A BATTLEFIELD CALLED STREETCORE

Outside I am trembling my heart is amplified and guitar-strung the space between

us is convulsive at least three times a day I hear myself singing to myself

THE TEMPERATURES ARE RISING     the reality is our human siphoning

my wallpaper glued to your wallpaper in a collage of DNA     I think don’t think

blackoutdon’t thinkblackout there is a light filling up my socks and light is endless

light is Joe Strummer circa everyday     an impossibly funny feeling

in my battlefield my battlefield is nonsense I call it my heart a flamethrower

of nonsense tied to the back of a bus     Sometimes we risk taking ourselves

too seriously     like we are fat leather books labeled The Best Thing Ever when

all we should do is go to bed and be terrific ridiculously terrific and as heartbroken

as broken hearts     we should drink chocolate milk and pull explosions out of

each other’s hair we should turn our hearts up to rocket and sound system our

existence     because we are wailing our faces off for love wailing into the astonished

sky THE SPIRIT IS OUR GASOLINE and it feels good to take my head off

once in awhile it makes me want to build a newer world in the bedroom

a newer world where we cram sunlight into our eyes and the sunlight blasts merrily

merrily out of our mouths     we are so ecstatic that we’re gasping gasping and blue-

berry beside the record player dancing a new dance we call The Streets Are

Burning     because if we are not a levee and the music is not love what chance

do we have of keeping our hearts up? because it’s our hearts that float outward

to the sea our hearts enormous life vests strapped to our stupid faces     We are

lucky to know the obvious from a metaphor our music so tearfully obvious

we shine our body parts into a sinister feeling and glow     we glow on and on

two spotlights shining down on nothing left to say.

I ❤︎ YOUR FIRE VS I ❤︎ YOUR FACE

Every new day my friends is firecracker and I can feel your shoulders inside

my shoulders the strain is lockjaw and telescopic how I love the universe

and our muscles tearing apart how I love what we do for no good reason our

anxieties stuck in our vinyl mouths like microphones our sadnesses filling

our pants with mayonnaise     we tell each other how this version of

the world is petroleum how we are the gasoline in our blue veins O the world

is dancing and it’s so cherry we’ll tell everyone we know what we know about

anguish     it’s ferocious and it’s spectacular and we don’t care if our names

are earnest     I’m singing our names in the shower because our names are

real and terrifying so real it hurts our faces to be full of love that’s how

I’m feeling right now and I want to caress that     my love has a purpose bigger

than Cincinnati OH and I want to caress that     This is something we can

agree on: clap your hands and sing yeah it’s beautiful heretoo like YEAH IT’S

BEAUTIFUL HERE TOO and I’m telling you again because that’s affection

that’s my liver at full throttle and it’s singing and I don’t know why and I feel

forever is the second-punkest word ever invented after love     When it’s after mid-

night I wake up and I reach for my megaphone which is a blackout waiting

to happen which is called another Wednesday night waiting to happen     All my

friends are clouds and I am grateful for the sailboats in our black holes

for the music in our faces that is so Midwest it’s a garage and a parking lot

in our guts our guts the absolute beginning and the absolute end the place in

which we reach for conclusions sewn onto our hearts     our hearts suck face

and it’s more cardiovascular than bleeding more gingerbread than your freckled

soft face     All my friends are rockets and I am setting my face on fire

with a snowcone and some matches     I want to subwoof everyone I know

and rhinoceros our beautiful music call our music what we call our hearts

and swallow my favorite moments call our lives The New Republic of Hoopla

keep our hopes up O HOW WE KEEP OUR HOPES UP and sing each

other our favorite pop songs      I’m singing us into forever-hood because we

can never die we can never die we will live forever in the shade.