Thursday, June 27, 2013

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

Sunday, June 16, 2013

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.