It all happened so fast. You were drowning in your epiphany, your discoveries, and now, you can't even feel the water that surrounds.

"This is too difficult." you think, as you try to feel again. The ocean you drown in now is not the one you want to die in. Wrong ocean.

You want to drown in information, feel the knowledge flooding your lungs, the insight drip down your legs, but it doesn't happen.

Instead, you stand in a desert, the reality of this never sinking in. You drown in an imaginary ocean.

Your heart beats fast as you hope the pills work. Something needs to pull you out of these fake waters, because you can't swim anymore.

It's almost hopeless; all you have is yourself and the distant voices that tell you they care. Thank god you always had trouble giving up.

Or not. You never believed in a god. You do, however, believe in yourself. "This water's no match for me." you think, crying. You're scared.

"It's fine." you say, holding up your fishbowl. "Consume improbability..." you whisper, remembering your own words. You stare at the glass.

"Become impossible" you had once said. If walking on dry land again was impossible, then that's exactly what you'd do. You eat the fishbowl.

You cry as you do so, the tears fall, reminding you there is no ocean. "You are not drowning, you are in dry land." You say.

You wonder what's going to happen next. You sit and wait, smiling. "It's okay. It's okay." you say to yourself. You cry some more.

It really is okay. It's scary, but it's okay. You're going to be fine.

When I was seven years old,
I had a bike. I was still on training wheels, I was embarrassed about that.

I was lonely
my mother did not treat me right.
I had no friends.
I never went out.

I wanted to
run away.
I stuffed a giant pillow in the
basket and
pedaled 'till the end of the road.

I hadn't gone past there yet.

What if I did?

I could be free.

But..
had she even noticed I was gone?
Did she think I was okay, happy? Did she care at all?

My only use to her
was to distract her with my needs.
I was a game to play when she was sick of loneliness.
She would cling to me, selfishly,
desperately. I did not understand why she would
weep
I did not understand why she would
hug me, I was uncomfortable, I disliked her.
I wanted her to get away from me.
I never felt like
she loved me.

Would she had cared at all if I left?

I concluded she wouldn't.

And it was
that same conclusion
that made me stay.
"She wouldn't care if I was gone, what's the point?"

"She doesn't care about me,
but
I can't survive
without
her."

So I
went back


and said nothing.

July kisses me and I kiss it back,
kiss its last days away.
Somewhere, in a room, in a bed,
your t-shirt clings to muscle,
to your skin.
And I want to be beside you,
closed inside the locket of your arms,
even now, even now,
in the heat of mid summer.

Q: What is the eye to you?
L: Haven’t thought about that yet.
Q: What about the “I” then?
L: As opposed to “me”?
Q: Yes.
L:
Q: You can’t smoke in here.
L: It’s cherry flavoured. I haven’t tried them yet.
Q: That doesn’t change anything.
L: Fair enough.
Q:
L: What was the question?
Q: Your thoughts on “I” and “me”.
L: Ah. So, “Me” is me standing before a mirror and pointing at the reflection.
Q: and “I”?
L: “I” is a prayer.
Q: Can you be more specific?
L: “I” is a prayer one utters when battle has made you weary and you’re not quite sure how it is you’re still standing. The vision in one of your eyes is blurred and red. You can’t tell if the blood on your face is yours, but it is. All of it is. You’ve just realized that. The thought hurts more than the wounds- “Have I always been the one being wounded? Has this battle been a war against me all along? I’m the victim?”
Q: What kind of war is that?
L: One against you.
Q: I see.
L: I’m not finished.
Q: Continue, then.
L: You ask yourself these questions and realize that not only are you still standing, you are, and there’s power in that. So you square your shoulders and breathe slow to look hell in the face. You’ve still got one good eye after all. The ground is suddenly stiller than you remember. The fog lifts. There are no bodies. The remnants of war and chaos surround you; you walk forward. You don’t know where you’re going but the thought isn’t a doubt. You’re full of certainty and gun smoke and nothing stains or stings your lungs as you breathe in- and then out. Then suddenly- there they stand, the match that started the fire, the one that ended in certain death and now rebirth. You stop. You breathe- in, out. You pray.
Q: “I”?
L: Aye.
Q: Who are you praying to?
L: God is present in many things.
Q: The self?
L: “I”.
Q: I see.
L: The more I value myself, the more God there is in me.
Q: Who is the enemy in this war?
L: Depends.
Q: On what?
L: How much you’ve healed.
Q: Can you elaborate?
L: The enemy could be a ghost, your uncle, your first grade math teacher, a rabid dog. People, though- they rip things from you. They cough in your direction. They tell you to prioritize their wants over your needs. The enemy could also be your reflection. It depends on how much you’ve healed.
Q: Are you at war with yourself?
L: Absolutely.
Q: Who started this war?
L: Many.
Q: Why hasn’t it stopped?
L: I was taught to continue the war, not to end it.
Q: You mean like abuse?
L: Not like abuse. Abuse.
Q: So being abused led you to be at war with yourself.
L: Correct.
Q: I’d like to go back to your first answer.
L: You want me to conclude it.
Q: Yes.
L: “Me” is an image. “I” is your essence. Your essence can be weaponized through prayer.
Q: That’s quite the statement.
L: When the enemy has you pinned by the wrists, thretening to stab your throat with your own brush, when your worth becomes tied to how many times in the day they decide to use you, when they take everything you are and tell you to **** yourself with it once they’re gone, when they have their foot on your back and a fist full of your hair, cackling like demons in a church they were never meant to enter- that is when you pray.
Q: “I”?
L: The reflection’s reflection speaks. This is what God is. This is your prayer. Everything you are packed tightly into a single vowel, in one deep breath. The reversal of a tragedy preformed perfectly, the cracking of a reality that once was, but with a single word, is no more. The vocalization of your very essence-
Q:

L: “ I “.



From: *Stories From A Sane Poet: A Look Into The Mad Minds of Troubled Youth (1986) - Chapter 7: What Is The Eye?

I don’t mean to be rude, it just comes out that way. I’m just tryin’ too hard. The moon looks full sometimes, and when I look out the window, I can’t quite see it.
I can’t quite see it.

It’s like that sometimes. There’s something beautiful. I want to reach it with words. I want the permission to hold it. But I can’t quite say it. I open my mouth, and I can’t quite say it. I’m sorry. I wish it were different.

Eres un idiota. Sangras agua. Como dios frágil.

Un niño.

Corazón de poeta.

Pierrot en llamas.

Cierra tu boca y escucha; el mundo susurrando, tu aliento en su piel.

El universo te ama
pero solo si te haces conocer.

Small, oblivious, disgusting.
I wasn’t even a person before.
Thank God I have a brain that learns,
even if it does do so at the speed of a very clever turtle.
I walk slowly, but I get there,
and when there are no shortcuts, why,
I tear them into existence!
And when people look at me with scorn in their eyes,
I pray to the God in me:

“I am, I am, I am.”

And there! I paint God my own color, and worship no one but my own!
My own, my self! The “I”.

Small, oblivious, disgusting.
I could not even pray before I became.

Thank God, thank God, thank God I learn.

—*The Poet’s speech in The Child in The Dark, (1956), L

The world comes to me again with my sunlit room. A bird is nestled on the branch outside my window. My troubled-kitten sleep. The ceiling. The pictures in the cracks. My emptiness outside of school. Yes, divine is this space, for holy are the tears I’ve shed in it.

Survivors are often called monsters for what they are capable of doing.
If you called me a monster,
I would stand tall

and bare my teeth.

My creature– My creature can only be from the Wood, from the lake in the heart of it. He must be the ember in the cabin dying by fire, he must emerge from it; and his eye must be red with passion, burning in wrath.
Indeed, my babe can only have the eye of the Wrathful Lamb.
He can only be blade. Tongue wet with Passion.
Heavy with divinity. God-defying. Nothing less. Nothing less.

Do not settle into the rose bed. Press it hard with your palms.
Press the thorns.
Bleed until you remember the pain hiding amongst the petals of your comfort.
For it is only through the awareness of pain that one is able to heal from it.

---from *The Jackal Spoke (1969), L

I taste the honey;
You pour it on me
And you lick me like you have the hunger of an ancient thing.
{          }
Impatient for wholeness.
{          }
Hungry for hunger.

My lover is soft. My lover is gentle.
My babe, she holds me like a dying child, and when I ask her,
           “Am I taking this from you?”,
                                    she tells me,
                                            “No. I am giving it to you.”

Look at me.
I do not tremble.
It beats in my hand  at a surprisingly steady pace.
I hold it out for you;
my dear, dear lover.*

To the world, you are long gone.
But I can feel your almost-warmth,
your almost-whispers and your almost-breath.

"Do not follow me." you said, hours before you were taken away.

I feel your almost-presence in my bones
like the quiet before mother nature's punishment.
I feel your almost-eyes almost looking at me, I feel your almost-hand being placed on my neck, your almost-touch, your almost-kiss.
Almost here.
Almost you.

I stand here, in the middle of the room that is the only witness to our first kiss. A sunday it was, 1:33 am.
The room I now spend my days in.
These walls are my space, this ceiling my sky.
Remember? Remember when you crept inside my now-forever-home,
your curls were soft, and you were the breeze, the moon and the entire night pouring in through the window quietly, so nobody heard you.
We would spend the night holding hands in my bed.
Our bed.

Some nights, I can feel your almost-hand, almost here.
Almost with me.

Remember when you bought me that knife for my birthday?
I had no use for it other than to open boxes maybe, but it sure looked cool.
You didn't have enough money at the time to get it for me, so I gave you five dollars. I paid half the price.
An almost-gift, but I didn't mind.
I never did.
I loved it.
I loved you.
I loved you so much and you left me.

But I don't mind.
I don't mind, I say, as the knife opens the door to my heart.
I only mind your not being with me now, Thomas.
I am young and I am in pain.
Nobody knows what we had and nobody can know. They'd hate me for being a boy in love.

It's okay, I don't want to be here anyways.

I reach in the door.
I pull out what's yours.
I hold it out.

I love you, Thomas.
I love you and this world is too small for what I feel for you.
My love for you doesn't fit in this universe, much less in this room.
I will never be able to erase you, I will never erase my love for you. I will never fit, I will never belong.

My heart is... so heavy. How I have managed to carry this inside me for so long, I do not know.
I am tired.
I am... so very tired...


Thomas,




lay with  me,




hold my hand, let's sleep,  but quietly, so they don't... hear... y...







...

JG (2)

There's so much more to say about the things you did to me.
I know it's not black and white.
I know you were hurt by me,
but never in the way you hurt me.
I gave you a scratch while in an autistic meltdown living with you caused, and you told me I wasn't a person. That's an important distinction.

I just woke up from a nightmare. It was so vivid.
I often have very vivid dreams, and I've had terrible nightmares before. Of course I have. You get nightmares when you live in unlivable conditions. But that's over now. I haven't had a nightmare for over a year.

You know what? My last nightmare- the last one I really remember- was about someone else.

She's beautiful. Just absolutely gorgeous- she loves to hear it, too. She's kind- because after having experienced her own darkness, she knows to be. But she's also afraid. I don't think she knows I can see it.
She hides away when she's unsure about things, but only because she wants to get it right- I think she's a perfectionist that way- and she's very secretive. Especially when it comes to her fears.
She's made mistakes, and when she does she tends to run away from them, but in the end, she wants to be better. Ultimately, she wants to grow. I believe that.

That's why I'll forgive her when she comes.

I feel a softness for her that I also feel for you. Each person is infinitely precious; what we go through matters and our experiences make us rich, like wines that become more valuable with time-- except.. putting it that way isn't quite right.
I think that existence equals value. I'd love the grape as much as I'd love the wine. I believe the value you hold now was there when you were born. I think people just become brighter with time, no matter what we experience. But we have always been precious, and worth being protected.

You're so precious. There's only one of you.
I feel love for you, of course I do. I'm probably wrong about a few things, not getting the full story of it. I certainly don't totally know how you felt during all that. Since you've just..never told me.

But I don't care.
I don't mean that in a cruel, defensive way. I just don't want to engage with it. I'm not interested.
I'm not necessarily even upset about any of this.

I don't feel resentment. I don't feel like it's even me you betrayed.
I've processed so much of my trauma; the me who suffered and the present me feel like different people now. And I'm angry you hurt someone.
You put them through something they didn't have to experience. You made their dissociation permanent by forcing them into this environment when they had already told you they weren't ready.

They'd lie awake at night having these episodes of despair, and you were annoyed.
"I just want to sleep" you said, with a person crying, spiraling in despair, unable to cope with any of it, next to you in bed.
That's a whole person, as infinitely precious as you and everyone else on the planet and you treated them- you guessed it- not like a person, but like a problem. An annoyance.

I'm not going to forgive you for that.

Not only that, but you come offering nostalgia of all things, to pull me back into you. Nostalgia. What's that got to do with the **** you put me through?

There's so much more. The time you hid the matches just to try to make things a little harder for me and Dani. The jealousy. But then you'd ****** some girl days after we'd separated. Touching me, thinking you were seducing me somehow, when I came into your place for less than a minute- while Dani and my mother were outside waiting. Do you know how ****** up and uncomfortable that was?
The disrespect. I should've decked you. I should have dislocated your jaw. Should have opened the scar above your lip.

It's not about whether you intended to or not.
"I didn't know any better" is a truth that very rarely changes anything.
You didn't know any better and it hurt me. That's why we learn. That's why we grow. That's why we must refuse to stay still.
But you loved being still. And you refused to grow, and you proudly kept yourself ignorant.

What else can I even say.

Oh, my nightmare.

I dreamt a friend of yours had me institutionalized, and because you were angry at me for something small that I did, you let it happen.
Which is just exactly what you would've done in real life.

It was terrifying. I woke up so scared. I thought it was real.

I'm tired and hungry.
I'm gonna go pet my cats.

My darling thing. My precious lover.
Lake-born, Blood-stained, Wrath-filled.
My babe, She who howls inward.
Whose violence I hold in my hand
and tame with tenderness.
My sun, brightest light I know. My thing of nature, earth-loved;
My angel. My divinity. My god.




-

I’m desperate to be held by you. I’m desperate to love. I’m desperate to know care and connection- it’s why I say so many empty words. Desperation. I press my hands on you and you step back. “Touch softy.” you tell me. I press my hands on you and you step back. How long ‘till I learn to love right, how long ‘till I learn to speak my heart to you, to anyone?





-

I don’t know where to put this pain. It feels like an injustice that I can only hold it in my hands, a little puddle I pour to the earth, until the next one forms again.
It feels like an injustice too, what’s happened. I was willing to sing myself to you, all bare and defenseless, but could not undo the ritual I had been taught to perform since I was a baby. I couldn’t do it in time.
That awful ritual- the one where I held up a mask to my face and said, “Here I am, it’s me. Someone like you, a face you’ll not scorn.”

I’ve never failed so many times before. I’m failing, and failing, and failing. And it’s so strange, because punishment never comes. “I’ve failed” I say. “I know what they think of me now” I say. And I ready myself for the blow, and then the grief of being too much work for a person. But punishment never comes. You refuse it, and it confuses and upsets me- this natural order made obsolete, this broken vase a thing I once knew. “Here,” you tell me, and hand this precious thing to me; “There was always a flower inside it.”

I hate this place and I hate you.
You were selfish; kept me here because it was easier for you.
You never did anything for my benefit, never took a risk, never sacrificed anything for me.
You never protected me from the things you knew were destroying me.
You blamed me for being a part of those situations at all-
the ones where I'd let my hair
decorate foreign beds,
the situations where
I was promised love
and was too eager to take it
because you wouldn't ******* give it to me.
I was disgusting to you
when I was covered in the dirt
of another's actions.

I hate this place
and I hate you.
You're so weak. You're such a coward. You betrayed me.
Drowned in denial. Didn't control yourself. Dead ambitions.
You ignored your duty as a mother,
as a human.

I hate this place.
I hate this place.
But in this island,
there's nothing I hate more
than being stuck
with you.

I’m sitting with my mouth a little open, my head tilted from the weight of summer. I’m sitting in the shadow of someone’s love, I’m sitting in this room, always this room, always some room. I never leave. I am never let out. I put a pillow on the chair so it’s more comfortable. I sit in the shadow of a better life, this blackness, where there is only rage and pity. A stagnancy that kills you slowly. Every good thing I could be is always walking in front of me, and I walk and walk, and I’m only ever in it’s shadow. I told someone I was going to die one of two ways: I’m going to disappear into my mind, and you’ll wave your hand in front of me, and I won’t answer. Or I’ll jump somewhere, and during the fall, I’ll love the wind and the world, until the moment it all goes black. I don’t know if she understood. So I sit. In the shadow of all good things, I sit. I put a pillow on the chair. I cry.

You were sweet, yes. I won’t be the poet who compares you to honey for it, but yes. You were honey.
But not for your sweetness; honey–
Not in spite of your acid, but because of it.

You are the gods painted
in our imperfect, mortal image.

In your mortality, in your burning
In your acidic, golden eye.

Honey.



-

The world comes to me again with my sunlit room. A bird is nestled on the branch outside my window. My troubled-kitten sleep. The ceiling. The pictures in the cracks. My emptiness outside of school.

Yes, divine is this space
for holy are the tears I’ve shed in it.


-

December 9.
When did the month arrive, October and its leaves rushed past me just yesterday.
I’ve not seen the snow since I was barely a teen.
Powdered branches just outside my window.
My eye closes wearily. All of me is exhausted from the past days’ loving. Fall did not come in November; December fell, it fell silently into my life.

— *L, from the journal “Winter And Its Waking Breath

I’m keeping a secret.

The secret is what I dream. The secret is what I yearn.

The secret is in sea foam,

in its cradled growl of the thing from the depths,

and the treasure it guards.

The secret is in the feather of angels’ wing

and in every painting of them.

It’s in their golden splendor, in their vanity,

in the sins behind their teeth.

My secret, my tender little flame,

the thing I can’t yet let loose

lest it run to you.

I give my fear so it is held, and held, softy and weightless.
You hold it gently.
You hold me so gently.

My darling, if you’d have given me just a drop, I’d have changed just the same. How easily we grow from the dark, when watered with kindness.

I can’t stand to write any longer! No matter how true my words, they are always slathered in decorative gold, in velvet lies!
A veil is never an evil thing so long as one knows what hides behind it, but I’ve grown tired of portraying the truth this way.
Lift the veil. Poetry is dead.

--*L, The Poet Is The Liar’s Brother

God, I’ve turned stupid with the thought of you.
Look at me- desperate for something that, if it were even possible, would happen only in a future so far I cannot even see it with my telescope. I write without thinking. I think euphorically about nothing. I lie. I give too much of myself to an audience that doesn’t know me. I beg, I breathe hard, I stop myself. Truly, truly, I’ve become stupid. I don’t even have a telescope.

The smoke will nestle in the fur of my coat
and I will bless the glass with every sip I take.
You will hear my steps- boots of long gone animal-
and when I am drunk with wine and lust,
you will taste the halo in my mouth.
The Lord cuts my wings, but I remain holy– holy,
holy am I in all my blood stained glory-- Amen.


—L, *The Mortal Angels of New York (1995)

I can only love you in a poem. In some fantastic little story. If I loved you with my hands, I’d press too hard, and in my inexperience I’d hurt you. In my desperate needing- like fearful animal to nurturing woman- I’d hurt you.
Have you ever seen someone so robbed of humanity?
Have you ever seen someone like me?

November 11.
Your sister is so small, mother.
She’s made herself a mouse. She hides from anything that sees her. She bit me. I bit back, then I sang her fears to her.
Tomorrow I will check if she’s grown in size.

*— L, from the journal “Winter And Its Waking Breath”

I had this big TV in front of me. No sofa. The living room was just
the computer desk, and I was using this big TV as a monitor.
The kitchen light- next to the small living room- was on, the light from the hallway behind me was on. But I kept the living room light off. The screen was bright and the night was dark. It was too bright for my eyes and the room felt like a sad, private wonderland.

I heard that song for the first time. I didn't know what to expect. As the song started, and Julian Casablanca's voice- raspy, young and confused- filled the house, I came alive. My eyes lit up, I sat up, I put my knees on the chair. I loved it. I felt like my wonderland was real. This house- this cage, it was small and miserable and magical. This dimly lit living room, empty of furniture, the sound of my neglectful mother watching TV at the end of the hall in her room. This room. This small, miserable wonderland.

It was a portal to hope. The screen, the light. It had been a year of isolation. I heard his voice, the song, and I was a child again, and all I knew was eternal wonder and hope. I wasn't consciously thinking about it all- it's hard to explain- but everything was real. I hoped for a future, and friends, and a life, and in that moment the living room and the light and my mother and her TV were real, and that future I longed for and cried for was real. Everything was real.

My love for you is this: I am ready. Water me; I promise to flourish. Even if it’s only a drop. I will always know exactly where to put your love. I will always know exactly how to spend it. And even now, that I am underneath rot; something that has grown on me, that has me in its grasp, weary and slow, I promise to bloom.
Sink my head in your waters. I’d never drown with you. Only grow. Only become.

Love takes me, it takes me.
It washes over me and I drown in its tenderness, in this kindness you show me. Love touches me and I drown in the possibility of it, in the mere thought of it.
I thought I was done with this.

What are you made of.
What cursed god-thing courses through your veins, that it bleeds into every one of your words–
  
   hi, honey

I had convinced my heart to still itself whenever it remembered you.
How does all my heart-work (weeks of it!) go to waste
the moment you say hello,
to me.

Dear God, Angel, don’t tell me anything else,
you must know by now, if you do,
I’ll show you this mess, this weeping, this euphoria,

   this foolish hope,
and my sweet, grand fear of it.

October, 2017

When I was a child, my mother convinced me that i was surrounded with fine pearls, and that her motherly love was the warmest embrace I would ever feel.
She had told me that when I was born, I was like a small bird, because I fit perfectly into the grooves of my father's hand.
She tells me, with unsettling wistfulness, that when I arrived, my eyes were wide open. She doesn't seem to understand the weight of this; I opened my eyes to the truth before there was ever one to see.
I was never blind.

I am sitting on the tongue of my mother.
Her breath is warm. Her teeth glisten.
My mother is a crocodile.
I cannot leave you, your jaw will clench shut. This is how you love me.

You keep me, loving me like a precious meal
and I- the child that I am- trick myself into thinking you love me.

I, the thing that keeps you company.
I, the small thing.
I, the small bird.

It's so strange. A pain comes to me, and I think: I'll feel it, because this is what one should do with pain. This is what one does with emotion.
And once I feel it, I find that it's gone- away and done with, walked into a mist in the wood.
And there it all is, beyond the threshold of trees-- all this pain I once felt, and have let roam free as deer one can never encounter again.

I’ll tell it to you, my greatest fear.
I’ll tell it to you because I must say it. I must say it.
It is the refusal to be forgiven for my still-bleeding,
for the color of me, for the rivers of blood
that might spill out of me.

It is the coming of the moon
unchanging in its quiet loving
the waking of the sun,
fiercely singing in its ever-burning,
and their never-meeting
never-touching.
It is God’s demanding of this.
It is nature’s demanding of this.

It’s to sit and look past some baby’s eye
as she tells me with her softest breath,
“I can’t love you. Not like this.”
because it echoes, and it echoes,
The moon and sun in their never-meeting,
the joys of life inevitably ever-fleeting,
Nature. Nature. The will of God:
“Nobody will want me.
Not anymore.
Not like this.”