James Diaz- Three Poems & Photo

This Emptiness you've Gathered Up in your Arms

Bottle up

that long neck of the shore

line across 

geno-typical space

from now on I'll hide

the indentation 

the water you seek

move mud into boxes

underneath willow of breast

how rain slides from mouth

into streptophyta 

into nowhere at all-

which came first,

pain

or the memory of pain?

Are you still standing in line

for the bathroom

at the county fair

your green hair raising suspicion

your eyes breaking hearts at the tilt-a-whirl

when you puke you call it punk rock

but when I puke you call it feeling sorry for myself

agile finality to gripping curtain cusp 

you can laugh for now

breathe easy

but the moral is another place

another time

gas station sodium light

liquor in a brown bag

unshaven legs 

yelling at the cops

in a ripped X-Ray Spex t-shirt 

“I've seen your blood rotate

inside of the earth, your cartoon infinity

your land of plenty 

turned to shit cuz you've made the whole planet

immaterial!”

carried away in cuffs 

teenage sounding voice

echoing for miles

in the dark thicket of a hopeless town

& as bruising as it all was

we'd still do it all over again

you and I

full of piss, blood and shouting

right up to the final scene

the settled score.

Monty XIV

each shadow is the longest

where I live 

near the birch wood

off of the interstate 

& my hands are crooked

like memory

let out of the stables

tumbling

each tiny stone

across the deep blue

and tell me this

if love were a choice

do you think I would make it

in this way

cobbled knot of light

at the back of the stove

burying my poem of you in soot

the boot blots the moon

& soon you will be so tired

& the road will not rise

but settle / the bottom of pond

like a shimmering heart

you naked I imagine

lacing the silk curtains across

the backbone of weeping elm

& how could I ever hold you

without cracking completely

open

here, and here, and.....

I can't carry the next word

but I... so wish... I could...

to your lips & you'd drink

for hours & hours &...

my hands 

would glow 

with all of the light 

you left there...

Monty XV

The truth is how you travel

the is rest how you live

one hour, pure sky

no one hears your heart beat

still fingers tracing hesitation

across the mirror 

deep religious eye of nothing

on the door

the road won't always

let you merge

so you crash into a  field 

& what has become of your dreams

shatters infinitely there in the dark

you pick the parcel of air

you want most to breathe

& say her name three times

Monty, Monty, Mon...

though the third blanks you out

mind winded off shore & her memory high above you

think of this, you aren't the matador

the chase is inside of your body

glimmer bound sluice of steam

floating in the east

& when it suits you you'll return

as you were before

a bit more weighted shadow around your eyes

everyone knows love is blind

but what you've never understood

is how just when you think you couldn't

get anymore alone

you do

& how when you do

you think of her & your head feels soft inside

like the clouds just entered through your ear

and made a small straw bed in between your eyes

and wove pure light out of you until you slept

& how when you slept

so did your desire,

so did everything you couldn't have. 

Bio: James Diaz lives in upstate New York. He is the founding editor of the online literary arts journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in Indiana Voice Journal, HIV Here & Now, Chronogram, Cheap Pop Lit and Foliate Oak. http://heroinchic.weebly.com/