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