We Were Emergencies, Buddy Wakefield

We can stick anything into the fog and make it look like a ghost.
But tonight let us not become tragedies.
We are not funeral homes
with propane tanks in our windows
lookin’ like cemeteries.
Cemeteries are just the Earth’s way of not letting go.
Let go.
Tonight, poets, turn your ridiculous wrists so far backwards
the razor blades in your pencil tips
can’t get a good angle on all that beauty inside.
Step into this
with your airplane parts
move forward
and repeat after me with your heart:
I no longer need you to fuck me as hard as I hated myself.
Make love to me
like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.
Go slow.
I’m new to this,
but I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop
without jumping.
I have realized that the moon
did not have to be full for us to love it,
that we are not tragedies
stranded here beneath it,
that if my heart
really broke
every time I fell from love
I’d be able to offer you confetti by now.
But hearts don’t break, y’all,
they bruise and get better.
We were never tragedies.
We were emergencies.
You call 9 – 1 – 1.
Tell them I’m havin’ a fantastic time.

  -- Buddy Wakefield, "We Were Emergencies"

The Intimate Nature of Knife Fights, Wishes, Steve Connell

Three nights with which to wish three wishes.

On the first night I wish for love.

It is a love not like I've had, but like I've always wanted. One with the sturdiness of steel to support us. One chipped out of ice that withstands the hottest flames we can throw at it without melting. It is a love of grand design, immaculate, like I was told love was. Like a spider's web, infused with air and light, weaved with spontaneous precision and set off perfectly by crystalline drops of water. refraction. and twilight.

But alas, wishes are for make-believe, so the wish did not come true.

Three nights with which to wish three wishes; now I'm down to two.

Three nights with which to wish three wishes.

On the second night I wish for love.

A perfect love born of two imperfect souls. A love that surprises you with flowers and rubs your feet when you're tired. A "good morning my lovely!" type love. A love that has headaches and argues over movies but still holds your hand and gives you the last bite, that kind of love. The love that goes to work late, stays in your arms. The love that tells secrets over ice cream, a laugh out loud to the sweet spinning sky and dance on the side of the road because "that is my favorite song!" type love.

An embarrasing, awkward, imperfect love. A limpish, gimpish, lame little love with no need for "excuse me" and no time for polite. That gets messy and sloppy and has fun in the doing so. A wonderfully perverse little unique little lovely that takes pride in the clumsy-um-umsiness of peanut butter and limericks and dances badly, so gladly, so badly from the inside of a mirror. That is the love I rolled down hills of wishes for on the second night.

But wishing is for children who haven't learned to not have fun.

Three nights with which three wishes, and now I'm down to one.

Three nights which with to wish three wishes.

On the third night I wish for love.

Hard earth love. Early morning cold love. Love of chapped lips and running noses, "make do with daisies; I can't afford roses" type love. A love of give and burn, live and learn, spit and rage and get better with age. That is the kind of love I am looking for. A love that is up all night with tears or with secrets. A love that finds solace in the heartache of fighting, knowing it relents like wheat against wind and moonlight and soft apology and gentle kiss. This is not love that needs the sunset nor weeps only from extravagance but rather in brightest day or darkest night, roof of steel or floor of mud, take shelter in my arms and my promises, take nourishment in the succulence of my lip and measure the horizon by the nearness of my gaze.

That is the type of love I fractured an eyelid wishing for on the third night.

Three nights with which to wish three wishes, now what'm I to do?

I wish for someone to send me love, instead they sent me you.

And now I got no more wishes. All I got is you.

I got no more wishes. All I have got is you.

I got no more wishes; all I've got is you.

Huh, sonofabitch. Realization.

My three wishes came true.

 -- Steve Connell, Wishes, The Intimate Nature of Knife Fights

Elbows, The Intimate Nature of Knife Fights, Steve Connell

It has nothing to do with sex actually. It has to do with developing an intimate knowledge of elbows. Sex without that is meaningless. It's an activity, like playing Nintendo, merely hand-eye coordination, cause-effect relationships, and lasting. For most people the first person they had sex with serves no importance, save being the first. He's an asterisk, footnote of a young girl's journal, an afterthought. Beyond the first is less, it's midnight fumbling and stains on the rug. Incidental blurs of skin. Lying alone: with someone beside you. Memento. I want to more than last....When you breathe... I forget to. I do not want to be incidental. It's not enough to be noteworthy. I want to know every freckle on your body. I want to know from the tone of your voice that you need another blanket. I wanna be unextractable. It is not about sex. And it starts with the elbows.


 -- Steve Connell, Elbows, The Intimate Nature of Knife Fights