Poetry

By

James Diaz

There Is No Easy Way To Live

Have you begun naming the body again?

Aren’t there so many other places we should be right now?

First and foremost, turning our pockets inside out

loss is imminent

starting all over is imminent

phantom of specificity, of aloe on the burn

how deeply I loved you through the emergencies

through the late night suicides

you are not abstract, touch your body

it needs you to pummel forth

indefatigably, to live, meaning: I am here for you

I will not let you choose death

there is a thread traveling from my heart

it is unidirectional, wisp of a name

a word spared from the flame

hold onto this, grow old with me

bear yourself a moment longer

it gets better,

we get through the impossible

because to not get through is a luxury

and we are too poor to indulge the easy road

our spirit eats flame,

we are carrying volcanoes in our bellies

we recognize life, we refuse to abandon this country

to dissolve the border of ourselves

we become the safe landing, the generative survival surviving the unsurvivable.

The Murky Mid-Run 

Worlds touching

among worlds

hands of their wilderness

stirring the peppermint

into the weave of the off kilter shore

fragile monochrome ether

bright as the grape vine

your body wraps itself around

what comes first ought to

leave later,

this little I do know

we aren’t the last word on any of it

the androgynous base

is a breathtaking all-bursting-forth

who was I to pretend to be so settled

a frail disappearing polemic

an imploded river, this poem

and this heavy grain

excluded

a manner of speaking without owning what is said.

James Diaz

James Diaz lives in Upstate New York. His poems and stories have appeared in Ditch, Pismire, Cheap Pop Lit, Collective Exile and Epigraph. You can follow him on Twitter @diaz_james.