Bicycle Tires (revised)
I just ate shit
tripping all over your bicycle tires -
I swear I never saw them, in fact
I’m sure they sent silver tendrils
To tangle themselves up in my tendons
Cause Lord knows I’ve been finally healing
Though now this heel just keeps on peeling
Back the layers, winding skin
Around broken arrows
Too weak to shoot down
Any sort of god from my sky.
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So fault me if I’m wrong
But a body crashing yet still catching
Shouldn’t ever be enough
To cause the type of earthquake
That shatters stained coffee mugs
Still dripping with morning dew -
Size-mo-graph me up
With twitches of a needle charting
Every heartbeat
That shakes this city to the ground -
I’ve never been around
Long enough to see the peaks of poignant
Snow tops turn to avalanches that bury you
Beneath unstable wooden porches
But I sure am willing to try and find you there -
I’ve learned to hear your voice
Every time the floorboards creak;
I always swore you kept your secrets
In the splinters sticking up, waiting
To embed themselves in my sole.
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But of course, by now
I’ve tripped over every spoke in your wheel, searching
Cause my feet don’t seem to know the difference between
Metal rods and concrete
Or a bruise from a scratch -
No matter how hard I try,
I can’t stop scratching
At the scuffmarks that make
Dashed lines in the shape of your smile
On my cheek -
my cheek bones were never meant to be a
Dirt road for you to pedal down
Though my mouth was once filled with gravel,
But I refuse to grovel -
I’ve just pulled all the limestone from my stomach
And laid it flat out in your garden
So I might have a stable place on which to stand
While I admire your beauty -
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I’m used to falling,
My toes catch corners all too often
And while I’d like to think I’d land in your flowerbed,
Cradled there by blossomed petals,
Held there by grounded roots,
This ground is instead rooted
With dead vines still grasping for soil
Too quick to take hold of my bones
For me to think of myself
As anything other than fertilizer
Cultivating viable vegetation
So you can breathe in clean oxygen
Or fill yourself with yellow pollen -
Go ahead,
make me allergic to you,
Besides, after all,
I’m still terrified of bee stings.
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You left your bicycle tires
Stranded without a frame
Outside in the rain
And the rust just kept on building
forming a tarnished layer of grime
So that the pure silver
Never even had a chance to shine through
And when they caught me,
I thought I too had become tarnished
And I thought you’d think grotesque
But if you’ve taught me nothing else
I now at least know that
Gorgeous hasn’t ever been spelled grotesque,
That beauty isn’t spelled bleak,
That a rusty bike is still a working one -
Every time the chain falls off
We just need to release a little tension
In a feeble attempt to allow
Your happiness and
My happiness
To spin fluidly in the same gear.
