Kendall Roy, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down by Justin Karcher & Kristin Garth

published in Roi Faineant in Winter 2022.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me

every night too much birthday in the big city

the craziest year of my life & Kendall Roy

that deeply broken soul, has been with me

every step of the way, like a guardian angel

with more money than I’ll ever need

but with the same taste in music, all bangers

all the time, here it comes       the white lines

here it comes the radios replacing our mouths

so every word coming out is disingenuous rhythm

something thought up by someone else

yet we still shake our hips through boardrooms or treehouses

always acting like young dinosaurs having their first roars

pathetic little fucking narcissists who started this big war 

against the world, but more so against ourselves

now watch us fall apart, here it comes

the hangings of Babylon, here it comes

the family rubble in our eyes

so every time we try to form a memory of tenderness

the flowers don’t feel quite right

but wouldn’t it be nice?

building a treehouse above your grave

where I scribble swallowed blood, all of the

depraved mistreatments I will always crave

because you needed something small to be

a sacrifice to seem a deity

I need to be the last of us alive

undulating in a dying tree

inside your architecture, I survive

I blossom here if indecently

the walls are papered velvet cashmere sheets

I wrap around the men who climb to me

up rungs I hung the afternoon I grieve

an idea of you I refuse to save

no room inside a treehouse above a grave

here it comes the white lines

here it comes       the family rubble in our eyes

Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Instagram: the.man.about.town) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright from Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). He is also the editor of Ghost City Review.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Rhysling nominated sonneteer and a Best of the Net 2020 finalist.  Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of many books of poetry including Crow Carriage (Sweet Tooth Story Books) and The Stakes (Really Serious Literature) and the editor of seven anthologies. She is the Dollhouse Architect of the Pink Plastic House.

Your Heart Holds A Violence