you talk through your laughter;
you barely complete your sentences
it's raucous, rich, and resounding,
uncontainable, unstoppable, unforgettable
it goes bursting out without a warning

and sometimes tears are there, too:
the kind that makes me laugh, too,
and when i do, it's due to the joy
of being there to see you laugh:
a sight, a sound, a grounding
that makes being here worth it

and your laugh comes from your belly
and your heart is there, too
and i like to think your heart is what makes
your laugh so sonorous

and when i'm downstairs and you're up
and i can hear your laughter from the other side of the house
i can't not smile, too, and come join you
because there's this gold treasure bursting out
and i'm too selfish to let it pass without witnessing it

there is too much good there
it floods through every room
and whether i want it or not
whether i'm in a good mood or not
whether i'm playing "what's the point" or not
it wets my feet
and i'm a boy in a waterpark, skipping through the splash pads

you do that for me
your smile, your laugh, your joy
it's infectious
they're my favorite part of living with you

I step out my front door
and I meet the flood
He is everywhere and waiting
debating and contemplating
new ways to pressure me

I swim out to my car
and I've made it
the destination, far
and the flood is ready to pounce
"How can we squeeze out his every ounce?"

Relentless, he pushes down on me
Unceasing, he presses my heart
In the closed system
the blood in the ****** feedback loop
pulses and pushes boundaries
trying to escape my restricting veins

The flood breathes out
He centers his weight
on my ventricles, my veins
and I am stunned
unable to move
unable to think

A perfect juxtaposition
of stillness and movement

I try to move but the flood falls harder
I try to breathe but the water fills my lungs

I am beneath everything

The flood's name is expectation
it preys to break my faith and
It wins every time
And every time it wins
I breathe shorter
I breathe faster

My body aches
embodied lackluster

Oh the naivete in my own eyes
Bursting with purpose
It's tangible, palpable
Like the jelly in a too-full sandwich

I am more me than yesterday
And the day before

I have lost parts
And rebuilt with the remainder
I have developed
And found fluid foundation

I was once both the crushing hand
And the cocoon within it
Now I am the blossomed
And the released

I've let go
And I have found myself

He,
The one in front of me,
Speaks in fluent Christianese
And I listen
And fall back into that dialect of antiquity

I,
The atheist in front of him,
Speak in tune
And he nods
And accepts the façade I’ve presented

We,
The former and the current,
Barely communicate
Through a thick layer
Of exclusivity

I am skeptical of you
How do I trust an *****
That's been so wrong
In times past?

You devil,
Reaching out to hold the hand of a new lover
When you haven't let go of the past

It took a long, long time
But I learned how to turn you off
And now that you're on standby
I don't know if I can trust you

Heart,
Battered by baggage
Beaten to the bone,
Do your nerves still work?

Are you able to discern the inner workings
Of the paramour's heart?
Are we compatible?
Are we in love?

Are we loving each other?
Are you able to be trusted
With our great future?

I'm a big Spanish mistake
And sometimes I'm just a mistake
Sometimes I am so burdened with the imposition of others upon me
Sometimes I simply cannot see
Past all of my shortcomings

They break down a flimsy wall, built up by the absence of harm
And then when harm happens,
The walls come tumbling down, and you are left seeing a version of me
That I don't want anyone to see

Much less the entire world
Much less the eyes I look into at my job
Much less the students I try to help as if I'm not an idiot

I am my mistakes
We are inseparable
And once I lose them, and I learn how not to make them,
I can help others who used to make those mistakes
And use that grace I so sorely needed when I made them
Because you can't leave the world with the mess that you found it in
You have to make it better

You can't expect everyone to be a teacher
You can't expect everyone to be a good teacher
Even though everyone should have grace

Just keep telling yourself it'll eventually get better
And it will
Either by happenstance or supplication, it'll just happen.

It's easy to forget how far I've come
Sitting here in a place I've driven to,
In a car I've purchased,
With a license I've earned
With a job I've kept for 7 years,
Writing on a computer I've bought with my own money,
Writing in a language that I didn't learn when I was a child

I'm not just my mistakes,
I am my successes
And I'm how they are handled
And I'm How I handle them
And I am how I handle my failures as well. (as well as my successes)
And yet

I'm neither
I'm somehow expected to be this third, emergent thing:
Human

And perhaps that is what it is to be human

To be encompassed by one's failures,
So helplessly encompassed by them
So terribly encompassed by them,
As well as our successes

I am a collection of the two
Yet neither

Look to the person on your left
And to the person on your right
And pull out your phone, and look at yourself through the reflection of your screen

Each one of you has been affected by toxic masculinity

If you looked and saw a woman,
You saw a victim, someone
Who's been tied down and told what to do
To stand in the kitchen and do the dishes
While the man stays in the other room with the TV
And has an affair with the sofa

I hear the two of them are happily married now,
In fact, the couch and the man are inseparable

The man becomes the couch, and the couch becomes the man
defiling that once holy entrance to that place you used to be able to call a home

When you were younger, you couldn't have known what the world would tell you you are
But now that you've grown up, you felt the pains and gained the scars
Now you know where the world wants you, and what role you play
On this stage, where the director's decrepit creaking hands come and defile you,
You holy sacred place.

He sits there and pays no attention to the hardwork going on adjacent to him
His thoughts are confined to whatever pretty colors and captivating sounds float across that screen
His eye lids shut only to keep from having a drought because he does not contemplate
He just sits there and waits for you to be done making his dinner for him

And what if he's working in the other room, and you can't see it, is there some sort of redemption for this man?
I cannot say, but he cannot expect to stand to the side of his life, pretending he has no emotions, teaching his sons that this is acceptable behavior,

Stop sinking into oblivion!

And when the woman speaks up and expresses these buried emotions, hurt ones, she is antagonized, like
Isn't this just another ***** with her crazy feelings?
Like shouldn't she be watching so that the chicken doesn't burn on the stove?
Like what happens if I let my guard down and let her in
And acknowledge that she is a human being?

The man says he can't do that
He can't lose his power in the situation
So he tells her those feelings she has are invalid
He makes her feel like the antagonist of the story of this man's life
And the only reason she stays with him is because she's developed Stockholm syndrome
And she doesn't want to be alone
And because if she's heterosexual, this version of a human being is the only one that's so readily available to her,
The kind that treats her like garbage, disposable, unable to have her damnable emotions redeemed

But a critique of something doesn't merit doubling down on that ideology you grew up with,
It merits its changing
So,

Men in the room, hear me now

You are victims too!

You are told to keep it in, keep the tears back
To stand up straight, to provide, to not show any weakness,
But you are most strong when you acknowledge those weaknesses openly
And possibly discover that some of them aren't even weaknesses
They're just a part of being human

And this trend is so hard to break, so hard to crack through stone that was laid 22,000 years ago
But here we are
The buck can stop with us

We can stop antagonizing
We can start acknowledging
We can stop treating people as subhuman when they express emotion
We can start skipping in the streets and holding each other's hands

Because there's nothing masculine
About treating other humans like ****

We can eventually reclaim that word, but first it has to be exposed for all the harm it's done

Look to your right
Now look to your left
And look at your phone again

Each of one you can be a part of the solution
Not a part of the propagation of bad myths

To conflate
being in love
With
being happy

The latter so
Often eludes me
But I fall in love
Almost every week

Which is greater?
The love
Or
The joy?

Contentness?
Or
Companionship?

Normally
The two muses
Make residence
At the same time

And they leave me
In the same way

I'm either happy
And in love
Or depressed
And lonely

So, yes, it's easy
To conflate the two, yet
I fall in love with you
All the more

Hi
I’m anthony brandy
And I’m a quarter filipino
Or at least, that’s what my dad tells me
And I’m inclined to believe him because
When I look at the curvature
Of the bones around our eyes
I think I can see it

That somewhere deep down I’m not just a white guy
With a white name
And a whole lot of privilege that comes along with that
But you can’t see it,
And I think that’s what matters

We judge people by who we see they are
And then they become who we say they are

You can’t see it, but I speak Spanish, too
But not because it’s my heritage
Because my white heritage doesn’t have anything to be proud of

I learned Spanish to communicate with others

It all started out as a way to check if people were talking behind my back
And I never even realized that that was a form of guilt-presumption
But as I learned to conjugate and put my words in the right order,
I found out that there are people on the other side of that language barrier
And they have warmer hearts than you could ever imagine
And their arms give the best hugs
And their eyes tell the toughest stories to hear

Like when they came over here, and people heard their accents
They were teased and told to go back to where they came from
And everytime an ******* said that to them,
That home they were told to go back to was always Mexico
Even though Mexico’s not the only country south of Texas

You see, we judge by what we see
And if we’ve never seen or noticed anyone from other countries
We overgeneralize

You can’t see it, but I’m also encumbered by years of religious restrictions
That tell me that my ****** feelings are not allowed
That my doubts have no place near my faith
That my eyes must always bounce
That my vocal cords were meant only for ****** Hillsong songs
And my hands were made to pluck easy four-chord songs
And three-chord songs if you’re lucky

You can’t see it, but there is resentment under this shirt, welling in my chest
And it seeps out of my skin even when I don’t want it to
And I sometimes think it’s best left unexpressed,
But I know, even deeper down than that resentment, that that’s not true

You can’t see it, but I so often feel unnoticed by my peers and my family
Because those doubts that I mentioned before are dangerous,
And my family has wasted no opportunity to tell me that it’s not okay to be who I am,
Having introduced dynamism to my faith
So I am left with only one option:
To hide those things, and keep my mouth shut

What you don’t know, family member, is that when you put on that bumper sticker that said God doesn’t believe in atheists,
You told me you don’t care for me
And what you don’t know, family member, is that when you voted for Trump,
You told my immigrant friends that they should stay away, and that it’s better for them to dwell in their oppression than to even remotely acknowledge it
And what you don’t know, family member, when you tell me how sad it would be for me not to be a Christian,
You tell me it’s not okay to be who I am

But nevertheless, I am who I am
And I will be what I will be
And who I am is a quarter Filipino, privileged white guy who’s trying to do his part
And I wish you could come along with me for that journey
But you are so deeply invested in remaining static,
That I am unsure I can ever help you at all

Telling you stories about my relationships with immigrants can only get me so far into showing you that these people
Are in fact people
And my college education can only get me so far into a conversation with you before you notice that I’m one of those people you call a “libtard”
And you disregard everything I say

I still have my foot in the door, but how long can I keep it open?
When will I blow my cover and be authentic?
Should I have ever kept things a secret in the first place?
Am I just trying to avert inevitable growing pains?

I could not tell you, and I cannot either
But I am nonetheless growing,
Dynamic,
Laden with doubts,
And struggling to make something good come out of my life
I hope you can see that
I hope you can understand
Why I do what I do

We are always the hero
Of our own story
Blind to the pain we inflict
Unable to see beyond the scope
Of our two limited eyes

Do you remember when this town belonged to you?
I do

But things aren't what they were

And what's the point of droning about this point?

What have you got to mourn?

The idea in your head
Of the people you left
When you went two hours away
And where they had to stay

You just don't know what to do with yourself
And your feelings,
But that's not new

Rest easy
Be still
And know
Things are gonna be okay

Even if the job *****
Even if the average age of the town you live in is 67
Even if it takes a while to get back into the flow
Even if the flow isn't what you want in life

It's where you are
And it's your job to affirm that position

Because it's all poetry
And it all belongs

talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
and when you're done talking about it
talk about it some more

"but what do you do with the ashes
from the myth you burnt down yesteryear?"

irrelevant. its scorch marks will eventually heal
in the meantime,

talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
and when you're done talking about it,
buy her flowers

and convince yourself
that the color of the flowers
will communicate the love you have for her

"but the love doesn't exist, in fact
love is a matter of pair-bonding
and consistent vicinity"

you are so right! but just because you know
how love works biologically
doesn't mean you have to live in solitude

which you have been for so long,
but let up, and refer to my first instructions,

talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
because language creates reality
just as much as it describes it

and when you're done talking about it,
buy her coffee in the starbucks
and talk to her about those real feelings

inside you, and maybe they're inside her too
but you don't, won't know unless you
talk about it, talk about it, talk about it

and once the myth is built, the greek prophecy
will prove true, believe you me:

you will feel again
you will love again
you will die again,
you will live again

and when you doubt again,
talk about it, talk about it, talk about it
with her friends, your friends, and your family

because feelings that are corroborated
are somehow more real than those
that are hidden

Consider the possibility
That your 4.0 GPA
Is the result of your failing mental health
And inability to accept yourself

Consider, for once,
That you are valuable innately
Regardless of approval

I see your deepest fears
And they're not you
And they don't define you

You are not the terrible feeling
Or the words you tell yourself
When you read that ****** grade

You're also not those butterflies
When they look you in the eyes
And tell you you're valuable

You just are

By yourself


Stop selling
Yourself
To the words
Others say

And when you feel that way
That's not where you have to stay

Listen to that 7th track on that old album
Even if its theology is ****** and shameful
You know what it meant to you when you were young

And when you feel that way
Stand in front of a mirror and say

"I am worth more
than others' estimation of me"

Because that is the real root of the root
That is the true bud of the bud

That you are valuable regardless
Of whether you have a witness

And even if you were the tree falling
Free falling in a wood
Your lumber still makes homes
You leaves still make paper
Your heart still has value
Because

You
Are
Valuable

lover of love's long lost history
you are so intrinsically dear to me
and i know you can hear the beat
when our hands go blistering

i love the neapolitan but not naples
listen to how the city sings like the others
but she buys time and barely bothers
to remove her appropriating staples

she is a reflection
of a reflection
of a reflection
of a reflection

but you, my dear neapolitans,

how holistically human you happen to be
and what a human thing to do
to braid oneself with a few
ventricles of other hearts unseen

you are not special insofar as you are human
and the home you make mistakes you
for a permanent resident, assumes you
are a planted person whose sole purpose is bloomin

but you are dynamic, not static
you do not live in someone's attic
you move around, the ground beneath you
isn't bequeathed to staying beneath you,

you

keep moving and loving and all of the aboving
because our love isn't something
that can be taken away by a location change
or how 21,000 hearts are arranged

I miss the summer smells
Before the salacious stopping

Shampoo rising in my car
On the way to church, smalls

Stop smiling
It won’t go on for long

Smile seeping
You’re not wrong

There’s something there
Isn’t there?

But summer, like us
stopped

He said, "if the girlies don't work out"
To come back here

And get **** faced

And maybe watch some bad movies
Like Predator 2

Past security, ticket given without a second glance
It could've been any old white piece of paper

But he didn't check.
Why wouldn't he check?

Inside are the real predators
The real commodifiers

Who stalk prey called women
Look at the way they look at you

Do you notice the way they look at you?
Or is it like breathing air, or a fish in water

And do you buy into the predator's worldview?
What do you really see when you look at the self?

Only what others see, perhaps?
I understand that

In the car, on the ride here
He said, "I'm looking for something special"

"I don't **** and get out"
But definitely don't stop calling them *******

The culture says who they are,
Rather, the culture says what they are

You are complicit in the culture
Just like me

A stoic face toward oppressors
Is still complacent

A face that prides itself on not objectifying women
Yet lays silent in their objectification,

Isn't he just the problem?
Aren't I that problem?

And the songs that are as unspecial as the ***
You purport to not want

Boom louder than your heartbeat
That you can't tell if it's the bass or the blood

Pulsing through your veins

How do you know what you want isn't real?
Are you oblivious to the remake, the unoriginality?

Like the songs stolen without rights,
You adopt your predecessors' predatory propensities

It's all *******.
That's what our glasses are full with.

The Irish drink to connect
We drink to waste away

The same way we do when we sit
And become one with our couch

At the heart of the Ire-land
Is a history of conflict

And inability to have conflict,
Also known as: war

So they sit and they drink
And they talk and they fight

And they all have bad livers
But their hearts aren't clogged.

But back in the club, there's a one size fits all video
Playing over the one size fits all songs

Catered to the one size fits all people
And our one size fits all pallets

In the blur of the headbanging and the deafening
We lose our precious individuality

But maybe I'm acting too pious to judge as I do
But, if you were in my shoes, wouldn't you?

Eating is such a chore
But health dictates that I eat

There is certainly nothing sacred about it
Just mass being converted to energy, right?

That's how it feels too often
It's easy to forget the evolutionary feat

That is you

And what about breathing?
Isn't it routine enough to just forget?

But the unconscious action can be interrupted
With just one phrase:

"You are now manually breathing"

Did you notice that? Once you start,
It's hard to remember how to stop

Yet breath is so essential
Essential enough to forget

As is to eat. And what a chore health is.
But the Good Life dictates it

So I breathe...
So I eat...

Sing, poet Presley! for you are right
'Tis now or never to hold them tight

'Tis now that the heart acts like a wild animal
Trying to break out of its tired cage

'Tis now or never to seize and kiss
Or let ferment and age

'Tis this fleeting moment, passing so swift
That yet paralyzes and perilyzes me

'Tis this, to be enamored with you
And to hold you at a distance

'Tis for distance sake, as we are both
Fur and far apart

But quell your aching heart
For now is not opportune

Neither philosophy nor location
Are terribly in tune

And whether congruency is even possible
For someone like me

Is largely irrelevant for us.
For my lips beg for your lips' touch

So, poet Presley; first name Elvis,
Have we passed into the future,

making now the past?
Do we live in the never?

Why negate when such a strong feeling
Wells within me?

When it could just as easily
Be stored for them later.

Are not things worth waiting for
Worth waiting for?

Close enough to kiss
Well enough to love

Let that thought insist
And float right above

Two could be lovers
Two would be lovers

Still left with that feeling
That repeating fleeting

Goes seeping through
My eyes to you

Who speaks first?
Who delves last?

Who digs up
Decrepit past?

Who lays these
Boundaries?

You

Or

Me?

He turned to me and said, "It just creeps up on you, the way it creeps up on you."
12 hours into your day, you feel inadequate and less than death
And I understood this, so I nodded my head in his direction

"I built up my entire identity"
On many singular things

And it's just so hard right now
"To identify who I am"

Under all this skin "and bone
And a too-caffeinated" heart

Pumping blood so loudly
I'm unable to hear myself

             "think"

And the gray "floods over me"
And I forget what it is to have color

What these cones in my eyes
Were really meant to perceive

And as if there is something able to be discerned by human minds
I turned to him and said, "I know so little about this world
And how it works, but I do know the meant to be"

And "you are not" that grayness
Penetrating your skin, bleeding through your clothes

"And" those eyes that used to shine hazel
Because it's "not what" you're meant to be

It's not who you are "forever"
It is an inescapable "right now"

And those words are too silly and cliché
For me to employ in a real way

So I use them ironically
Knowing that a cliché is a cliché

Because it was able to communicate
At its core some sort of truth

So people repeated it, as if
Repeating by itself creates truth

And at that moment we both realized that each other's eyes
Were brown and blinking in tandem and I could see it  
In both of our eyes a burning question

"Why do we let people affect us this way?"

As if we have a choice

As guilty as I am, I guiltlessly tell you that I miss you
You're never home, but hey, neither am I
Your freedom is important to you, and I want to understand that, but I can't say that I already do  

Now I have this aching, this urge, this itch, this feeling, that screams at me I have to appreciate you
And now when I try to do just that, you run away from the house which we used to live in

I hurt you whenever I pursued Romance
And that was wrought with a lack of understanding from both of us

And now here we are, standing so far away from each other, yet only a couple miles removed,
and I don't know who
or where
or what
you are anymore



You remember when we would love poetry together?
Do you remember the feelings we had and the solidarity
I remember feeling like you losing your faith was the worst thing that could happen to both of us,  


and then it happened to me

I remember fostering our relationship by going to a church which only you go to now
I miss when we talked about doing drugs in the abstract, never actually doing them
I miss when I could tell you about Romance, and you would listen

I miss sharing my whole self with you
I miss sharing any of myself with you

Thin, white, and a golden rose watch
Diagonally across, I sit and watch
The perhaps brilliant musings of a blonde determined to be studious
And ask only the best questions, of what do I do with this
Beautiful pony tail wrapped piece of gold
Who is no more an object than she is decrepit old
And if at one time she'd look and see this poem I write in her presence
Would she deny it like daggers or receive it like presents?

I do not know, and isn't that the whole point?
To not know, to keep the mystery in joint,
The one I have as close to me as my knuckles
And an Erosical conjecture that buckles
And heaves as if to tell me that it's not right
To sit and watch the watch to my right

Yet this conjecture is as valid as it is fruitless
Just an inflection as invalid as she is cuteless
But the cuteness still doesn't inspire me
To inhale holiness and ask the dreaded why are we
Sitting so terribly far apart, my Heart,
When we could be together a beautiful piece of art?