Let’s say I’m coiled by the part in the Al Green song “Love & Happiness” after the toe tap beginning when the guitar twang lifts a musk of mmmmgh into the air

Let’s say you’re talking to me when this happens and yr feelings bruise but I literally can’t

hear you

and in fact I no, no my finger to yr face when you

or that drop in “Mine” by Beyoncé where she says “no rest in the kingdom”

(note to self: write pop song called “Once, Twice, Three Times Beyoncé”)

the shreds of Al’s voice Bey’s  deep tufts of gauze stuffed in my like chakras

I have the vague feeling in the thoroughfare of my thought process

like I care what yr saying ghostly

recognition of the fact that yr getting insulted, but srsly? Give me

a minute.

This absence of reason—but a flood that feels reasonable to me—is this I wonder is this, natural?

or does music turn me into a sociopath?

My roommate Danny says music makes you gay, but only some ppl realize this is happening.

from Nature Poem

My singing teacher says, just focus on yr breath.

I don’t know how to explain this next part, other than to say I don’t find breathing very relaxing. Can’t you see I’m trying super hard not to focus on my breath? I’m trying to forget.

I look up at night thinking

and getting dizzy so I have to sit down

How many of you are there, up in the flat sky outside the city.

Vibrato is great on a lake with the doug firs pointing upwards, but I can’t help it I miss the city. I miss the city when I’m in the city. Where am I?

That’ssssssss, okay, that’s fine. She says. Move to the country of yr breath,

but you still have to sing the note, and the next

one and the next.