James Diaz
You Know My Ways
Venus Beach rose in me
as you sank into darker waters
these bones / the winning ticket
how hard we fell
and laughed
and slammed
into shit we couldn’t fix
look at this carbon dating on our hearts
a hundred years of aspen Colorado frost
and who got there first
the lover or the fighter
a great battle
with god-only-knows-what
ghost on the other end of the line this time
would it matter if we knew all these dark things
were coming from us, these hands
these hungry eyes that can’t get enough
haven’t you had enough?
a mother who gave a damn might ask
I was hatched from a moonstone
the river rubbed raw into starlight
I got the details wrong
I tried everything
you saw this light rise and then fall
and no one could warn you of that heavy dip over the bend
you just had see for yourself
how what saves you and breaks you
is sometimes the same goddamn thing.
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor of the forthcoming anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2018). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and Prison/confinement. He resides in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.
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