Titanic

I grew up in the town that recieved the first distress signal saying the Titanic was going down it was the only thing we were ever reknowned for in fact we prided ourselves and our failure to save the sinking which is maybe part of the reason I prided myself when drinking my first fifth of whiskey at 11 years old it's cold where I come from I learned to drown young at 14 I showed up to my 8 a.m. high school class so drunk that my art teacher took a month long sabbatical to reevaluate her ability to make the world a better place when she returned she had a face like a gravestone with an already passed death date I sometimes wonder if I killed her which is maybe part of the reason I sometimes paint this world prettier than it is have you ever had the feeling you owe somebody somewhere a really good reason to live to grow old to be 98 and a half to laugh like broken glass so whenever folks walk barefoot they get hidden pieces embedded in their souls I've spent too many years sewing my tears together with thread and hanging them like christmas lights spent too many nights watching the sun set on the edge of a knife don't wanna let myself or anybody else drown anymore so call this poem shore so when the message in the bottle finally arrives it's not gonna ask us what broke us in half it's gonna ask us why we survived why did we dance when his beloved died why did new orleans carry saxophones on their backs when they swam for their lives why did the childeren search the sky for the moon and their wounds were still open as hopes suicide note when the stars were still bleeding why did frida kahlo sculpt the paint brush from her scars my mother my mother says the real thing about chairs is they keep you looking up says forrests may be gorgeous but there's nothing more alive than a tree that gross in a cemetary and sometimes its the cup thats half empty that fills the heart so full it could pull a bow above the strings of a combat boot and make it sing like God cutting loose on the dance floor of heaven two years ago my niece's eyes kept the needle from my sisters veins for the very first time if I could collect that day the sweat from her shaking palms the cramps knotting like a noose in her gut I would have the stuff of monarchs taking flight of night when the smoke of burning flags floats across our borders like a kiss it hit 170 degrees in the locked trailer of the trunk the women locked hands and sang so hard the Texas desert shook so hard like the hearts of the folks who would find them still alive why did when we dance why did new orleans carry saxophones on their backs we have cried so hard our tears have left scars on our cheek bones but who finds the way home by the shortcuts you wrote your first poem on a homophobe's fist you wrote your first poem on your mother's dying wish I wrote this line on my own slit wrist sometimes it's the metal in the wind chimes that reminds us how soft the breeze is sometimes it's when we're lost that we realize we arrive that the soul is a mozaic from a thousand different pieces I will meet you in the cracks I will meet you when the heart tears itself in half to fit the sun inside I will meet you where we shine where we shine where we fucking shine