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.