?

Before you become my friend
picnic with my rubble
roadtrip with everyone I left in the dust
do the laundry from the last time I was loaded
how she found my trigger and we woke
with the sheets pulled above our heads
praying the mortician could make us pretty
None of us are pretty
but our ugly has an alibi
and our gorgeous has a baby sister
a sand collection or three harmonicas we keep blowing off
for that flute we carve from our wrists
Put your lips here
Tell me there is music in my blood
then tell me there is more in my light

Hang me chandelier from the last night
I believed this life had to hurt so much
I am done kneeling in the church of steepled smokestacks
Done stargazing train crash

Give me windsprint
Tell me my fingerprints are the shape of ripples on a frozen lake
Tell me my coal mind will never collapse on my heart
I'll tell you these poems
they're my birthmarks
and I came this close to having them removed once
even kept that voice-box cutter hidden in my shoe the day that flight took off

but the runway
it's made of marble
made of gush
made of windmill
made of salt
and there is a sea of hopechest in every word I speak
praying to be open by the night
with its belly full of anchors

full of yield
Pull the shield
from my wingspan
Teach me how the candlewax says thank you to the flame
Tell me how your mother says your name like an orchard going bloom,
Angela
A doctor once told me I feel too much
I said so does god
That's why you can see the grand canyon from the moon

we are a telescope a riverbed
we are empty lockets melting into gold
we are hearts breaking bread
Fold me in the napkin poem
Pull the tinsel from my hair from all the past I cannot let go
My gills are adjusting to the air
The story husk peeled from my bones
My bones know the song of our tears
dripping from the faucet
ticking like a metronome
I know there is better music
Even in this cabin full of fever

tonight I'm catching nothing but the lightning bug
My body is a mason jar
transparent as a jellyfish
I wish for a heart you can see straight through
for a voice that glows in the dark
and a few really good friends to skip moon rocks to