The City

Sonic assault

and

Verbal abuse

When you stare into the city

It stares back at you

With eyes that glitter with burning lights 

Pushing the limits of their battery life

And the seamless way the metropolis beast

Belches Iranian and American leftovers through black asphalt teeth

So easy to be seen

So easy to disappear

So easy to see the disparity between

Couples intertwined by ambiguously powerful finger tapestries 

Zigzagging lifelines like bloodline tributaries 

Content with the presence of another

So easy to see the difference

Between them and the shadowed homeless living off of the music of sidewalks

devolving from the point

Of needing another human being 

To needing to fulfill a base need

Cause it's hard to love someone else when your hungry

The city that never sleeps is really the city that sleeps with one eye open

One ear to the ground to hear the conspiracy of rumbling subway factions

Intestinal train tracks pumping forth the contents of the urban lifestyle

The businessmen, the chefs, the students, the teachers, the whores, the pimps

The ironic hipster in his native subterranean habitat bitching about how inorganic 

Subway is

And in the distance the equalizers

The fallen towers

That remind us that shock and grief are the same no matter what language they're spoken in

Sonic abuse

Verbal assault

Abuse assault abuse assault 

Of names

Hitting you like a memorial wall 

The detached observation

Sunrise/Sunset (Vile Goodbye/Vital Goodbye)

Three years encapsulate the tragic chronology
We are stretched thin over a timeline of romanticized destruction
Like a volcano erupting from the ground
We love the release of pressure
The catharsis binds us to self-harming addiction

I was a sunset when I met you.

Be careful when you love someone who hates themselves Biblically
It will never be a fair fight
When God is on their side
They poured scriptures into you
Told you that your descending weight was the burden of sin leaving your body
Your increased self-hatred was your moral compass pinpointing the islands
Isolating you from the wholeness of God's plan

They convinced you that your sexuality is an impulse
To be controlled by the vapid life of restriction
You are a damaged, unnatural wonder
Who can only be restored by holding your insecurities tightly
As reminders that your body is a cage
Your mind is a master manipulator
Your soul is nothing but a child who got rejected by his father far too many times

Yes, you have been scarred by church
Yet, you believe they can pray the pain away
It is hard to watch you offer yourself up
As a sacrifice to the complex martyrdom
Of self-denial

I understand this life is hard
To be who we are in a heteronormative society
Is to consistently be considered lesser
And to believe that your passing privilege
Will persuade God's wrath to pass over your
doorstep when judgment day comes
And save you from burning in the hell
You created

All I have ever wanted
Was to show you how beautiful the sky looks when bruised by the sun
And that people can still be beautiful after
They have been damaged too

The delusion of saving you has fled from my mind
Attempting your rescue paints the sunset back into my bones
The light I thought I saw in you
Was merely the rising reflection of mine
Recognizing that when I washed my hands of you
and passed over the dark night of your departing shadow
I had become the sunrise.

What You Guard (You Are)

What skin do you shed at night when you sleep?
Snake secret or crabby compulsion?
From hard to soft
As dust mites feast - you are unaware.
Tribute to a small pantheon of arthropod gods.
Your vulnerable flesh
So guarded.
Pain you keep locked up like a prisoner
What you guard.
You Are.

Impression of another person in the vacancy next to you
Pulling back upward for lack of a body to occupy
Its rising pride
You are a vessel of pride
Leaking like a broken faucet
Rusty as a neglected pipe
Affecting weary masculinity
And calling it wisdom
Placing others' lives above your own
And calling it love
Stuff your selflessness in a box
Meant for an engagement ring
Chaste and occasional
Occupy your future
To preserve your dusty destiny
What you guard
You Are.

Cracked oyster of a man
Bottom feeder water filter
Graced by the ever present
Effervescent saline purity bath ring
Of ocean's song
Tribute to a small pantheon of geologic gods
Warmed by volcanoes
Smoothed by the sandpaper sediments' journey
Your smoothness is the byproduct of their dusty destiny
What is your gift back to them?
You cannot offer up the pearl
You guard the pearl
What you guard.
You Are.

Bow bent out of shape
Arrow notched in the embrace of your string
Pulling back upward for abundance
Of a slender body to occupy your rising pride
Pierce the air into a frenzy with your whistling
Suspended in the distance of origin to unfortunate target
To intercept the musical note
Of your economic, ergonomic, aerodynamism conducted perfectly
Tribute to a small pantheon of war gods
Music and violence go hand in hand.
Arrow loosed from one heart to stop another.
Sacrificing innocence to guard innocence
What you guard.
You Are. 

This Body

A black body is an idealized
Physical object that absorbs
Any and all light
And doing so perfectly
As such not extant in nature

This is my body
It absorbs shame
Like a sponge
It is not hard
It has curves in places
That should be straight
And thin like the sheets
of a magazine

I often do not eat
For fear of pushing my waistline
Over the edge
Unacceptable
Look in the mirror
And there is too much to grab

This is my body
It walks like an apology
Aware of steps it should have taken
To prevent itself from ever reaching
It's current state
And beating itself up over it

I have given myself up
To the appraising hands of readers
Mastered in the language of braille
With lack of a word that can translate to appreciation
In their vocabulary
Less reading
More grave digging
I am dead in their eyes
Cold and mute
Like a gravestone sprung up from the ground
Participating in life
As a marker for death
While their shoveling hands
Become fluent in the language of desecration

This is my body
It is not a one liner
But it is always the punchline
Not sharp wit
But soft deflection of the hard questions

My body is dark
Like a mark of cosmic shame
Perfectly absorbing
any and all light around it
Consumer and destroyer
As such not celebrated in nature