Carefully crafted stones of playfulness.
To cure the emptiness of withered time.
Punished, imprisoned in a learned way.
Justify the step, brave the digestive ways,
of the prickled ones.
Talk to the bird that stands a perch among
the green untamed, fearless in flight gliding
down sighted at the motions of the string
held people.
A marvelous perspective...Fathom the
Calmness.
O the blood of vigor...of freedom...
You tell me that I am young
That life has merely licked me, not stung
That I do not understand, that I have not yet lived
Enough to grasp the substance
I have known disease
Slow tears, muted pleas
Pain that nothing could appease
I have known the smell of hospitals for summers
The beeping and slurping of machine in massive numbers
I have spoken to voiceless loved ones,
Loved ones with teethless mouths and twisted tongues
Distorted jaws and wheezing lungs.
We have spoken with little green charts
And broken hearts
From the inability to connect the mouth to the thoughts in the head
And I left without understanding,
What they had said
Because I eventually had to let it go
(I still don't know)
I have spent countless summer nights
In nature’s garb, floating silently in a river
So warm that my limbs, skimming the surface, didn't shiver
Under a clear sky, the stars like paradisiac lights
Without anyone ever finding out
About these wild and primal escapades
I've drank, I've smoked
I have burned my throat
With coarse lemon gin
Until I could no longer feel my skin.
I have been frightened
Yes I have felt fear, like a noose around my throat being tightened
Like a gruesome black crow, perched on my shoulder
I have often awoken affright at night,
Longing, praying, for the morning light
I have felt fear, wild, fierce and turbulent fear
More than anyone will everyone will ever know
By men, by life, by myself
Desolate under the sheets, like a forsaken toy
All by myself
I have seen Paris in the rain
Traveled the French countryside by train
I've woken up to New York window views
And seen New Orleans afternoons, filled with heat and blues.
I've swam the Mexican Baja waters, turquoise and clear
With snakes as sharp as spears
I have known humiliation
Causing my cheeks to turn carnation
A spoon, emptying my insides out
Like a gourd
I have loved
I have known the aching pain of a swelled heart
And the way it can tear you apart
I have gushed torrents upon my pillows and sleeves
Tears running down my chin like guilty thieves
From a lit-up house
I have known death, and grief
The meaning of "never"
Whimpering in the school bathroom
And cold, lonely nights
I have seen the works of Van Gogh, Mondrian, and Miro,
Modigliani, Cezanne, and Frida Kahlo
Of Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, Magritte, and Picasso
I have wandered through hallways of masterpieces
Holding tight to my grandmother's hand
And I have wept shamelessly for joy
Before Degas's La classe de danse
I have been diagnosed
I have undergone computer programs designed to shift my brain, to better it
To get me to be normal, to submit
I have had brain-altering medicine shoved down my throat,
Like stuffing a goose,
To make my brain run a little less loose
And I have submitted and gotten use to my brain being altered.
I have had kisses that were mere trifles
Frivolous, yet fierce and acute like shots from a rifle
Lips of mere flesh, not sweet godly nectar
And gazes that meant everything
That seemed to connect with an invisible yet indestructible string
Iris like distant galaxies and pupils twinkling like black jewels
Eyes that seemed enkindled by some ethereal fuel
Speaking of emotions far too secluded, cryptic and cluttered
To be worded and uttered
I know the way in which violence resides
Not in commotion, brusqueness, nor physical harm
But in silence
In the time that covers pain and secrets
In the slow impossibility of trust
In the way that some secrets become inconceivable to tell, time has so covered them in rust
In that dull, dismal ache
In all that is doomed to remain forever opaque.
I have read, for pleasure,
The works of Balzac, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Voltaire
Of Bobin, Gaude, and Baudelaire
Of Flaubert, Hemingway
and good old Bradbury, Ray
Émile Zola, Primo Levi
Moliere, Rousseau, and Bukowski
I have read, and loved, and understood
I have known insomnia
The way a beach knows the tides
Sleepless nights of convulsive, feverish panic, of clutching my sides,
Of silent hysteria and salty terror.
I know what happens at night, when sweet slumber seems so far away
The worries and woes seem to multiply and swell in hopeless disarray
My lips grow pale, my eye grow sunken
As a time ticks by, tomorrow darkens
I have witnessed horror
In the form of a blue body bag
Being rolled out with a squeaking drag
By two yellow-vested men
With apologetic eyes
That seemed to say "Oh god
We're so sorry you had to see that
Please, please
Go home
And try to forget"
But you are right
I am still just a child
Naive, innocent, and pure
I have known nothing dark or obscure
I have not yet lived.
“Don’t go in there,”
He moaned, playing with his
Draw string hood,
Pulling on his bird-nest hair.
Why not? If I asked
He wouldn’t tell me.
Would the matte-dark masked
Man eat me up?
If I unlocked would I
Crack with shock or
Melt with grief into a cocktail
With those silly umbrellas
And pea pod cherries.
Unless it was his.
Maybe an orchard
Lies there, apples and lemons
And juniper berries and they
Weren’t mine but they were his
Pea pod cherries.
Or a marble deity,
Greeny Greek blue,
And I ask myself,
What in God’s name could he do?
Everything (physically) erased, nothing ever forgotten. Every word spoken or written is engrained in my brain, I will never be the same. Unlike no other you came you conquered you (changed). Seven existential hours that would change my DNA and internal making, making, making what I knew up until then surprisingly malleable. Your words your actions your face your voice filled up every millimeter of me that everything else inside was pushed to the brim and seeped out of my pores. Everything I once was became everything you ever were, ever are. There is a chair in the back of my mind that is reserved for you to sit there and continue to hotwire (my mind) and thoughts into something much better than I ever could have fathomed. Your puppet strings control what and who I am and it is impossible to think there is any other living organism that could possess that undeniable ability. There is a keyhole somewhere inside myself. There is a key inside of you. Keyholes the size of pinholes as vast as Sirius. Small, believable, existing. Keys the shape of orchids and birch as natural as the metamorphosis of roots (into) trees. I never knew what (my) purpose was until you. Or maybe I always knew what I was before you and you opened the windows to the (soul) otherwise known as brown eyes so timid to everyone besides you. The smallest organs became so (full of) nothing but visions of you. There is a special place in my slowly beating heart perfectly executed to fit all of you. A twin bed that only holds one girl has an infinite amount of room for whatever (love) you could continue to bring into my life. The impossibility to (for)get and erase has left me with an endless amount of hope to see you again. The possibility of knowing that you are still somewhere out there and I am still somewhere down here, although unsure where. I cannot ascertain whether or not feelings are reciprocated but I know I know they are. I know you know where you are. I know you know I do not know where I am but you could figure it all out for me. You had it all figured out for me. Plans stretched farther than the 3000 miles separating my red string from yours. Our strings are still connected. There is nothing in the world that can cut them no matter the distance no matter the people no matter the time no matter the place. I know and somehow you know fate will bring our two oceans together. One calm ocean full of creatures so logical and tides so serene they make a beautifully flawed human being known as yourself. One ocean plagued by waves and uncertainty as to what is below the surface that makes up a human being, me. Both oceans surround land full of love. Our continents will merge. Our love will emerge. (You, only you.)
16.
What a small weight for the most important gas,
that is keeping us alive.
I was 16 when I realized that my mom
had forever been my biggest supporter.
I was 16 and I was still holding my fingers crossed behind my back,
hoping that Santa was real.
I'm the hidden meaning behind good reasons
that have paved the way toward bad choices.
For I have realized, sitting silently in the corner,
that we are all forced to realize our
own self destruction.
Like the building and the wrecking ball,
of which I am often both.
I am your overspoken words and unsaid thoughts.
I am not the beautiful bare trees in the winter,
but instead I am your poisonous dinner.
I am the passion behind tears
and the emotion behind screams.
I am the thoughts that keep you up at night,
and your cold, bare feet.
I resemble a constant string of avoidance and indecisiveness.
I am your dewy eyes and groggy voice at 7:30 in the morning.
I am nothing but a blinking statue.
I am 16 years worth of unanswered questions.
Yet in 16 years will all I be is
another 16 years older?
I am the epitome of drowning without water,
and not to spoil the ending for you,
but I still have 16 years worth of faith,
that everything will be okay.
I remember the last time we talked
My voice trembled like a violin string
As always my mouth was numb and locked
And the phrases I couldn't utter seemed to boil and sting
I watched distraught words float by on the breeze
As I desperately tried explaining to you,
With embarrassment and unease
All we could and should be, all I dreamed and knew
Tried weaving a future from a tangled past.
I saw you through curtains of heavy fog
Your eyes bleary and glassed
I stuttered and muttered and wept and I couldn't
And I knew that I wouldn't
Give words to the ineffable mess in my brain.
I looked up, the mist breathed slowly
You walked away like a slow and silent midnight train
The sun was shining through the clouds, golden and holy
As the white haze of things unsaid weighed upon the rolling hills
I hold in my hands
The beginning of a poem.
The beginning,
Or perhaps the very end of a loose string.
Eyeing me.
Asking me,
You,
Who sit behind the desk,
You.
Do you forever wish to maintain this?
Do you never wish
To sit below?
Above?
In front of?
Inside?
That’s stupid,
I say,
You can’t sit inside a desk.
It’d have to be industrial-
Sized.
And they don’t make those,
They don’t.
The string hasn’t moved.
It simply says-
‘I’m not joking.’
---
‘Do you wish to meet your heroes,
beggars, fools, enemies, lovers, and
every walk of human who walk
forever in the in-between?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you wish to know
life
and death
instantaneously,
contemporaneously,
with solemnity,
with contempt,
and know
every moment and feeling
inbetween?’
‘Yes.’
‘You shall know little else.’
‘Do you
wish to wish
wish to want
want to wish
and so on
and so forth?’
The string asks me tirelessly.
‘Simply put,
I am always wanting.
I am always at fault.
I am never wrong
But I am never right
Either.’
‘You know this
and little else.
Live both in
This world
And outside it.
View this place as it were never meant to be.
Like you,
It waiting to see
And be seen.
Like me,
It is a string.
It is nothing,
And yet to pull
Means everything
You have been summoned to task.
I have been left here to
Ask you:
Will you do it?’
The string has not moved
But my hands are shaking.
‘No,’
I say,
‘Yes.’
The music shot into her eardrum like a trance-inducing drug, each bang of the drum, each rhythmic flow, each string of the guitar would slowly take her under. Under hypnosis.
The power of the beat was so intense, that it lifted her chin and shoved her into the floor of dance. There, was where she found herself in a state of uncontrolled and vigorous rhythmic movement. The music had somewhat possessed her limbs as though they had a mind of their own. Her routine was calculated and her foot movement, unique.
She, all at once, knew and knew not what she was doing. As her surroundings stood marvelled in awe, she was alone. Her hips shaking and bouncing as though a chemical mixture was being synthesised deep within her, a mixture that was yet to explode. Explode with power so great, it would possess others in her 'roundings. Surroundings that would, in time faster than inhalation, be under the same knife. With movements and sways that embodied and humanised the worship of music.
Rhythm is their God, the controller of beings. Almost as if dance is the ritual of prayer, and the club, a mosque or sacred ground.
Like rhythm is the favoured slave-driver. Like rhythm is the unfeared tyrant. Like rhythm is what brings the animalistic spirit within us all back to life after daylight and spiritual rest. Like rhythm is the pair of unspoken arms that push them, its subjects, over the precipise and into the river of flow. And under The Rhythm's spell, they will move, they will love it.
There's nothing in the world I would not say
or do
or anywhere I would not go
if I believed it could save us,
Even if it wouldn't,
I'd string my words up like Christmas lights an give them to you,
to help brighten your world.
But I cannot give you anything
or be near you
or grab you and shake you or scream
or cry in to your chest.
I am at the mercy of you.
You have the power to leave
in seconds and minutes.
But I would do anything in this world to stop it.
Why? What's the point?
Because you are the first person I've ever really loved
and the first one who made me believe I was special
and the only one who's ever believed in me
and the last one I ever want to love.
There's nothing in the world I would not say
or do
or anywhere I would not go
if I believed it could save us,
Even if it wouldn't,
I'd string my words up like Christmas lights an give them to you,
to help brighten your world.
But I cannot give you anything
or be near you
or grab you and shake you or scream
or cry in to your chest.
I am at the mercy of you.
You have the power to leave
in seconds and minutes.
But I would do anything in this world to stop it.
Why? What's the point?
Because you are the first person I've ever really loved
and the first one who made me believe I was special
and the only one who's ever believed in me
and the last one I ever want to love.
