last night was so dark, i exhaled a smokestack.

Have you ever coughed up darkness?
There is an ocean bed that rests between my palms
on days the sun doesn’t have enough courage
to protect me from the clouds.
Love is blue,
and don’t let my children’s books fool you,
rain is not.
The essence of the heart is not red or softness
or bread on butter as we all imagine,
or would like to.
Once, I put a microscope to my wrist,
hoping to understand the gear shafts
that tick-tock my pulse,
but they guessed at my intentions
before I had time to adjust the lens
and escaped to my eardrums,
there,
they told me secrets not meant for eyes
like how the rhythm of the human biology
can never be incorrect,
but it can be inadequate,
and how the cadence of our heartbeats
can sometimes depend
on the velocity of the tears of God,
with these references I support my belief
that rain can only bless speechless things
like a horse’s water trough
or fields that understand nothing of emotion.

I saw a picture of a ribcage split open,
this is how I know that we carry
thump-thumps the color of a cloud-home,
when I wrote this yesterday
I wondered at
how many different words I can use
to describe the heart
and how many to describe the sky?
More than I have ever found to explain God
but not nearly enough,
so record this poem as a lack of creativity.
If I am any basis for comparison,
may I test the measure of your chest, too?
Does yours have a paperweight nucleus like mine?
Is it a sinking life raft that has every reason to float too?
We are not heroic fairytales.
The ground below us imagines what
we would taste like softer.
It has become so hungry,
it has forgotten how to eat,
the way love remains elusive to those who have been lonely
all their lives.

When I die, they will find a pot full of pennies in my diaphragm
wishes I swallowed when I should have been stargazing.
I pray the autopsy will make someone else less poor,
although I know the mortician will be struck with this jar
like an affliction,
like a deaf man healed to hear,
who cannot say hallelujah, for he knows not how,
and my pennies are pieces of smoke.
There are ghosts in my lungs,
they are looking for my heart,
they are looking for yours,
so record this poem as a warning bell
or a raindrop playing the piano.
If you must feed the darkness,
tell it to eat everything red inside you
for the heart is a piece of the sky;
even demons cannot drink what is poisonous to them,
when it rains I will cup my hands,
tell them my chest is not a vineyard,
but the lagoon between my fingers
holds everything they ought to and will not take from me.
every time they do not leave,
my breath looks like steam
the roof of my mouth tastes like clouds and clockwork,
I hold precipitation behind my eyes
the way soldiers hold extra ammunition,
my breath always smells like thunderstorms and seaweed,
have you ever coughed up darkness?