is suffering
with boulders on your eyelids;
splinters in your chest
and then finding perfect sight and a calm breath

that is samsara

driftwood skin
sea glass eyes
****** guile
raw and toothless
husks of promises
trawling for exoskeletons
you were mine
i was yours
but i am not one
to let wounds fester
even first cuts
are licked clean
with time

Doors slam like Satan himself is
in a fit of rage below us, even if he is
in the deepest level of Hell, I feel the floor
shaking like a 6.0 has just swept us but it
is only a consequence of wood slamming
against wood and fists fighting doorknobs.

Voices rise like the temperature in Arizona
in the summer, abruptly, hot and heavy, so
quickly stifling any chance of relief—
anger is an emotion I am far too familiar with.

Some people live quiet family lives, are never
interrupted in their sleep by screams from a
father who dreams of death and a mother who
carries a scythe of shame as if she is the Reaper,
some people wake up in the morning knowing
there is breakfast waiting on the table, fresh eggs
hot off the stove and orange juice with pulp, but
others wake up and make coffee for themselves,
knowing parents sleep past noon and
we are the ones who are doomed to repeat the
history of abuse and psychological suffering but:
we are the ones who will help to stifle the shouts,
to put a stop to slamming doors and shrill screams,
dysfunctional daily routines and waiting for hope
that never arrives, we have had lives consisting
of always having to act stronger than we feel
when the floorboards seem to be breaking just
beneath the force of our feet, because our
bodies are not just our bodies, we are carrying
burdens that weigh more than our bones and
blood cells combined, so when we step on the
scale the number we're reading is really how
much hurt we have been holding, not how
much food we've been hoarding inside of us.

We are the children of complex family situations,
we are spend-more-time-in-psychologist-offices-than
we-do-in-our-own-roo­ms, we are no-parent-to-tuck
us-in-at-night-read-yourself-a-story-it-builds-­ability.
We are daydreams of escaping like Rapunzel,
we are how do I save myself from a nightmare when
I am already awake? We are years of reading self-help
books in Barnes and Noble until we finally understood
that the only thing to do is to help the world help us:
we are strong. And we understand that family exists,
but for us it is different. We are the children who find
comfort in books and coffee and anything outside
of a house so filled with tension and hatred, and we
have been waiting to fix ourselves for too long.

how i feel is irrelevant
compared to the vast beauty
of the open plains
of liquid gold before me
drowning in the changing waters
undecided whether they are black or blue
quite like me
undecided
   uninvolved
     un- enthused, emotional, clear
but where is my clarity?
for i've been travelling without it
in what seems like an endless time
and i cannot remember where i began
                        through grass
       through trees
                    walls            houses          
                                                                ­                       people

i've swept through them without notice
as if they were shadows on my ceiling
that i stare at instead of sleeping

sometimes i wonder if they're real
or if i conjured them there
to conquer this lack of feeling
maybe if this were a fairy tale
i'd have the shadows align an army
strong and steady
and someone would fight through
and banish them

but alas
i have grown accustomed to these shadows
and i am no damsel

you didn't tell me
about off-color lights
or storm drains so deep
that echoes can't find me

you didn't tell me how the summer
is warm to touch
but would scald my feet one day

you didn't tell me how the ocean
would show me the curve of the earth
would show me the tides
but then sweep me away
when I'm not looking
and lose me to the undertow

you didn't tell me that this
is all I have
and all I can ever know
but it means nothing

you didn't tell me to cover my ears
if life got too loud

you didn't tell me how to land on my feet
or stand back up
or how not to fall

you didn't tell me I had to wait
for better things to come
or that they usually don't

you didn't tell me that something
that's one thing
could be another thing altogether

you didn't tell me that closing my eyes
won't make it stop
or go away

you didn't tell me that I won't ever have a voice
or that you never did

if i wrote for you
a million metaphors
i think still
we'd have a miscommunication
because this is gonna take
a lot more than ideas
a lot more than time

i was so **** tired
an hour and a half ago
i didn't have dinner
correction: i don't have dinner

what am i?
if i were okay i'd be asleep
god, why does hunger
have to hurt so bad

the space between
my shoulder blades
is burning up
my neglect for basic human needs
stays lodged in my throat
head pounding
teeth clenched
trying to hold on to
what i have left of exhaustion

please
sleep

grass crunches softly in rhythm to your compassionate jaws
to be slow and spotted is to be the subject of some onlooker's pause...
no words to exchange
  just desires to imitate
    through sounds and the absence of thought.
friends weave their wishes into the moist poetry glistening out of your big brown eyes
while the mellow motion of your mouth traces saturn's rings around the sky
i, entranced and graciously assured
  the world and all its needs
    are a body to drink from, like this lake at your knees.
it isn't random how we found each other with only a fence between us
what's a fence if we've grown tall enough to step over or strong enough to walk through?
to everyone around me it seems
there's somewhere else to be,
this scene bearing you and your family lays itself out like acrylic cows and trees
a moving picture to impregnate
the awakened veins of my future.
switching bodies, i poke & sniff at shade and water
while these dry stones beneath our feet
in part gravel arriving here from mountains we've yet to reach,
find me realizing
i was never just passing through.
  moo was meant for me
    i was meant for moo

1
We, whose lungs fill with the sweetness of day.
Who in May admire trees flowering
Are better than those who perished.

We, who taste of exotic dishes,
And enjoy fully the delights of love,
Are better than those who were buried.

We, from the fiery furnaces, from behind barbed wires
On which the winds of endless autumns howled,
We, who remember battles where the wounded air roared in
paroxysms of pain.
We, saved by our own cunning and knowledge.

By sending others to the more exposed positions
Urging them loudly to fight on
Ourselves withdrawing in certainty of the cause lost.

Having the choice of our own death and that of a friend
We chose his, coldly thinking: Let it be done quickly.

We sealed gas chamber doors, stole bread
Knowing the next day would be harder to bear than the day before.

As befits human beings, we explored good and evil.
Our malignant wisdom has no like on this planet.

Accept it as proven that we are better than they,
The gullible, hot-blooded weaklings, careless with their lives.

2
Treasure your legacy of skills, child of Europe.
Inheritor of Gothic cathedrals, of baroque churches.
Of synagogues filled with the wailing of a wronged people.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You have a clever mind which sees instantly
The good and bad of any situation.
You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures
Quite unknown to primitive races.

Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see
The soundness of the advice we give you:
Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs
For this we have strict but wise rules.

3
There can be no question of force triumphant
We live in the age of victorious justice.

Do not mention force, or you will be accused
Of upholding fallen doctrines in secret.

He who has power, has it by historical logic.
Respectfully bow to that logic.

Let your lips, proposing a hypothesis
Not know about the hand faking the experiment.

Let your hand, faking the experiment
No know about the lips proposing a hypothesis.

Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision
Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.

4
Grow your tree of falsehood from a single grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.

Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.

After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles
Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned.

Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking.
Dispensing flattery called: a great talent.

We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism.
We, whose cunning is not unlike despair.

A new, humorless generation is now arising
It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter.

5
Let your words speak not through their meanings
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

6
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.

Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.

Do not love people: people soon perish.
Or they are wronged and call for your help.

Do not gaze into the pools of the past.
Their corroded surface will mirror
A face different from the one you expected.

7
He who invokes history is always secure.
The dead will not rise to witness against him.

You can accuse them of any deeds you like.
Their reply will always be silence.

Their empty faces swim out of the deep dark.
You can fill them with any feature desired.

Proud of dominion over people long vanished,
Change the past into your own, better likeness.

8
The laughter born of the love of truth
Is now the laughter of the enemies of the people.

Gone is the age of satire. We no longer need mock.
The sensible monarch with false courtly phrases.

Stern as befits the servants of a cause,
We will permit ourselves sycophantic humor.

Tight-lipped, guided by reasons only
Cautiously let us step into the era of the unchained fire.