PART THE FIRST
our words are painted in the blood that coats our hands from our self-vivisection a harsh introspection gently brushing crimson paint over our mouths like too-red lipstick in the shade of the sunset before a storm and self-deprecation becomes an artform akin to the irony of smiles in the faces of skulls and surviving without really living.

PART THE SECOND
who was it that so thoroughly convinced us that gentleness is weakness that vulnerability is to be avoided at all costs that emotions are distractions that showing fear is a sign of defeat? when we accept our broken pieces not as failure but as experience and do not beat ourselves up for the cracks that remain that is when we will truly know who we are.

PART THE THIRD
we are afraid of the things we want the most because striving for something we cannot reach hurts less that achieving all we could have ever hoped for and having it slip through shaking hands like smoke in the winds of change and if that is not the hallmark of self-sabotage than i dont know what is.

PART THE FOURTH
like all things time is a construct merely a patchwork of cogs and stone circles and the small pieces of autonomy we carve out of our day to paste on clock faces like our painted-on smiles and ready acceptance of having our days dictated by our ancestors’ need to define-contain-control.

PART THE FIFTH
the hallways of academia are perfumed by anxious fear-sweat and existential rage mixing as a noxious fog of violet and violent movement in absence and the eddying swirls of determination’s backdrafts.

PART THE SIXTH
we loved legends with prophecies when we were young because we wanted purpose and direction and meaning and now we devour stories about rebellion and fist-fighting with fate because now we think we know that being told to only set our feet in orchestrated patterns is little more than accepting our role as puppets to the cosmos but really what do we know about anything? there is joy in clear directions and there is joy in carving our own path but either way life is a jungle and we are just as likely to be devoured by graceful creatures of earth and sky and beauty on the path as off of it.

PART THE SEVENTH
they say that youth is pain and that growing up is exhaustion but who are they and why do they get to dictate the trials of life by binding us into cliché who are they to speak sorrow into our very breath who are they to tell us they have taken the measure of human existence and found it wanting?

PARTH THE EIGHTH
peace is the name of a friend ive never met who might as well be imaginary and relegated to the dimmed halls and dusty attics of my early years.

PART THE NINTH
sometimes i wonder if i donated my breath to charity and the remaining hollow shell of myself to science would my gift be considered a sacrifice would my story be considered a tragedy would my life have meant anything would i have made my ancestors proud?

PART THE TENTH
and we learn that words are alive alive alive as we drown in eloquence not meant to be spoken in high places not meant for voices of thunder or gods but for the fragile invincibility of children.

h.f.m.

Who am I pretending to be?
Can anyone tell me?
Pick up that pen and paper, who am I imitating today?
Who's passion and preciseness becomes filler and *******?
Who's vigorous melodies become the background to my ******* fake scenes of emotional clarity?
Who gets to be the air I breath?
Because God knows my supply is empty.
Because I wake up with worse eyesight than I'd gone to sleep with
And that's just so tragic to me, right?
Because my body does nothing but relay horrifying secrets and things to be afraid of, and all it takes is a glance to believe it
Because I've seen it.
But I don't want to lose the fundamental parts of me that just happen to experience this hell I'm living
I just want to stop this aching.
But no matter how many times or methods I use to say it,
it doesn't stop.
Words and songs, and things I want and things I want to be
colors and concepts that I find fascinating - no, life saving - no, everything to me
Art can't save me.
Art is what I choose to be, and I know I can't love, or take care of, let alone
save
me.

New
Like the dawn
The glorious sunrise
Pinkish hues awash with silent beiges
And the sun
Is a fiery orb
Coloring life into every living thing

I feel the new
With my breath
In and out
And I think of the ocean
The powerful ocean
I can feel it within my heart,
The waves rumbling through my veins

I can see the new
In not so distant visions
Of a future full of growth
I’ve healed so much
And yet there’s more
More of the new
I open my doors
Let it all in
All the gloriously soothing beauty
Of life’s simplest pleasures
Healing me

There’s been a crack made in my lifelong illusions
I’m beginning to feel clarity, and not confusion
Saying yes yes yes
To more beauty.

At a desk, coffee sachets rest.
Long-life milk harbours
white dreams of expiry.
Shuffling in his forgetful nest
a grey man blinks
at the intruding light.

Americo, do you remember
your antique power,
that opened like a rose
on the walls of Hiroshima?

My father is an old man
Once upon a Time he was a cold man
He was almost always a good man
The kind where you knew where you stood, man.

My father raised loud daughters
My father raised proud daughters
My father raised daughter that said yes with no question
Who's no's were not a suggestion

My father raised strong daughters
Beside you when nights got long daughter
My father raised stern daughters
Daddy raised you get what you earn daughters

My father raised daughters that would fight a grown man
But know when to stay silent and when to raise a hand
Daddy raised daughters that don't need a man
Daddy raised daughters just like he planned

And those daughters became mother's
Cousins
Aunt's
And their daughters are difficult women
Loud women
Proud women

Because daddy looked around and didn't like what he saw
He saw weak men
Like to drink men
He saw men who beat their wives
He saw men waste their lives
He saw men who would suffice
To sleep next to his daughter the rest of his life

So Daddy raised women to be strong
And sat beside them when nights got long
He never had titles, power, or wealth
In his old age he barely has his health
But daddy gave me more than money or fame
Daddy gave me his spirit and gave me his name