Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Moonwalker

My family had always told me to be wary of those whose eyes had been
Battered from looking to longingly at the moon on colds wishing for the healing
of the bruises on their hearts battered by the institutional marginalization
Of a society that has consistently told them that they had no place
In the rays of the sun
They didn't know I was one
Of the moonwalkers
Of the dayfearers struck dumb by the brilliance of a star withheld from them
Knowing the isolation enforced from within and without when confronted with the 
presence of majority rules put in place because the majority rules
The pulpit, the schoolyard, the business sector, the political parties
That we must conveniently hear about through the grapevine because our
Invitations conveniently get lost in the hate mail
Do you know what it's like to have your name branded in a burn book
Because you love someone who has the same pieces as you and your told 
Time and time again that you could never fit
The feeling of never asking for a prom date because 
Best case scenario you'll end up on a pity date with the girl everyone thinks
Is your girlfriend anyway
Worst case scenario you'll end up with a black eye marking you as the boy whose 
Mirrors break a little too easily when he hears the word faggot
Walking on pieces of shattered glass trying to keep the idea of self concept alive
Underneath the unconvincing production of heterosexual mimickry
I will never forget the day you said you were gonna kill me 
When the secret pixelated out the graveyard of hastily deleted internet histories
And google searches
I was still your breed but somehow I didn't smell the same 
This is for the boys who cry themselves to sleep at night thinking they
Can drain the gay away 
This is for the girls whose idea of love is undermined by society's patriarchal
preoccupation to turn their intimacy into entertainment
Life is yours
This is your anthem
When the pulpit calls you an abomination
Life is yours
When the schoolyard bully screams sissy or dyke
Life is yours
When you feel like your floodgates are gonna overflow
Because the earthquake of your anxiety told 
the tsunami of your grief to surge with more 
Spirit than you think yours can handle
Life is yours
Life is yours
Life is yours
When grasping for hope has broken your fingers
Remember that suffering is only pain that lingers
When you want it to
When it's easier to wallow in the cesspool of your own defeat
Remember that your victory is just above the surface
Waiting for you to break it in
And clam the life that is yours
Even if it exists on the dark side of the moon
Being able to navigate the ancient depths of the craters
Will mark you as a a full-fledged moon walker
To those just beginning to find their way

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Halo Benders (Jittery Joes Edit)



We were always so musical in the way that we did things
Listening to the sound of each others' heartbeats
And trying to play them back to each other in
a way that felt most biomechanically
natural
Blowing wind through our wrists like harmonicas
Bowing our tendons like violin strings
Making music from marrow
Song from sinew
Every so often the notes would drop and fade (pianissimo)
and it was ok because the crescendo would pick back up altogether (fortissimo)
Reconstructing the blueprint of our bass
But even the best laid plans of pianos come undone

The last time the chord struck
Sour over the telephone pole
I knew you were tired
And I was tired too
Trying to drop life
Into suicide eyes
It all just wanted to die
Hang itself from the chain of memory
Crack its neck on the headboard
Land in a bed of mushrooms
Hoping their fungal fingers would break apart
this abomination into something useful
The mercy of mycelia
Looking for redemption in the soil
No longer in angels' wings
No longer trying to jump through halos
Because we kept bending them into prison bars
To hold each other as POWs
In the war we waged against the coming truth

When the flood came we bent our bars into dams
Because we feared the inundation
We didn't want our banks to overflow
And spill out the mouth of the Earth
I don't want to be your Ark.
I cannot carry life.
I don't want to be your Noah.
I cannot build life.
All I can manage is the whale
That will swallow you whole.
But you are far from Jonah.
You are not divinely called
To step into my sea.

It hurt so good sometimes.
To know we weren't numb.
That we could feel the tension
Of each other trying to bend our halos back into compasses.
Pointing in the direction of stars.

They miss us you know?
The way we laid star-crossed among the clouds keeping each other warm
In their radioactive furnaces
Suspended there in the dark waiting for a wish to grant.
A hope to provide.
But instead we are resigned.
They hang ashamed in the sky.
Waiting for someone's hope to catapult them into
Shooting stars
We aren't that different.
You, Me, the stars, and their prophecies.
When it comes down to what we need most deeply.

It is our wish to be fulfilled.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Lily of the Valley


Lily of the Valley

If you asked of me to compare us to a flower
I'd tell you we were like the Lily of the Valley
Sweet, poisonous, and with a little bit of a Messiah complex
Because we both believed we could save each other
But neither one of us were rescuers
We were more like hiding places the other could escape to
When we needed to get out of the sun for a little while
Lengthening the shadows of our refuges brick by conversational brick
Laid down with the mortar of quick banter

"Did you hear the strides Chik Fil A is making in politics?"
"I just got in a fight with my dad."
"It's been months since I got laid."
"I got some last week and it hurt more than I thought it would."
"At least you didn't go numb."

And we laughed and cried and smiled and died together.
But every once in a while the sun would peek through.
And when it did it cut through our strings like a frustrated puppetmaster.
Alliances established in the dark can never stand the light.
Our castle crumbled under the weight of sunbeams.
Our Lily of the Valley was wilting in the intensity of the sun
Flaunting its flare at us.
Grabbing at our darkness and stealing the golden spoons right from
Our disbelieving mouths.

Silence in sunlight.
Discourse in darkness.
Why did we crucify the Lily?
After three days all Messiahs must return back to their complex.
And we did. We rebuilt our walls. We resumed our banter.

"It's been a while."
"Yeah it has."
"How have you been?"
"Good, you?"
"Good..."

And we ease ourselves from the light and back into the darkness again.
Till the next pieces of silver coruscate in the sun's rays.
And Judas returns to simplify the Messiah complex.



Saturday, July 14, 2012

Attachment

Everyone wants to be the hero of their own story
But that means you have to be in the villain in somebody elses
Somebody else once told me that "I love you" loses its meaning the more times it's said
And that if drag hatred through Christian language long enough it sounds just like concern
I felt concern for myself when wished that I could have lovingly hugged my hands around his throat in retrospect
Because now my "I love yous" are as rare as gold
And consequently my good friends are as rare as an ice cube in hell
Evaporating as soon as it gets close enough to mean something
It meant something when you held my hand and promised he you would never let go
But it would just be my luck that I was foolish enough to know that the best kept promises
Are best kept in your head
Never break your promises because a broken promise today
Means an broken heart for someone else tomorrow
Broken hearts ticking like clocks that didn't know they were broken
Working on their own time
Either too late or too early but never punctual        
But always punctuated by that nighttime beating that reminds
You of the smell of a sweet memory turned sour
Until the daylight peeks in to freeze the gears of
the nostalgia, paranoia, melancholia
and jumpstart
the confidence in the clairvoyance to foresee familiar incidents
This life is so predictable
The same story told by different actors
All the people you love are actors
Some play their parts so well
That you feel like the sum of their expectations
Weighed on the scale of your own
You should never want to own someone
People are to be enjoyed not possessed
But knowing that is not enough to stop the tugging in your heart
When someone you prioritize makes you an option
My only option was to turn you into a door
And close you because as one door closes
another opens
and that's so cliche
But all cliches have a grain of truth
Taken with a grain of salt
And a shredded self confidence as you view the cast list
You can never decide the role you play in someone's life
The best friend, the lover, the stranger waiting to become a friend
The old coffee table you talk over but never talk to
Talk to the ones you love
Let them know you love them
Even if you have to tattoo the words on your back as you walk in opposite directions
And that's okay
You have to know that they know that you tried
And you'll try to remember
Even when you get so angry that you want to forget
You'll look back on the good times and remember
You'll look back on the bad times and realize that it was worth it
The pain was worth the moving on into change
It's natural, the way we dig our hands into the sand on the beach
And watch it sift from our fingers
That rough feeling of not holding on too tight
So unnatural but it feels so true
And the truth is that they will want to forget
And you will too when the indignation forms a lump in you throat
At the reflex of saying their name
But you can only sing it out like a funeral song
As you bury the casket of your attachment
That you can never forget, like a time capsule
You'll dig it up when you're ready.
But please, don't forget
Don't forget
Please, don't forget
We are growing in opposite directions
That happens sometimes
But growth is good
It's a rite of passage

Dulce et Decorum

We give soldiers guns and tell them to shoot on sight
Because in war you can make those assumptions
Assume that some of our brothers are so far below humanity
That they are weapons that shoot and should be shot on sight
Weapons that are trigger happy and trigger drunk
Whose triggers are pulled by men who will never have to hold a gun
In hands that are still stained by blood
Hands that send out nonchalant condolences to the families of soldier
He was such a noble man they said
We’ll make sure there’s a footnote of him in the history books they said
But they pretend not to see that veterans who come back
Never come back totally complete
And I don’t mean like an amputee
But more like the wind that wails at the sound of thunder
Or the tree that breaks at the sight of lightning
Like a toothpick whittled down by the unflinching razor’s edge
Of blind patriotism
Every sunrise is a mushroom cloud
Our heroes come back shattered
We hold them close as long as they stay on the news
Bring back our troops we scream at t.v. screens
But walk away disgusted when we see
Our veterans begging on the corners of streets
Virtue doesn’t create heroes; necessity does
And necessity can break you
It will drag you
Sometimes people believe in you so they can
Unburden themselves
Never asking if you wanted their beliefs to begin with
Unwanted beliefs easily become doubts
Enemies easily become ourselves
And every life we take is a piece of our own soul being blasted away
So why do we ask that of our soldiers.
Why do we let them smolder in the fires of war
Then act surprised when they are too hot to touch
Too sensitive to feel
Tripping over the normalcy of civilian life
Like a landmine is waiting to land on their heels
We never allowed them to show weakness because we convinced them
That their hearts were Achilles’ heels.
And back at home we march on heels
Stomping on a future that was just beginning to heal.
The American Dream is holding us hostage in a screenplay
A cinematic illustration of machine gun soundtracks
And dialogue that pleads for life
When life is the intermittent periods of silence
Between gunshot bursts
Sweet and proper it is to die for one’s country indeed
But sometimes knowing death and being dead
Are not the same rhyme scheme
What is happening?
And why is why always the hardest question to answer?

Love Is Luck

Love is luck
And a lot of biology
I’ve never been good with fortune
And evolution has not been kind

But I know of poetry
And a lot of accidental chemistry
That I apologized for

When love became an apology
And I could feel your knuckles crack
When your hand was in mine

Your smile smelled of botox
And paralysis clamped onto your knees
Like a clingy boy who apologizes too much

I’m sorry

This has happened before
And you are just another bad poem
Trying to be as vague as possible
Screaming as generally loud as you can
Beating around a burning bush
Prophetic in hindsight

Are you still here?
I’m sorry if my goodbye
Sounded like a hello.

Skybruiser Trainwreck, Bone Memorial

There comes a time in everyone’s life
Where the nights seem too long
And the days seem too short
Because you’ve slept through them all
Exhausting yourself cause you strain your eyes at night trying
To figure out how many times a razor
Has to scrape across your wrist
Before the scars look intentional
Calculating how many times a day
You can flash a smile in front
Of the faces of well intentioned friends
Who could never know any better
Before it looks like you have botox in all the wrong places.
How many times can you attribute the hurricane
Wreaking havoc in your stomach
To sudden onset nausea-caused by random bouts of situational

anxiety
Before you the divulge the difficulty
Of determining the amount of time it would take
For those who pretended to love you to disappear
Into the sun bruised horizon
Away from the train-wreck that has become your life
Fascinating to watch from a distance
Heartbreaking up close
Unbearable under any circumstance

But the celestial bodies care little about what you can or cannot
bear- so the sun moves in its arc immutable and apathetic 
And as the sun glints on your broken glassjaw
And sets on top of your twisted metal spine
Night falls like rain
Filling your nostrils; flooding your throat
Invading your bones; rocking you gently
Into the comfortable sigh of anticipated disappointment finally arrived
As if forecasting loneliness was something to be proud of
While defeat begins the final march into the triumph of your threshold
You must realize
Your bones are a weather battered beaten to the small victories
And large defeats that have shaped your soul
Your body is a temple 

You are stronger than the darkness storming your hallowed halls
You are stronger than the darkness storming your hallowed halls
Part the distended clouds of your lips and release the sunrise of your smile
Pull yourself up from the horizon of depression
Bruise the sky with your light!
Each breath you take is a cosmic demonstration to the success of the
universe
A testament to progress
A scripture of laughter
So laugh
Laugh till your sighs become ridiculous
Laugh till your tears are no longer dripping with the shame of pain's refugee

There is grace in hardship
And salvation riding the spine of every crown of thorns you bear
But that kind of serenity can only be attained by
Opening your eyes
Looking in the mirror
And saying:
“I can respect that.”

Bastardy

Ask yourself how many times in a given day you say the word dad.
If the answer is less than one, than this poem is for you.
If someone asks you how your relationship with your father is.
And you answer more to your disembodied dad than to them that
You wished that he had told you beforehand that he intended you to
be
A seed that grew without his watchful eye from the get-go
So that you could’ve known better than to try to save a place
For him in this space that wants to call itself a heart.
This is for you.
This is for expectations turning into doubts and finally
    hopelessness after too many
Silent years of missed Christmases and disregarded birthdays.
Silent years because children are wishbones that break without a
    sound.
Apologies can never quite cut it when a child is broken.
Broken children walking around like cracked funhouse mirrors.
Fragmented and distorted.
This is for sometimes wishing that you could be more angry than you
    are disappointed
Because anger at least keeps you warm at night.
A burning man is better than a man that has to thaw.
And I’ve seen them all.
Firemen and icemen propagating broken children.
And endless cycle of bastards propagating more bastards.
Men who never really stopped being boys having kids.
Never really settling down with responsibility but living their
    lives
A constant competition of who can get the most fucks, but when
    bastards
Fuck it’s the children that are screwed.
Wasting the future’s time for the present’s impulses.
Seeds cast here and there like a germination fair.
A carnival of weakness and resentment.
To this day I vowed never to bring another life into this world.
Not while men are raging like wildfires and blizzards.
How does one live as a child of a natural disaster?
Branded by scarlet letters embroidered on the skin as everyone pokes
    and pities.
This is for the broken children.
The modern day Frankenstein monsters procreated out of hubris with
    no intentions of love.
Stitched together with expectations of being equivalent to the
    nuclear family, but we are most certainly
Only nuclear.
Mushroom clouds rising as high as we can into space to
    strangle our wishes out of stars.
Because broken children learn that no one will tell you your worth.
What slipped through your cracks you must refill.
Cause you are broken but not shattered.
Your duty is to yourself.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Seesaws and Cocoons

I knew something was wrong when you sent that text message at 3 o' clock
Nothing good ever happens at 3
When it's so dark you can't see the hands of the clock tick, tick, ticking a middle finger to the holy
Trinity
Father, Son, and Holy Shit you're scaring me with all this talk of becoming a ghost
And you said I'm sorry I just don't know how much longer I can go on
With this static, with this butterfly beating in my ear like I'm the cocoon it could never break free from
This flaky husk flecked with dust that's settled before its time
Can't you see I'm obsolete
And my warranty has expired?
Stop talking like that!
Cause if you're obsolete
Then I'm selfish.
And if keeping you alive is my last desperate wish.
Then I'll flick a rusted penny made from your eyelid into a wishing well
and wish you well
and wish whatever hell you feel trapped in
would melt away
and that's all well and good
But this noose has already been tied
By hands other than mind
And knots tied by other hands
Can never be untied
So let me be the chair you stand on in your final moments
And I promise no matter how hard you kick I will not let you fall
I'll stand long enough for you to realize
That the scissors in your hand could cut the rope all along
It's ironic how scissors are like butterflies
Cutting their way through cocoons, cutting their way through a noose
A rope woven chrysalis you could only break free from by breaking your neck
Counting down the infinitesimal seconds from the slack of string to the crack of spine
Can't you see your life is just a parallel of mine?
A universe where we say goodbye for the last time?
I wish I could be there each time they fish you out of the bathtub.
Or pump your stomach of the cure you turned into poison.
When did living life become poison?
When did taking it become a cure?
When did living life become poison?
When did taking it become a cure?
And I wish I could Peter Pan away the age in your eyes that says
Your time has come
And remind you of childish things.
Of our seesaw.
The one you broke.
The one that screamed up and whispered down.
The one you rode backwards.
Riding a seesaw backwards makes it hard to see eye to eye.
So stop acting like you're so ready to go.
Stop being such an asshole.
So stay.
Please?
For me?






The Day I Killed God-- Jay Morris

I was brought up on strict lessons
And brave stories
Of desert nomads wandering purposefully
Like a sandstorm army
To follow the wind the wind as it carried the words
Of their God
I was raised on victorious trumpets
And heralding angels singing praises
Of he who was and is and is to come
Old, yellow, cracked scriptures
Were ground up like powder
And steeped into my drink
So I could partake
In a communion
That I knew little of
But considered slightly
Vampiric
For years I prayed at the altar of God
And bore the cross of Jesus
And prayed and prayed and prayed
Until my lips had become
So accustomed
To the words that they poured out
Like second natured spells
When the going got rough
It was during one of these moments of
Mindless incantation
That I heard a distant howling in the waves
That penetrated my eardrums
Vibrating the desperate message
Know me. Need me. Love me. Remember me.
That voice was instantly familiar to me
And I turned away out of disgust
That this the omnipotent could beg me for
My prayers, my struggle, my love
I turned away form this being that was
Seeking relevance through me
And cast his dull pleading roar to the airwaves
To be drowned out by the sounds of early morning radio
And late night television
I starved and emaciated him till he was little more
Than the rattle of bones reluctant to get out of bed
And the erratic snowflake beating of moth wings
Before their inevitable plunge into the fire
And in his final moments
I saw the five stages of divine grief
The denial of Peter
The anger of El Shaddai
The bargaining of Jesus
The depression of Satan
And
The acceptance of Jehovah Shalom
All at once in animal screams
And angel shrieks
At the power of an ego suddenly impressing upon him the reality
Of his own transparency
And weakness
Like a machine suddenly aware of its design flaws
Outdated and obsolete
Outdated and wholly incomplete
Trapped in the fabric of our memory
Like a stain
That fades
Over time
And I put my hand on his shoulder
And told him to remember his grace
Closing my eyes, willing us both to let go
As I whisper.
"Can you hear that, God?
Can you hear the human soul?
Can you hear the sound of it fending for itself,
weathering the storm?
Can't you see that's the holiest part?"
The will of instinct...as we close our eyes
And feel his dying breath drowned out by the sound of
Late night radio
And
Early morning television
And pledge to remember him as a time of day
When fairy tales are told, and challenged, and shelved
And placed into childish memory boxes.