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I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?

Richard Siken

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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
World
Hope
Afternoon
Easy
Tone
Better
Degree
Somber
Even
Strategy
Tones
Thing
Degrees
Strategies
Kind
Please
Suggesting
Good
Maybe
Handful
Life
Talk
Entitled

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You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.
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I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you say I'll give you anything but you never come through.
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He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There’s a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place – well then, game over.
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We laugh & it pits the world against us.
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I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
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Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?
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The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.
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I woke up in the morning and I didn’t want anything, didn’t do anything, couldn’t do it anyway, just lay there listening to the blood rush through me and it never made any sense, anything.
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Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
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You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.
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I wouldn’t kill your pony. I’d like to believe it, anyway. I’d like to believe I wouldn’t drag you out in to the woods and leave you there, either. So far, it hasn’t come up.
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Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it.
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We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.
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Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.
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I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.
Richard Siken
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Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks
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He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.
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The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.
Richard Siken
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Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
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I'm bleeding, I'm not just making conversation.
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