this is this

i have meat in my teeth from eating shreds of brisket cold

and i fear this meat will rot if i fall sleeping before i floss

a lot of my mouth is dedicated to teeth

and those teeth are dedicated to nothing

i have unusually sour gums

& when i kiss people i love i put sugar in my mouth first 

in order to overwhelm the sourness so

that the people i am kissing will enjoy the taste of my mouth

and want to keep kissing it/me

i have told one truth in this poem so far which is better

than zero 

this is the third truth: i have no ideas for what to write about

i started with brisket-tooth because i was experiencing that

but the rest of the poem up til the first line about true things

was made up stuff

not that making things up is wrong

not that writing true things is right

not that this is beautiful even though

i think that i want to make beautiful things happen

maybe this isn't the place for beautiful things when

i am constantly tempted to ask questions like these:

"will these words hang together?" i wrote just now;

"will they have a choice?"

words are tools and they can't make choices

but like boxes, they can only fit so much in them

and the shape of the box determines what can fill it

i have no choice about what the words are filled with 

i think they are filled mainly with water but things might be floating as well

little soft beans might be floating in the water that fills words like these:

"i might wake up in a tent with your hair in my mouth"

empty out the "i";

empty out the "might";

empty out the "tent";

empty my mouth of your hair.

in my mouth are a thousand fishbones poking holes through my jaw

& they let light in & the light is pure energy & the holes look like stars

& they are the stars & my mouth is the universe & the universe is

expanding & it just did a little & it keeps on doing it, so

where is the rest of my body?

and what is this nest of your hair hovers and spins above my wrist?

i have thought these things tonight

while listening to angel olsen's song called

'acrobat' where she sings

"i love the way you take a walk

and all the things you see with your eyes

oh to be that distant thought

some growing meaning in your mind"

those things
are truethings
all true things
fromthefloor
uptotheceiling