O quam cito transit gloria mundi.

they say there is violence
to every new beginning
so let me love you gently —
as if you & i hadn’t been both gravity-
slammed on
& catapulted off the seesaw of visibility
or found our bodies buried in far-off
distant hillside cities
with Leviticus breathing down our backs—

let me love you in olde english,
or family recipes
in every language that hasn’t yet ruined
the season’s first snow or
the meaning of Yes
let me love you
the way my grandpa loved whiskey:
shamelessly & with abandon
let me make watermarks in your
hardwood,
bump my glass hip to yours.

there is a four poster bed in my chest
with your handkerchief knotted to its banister,
& i am splintering, bent, & bowed low
like a tree in monsoon season,
proposing with all of my 26 rings:

how about Oklahoma. or Utah
maybe a rocker in Southern Georgia or
porch steps on the coast of Maine

because you & i? we have both
done it Right
too many times
& I want this, so
Baby, get messy with me
let’s do it all Wrong.

leave the tired to their ruts &
invent something other
than the wheel with me
I don’t want anything labeled,
processed or pre-wrapped,
don’t want Forward
if it’s toward what we already know

i want slow motion;
let me slow dance you in the kitchen
while the artichokes boil over,
I wanna boil over with you.
paint the kitchen the color of our water
damage

forget children,
I wanna raise a barn with you—
put hammer to nail &
barrel-buckle our bodies to community

I want the blister of handmade
on my heart &
the dirt of homegrown in our bed
& if it’s true that only fools rush in
then fuck — take my hand
and my whole life, too
because you have made me bold enough
to think that even backwards is better
than what we’ve tried to bend ourselves into

& it’s true that i’ve got
fistfights in my belly
for every coward that’s handcuffed
their hurt to loving you
& i know you’ve never charged extra for baggage
but this body is a suitcase &
i don’t intend on letting you carry it, no.

walk beside me.
let your brack & tweed
stand alongside the midwestern yearn
of my urban swoon,
show me your swagger just by
pop & locking your garter belt

i want to write your name
in the dust of a train car’s exhale
somewhere south of the Mason Dixon,
kick wasp nests deep into the hills of Julian
where you found that bomb &
still made it back to show me how to ball yarn
& crowbar myself open wide enough
for the helium of your hearthatch
to hot air balloon us
into the chariot of every afternoon’s
swung low

so let’s go —
lungshock headroll off the dock
& into crisp lake water
of the next sixty new beginnings
all hands &
no hesitation.