(Written to be spoken to babe-y)

When it comes to putting what you are
into words
do you trust yourself?

I understand there are many ways for another to mistake their symbols
for your sound

I've been wrong about more things than I care to count

and I still try to count on all the things up in the air that I haven't nailed down

but my love is so unreal it's getting kind of hard to figure all this unreality out.

Harder than stilling shaky hands from all my mental pacin around

and impossible as that one poem I read to you aloud.
You know the one
 about how heaven and hell
are also just trying to figure each other out.

I can imagine the view
 from up there and believe me
I know my sleeves shouldn't be so ******* filthy

because from this distance and from what I wear, some may confuse 
my heart for the muck

all the love I've tasted with a pinched nose trying to stem disgust

I could never wash any of it away 
but



I should remember

I do remember and recall much

that has made me into someone I love.

Born of dirt and trying to be enough.

Just two in the running tally, 
of my error.

There is no volume control for my daydreams

and there are no knobs for this kind of radio

so when living poetry around the clock

you either you dont like the song 

or your driving foot gets a little heavy and the windows come down.

Faster, faster coming to me faster 
across lines that blur into the trees

that blur into the blues. 

My favorite song,
a kindred color that without

I wouldn't be able to see you

Dancing on the edge of my vision 
blowing bubbles in a see through room

I've made out of the words beauty and grace

glued together with tiny memories of your face.



I remember.



One eye staring from over a pillow full of a moment we'd rather stay awake for.

A tangle of your hair bolting across your cheek I liken to drinking black coffee  

and those electric lips owning the words that almost drown

in the wake of your thunder

but I'm listening

and oh god I hear you. 

Sounding down my spine with lighting striking from your mouth into mine.

Under a storm of blankets and mixed limbs that become the eye

A perfect stillness

a weightlessness

where there's not enough gravity to go around 
for all my weatherfall still there

rain snow and shine stuck hanging mid-air 

you are a timeless weather woman

with no need for percentages

because you give me

what I've always known to be real

that the other forecasts 
predicted only to exist in a halo

eternities chance approaching zero

the circle that's but a fraction of an instance colored in you totally

smothering me slowly in a symphony sparing no noise

impossible to be wrong about

the correct answer

nobody ever told me to jot down

and baby I've been tested

I graduated from broken records

and the bad side of town

from black sheep flocking to 
darkness
with clothes shaven from the light

Top of my class with a degree in acceptance

at a university where we take left and use it to make right.

My friend, these are some heavy credentials 

so I hope you understand the weight 

behind my certainty in your footfall.

I'm some authority on mistakes and heartbreak

so treat me like a scholar 

or a weatherman with forecasts known to account for everything and the decimal.

A dotted i

Hear me place the you in me down to a point

the one I'm making

with all I've ever been wrong about

beckoning us

but never doubt.

Night is for the hours
Cowards,
Let a man of God speak or night
Will continue to burn flowers

It's been said napkins are the greatest currency
For it holds the food spittle of man
Like how ambulances sit waiting
To clean up after misfortunes
And make fortunes for the fortun-
Who Ate paragraphs of spider webs
And patted weaves like black men seating at the back of the limited luxurious Q46 bus nodding heads to the noise of Toyota cameras they couldn't afford in the land where they spend $300 million to part the seas for summer entertainment
While they only spent $40 on California cuteness and walked on water with 13 Jesus' and ate at the bottom of the sea with only three tokes from the plastic bag

Let a man of God speak or night
Will continue to burn flowers
For we graduated from 30 hot nights of mathematics
Only to find that the future will always be white and in the *******

In the burning right hand of the bald city,
denizens frame calories and count instagram blessings
while beacons of hope refund inspiration in USADA *** cups.

Abyssinian maids wail over yesterday lovers
who wore Ginsberg’s skirt with less  pizzazz
and watched bedbugs **** blood off knee caps
wondering, what if Jesus Christ drove a Nissan?

As bullets of paragraphs fall Vietnamese pesticides on my head,
The dusts off my breath sing homilies
With letters of broken leather whiskey,
For even in the most dishonest jest,
clandestine toothbrushes are overrated
and every first false lie is the only truth.

It is dark and everything is quiet.
Like a step taken would be so soft
the sound would elude ears
and the traveller would smoothly transit
from one point to another.

The cold granite pavement is
the only thing telling me this place
exists.

My eyes are open, or are they closed?
I blink.
There is no difference.
But it is so dark I feel the black
is poring into my eyes
and covering me like
an invisible, untouchable, distinct
sort of
a thick, giant parcel of air
or space, even
that transcends my field of vision.

I am lost, but I don't feel like it.
There is some sort of freedom and peace
while walking along path I set myself.
It is just walking, simply walking
no plans made, no trails followed
simply walking.

All along the way I've walked,
I've only heard the sound of my feet in this quietness.
The faint rush of breath out my nostrils
sounds so light, almost nonexistent,
as if I've been holding my breath
or I never breathed this whole way or
even breathed at all.

Time. I've forgotten the meaning of time.
What is time?
I don't know when I started walking
but from then till now,
I don't know how much time has passed.
10 minutes? 2 hours? 1 day? 3 weeks? 1 year?
A century?
How do you know?

No matter the length I've walked,
my feet do not hurt at all.
In fact, with every contact
with the ground,
the muscles get soothed and they
sigh with pleasure
despite not knowing
when they'll ever stop
walking.

Alas! I see Eigengrau!
and slowly, the faint outline of
toys, books, mats, a telescope
come into view.
But very, very faint.
Only the very top parts
are a little bit lighter than the rest.
Enough to make out what they are, though.

My feet sense something different.
Before, they walked on
cool, hard and sure granite.
Now, they feel a soft carpet,
little furry things tingling the toes
that go easy on the soles.

Oops!

I almost tripped!
I see a plush toy of a planet, the Earth.
And starry things are sprawled all over
where my field of vision can reach.

Walking closer and closer,
a window comes into view.
shutters are white in colour, but
tucked neatly at the top.
Now light spills in
and there's a tiny figure
whose breathing I hear.
A slow, peaceful rhythm,
devoid of fatigue, stress and dread.
A being not aware of my presence.
It is-sorry-he is
a little boy, wearing blue Power Ranger pajamas,
clutching tightly to a bolster, covered slightly
by a recently-ironed blanket.

Curiosity takes over
I walk to the little boy,
slowly turns his face over...
brushes his hair off his face....
and he's-he's-

Oh  my  god

That face.

I used to see

in the mirror...



Sixty years ago.

I.
The heavens were an infinite expanse of mourning veils,
Untainted by a moon;
Or possibly even by the stars.
The air was frosty,
And hard-hearted,
Gnawing at my flesh.
But yet I simply had to proceed.
I was feeling trapped and helpless,
But yet I saw certainly no other possibility.
I realized I had to pass The Black Bridge,
To seek the blessed springs,
That possess miraculous powers to alleviate
Just about all afflictions, torments and woes -
Which drown human conscience and faith,
Further and further,
Into an abyss,
Deeper and deeper,
Where they are seized by devils.
I had to pass through hell,
To get to heaven.

II.
The Black Bridge was somewhere no soul ever wanders,
Somewhere that has been lost,
Somewhere that has been silenced and suppressed,
Victimised by the murderous evil.
Will the path I have chosen,
Devour me completely and make me lifeless once again?
**** my grandmother,
My only hope in this chaotic world?
Why should I have faith in the cursed tongue,
Of those who have never crossed,
This saintly white yet black bridge?
Maybe, just maybe..
The Black Bridge could possibly lend a hand in my quest,
By keeping me safe and out of harm's way,
Banishing all who embraced sin and depravity.

III.
The wind howled in despair,
And the oceans crashed violently upon the shore,
As a storm began to brew.
I could hear every footstep of mine,
Every anxious beat of my heart,
Every breath I took.
No demons had crossed my path.
A ray of hope flickers in the sky.
I am not the Shade.
I walk on the path of enlightenment.
The tale of The Black Bridge was a lie.
Never have I seen such ignorance or contempt
For somewhere so innocent and kind.
Never shall I make this mistake again.

IV.
The Black Bridge was heaven in disguise of hell -
A disguise blackened by the sin of lies,
And unveiled by the illumination of goodwill.
All that seems dark, dire and deathly,
May not be so bitter after all.
I had to pass through heaven,
To get to heaven.

plants do not require papers that state from where they came

they are caught and pulled by the bite of birds,
        seduced by the between-legs of bees,
            seized on the legs of the wind and animals by thistles and burrs

and the blessed are pollinated by the hummingbird

I do not know where I came from (really?) (really.)

or where nature and nurture intertwine within me, precarious balance from discipline and my genes

I twist bunches of grass between my fingers, feeling the good in a strain

racked on top of white bones, pushing sheets of freckled skin
out, spreading cancerous aluminums under my arms because
an artificial flower smells better during *** than human sweat,

what a pity, we are unable to reveal with the bursts of Walt Whitman (!) in
our own organic mechanism's ability to produce salt. The ultimate flavor.

I grin. Inhaling deeply while alone and unwashed, Whitman would've been into it.
Maybe I can find someone into it too. Someone who'll read me Henry Miller.

But instead I'll wear expensive perfume. I grin, again. Sardonically.

And I've been told I have a beautiful smile.
I should,
that smile cost blood and five grand for something cosmetic and quirky,
train-tracks over teeth, I now stain yellow with obsolete cigarettes.

I wait in the tropical heat, languishing while I bake, a freckle factory
and tan--adrift--awash with memories recalled by the smell of green
and the fearful hum of bees.

Why did I start smoking again?

I look at the red hummingbird feeder, and wish I could trade
          
             standing still as a hummingbird, I lie and say I cannot wait.

he only wants you in the way that means
he can wrap himself around you like a cocoon to help you
change you'll be
a butterfly
something different from what you are which is
flawed so flawed i don't want to touch you don't want
to talk to you just
write poems about the way your hands fist in the pockets of your jacket
i hope you'll go with him because
no matter how many poems i write about the way you
hurt and hate and hope in helpless hollows i know
it'll still burn
like a rope you tried to catch when you fell but
it just caught the skin of your palms
[please don't ever open my notebook you
look at it sometimes when i'm writing i
don't ever want you to see the way
i romanticize
your pain it's not
beautiful or poetic it's just sad
i wish you were happy but i just keep
writing poems about
your misery
and when you surface when you emerge from your cocoon i will
write odes dedicated to the selfishness
that would keep you hurting so i could
feel something when i look at you]
he only wants you in the way that
stitches want an open wound and
i know you want to be mended but no,
no,
nobody can fix you but you and they,
they will try but just
stitch embroidery
into your back
you are the seamstress and the shredded quilt:
you can stitch yourself together you just need to find the thread
and love is no substitute
for a sharp needle.
don't unclench your fists for
any lover who promises to
fix you
don't shotgun old wounds like thick smoke
if they promise anything more
than to hold them
in their
lungs
until the pain eases
just a little.
he will cocoon you
and let you out confused
and hurt
and hating yourself because you didn't change
you are
not
a butterfly
you will not wake up beautiful:
just learn to be full because the end of the word
is all that matters
and the last words of a relationship
are the most honest.

when you stitch yourself together
i will wear the rope that caught your palms like
a silk collar
pour your perfume like lighter fluid
and burn my notebook
and hope that no one writes ballads
to your clenching fists
again

The aura of your spirit precedes you
Calling out insight and energy
It swirls around you, hanging above
Like a singular beam of light
And you tread on instinct;
seeing with your eyes closed
Universe amalgamated;
a conduit for its voice
And you tell the tales of your old soul
And you tell the tales of your purpose and journey
But a broken hearted boy haunts you
The one who ran away and no one cared
So you tear at your feelings
as they hold you under
Gasping for air in the oxygen of escape
But it wears off
It always wears off
And you forget how exquisitely you are made
But one day, you will make peace with the boy
And suture the bleeding holes in your heart
And the footsteps of this nomad will climb
to see how much bigger your world can become
and that some dreams are built very far from our homes
Because at this moment, living inside of you
is the energy that makes a good night a good night