Blood of My Blood

Blood of my Blood

Blood of my blood
They know not what they do
Hold your tongue carefully
Because it is sharp
And swordplay is an endangered art

Blood of my blood
Your words can cut deep
In the dialect of opposition
When you strike and protest
Against your involuntary education
in the language of "just this"
We have never settled for "just this."

Two words wrapped over and over
Interwoven into complacency
Lacing the fibers
Crafting the rope
That they formed into noose
A destiny knot that tightened the cord
Suspending the bridge
That spans our generational gap
One end wrapped your neck
The other my ankle
I am hanging on every word
That comes from your throat

Blood of my blood
They have turned us against each other
Tethered past to present
Like chain to shackle
Every time you bend your neck up
I am dragged down
Every time I walk forward
The rope squeezes tighter
To strain your lambskin lungs

We must
Adjust our behavior
Adjust to their social control
And in becoming instruments of our own regulation
In turn become instruments of our own oppression as well

Blood of my blood
You will never run dry
You will sluice the sewers
And leave stains in the streets
As long as people are learning the language
of "just this"
Blood of my blood on their hands you will be
Blood of my blood on my hands you have been.

Crow

To everyone who has tried to love me
I am so sorry
I did not mean to offend
It’s just that..my reflex is to defend
What is left
And all that is left
Is all that I hide
The mathematics of shadow
Nothing + nothing = a greater appreciation of something
Even if it is only a falling crow calling out to its wings
Beat against all that is around you
That is the only way to keep flying
Cause when you fly solo
You fly so high
I have been told that people who sleep
In the fetal position are searching
For love and comfort in the posture and poise
Of dreams and nocturnal choice
I have spent so many nights
Sleeping in the fetal position
Like love is a verb
But it is not
It is a question
I have no answers for you

Haikus #1-3

Haiku One

The crippled phoenix
Stumbles towards ressurection
Breathing future ash.

Haiku Two

Tower of bone white
Hold in the sins of eons
Babylon is sand.

Haiku Three

The pervasive tongue
Speaks in the bright alchemy
Of coalesced dream. 

Ambush

Sometimes, when I'm lying in bed
Barricaded in blanket and pillow
From out of nowhere- I feel the point
of a sharpened spear.

It's wielder --> all scales and wings
All savagery and low cunning

I call him the Bad Noise.
He breaks the peace of my silence
With denigrating bombs and grenades.

YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING YOU'RE NOTHING.

I'd like to say I'm strong enough not to believe him.
But - if the amount of your substance was directly proportional to the growing distance between you and the friend you used to have, at what rate does the volume of your self-esteem decrease until it reaches 0?

Show your work.
Your pencil is only an eraser.

It's impossible.

I envy the people who can leave their homes.
Then return to find out that they have grown apart from everyone they love

What is to be said about the ones who stay and watch it happen?

The again - today could have just been a bad day.
 Bad days are not indicative of bad lives.

You are not defined by the people who walk out on yours.

On a good day, I can drown out the Bad Noise.
But you are only covering up the sound of him sharpening his spear,
waiting for his next opportunity to ambush.

Bring You Back (So I Can be Your Spine)

The poem I want to write.
Will not bend God to His knees
To wash the feet of ephemeral men.
The poem I want to write.
Will not grind mountain down to sand.
It will not heat the desert to glass.
The poem I want to write.
Will not dry the oceans.
Or incite their undulating fury.
The poem I want to write.
Will not keep you warm.
It will not remind you of the empty spaces
Vibrating to fill the empty spaces of another.
It will not fish for compliments.
It will not drink whiskey
and eat steak with chili peppers.
It will remember.
And in remembering, look forward.
And in looking forward, look backward.
The paradox of wanting something you've already had.
Looking two different directions at the same time.
That's the poem I want to write.
The paradoxical encomium.
The ode to empty spaces longing to be filled.
The redemption party God was too busy to show up to
The poem that forget that pen is not bone.
Ink is not blood.
Skin is not flesh.
And in its forgetting.
Inserts itself as your spine.
Transducts potential into action.
Looking forward.
Walking backward.
The poem I want to write.
Is the poem that brings you back to me.

Microagression (Black Capability)

You do not know what he is capable of.
When you walk on the sidewalk hold purse closer to self.
Cross street to different side.
Stay alert at all times.
You do not know what he is capable of.
He is brimming with racial vengeance in a post-racial world.
Keep your children safe.
Lock  your doors.
Do not be caught in the wrong neighborhood.
At the wrong time of night.
You do not know what he is capable of.
When I was four years old.
There was this girl named Sarah.
She told me if I brought the Disney movie Anastasia
Every day for an entire week to watch during after school.
She would be my girlfriend.
My four old body.
Wanted a girlfriend.
And all the ostensible glory one could bring.
I brought Anastasia every day for  week.
And sure enough on the last day.
She said, I will be your girlfriend.
And I saw it was good.
So we held hands.
And blew kisses.
And I made her a house out of building blocks.
Because that's what four year old men do to provide for their families.
Her mother, sweet black haired future warning that she was.
Told me, I think it's cute that you guys are playing grown up.
But sweet baby, black boys and white girls don't belong together.
My four year old brain accepted this as a fact of life.
Told her I would do the chivalrous thing and break up with her.
I told my mom what had happened.
I had never seen her so angry before.
Even today, they are capable of this, she said.
I said, capable of what, mom.
She said, capable of something far older than you.
My friend told me.
You are not like most black people that I know.
I said, what are most black people like.
She said, have you ever seen BET.
I said, shut the fuck up.
She said.
With you.
I do not feel like I have to hold my purse closer to myself.
I do not feel like I have to walk to the other side of the street.
I'm not sure if you know what your kind is capable of.
I said.
My kind is capable of people like Benjamin Banneker
who measured the dimensions of the seat of your President.
My kind is capable of Garret Morgan, who created a gas mask
to protect us from the weapons your kind is capable of.
My kind is capable of Daniel Williams
Who learned how to mend a broken heart
Something poets have been trying to do since the beginning of time.
My kind is capable of great things.
What you have reduced us to.
 Well, that sounds like a personal problem.
I said my kind is capable of people like --
She said.
You're so sensitive.
I said.
You're so micro-aggressive.
She said I didn't mean to be offensive.
I just meant to say it seems like you've had privileges other people
of your particular persuasion haven't had.
I said that's good to hear.
I said, there's one more privilege I'm waiting for.
The privilege of not having to worry.
The privilege of knowing that if I'm walking down the street.
Someone doesn't have to feel like they have to clutch purse closer to self.
Clutch children closer to parent.
Clutch weapon in preparation of threat.
Clutch bias.
Clutch prejudice.
Clutch the casualty.
You do not know what we are capable of.
You have no fucking clue.

Clinical Depression NOS

To live in a clinical depression
Is to be entrenched in the midst
Of the polarizing opinions between
Two sides of self.

Today is going to be a good day.
Today is going to be the day that you die.

Today is the day I will feel handsome again.
Today every mirror cracks in the ugly wake of your path.

Today is the day I won't feel like I need to swallow a pill to function.
Today, you will swallow every pill that you own.

Incongruent thought processes cross perpendicular into mental crucifix.
Nail the ego here.
It is not fit to play the role of decision maker right now.
It is only bystander.
It will later be held hostage to the hostile syllables
Held at bay by the serotonin inhibitors you use
To sew your mouth shut in verbal ransom

This is the arrangement between the diseased brain
and the strained vocal cords.
Look closely.
Can you see the words crawling underneath your cheeks.

As the disease spreads, you will delude yourself
Into believing that the lack of oxygen
And forced isolation
Will give you ascetic clarification
Into how clearly obscure the world is in its design.

You live by the impaired logic of umbral understanding:

If nothing is knowable, then nothing is manageable.
If the mind is a beast, then the nature of the beast is to grow with neglect.
If I break my hands, then I won't hurt myself again.

This is wrong.
This is comfort.
This is dangerous.
This is comfort.
This will kill you.
This is comfort.
This is wrong.
This is so much easier than doing what is right.
It is comforting to relinquish one's self into the hollow rites of depression.
It is wrong.

Today is gone and it wasn't your day.
But tomorrow is a new day altogether.

Tomorrow is going to be a good day.
Tomorrow I am going to feel handsome again.
Tomorrow I won't feel like I need to swallow a pill to function.

Your ego watches from on the cross.
It is no longer bystander.
It is hostage
To hostile
Syllables.

Polaris

If fucking for virginity is like waging war for peace
Then every war ever fought was caused
By a breakdown
In communication.

Every crush I've ever had was caused by
A breakdown in communication
Between head, heart, and soul.

The head says love the one whose opinions contradict yours.
You will never have a boring conversation.
So as someone who worships Kurt Cobain.
I sought out someone who worshiped Axl Rose.

They were fucking psycho.

The heart says love the one who can workout your body in ways
It has never been worked out before.
Calm down, this sin't going where you think it is.
Love someone who makes you want to do nothing
but 10,000 push-ups a day to exhaust every ounce
of energy you have until you have no choice but to

Relax.
Relax - hold on softly.

The soul says love someone who makes you feel closer to God.
I dated a Satanist thinking that one man's devil is another man's God.
Sometimes, the only lesson you get out of a relationship is to get out
of the relationship.
Run quickly in the opposite direction.
Do not stop to look at the blood stains.

Regardless on how these three bicker and argue and contradict one another.
They can always agree on one thing.
Don't listen to the guy between your legs.
He doesn't know how to love anyone.
He is just a fucking dick.

The Therapist

The first time I went to the therapist
She told me that the winter is in my bones
Like the summer is in my skin
She said the technical term for this
Is negative emotionality

She said, you can combat the darkness with lights.
No, really, buy these lamp bulbs and stare into them
for half an hour a day and see if it makes you feel
any better.

I looked at her with the straightest face
My gay body could muster
And asked her
"Do I look like a fucking moth to you?"

She said, it depends, do you often dream cocoon?

I said, yes.

She said, do you understand?

I said, no.

She said, that's the first step.

I told her moths couldn't talk.
She said they can't be smug either.

Fair enough I said.
Fair enough.

I laughed as much as my gravity would allow
Without snapping my vocal cords back to
where the darkness lives.

I asked her, what do you dream about?
She said, I often dream web.
I asked if that made her a spider.

She said yes, in the least predatory sense.
If that's possible.
I digress.

I asked her, what's it like to dream web?

She waited, gathered her breath, and said with as much wisdom as possible:

Your time is up.
Maybe I'll tell you in our next session.
Fair enough I said.

Fair enough.

Hiraeth

I have lost it
I am looking for it
in all the old places
At the concerts
At the poetry readings
At the end of a book
At the bottom of a bottle
of cheap vodka

This form no longer fits its function
It aches to pupate from this strange shell
It aches to return home
To recharge
To replenish
To renew
The altered anatomy

But home has never been a corporeal place
Though everyone tells me
That home is church
Or friend
Or lover
Or heart

It has always been a glacial ghost
Grasping at me with phantom phalange

I will slip its fingers into mine
We will go home together
Put the ghost of hiraeth to rest
Melt the ice surrounding him

Poltergeist becomes guardian spirit
Spirit becomes soul
Soul becomes whole

Whole is home.
Whole is home.

Resonation

I've been resonating a lot with deserts lately
In particular the way the wind kicks up the sand
And the sunlight coruscates off the crystals to form
expectant images -- mirages
I have been walking around with mirages in my head
I can't help it.
The void created by the gravity of your absence was begging to
become a starlight dream projecting movie screen
My brain projected late night showings of the mirages floating around in my head
Bestseller is the day we got stoned and watched Bruno
Didn't say a word at all
But it was perfect
At least in my limited understanding of the word
The night before
We sat in your car before your 20 mile drive home
I can still smell the gasoline
And hear the way your wheels growled against the road
I knew then
As we were separated by exhaust pipes and asphalt
That highways are concrete examples of this abstract idea
of longing going towards a place you know is out there
Some where
And the anticipation of getting there
And hoping the destination isn't just a mirage
Hoping that the sun goes down so the light can't play tricks
On your mind

One day
Three weeks after I never saw you again
I was walking to my car
I looked at the sky and saw the moon so full
I thought she was threatening to break like a fever in her starcloud blanket
You know I wonder as she sits surrounded by her cold halo
If some lunar anxiety ever whispers in her dreams that this is the last
Time she will remain whole
You will wax
You will wane
You will tiptoe with the tide
And toss with the wind
But you will never standalone in solitary beauty
I turned away
No piece of rock will ever know my name

I sit in my room
Staring out the window
There's a singular pleasure I get
From looking at nothing
Like for 10 minutes I exist outside of this constant current
Of time and demand
And I wonder if that's where I went wrong
The day after you left
I told you I was leaving first
You said you didn't understand
And I said
It's the nature of the beast to grow with neglect
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder
But in this case mine festered
I knew what I deserved
But wasn't fully committed
When I said I had to go
Your pride perked up
Told you that you would never suffer the reality of someone
Walking out on you
You were too accustomed to things being the other way around
So when I said goodbye
I was hoping you'd hear me begging for a door
But you opened up a window
And told me to jump

Now my bones ache
And I can feel the pain of you in my free time
This must be the closure everyone keeps talking about

Heaven

I am so overrun run with faults and flaws
That gather particulate and granular in the
grooves and crevices that form the network
of my reasoning

Live life by the rationale of bastard's logic:
If love is your intention then you will never leave
If you never leave then everything will naturally fall into correction
If everything naturally falls into correction you then will be happy without
ever having to talk about anything or explain that you trace your history
of expectant love to the very first time your father left and
didn't come back for a few days

When I met you it was just an exercise in what I thought I already knew
Sometimes great things just fall into your lap and you have to accept it graciously
So I accepted you graciously poised in the position of forever
Fed by your belief that we could be forever
Bolstered by my desperate desire for that to be true
It was indulgent
It was a train-wreck
It was a self-fulilling prophecy turned cycle
Dance the dance of fixation
Feet too flawed to realize they could stop
Vision too flawed to recognize
There is something better than the fulfilled anticipation
Of perpetually being put back together again
Always vigilantly aware
That any day could be a day that you were gone

Is this an instance of the infinite
If we don't talk today - will we never talk again
If we don't see each other today - well we never see each other again
Are you gone for an instant, or for infinity?

The seed of anxiety was your fault
But me being such fertile ground was my flaw
I used to know how to swim until I met you
Now, whenever the tide comes in
And I'm pulled under
All I want is to lay still
In the mud of the seabed and
The purification of the saline sheets
Either I forgot how to swim
Or I just got tired of kicking
Or maybe I just empathized with the sharks
Who need something to bleed to feel sustained


You told me you believed in God
For about as long as I had decided that I had given up on him
You believed in perfection
After I had long since told myself that inadequacy was the norm
So I latched on to the notches of your Bible belt
Hoping your immaculateness would rub off on me
Even long after well meaning friends told me
That this was bad for me
But who has ever heeded the advice of the intensity of thunder
As guidance against the stringent stroke of the storm
No surprise when the white hot God-lance seared right through me
An alliterative assault breaking brain bolstered bastard beliefs
completely circumventing circuits created as conduits for an incomplete infatuation

I told you I had given up on the idea of God
But I had never given up on the idea of heaven
Particularly because I know hell exists
Life keeps trying to put out the flames on my doorstep

I still believe in heaven
But heaven for me is not gate or river or tree or life or salvation
For me
Heaven is where the flaws that keep us apart don't matter

Excavation

When they tell you to leave someone bad for you, they don't fail to tell you about the newfound freedom and affirmation you feel after the fact.

They will tell you that every day you stay is an admission on your part that you deserve everything that they put you through.

They tell you that at some point you have to get fed up with exalting the tragedy - if every moment feels like a visitation right then the only thing under custody is your dignity.

They don't tell you about the dreams.

They don't tell you about the anxiety.

They don't tell you that every day after the deconstruction

Will be a day you crawl out of.

You will try to stay busy, every second of idle activity turns into a period of mourning that claws into the obligations you have set forth to keep your mind off the healing process.

Dull the senses - feel no regret.

Dull the senses - see no memories.

Dull the senses - speak no words of retraction.

Dull the senses - hear not the gaping yawn of the void.

Dull the senses - taste not the loneliness on your tongue

You can easily fall in love with the lifestyle of loss.

If you listen to punk rock loud enough you can't hear the sound of your own feelings.

Stay in the company of people who know your heart.

They will remind you of yourself before it all went to dust.

Shake the dust - waiting is not living

Shake the dust - rust is not experience

Shake the dust - not every love is eternal

Shake the dust off the excavation site of your bones.

Whoever does not recognize the gold they have struck in the vein of your heart does not have the right to call you mine. 

Eschatology (It's Okay, Welcome Home)

I always knew that the higher power you answer to
Would always drown out the sounds of my calling
I don't fully understand the eschatalogical motivations
That stir your actions
All I know is that when they stirred your hatred for me

I thought my world was ending.

An apocalyptic mess.

Four horsemen galloping gallantly into the fray
Until their faces fall away into the hungry Pestilence
The maggot infested Death with worms crawling from
his sockets

Our vision is always distorted by the wriggling reminders of our wrongdoing.

The blade of Conquest -- hilt fashioned from the skulls of men
who thought their biological disposition was a sin.
Whose emotional attachment they could not detach from the
judgment of stony words.

I don't know what agenda we set forth to wage War on society as we know it.
I missed that meeting.
I don't understand why you designated me as a vector for disease.
In my experience, my hands have always been washed clean
By the salty tears that come with the isolation and persecution of
being what is known as a sexual deviation.

I have seen myself as broken more times than I'd like to admit

A biological uselessness.
A religious threat.

You compound my anxiety, my anxiety, my anxiety--
My anxiety is unmedicated.
It is ameliorated by the momentary shifts of sef-concept that remind me
That who I am is ok.
Who you are is ok.
If I ever hear the phrase
Coming to terms with my sexuality ever again
I will lose my brain.
The word term implies temporary.

I am not temporary.
Stop treating me like a fucking phase.
Stop treating this like a fucking phase.
Stop treating yourself like a fucking phase
To be dealt with.

It is not my place to tell you how to feel
Or mold you into a shape that I think is your most real.
My hands, and mouth are clumsy
You would not turn out the right way.

But it's ok.
It's ok to say you're gay.
I know - the word got caught in the back of my throat the first time
I felt my heart and understood my brain.

My goal - as cliche stands - is a rainbow waiting to reach some pot-of-gold
to find that the passed 5 years are worth it.
That the waiting is worth it.
That the patience is worth it.
That we are all worth it.

Regardless of what any book says, the only reading that needs to be done
is upon the braille on your skin - every bruise and scar is a story of affirmation
Branching out from a narrative of post-apocalyptic desolation that has left you
veiled in the illusion that you are alone.

You are not alone.
We are not alone.

Home is only a ribcage away
And beating of the heart is the knocking on the door.

My door is always open and the doorbell rings
Welcome home.

Night Stand

You walked out the door--so smoothly
I'm sure that you and the doorknob were conspiring against me

Cause when I try to walk out every morning to face the day
It jams shut like a jaw clenched tight before the vocal chords
Strum words the brain doesn't want to say- stay

When you turned the knob
The lock slipped--so smoothly
Like you slipped out of my bed
I do not know you, but I'd love the potential of you to stay
But when you hear noises in the middle of night signaling
EXIT- like blazing door signs
You can't help but stay quiet

It is rude to hold on
So I carry on
Sleeping
Pretending to
Hoping that when I wake up the evidence of you
Will not be planted on my unlocked door

But it always is.

I have always had this thing where I get
The worst anxiety when someone makes the sounds
Of silently leaving in the dark
When that happens- I look at my one night stand
And pull a pill to alleviate the strain
Of knowing that I'll never have to remember your name
It goes against my nature like it goes against yours to stay

I put the pill in my mouth
It's heavy as a jawbreaker

Then you call.

"Dinner at this place I think you'll like?"

I say yes. And that yes.
Hit's me so hard that I spit the pill out.

I look at the night stand.
And then I realize that one night stand is something
We could share
When we grow old together
And we can fill the drawers
With something other than
Pills.

Gift Horse

I saw the devil
And he was crying
And begging
Said never look a gift horse in the mouth
Else it'll kick you in yours
And his teeth were jagged
Like his tail
To hell with dentistry
To hell with gifts
To hell with horses
Even though their manes catch on fire
So quickly
And they run like they were born to
Carry burdens like they were bred to
I saw the devil
He was riding a horse
He said- people are often what they are made to be
Not what they were born to be
I was born to be a hero
I was made into a star
Drowning into a gravity well
Holding myself together
Some men- after being hurt for so long
Forsake all feelings that could signal
A need to be around people
They hold themselves together
With emotions that bind the cells
And the soul into a singularity
Seriousness, cynicism, melancholy
And they bind themselves in these
Saturnine-rings
So that when others propose
To free them from themselves
They drop to their knees too
Pull out a ring- and say
This is all I have to give in return
I saw the devil
And he was crying

God Is a Zombie (The Day I Killed God Pt. II)

How soon they forget me
They whose clay was quickened by the weight of my words
"Let there be.."
And be there was and be there is and be there'll be
Even in this era so destitute of the presence of bees
My messengers
My honeycomb pillagers
Hovering about gently through the winds that blow across your bodies
As you dance the dance of temporality- the gift of life I laid at your feet
How could you ever know the price of eternity?
Driven stark raving mad by a universe with nothing
But a bunch of hot air to talk to
Let there be man
Let there be woman
Let them love whomever they love
Let there be words from me to them
To make this life a little bit easier
I didn't make anything easier did I
I should have cursed the mind-never have given it
The capability of twisting words into whimsy
No nothing was made easier
They choked themselves on my message
Took the rock to heart
Till that too was worn down to sand
That they raged about their divisions
Like a sandstorm army
Marching to the beat of a drum
I play
And they distorted-into lo-fi blasphemy
How could you ever know?
The loss
The grief
The anger
The bargain
The denial
The denial
The denial
The acceptance

Insofar that they of clay were made by the breath of my own essence
May they live in the prosperity and splendour of Eden's blessing
So that their lives will be as vibrant as the emerald tides of grass
And their souls as pristine as the water that flows with sapphire pass

I had a plan- a vision
And I watched it all fall to naught
And here I sit in seraph chair
With heavenly voice in my throat caught
Waiting for Armageddon
For Golgotha's kiss the grace the world
To gather the pieces that broke themselves
And mend them again and again

Humanity is a lesson
And even gods have much to learn
How-how could you ever know?

Armor and Squalor

This armor is so world weary
Fitted with adolescent ennui
Linked tautly with words self-taught
in reflex like the jerking of a chain
Around the collar of a neck whose vocal steps have
Ambled too far from a reliable lexicon
There are no words to describe the entirety
Of feeling on display in a glass ceiling
Glass stained with the gall of so many neglected questions
The loudest of them being when will the ladder
Become a bridge
Even then
Who will man the toll
And who will decide
Who gave who the right
To take away the faith in mine?
The Artificial Intelligence
Who engineered this life
Did so-with so few people in mind
And now our fields our laden with squalorly mines
So we scavenge the free market to insure our capitalist security
Armored in whatever manifesto can justify living this
Life so fantastic
Life so tragic
Life so frantic
Life so spastic
Life so
I hate you
Sounds so much like the
The most exhausted piece of armor being crunched through

Sincere (Nervous Self-Conversation)

It took me a long time to realize what nights were really for

I always thought it was for fucking, or alcohol, or music

Or for staring at computer screens till your eyes went bloodshot

But I now know why the sun goes down

I now know why night time amplifies the softest of sounds

Nights are for hoping you don't break mirrors for staring into your reflection too hard

Nights are for listening to the moon tell you how it's not jealous that people dance for the sun

Cause it knows that when people want their loved ones to hear the songs they sing

The always sing them in the moonlight so only the people who are trying hard enough can hear

The night's for knowing that darkness doesn't cultivate fear

It sows truth for the people who are willing to harvest it

To reach into shadows and dirty your hands with the iniquities and injuries

That come from the acquisition of wisdom that can never happen during the day

When everyone's saying the first thing that comes to mind

It doesn't give the spirit room to breathe

It doesn't give the pre-frontal cortex enough time to make nervous conversation

With the heart about the impending realization and enlightenment

That love is not always the answer we want it to be

It's the answer we're willing to accept

I've taken hard slaps to the face because I thought the bruises would

be a distraction and take attention from the dirt and dust I let

Gather on my hope and my trust

There was dirt and dust on my hope and my trust from not being exercised

enough

I can't count how many times I over-thought every hello, goodbye, and how are you

My paranoia ran wild with the fantasies of ulterior motives and arguments made moot

Like unicorns run wild from being called fantasies for so long

Give anything make believe the chance to be reality and it will go on for days

About how good it feels to be self-actualized

Stretching its wings, tensing its torso, plodding its hooves through soft, damp clay

Till it can fly back into your imagination at night in the form of dreams, and nightmares, and

Hours staying up looking at computer screens till your eyes go bloodshot

Till you preoccupy yourself with fucking, or alcohol, or music to get your mind

Off the night time truth that not everything you slept on will be there in the morning

You won't always be able to hold onto your loved ones

What song do you want to sing to them?

The moon is always listening.

NoOneWillKnowYouWereEverHere (Inspired by Give It Up by k (v) i d s)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv5czbyzT8M
You were a cassette player in my dream
The endless loop drone of your shuffling bones
Rustled on like October leaves
You see I am like a tree in autumn
I'm not good at hiding things
After I drop my colored sheets
I'm nothing more than cold black skin
Waiting for spring to sink back in again
Like the feeling you get when you think Earth is gonna collapse upon itself
And there's nothing you can do to halt the immutable gravity of the circumstances
Pulling the dreaded response into orbit
In a morbid anticipation of the seasons changing from future to past
Waiting for an answer you've already seen coming
Is like listening to a broken faucet dripping rusty water
In your sink
There are so many ways I think I could have fixed things
Like some indecisive handyman
But when you ran
My windpipes froze up so bad that they burst open
with cold, wet words trying to freeze-frame your footsteps
Like wishful thinking could halt your progress
Into the sunset
With the crows circling above your head
Waiting to form a pact in the place where your shadows met
Where the time was set so hungover and heavy
Drunk on the intoxicating longing of what-iffing your days
Into demands for something better
They always said it would get better
I am hoping they meant for everyone
Not just for people who walk towards the sun
Cause I know it just takes a slight tilt of the Earth's orbit
To throw the weather forecast from
Sunny as the day eyes first meet and they know they'll see each other again
To cloudy as the doubtful days when you're waiting for a phone call
And I know that on those days when I'm waiting on a phone call
Or a text message
I'll be hoping that the rustling in the leaves will be
just the howling wind and
Not the shuffling of your feet
And if it is the latter
If the closure is clear
I'll play a new cassette
And it'll play a new song
With the same verse over and over
No one will know you were ever here
No one will know you were ever here
No one will know you were ever here
No one will know you were ever here

Athens, A Ghost

One night I had a particularly tough time falling asleep

My bed was either too hot or too cool or too cluttered or

too stained...by...imagination

By the time my internal clock felt it was the right time

To give me away to the comfort of dream

It was as close to bliss as my short life has ever known

But as one door closes

Another opens and this one brought a visitor

Her name is unknown but

When I heard her voice

I swear she was the patron goddess

Of cheap rent and hipster crawl

College distraction, and nighttime paralysis

She said:

"I will never leave you

This will always be your home

You will never leave me

Here to stay"

It's weird the way words work

Depending on whose mouth they come from

They can be liberators

Or prisoner

I am not exactly sure

Why her voice was so effective at holding me down

But all I know

Is that when I tried to get up

My wrists and ankles were bound

By something whose name is older

Than I could never know

And as she breathed

More life into anxieties long since laid to stone

I know that her words are the narratives of so many people

I have met

Like a mother and father explaining to their son

That them being 13 years to early

Will always end up with him being 13 years too late

When the gates come crashing down

Telling him that with two part-time jobs and no degree between them

Any hope of their rocky foundation being smoothed over to something more stable

Will always be covered with bills

Fast forward 6 years later

And he is doing the best he can

To unbecome what reflex creates

To become his own

And leave this land

But it takes less muscle to stay

Than to go

And all he wants is to go

And see if there is better music in another town

Sturmaz (In Memory of Aralee Strange)

The night before you died a storm
Raged its grief with rain and funnel
And hail to hail the loss
Of a veritable force of nature
Storm-born siblings made known
Their own protest against the presence of death
The lightning striking his picket line for the union of
soul and body
While thunder clapped his tantrum beat
Death cannot take what is mine
She taught things only a mother could teach
Like how grace is born in the balancing act
Between power and humility
When my time is come
And I am gone
The jellyfish will still be here
Greeting death every day in the deep
With the same salutation
"Not today."
I could never reconcile forces of nature
With the acts of whatever god
Even as thunder and lightning accept
The dance of life and death
Light ripping open the sky in zig-zag
Lines as a parade to celebrate your homecoming
And thunder claps open the gates of that doubtful world
To welcome you to the place where soul meets forever
Thank you Aralee
For being so Strange
When we all felt
A little too normal.

Atlas' Shrugs Are not More Important Than Mine

I'm convinced that when Atlas finally shrugged
It was not because the world is so heavy
But because the days are so long
And if a Titan can't shoulder the weight of time dragging on
What does it say of me when they tell me to wait
Good things come to those who wait
I always thought that if I showed up late to things
Then I could pretend to have more patience
than I really did
But I fooled no one
Except myself
And there are few things sadder
Than watching someone laugh at a joke
That no one else gets
Moving to the beat of their own drum
It is so offbeat
And every one can tell
Every one can tell
When you're not doing well
But that doesn't mean they understand
When I was seven
I heard that planes had crashed into the twins
But I shrugged it off because they weren't related to me
And I had no obligation to country yet
So I didn't wonder if anyone I loved was dead or not
But I did wonder how Al-Qaeda was celebrating their success
Back on their black gold soil
While we were trying to drain the blood from ours
Good things come to those who hate
It would seem
Laughing to your own jokes
Can be so dangerous
This doesn't make sense
The important matters of man never do
At least not instinctively
But time still drags on
And how I thank him
How I thank him so
Before I shrug him off

Updatezzz

This is finally updated to the best of my knowledge.
School is hard; the struggles are real.

More Sun than Flower

When I die

Lay me down like Autumn

I wanna be as frank with my death bed sheets

As the fall is with the leaves

Reassure me that like bare trees I can’t hide anything

Tell me that the dark in my hide is brightened by the brilliance

Of a springtime mind

Give me spring when winter is too persistent

Break my snowflake gush

With rosebud bloom

Snatch my winter snow blanket

And give me a spring shower curtain

Cause when I wash myself in the change

That only equinox can bring

I don’t want it to splash out onto my

Summer seams stitched with sunlight

Stitched with lightning bugs

Caught in mason jars

That used to be moonshine jars

Till the moon found out we were stealing her glow

When the moon casts her glow on my face

For the last time

Plant me in Georgia soil

Pray that I become a giving tree

Pray that I can cultivate the empathy that knows

What a sunflower feels like when it loses its mind

Over the idea of having more sun than flower

Fertilize me with the irony that

I had to vegetate to learn that the meaning of selflessness

Is me dropping my leaves to the ground like fall does

Cause then I’ll know what it’s like

Not to hold on so tight

There was nothing I could do in the first place

And thank god

There was nothing I could do in the first place

And when my roots are transplanted to the second place

Trim me down to bonsai size

So I can know Zen when I look at a giant pecan tree

And think damn

There’s nothing I’ve wanted to be more than me

And the Earth is so much more than our casket

Than our dumping ground

Than our heat sink

When I die I want to go to heaven

And heaven is right here under our feet

Darkaholics Danonymous

I'm trying hard to believe that hope is like the color spectrum
Just because you can't observe all the different wavelengths of light
Doesn't mean it's not still there
Dancing just out of sight

Who am I kidding?
I have rejected holier things
for greater demons
With messages at the bottoms
of their bottles.
All saying the same things:

Nothing changes
Everything stays the same
Be baptize in this undertow
They say the truth sets you free
So why then do I always feel like I'm drowning?
In this everclear stretched out like an ocean
Vast as the feeling of longing
Biting as the sensation of want
Resigned as the motivation of never again

It is set in your bones
The way suffering is encased in your marrow
Like gravity in your brain
Like instructions to your genes
From greater demons with messages at
The bottoms of their bottles

All saying the same things:
Nothing changes
Everything stays the same

I'm trying hard to thinkthat the darkness is not as bad
as the romantics would have me believe
Because there are nights
When darkness is the only peace I believe in

Because it's too dark to see their messages at the bottom
of their bottles
Too dark to read into much of anything let alone
Some idea of inertia that
Nothing changes
Everything stays the same

And at least I am confident
That in the years of practice I've had in using my voice
That when the demons discover they can talk too
I'll be able to drown them out
Until I can write a response to their message
Simply saying

Nothing changes
Everything stays the same
Untill the time is right.

A/S/L

Hey, how are you?

I'm good how are you?

Fine, just chlling ASL?

19/m/usa

Cool I'm 18/m/usa

Nice are you white or black?

Black

-Logs off-

Hey, what's up?

Not much just hanging around.

Cool, ASL?

20/m/usa you?

18/m/usa. Gotta pic?

Yeah hold on. Sent. Do you?

Yeah, gimme a second. Sent.

I didn't know you were black.

Is that a problem?

-Logs off--

Hi.

Hey, ASL?

18/m/usa you?

22/m/usa what are you here for?

Whatever comes my way

Yeah?

Yeah.

Here's my pic.

Hot, here's mine.

-Logs off-

Logs back in

Looking for a masculine, young athletic preferablly white guy to talk to.

Message me...but please no dirty monkeys.

Are you starting to notice a trend?

That these seemingly isolated instances of events

Are nothing more than coincidences

Based on preferences bound up in different colors of skin

And as hard as it is not to sound like I'm complaining

And trying to wring some guilt out of the last vestiges of racism remaining

You can't help but notice a trend

AllAmericanBoy26's profile says I'm blocking more Chinese than the Great Wall.

TanDream18 says if another one of those black gays comes up to me on the dance floor

I might just have to lock myself up in a bathroom stall

And puke because there is nothing more unattractive than a black gay dude.

JockBro26 says don't even get me started on those Hispanics.

Don't even get me started on how they make me sick.

Are you starting to notice a trend?

A preference.

An affinity whatever you wanna call it.

It's pervasive and no matter how many ways you call it out

It shifts gears and reacclimates itself until it's as mundane as the weather and says I'm here to stay.

Just look at the It Gets Better campaign.

What faces do you see?

Because when I look I don't see many faces that look like me.

And you know it gets really scary when the subliminal message is

That it does indeed get better but only for a select few

Not for anyone who looks like you

43% of black gay youths have thought about committing suicide.

And how many have you actually heard about that did in this wide

Net of information that we call the media.

Because I could count for days the number of

Tyler Clementis, Jamie Hubleys, Ryan Halligans, Bobby Griffiths, and Jamey T. Rodemeyers

Who ended it because they felt mired in the unyielding hatred of a small number of small minds

But what about the Raymond S. Chases, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoovers, Jaheem Herreras, and Joseph Jeffersons

Whose stories were confined outside the limits of the mainstream

Who decided that their deaths weren't important enough to be screened.

Were they the same people who decided that my people's only role in their community

Was as a vector for HIV

For AIDS

Have you ever wanted to waive a birthright?

When those oh so subtle stares that

Say you don't belong here

Drive home the screws that reinforces

The locks that make

You feel locked in your own body

Bound in your skin like a book

No one has the time to read like you

Were penned by an author on the side who lost the war

Like instead of Mary Magdelene you were just some common whore

That Jesus laid his hands one once or twice

In the testament and if you ever try to testify

They'll silence you and every practiced line

That's the cultural atmosphere

The social environment

Plants are at an advantage when it comes to growing because when they are raised

In an incompatible environment they just die

But people are not so lucky

They find any way to grow

Even if its crooked

Even if its with their heart growing inside out on their sleeve

I'm sorry

I can't be another Raymond Chase, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, JAheem Herrera, or Joseph Jefferson

I can't be part of that 43

I have to try

Anyway I can