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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.

Richard Siken

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Richard Siken
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: February 15
Poet
New York City
New York
Happiness
Idiotic
Sound
Miserable
Tell
Mouth
Wanted
Sounds
Love
Mouths
Blame
Joy
Maybe
Blather

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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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Do we simply stare at what is horrible and forgive it?
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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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I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.
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I am singing now while Rome burns.
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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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You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not           harmless. You are not                     breathing.
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We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much.
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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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Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.
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When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.
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You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room.
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Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
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I don't know where I end and the world begins. My best guess? Skin. It's the only actual boundary between the body and the world, between a body and any other body.
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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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I'm bleeding, I'm not just making conversation.
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The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.
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He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.
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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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The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.
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