James Diaz- Three Poems & Photo

The best thing about us

This carry on racket

I'll go 

where everyone else goes

I'll be in 

after the light

hollows under  

& you'll know it

when you see it

how more than fist 

and elbow scars

carry us across

the interstate

an absolute miracle 

to still be

alive right now

fucking world

won't go 

according to plan

need different maps

to draw the line

over a pulse so ill kept

so inside of you right now

that the outer skin blossoms like a name

you've kept hid

now stealing into the sun

don't think twice

it's not alright

but we know how to live off of very little

how to bleed without a cut

how to track & trace the things gone missing

shove them into our mouths 

full fisted & weeping

so much of the soul is carry-on luggage

what matters most will not fit

three punches in 

& your body crumbles

a voice from nowhere telling you to “just breathe”

it's been called the best thing about us

not knowing who we are.

Human Stuff

Nothing I hate more 

than having to tell you

circumstances

change something essential in us

and

where the light goes

when it's not in your eyes

I have no fucking idea

how many little deaths you'll encounter

before you find the real one

bounced checks are what my mother left me

when it's raining I forget the words for what I've left behind

I hope this finds you unwell

and knowing a great many things you didn't know then

when we loved with knives

and broken curfews

and god is what you called a cab with a busted headlight

drove us home anyway

as it turned out we had no home

dashed from the fare there on the corner

of nowhere at all

I don't forgive you

this isn't a forgiveness poem

it's a “can I borrow 20 dollars poem”

a love song without the love & without the singing

there is fire in me too

you thought my fields didn't know dark days

I came from nothing but dark days

you were always luckier with the light than I was 

you were a half inch taller than I knew what to do with

I was a bad name and I did not know how long it takes to hear yourself when called

it wasn't always shit

just more than we could handle

“human stuff”

my father would say.

The man at the 7-11, leaning in

He said, silence

put yourself in silence

he said, walk it off

until the tail lights deep blue

clings to your leaving 

& every day is more or less

devastation in waiting

until you pull two hearts from your mouth

instead of only one

and you laugh, how life still goes on

after you have forgotten all of the names 

attached to places

you'll never return to 

in one piece

He said, silence

put yourself into yourself

and hold on 

for dear light

is not long in this place

is already leaving without you.

Bio: James Diaz lives in New York. He edits Anti-Heroin Chic and has a few poems here and there like HIV Here & Now, Ink Sweat & Tears and Indiana Voice Journal.