Ocean Vuong - Ode to Masturbation lyrics

because you were never holy only beautiful enough to be found with a hook in your mouth water shook like sparks when they pulled you out & sometimes your hand is all you have to hold yourself to this world & it's the sound not the prayer that enters the thunder not the lightning that wakes you. in the backseat midnight's neon parking lot holy water smeared between your thighs where no man ever drowned from too much thirst. the cumshot an art -iculation of chewed stars so lift the joy -crusted thumb & teach the tongue of unbridled nourishment to be lost in an image is to find within it a door so close your eyes & open reach down with every rib humming the desperation of unstruck piano keys some call this being human but you already know it's the briefest form of forever yes even the saints remember this the if under every utterance beneath the breath brimmed like cherry blossoms foaming into no one's springtime how often these lines resemble claw marks of your brothers being dragged away from you you whose name not heard by the ear but the smallest bones in the graves you who ignite the april air with all your petals' here here here you who twist through barbed -wired light despite knowing how color beckons decapitation i reach down looking for you in american dirt in towns with names like hope celebration success & sweet lips like little saigon laramie money & sanford towns whose trees know the weight of history can bend their branches to breaking lines whose roots burrow through stones & hard facts gathering the memory of rust & iron mandibles & amethyst yes touch yourself like this part the softest hurt's unhealable hunger after all the lord cut you here to remind us where he came from pin this antlered heartbeat back to earth cry out until the dark fluents each faceless beast banished from the ark as you scrape the salt off the co*k-clit & call it daylight don't be afraid to be this luminous to be so bright so empty the bullets pa** right through you thinking they have found the sky as you reach down press a hand to this blood -warm body like a word being nailed to its meaning & lives.