Creeping on the Border of Going Away
Screaming about the confines of yesterday, trapped and tangled in vines of repetition.
Seeing through spaces and that everything is the same
with leaves transparent and mundane.
Wings tethering like
the pages
of a book
caught in the wind
with dust lining on the spine.
The sand paper crumbling
and sounding like
seeds
sprinkled
on the fertilizer
of crime.
The itching noise of clocks ticking
at dusk when you’re trying to milk your sleep.
And you fall in and out and you’re waiting
for the alarm to finally beep.
The grimy anticipation of time.
The teenagers growing too fast.
The children knowing too much.
Information becoming the past.
Dreaming about the limits of the future.
Weeping for an outlet that makes sense.
Screaming about the confines of yesterday.
Trapped and tangled again and again.
Reading to Drinkers and Drinking to Books
The piece I read for this event last night can be found here.
Saint Valentine Was Buried in Rome of this Month
Some people carry their lives on their backs. I just carry this self-revolving world including good deeds for my siblings that give me good karma. The typical.
Like Eddie McDowd, we couldn’t function without karma whether we were Buddhist or not.
And then you meet those confident people who teach you everything you know. Their ego is inspirational and they’ve got a hint of sympathy so that you know they’re human.
You’re convinced you can do anything. You’re accomplished unrequited, pure love and you’re close to spoiling yourself with infidelity. You have everything. Your career is at its peak, your family is openly proud of you, and your friends are just slightly jealous. It’s perfect.
You’re away from the conventional consideration of following rules and obedience. You’re realistic within yourself, thinking of yourself because no one changes and they instead grow into selfish teenagers and selfish adults. You feel esteemed and self-loving and belonging.
But then that one person, an angel in your eyes, turns infectious and even their apologies sound cocky. And you don’t conceptualize that until for some reason you become down and you’re clawing at something to account it to.
And it frustrates you because you’re the only one who seems to care. You care that that one friend doesn’t want to hang out anymore. You care that the future is dwindling. You can’t fit into your favorite jeans anymore. Things aren’t the same.
Your parents are starting to piss you off like you’re in high school. Your career isn’t worth it. You want to run away and infidelity just doesn’t do it like you thought it would. You’re feeling sat on and so far from self-actualization.
It’s only because you didn’t even think of transcendence. You didn’t think of the unclothed attitude of giving to others humbly. You didn’t think of not minding your pride because it was too vain like an IMAX screen showing close ups of a deteriorating relationship. A relationship much like yourself forgetting about the dog until you find him on the roadside dead. And you’re cursing yourself and cursing yourself again for even getting a dog because you’re allergic.
There’s got to be a way to get past yourself. There’s got to be a way to relieve yourself from it all so that you can give back without feeling unreciprocated and then understand how to give back without feeling guilty.
Some people carry their lives on their backs. I just carry this self-revolving world on my shoulders. So much time goes by and each day feels like a drone but I look back and everything’s changed. And then I think that everything’s changing and my life is improving when it’s not. People stay the same. Just stay in the inferiorized social role you were put in by narcissists admiring confident hot-shots. You’ll get your turn. You’re a step closer to feeling belonging.
A Poem For Tonight Written Right Now
I just want to wish Steve Jobs a peaceful death because everyone seems to be wishing him a good trip to hell. I mean, I didn’t know the guy. I just know he wanted to change the technical world. And everyone who owns an iPod or a replica of it should be grateful that the jerk was confident enough to pirate the Silicon Valley. Just like, although the twins pushed on their galley, Mark Zuckerberg went down in history. You have to be selfish. You have to take credit for the originality of coincidences. You have to shout back at belligerence even if it doesn’t make sense and you’re packing your shit at two in the morning going home.
My sister goes to West Point and so is entitled to cheaper train tickets. And I agree that the twenty bucks to Grand Central aren’t twenty bucks well spent so I tried her method once, got away with it, and tried it again. And so the ticket taker made his way down and took my senior stub or whatever. And his hole puncher is ready, going click click click. And he goes, “Now are you under twelve?” and I said, “Don’t I look it?” So I had to pay that extra plus the on-peak fare. And it’s not like I’m saving the world or anything so who really cares. And I took the on-peak to who knows to where and when. And since the soldiers of America is everyone’s friend, she and her seven-foot boyfriend blends with the other ecstatic children skipping to see the Ring starting at ten. It’s all in the camouflage.
It’s all in the initiative. Who really counts up to the derivative when it’s only you convincing with your self-serving bias. It’s David and Goliath. It’s all in the line moving and you choosing to be number four or number three or number two. It’s the patience expected of you when you’re hurt and the selfless pondering that you’re not capable to retort in return. To react to a child’s account like he discovered a cure for a AIDS. To brave the torturous wrestling in the middle of the day. To, for the sake of courtesy, pretend that their cereal box watches are cool. To not push with more effort on the canoe. To wade helplessly, feet wet in the drowned weeds and the dew feeling bound to the troughs to not expose the tainted rude. But to stand in the shower, thinking, “Man, my boobs really grew.” So you go out on an adventure and make some discoveries, too.
And irate bitches to the left whispering, “Who is that chick? She’s new!” And your flirty smiles and slight lean-ins are painted out to be something lewd. And before you know it, you stole someone’s man and they’re running après vous. And your eyeliner is bleeding and head is leaking but you stick to your attitude.
You have to laugh loudest in the room. You have to stroke gently to the tune. You have to think like those guys rubbing their palms together thinking, “I’m gonna make her my boo.” And that might not be likely but, you know.. do what you gotta do. You have to take it harder on the booze. But don’t start sobbing at the bar because you aren’t Ray Charles; this isn’t the blues. You have to dance smooth and really prove. That you’re someone who gets the joke even though it was too loud and you didn’t hear it, too. And you don’t remember names so you’re like, “Oh, that’s hilarious, You!” And some days, I know, you’re really not even in the mood. But you have to be in the in-crowd or choose to be a mute. You have to be the man. That is, you have to go hard in the paint or no one really gives a damn. And they have to really want fans because it makes them feel included. And avoiding being booted means that you didn’t lose.
And race with the chase to South San Francisco in North California on child off-peak tickets in tall hats made for witches skipping in privileged camouflage, salivating wet, hungry as a dog. Conditioned and aggressive and flaring smoke like a choo. But a body is dead today and all we care about is how he was viewed.
Spruce
Couldn’t cross the street
in grey feet
or greasy palms.
Slanted trees
and cardboard targeted
like poison ivy
or catching lady bugs.
Underground psalms, malapert.
Homemade creeks
of oily bins.
Blades curve plastic
and dig slippery pave.
Pivoted for homemade tears
under waning breezy days.
Toes cram echoes
and drag cell phones.
“Mijo!” she whistles.
Lighting flies.
It’s time to go home.
The Post Disorder
We drank from the same cup, my brother. And she couldn’t bear touch our infant bodies. She was touched first. And my grandmother was livid but she couldn’t live with it so she bought a rug to sleep under. I belonged there, too. It wasn’t news she was afraid. She returned from the war, realizing with her amygdala that fighting must have been a figment of her make believe life. Because her bones, honed with every strain from euphoria, became less hollow for some reason, my brother blamed for his mouth, too. But I prayed for longevity. The scissors that they used to separate me from her womb would be inside me if he left. That’s the difference. She couldn’t bear the repulsiveness. I was barely introduced. So I don’t wait for anyone unless I’m left. Fear induced the tears that left me and the comfort of being close by. Like my grandmother’s lies, darkness filled my body. I took it, unhooking because I, myself, am alive.
After the Trust at Sea
She always wanted to be a candle person but she was afraid of the thought of her home catching fire. Her daughter admired her taste but didn’t mind them with or without her bubble baths. She couldn’t live without her laced dresses, though. She remembered her mother braiding her hair on steps from a house full of the sounds of other people. She couldn’t find consistency and wouldn’t mess it up if she attained it. She couldn’t tell if her best was enough. She couldn’t find where to measure it.
Her cream walls were spotless. The carpets were always dusted. They weren’t infested with the flustering media and what other people thought. They were comfortably austere yet the mother feared dying. Everyday she hung her overcoat, she felt a panging knowledge that she was neglecting something. She prayed that it saved itself so their lives could be spared but the feeling never left her.
One evening, her daughter purchased a set of red tealight candles that smelled gadarene. Her mother tossed them immediately into the Sea of Galilee and prayed the whole night. Her daughter sympathized with her for whatever reason she figured. Its absence remained and daunted her; she couldn’t get it out. She didn’t know how to invite it back to bless her own region. It attacked her with fear of abandonment and neglect. She lived that whole week crying. Her mother was as tense. But, eventually, a glory entered. It centered itself on their pale gold tablecloth. Everything else remained dark. The stark chairs consumed them. The mother inquired about her daughter’s day. She felt the instinct she couldn’t convey yet woke up with, it seemed to relay, was gone. They exchanged words and swallowed in silence while a single luminaria candle flickered between them. The Holy Spirit lived with them ever since.
The P Versus the M
He pressured my occipital toward his pelvis and I flowed into the comfort of his tone. His eyes said deadly; he told me reassured, and positively that his basis expressed a turgid warmth. But he scolded head, choking loving, touching barriers for clarity. And I appealed. Rubbing, sucking, really making him a man. Feeling him run through my body because I was easily the sand with my elevating pulse and my needing a substitute and his upper hand had reassured he was as turgid, too. Because I was only colder, fucking sick in scolding heat. But I took the it in because the heat was deemed the treat. And I had loved it released. It seemed to just defeat. I was blind and closed to audition my instinctive disbelief. Lobes broken but I wasn’t. I mean, temperance too controlled. Boarding on and boarding off. Told lines taught me by rote. And he extracted it too well. Accomplishment so loose. Personally irie. I sourced. He was stingy, too. I wanted in; him in. Coalescence obliviously. And then I shoved him out of danger; frustration. Effrontery. Don’t know where he is now but he misses using me and I cringe by association to know exactly how he means.
And then he came along. Yes, he with the capital H. Not my creator but my savior who broadly, strongly paved. Laughing loudly. Not just heard. Reciting jokes. Had to be there. Ring as soft as listening eyes. Hands aggregating hair. He scolded heat but he was alive and I put the humidity up. And I’m a city girl; my heart’s in winter. Dead-choking us, I dub. I flowed toward his pelvis, he fondled my heart up. I guessed the nude was a pulsing view. I thought that that’s what’s up. Every beat toward his sheets toward the comfort of his tone. He was a man, grown and uplifted; I grew to deal alone. But I would complement. Then I shifted. Pulsated, the mood vexed. It should be hard but I forget that I’m frozen to death.
Remics
In passing amorous needs from you
the incandescent beamed within.
Backs ached pain, eyes faked drapes
fingers multi-picked certainly.
Until virtually descending.
In signing off
behind italicized weins,
Before graffiti summoned away.
In seeing you were it.
In missing you through stupidity
and the windy quadrangle.
Beside vines that wouldn’t reach for miles
to keep us thorned.
In happening for a reason
And overcoming too late
but anything for our forever witty lives.
For our forever glides down Central Park
and absorbing drizzling lakes
and taking pinches from tips of cemented stakes.
In giving away and praying for a re-do
and it growing with my amorous needs
and questioning if I let us be then.
In storing something special.
Tightly bonding the two, strong.
Without courts creeping a force to lose.
Probably just someone else
As I felt you were flawed.
It’s all paradoxical.
You don’t have to reply
or forward.
Just tell me I’m a notch below your less than three.
I’ll file on
as you will be
more mandatory
then he will ever be.
Our Eyes Avoiding the Sparrow
My mother gave me life with a shove of her breath. I was left from her womb. The stillborn took too long to embrace me, horns undeveloped so I waited. And as I cried, her pores wept with the pain of energy like my father that July night. It was hot, I knew. Nothing could’ve stopped them. But it was six years later when I grew into a beast when her legs strapped around his torso for better reasons, her fist heaping for the food he brought home slapped her dinner in the face. They didn’t listen to the silence of my sister whispering to God, begging that the shoving cop cuffing him wouldn’t hurt him. My father returned home where my grandmother gave him a heart fluttering with every meal she served him and every kiss goodnight. And I might’ve understood why he couldn’t give me one if I was emotionally there to be aware of the wind in their eyes. It choked me years later but I didn’t need it. It was to convince the devil he won.
And I’m sensitive as fuck so everyone told me I was strong so I could shut the hell up. It didn’t work but the supremacy birthed my self esteem while my sisters wallowed elsewhere, trying to find something I wasn’t aware of. I was inured by their hurting retort. Was it food to nurture their eighty pounds? I had it. Was it company to return to me alone? I became lonely. And we pained as a group. Sitting in the chairs my tuition accounted for, I long to be stopped and plead with and shoved with paining energy, pores weeping like I do everyday.
