Pain is a past
And
Future portrait
Of what was
And what is
To come.

Beneath the muscles,
The bone; this phosphorous
Soul of mine teetering on the edge
Of extinction and anonymity,
There is a burning.

The sensation
Itself
Is faint. Pick up a jar
Of pickles to a lick
Of fire.

Bring a hand
To the cheek
Of the one I love,
And there is a kiss
Of fleeting ash.

Rollover
Play dead
No man passed
Cares
Whether they lived
At the end for
They are dead.

Legacy resides in pain.
Trauma, injury, is our
Paradigm for progress.

We desire hurtles.

Anything too easy
Will be repositioned,
Remodeled,
Retold to fit the prospectives

Narrative.

Are we not all seeking
To be the hero
In this story

Of ours?

Of humanities?

If so (you cannot deny it)

How will the future children
View your digital cave drawings?

How will they listen to your tales
Through air pods, podcasts, and
VR reinterpretations?

What secrets will they find
That you believed
You hid
So well?

Will you even care?
Will

They?

My father:
Big-bellied
Black hair
Stupid grin but
Can beat your *** in pool
Any ******* day,

Sent me a Youtube video
About preventing myself
From
******* myself.

I said,
I am his son,
In guilt,
In shame,
In what should I believe.

He told me,
It's not what I meant.
It's not
What I meant to send.
But a ****
Not matter that the ******
Is always the ******
No matter the man
Or the ****.

He said
I said
I love you

Because death, however
Irrelevant within the actual
Constructs of
Remembrance,
Still feels sentimental (a tribal
Feeling based on Geneology
that the GODS no longer care about)

Yet we write
Through it all
With one hand naked
And another lax
Limp **** naked
Flailing for soverignty

There are these
Socks of mine
By the side of my bed,
Multi-colored yet
Multi-faceted with many needs
But used
For only one or
Two.

I keep seeing them there,
Laid bare weak, and useless
In the grand scheme of things,
Like other
Things that we'll say, I'll say,
Well, we know
What we're talking about.

That's the best thing about a poem.
You either know or,
You don't.
If you do, you look further.
If you don't, you either look deeper
Than the knower or you don't look at all and

The world keeps turning.

I keep
Recalling my former self,
The rosacea stricken
Shy-boy
California slow-brain
That fell in love daily
Far longer

Than he'd been alive.

I keep
Seeing him,
Walking underneath
Those ancient Redwoods
With a CD-player
Jammed into his cargo shorts,
Listening to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack,
All the way to high school,
Not ever thinking he could simply
Ride their bike.

Time then was to be
Ignorantly
Reveled in.

Majesty was innocent
And tangible like cool soft-serve
Or the nylon of
School-issued gym shorts.

Awe, for some, was commonplace.

I keep
Trying to reach
His freedom;
The way he would feel
Without hesitation;
An open wound for the world to kiss
And to sprinkle its salt.

There is an art
To vulnerability.
It's precious and stupid and carefree and
Dangerous.

Really, to be vulnerable, truly vulnerable,

Is to be

One's own God, free of the need

Of freedom, knowing

It is there, always there,

All along.

you plan to trap
to take a cut-
a ripening peach
with sugar bait?

you soil yourself
remove all sense
when all you have
you desecrate

her body sees, her body sees

'I'll take it now
she's just the size
to make me big
bend over chick

for she won't see
to mists she'll flee
I'll do a trick
with my joystick'

her inside sees, her inside sees

it's not all past
in spurting spray
a laughing squirt
bull at a gate

to steal a bud
the harshest crime
to rob a child
her life dictate

her body tells, her body tells

for it is seen
and registered
it's catalogued
in Judge's file

the breakage raw
her broken selves
you callous brute
are facing trial

and all can see
as you do now
the lies you told
you *******

he walked away
with the sting
of youth
burning
a halo

noted
by those
who know
that the passage
of the years as time
makes its relentless march
is simply because we got up
and retired to bed as he did
every day of every year

and one day daffodils
were covered by falling
leaves with mulled wine
in mourning as frost waits
knowing it will soon succeed
in bringing lasting shadows to
all living breathing creatures
including the man who
saunters on by

I see myself
Etching
Myself

On a shedding

Wall

Of indifferent time.