I move like a ****
I move like a *****
No, I move like a woman
And that's definition enough.

I walk like a man
I carry myself proudly
No, I walk like a human
And that's definition enough.

I speak like I'm white
I behave oddly to the colour of my skin
No, I act with intelligence
And that's adjective enough.

Strip me of your petty labels
I'll not be held down, I'll refuse their grip
Because I am simply me
And that's definition
And that's adjective
And that's enough.

I’ve tried again and again
All these heavy words, inflated with
Their own majesty and the intricacies in their eyes.
I’ve tried to make you out of paper that flew too easily.
Since then, I’ve realised
You are neither stardust, nor demon, and
You have no darkness strident in your veins, no galaxies expanding in your breath and filling the spaces between your words
You, after all, are only human.
I need not look up at the skies endlessly to catch a glimpse
Of your fleeting hands flicker.
You were never there.

For we have thought the larger thoughts
    And gone the shorter way.
And we have danced to devil's tunes,
    Shivering home to pray;
To serve one master in the night,
    Another in the day.

when Whitman wrote, "I sing the body electric"

I know what he
meant
I know what he
wanted:

to be completely alive every moment
in spite of the inevitable.

we can't cheat death but we can make it
work so hard
that when it does take
us

it will have known a victory just as
perfect as
ours.

You run your fingers across maps
Like you are caressing the cheek
of your dying lover
for the last time

I can't seem to write
anything these days.
There's just no poetry
in my misery.

I can't seem to right
anything these days.
There's just no cogency
in my apologies.

Greet death
with your hands in your pockets,
slouched back, cool,
collected, and confident.
Wear a hint of a grin
and a dash of cologne.
Say What took you so long?
Say You're behind the times, man.
Say Dead is the new black.
Coffin is the new condo.
Pallor is the new tan.
La vida muerta.

Greet death
with a fistful of black-eyed susans,
butterflies in your stomach,
and two tickets to tomorrow's sunrise.
Wear your father's cufflinks
and your mother's wedding ring.
Say I brought these for you, babe.
Say Kiss me, kiss me.
Say But wait until the sun comes up.
Just until daybreak.
I want to show you something.
Hasta la muerte, te amo.

Greet death
with a knife at your own neck,
chin up, throat bared,
cardiac in overdrive.
Wear nothing.
Wear nothing.
Say Bring it on *******!
Say Only on my terms.
Say nothing
and open your throat.
and bleed to completion.
El final, el final, el final.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Oct 29, 2009

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
******* up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of ***,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.