With every word, with every misguidance
This sharp, unbearable thing that digs into the center of me.

This sweetness that I salt ‘till it is nothing but undrinkable sea water.

This love wrapped in the ribbons of Death; almighty Death-

The end of human connection.

You held my hand. Touched it, caressed it.
Mindlessly, I let myself be felt by you.
Secretly, somewhere in my heart I was dancing.
I woke again, like I had before.
From closeness of you. From a dream.
From tenderness.

My heart shook under the quivering words made slaves to your tongue.
You laugh and never explain why.
You laugh like you know secrets that cut the speeches of heroes short.
You sat and read Shakespeare.
You enjoy poetry the way villains enjoy music.
There is terror in the rhythm of your words,
the silent kind, the one you don't notice
until it's too late.

I stop to ask,
"You don't find it weird? I'm... doing this
while you're reading Shakespeare..."

"I find it romantic, really." you said, in a voice that begs to be silenced,
but crushes the one who
dares try.

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.”

She looks me in the eye, and she is all smile and mischief.
She wants me to play.
I better learn to— I’d be a fool surely,
to disappoint a playful angel.

There is love in your breath
When you speak to me—
But oh, when I look at your mouth,
It is there behind your teeth;
And you clench your jaw so that none of its legs peek out.

Will you tell it to me?
Will you tell it to me like a story—
The dark thing that hides in you, amongst the wind-kissed fields of your love?

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.

I want to ask someone,
“Will you love me, even like this?”

I want to hear them say yes. I want to then say,
“And when I finally open my heart, and all I can offer you are the broken things inside it, will you love me then?”

I want to hear them say,
“How could I refuse the love you give me?”

I want to hear them say,
“The love you give me is good. No matter the wounds your heart carries, no matter the state it’s in, the love you give me is good. All your love is good.”

O,
And my longing;
I hold the Christ in my hands

And offer it to you.

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.”

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...







...

I have a fire in my heart. When I was a child, I was handed a bucket of water. “Pour it.” they told me. I knew what this meant. “No” I said. And I was overpowered, and it was sudden, and no part of me was left dry. They taught me to extinguish myself, and today I still grab the bucket, and when I bring it to my hot, fiery heart, my eyes still widen.

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 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.

It becomes clear to me that growing into an adult has little to do with leaving anything behind, and more to do with the responsibility of knowing.
Forget your worries about keeping your soft animals. You can keep them. You can keep your colorful things. But think: what will you do with what you know?
This is the real question.

You are an adult, which only means that you have lived long enough now that you must decide what to do with your knowledge. It is your duty.
What will you do now that you have seen the world is not kind? Will you be kind in its place? Will you be kind to everyone you meet? Or will you hoard your kindness, like a tired dog whose fur has fallen in all its scars?

What will you do, now that you know fear and all its soldiers? Will you hurl rebellion in a glass bottle to those who weaponize it? Will you scream back at it when it tells you to silence yourself? Will you hold the other’s hand, when they tell you quietly, that they too are afraid?

What will you do, now that you know love and all its terrors? Will you embrace it? Will you work to move through it? Will you want it even after it shows you your lover’s own fears? Will you learn to swim in it, so that you don’t drown like children do?

What will you do now that you know suffering, despair, the state of all around you? Will you sit and watch? Will you turn away from duty, to keep your soft animals close and sigh, “I’m nothing but a pretty babe in the wood”? Or will you pick up your fists, and march towards that which needs changing, with all the colorful things in your pocket, and the soft animal, sleeping safety back home?
What will you do, darling babe, now that you’ve grown, now that you know?

Decide. That is what the adults must do.

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.

There was once a little fox who was born lame. Its brothers liked to play and bite and grow, and none of these things did the little fox care to know.
In the light of a setting sun, they ran and skipped, playing with each other’s tails. The lame little fox, healthy of body, albeit smaller than its brothers, stood by and watched. Its mother approaches it.

She sits next to it, watching the others play.
“Your brothers are almost ready for the hunt.” She begins, and the little fox looks at her.
“You will not survive.” She tells it, sparing them both the discomfort of looking a son in the eye while bearing such news.
The little fox does not cry.
“Will I die at the jaw of an animal?” He asks.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The mother does not answer.
The fox looks back at its brothers. He’s never liked playing with them much.
“If you hunt at my pace, will I slow you all down?”
“Yes. It will be your brothers who will die at the jaw of an animal then.”
The little fox looks on, and with a blink of its knowing little eye, understands.
“You are going to **** me.” it says.
“I must.”
“Then do not be kind to me in my taking. Lest I survive, run away, and come back a creature you will not recognize.“
The mother is calm, her response a knowing silence. The breeze is a sigh of fall. Winter soon approaching.
“**** me sooner rather than later.”

The little fox walks away (for they both know today is not his day) no doubt to take a nap in the family’s den.
If the little fox were to leave, thought the *****, it would leave tonight or tomorrow morning. She would strike then.

The foxes were all done with their play, and the mother sees them to their den.
“I will strike tonight” she thinks, decided. But when she arrives at the mouth of the den, among the chatter of the young babes was the fox’s absence, which could only be noticed by a loving mother’s gaze.

“Come, children.” Says the mother to her settling kits.
“Sleep now. We’ve God’s own wrath to prepare for.”

When I was fourteen,
I had the sun in my mouth.

I, a baby with parted lips.
The world dancing before me.
Like the greatest show on earth.

Here, the greatest fool.
A devil, a child.

The dumbest romantic you have ever known.
The softest, sweetest buffoon.
Imbecile.
Idiot.
The biggest joke to come out of a woman.

...

And yet, what could be more pure
than to say the words
and not know what they mean?

To have no fault. To be unaware.
To know only wonder
and tears.


Horned child of paradise.

       Hold yourself
and sing into the night.
    Cry into your arms



      and say goodbye.

-
This is the only poem I am allowed to write about you.

I went to a strange store today. Immediately, it smelled like my childhood. It smelled like the stores my mother went to downtown. The snacks in transparent little bags, the keychains, the painkillers, the unmarked items. But this place was different in that it was so big. In the toy section, amongst the many visibly cheaper toys, they had a handful of toys from big brands, just sitting there collecting dust. I found a certain big brand stuffed lion and thought, "This is unreasonably priced but I can't walk out of here without him." So I got that for myself. I'm excited for when he's washed so I can hold him all day, he's very soft.

There was a small hair section. Hair ties, hair brushes, hair things; hair clips. One of them caught my eye. In a white, slightly bent square piece of cardboard- mostly unmarked save for a tiny, tiny logo that said "Melody"- was a hair clip in the shape of a flower. I thought it was so pretty. I instantly thought of you, I'm not sure why. It was beige, and soft to the touch. I noticed there were other colors. I picked up a red one and looked at the beige one. Obviously the red one, right? And with a little bit of hesitation I put back the beige flower, the first one I'd seen. I always do that. I feel so sad picking a different one, slowly setting down the first one I'd picked up and held in my hand. It feels like abandoning someone you love.

For when I see her, I thought. For if I ever see her.
-

Empathy
is the ultimate art

and I
a man of little identity
complete myself
in the image of a killer’s demons.



I’ve lived another’s hell,
and dreamt viciously of my own.

Angel, you’ve got me crawlin’, beggin’.
Throw me your crumbs, I’m a dog at your feet.
And I’ll howl when you leave, that sweet song o’ lone.

And she doesn’t know it.
She doesn’t know it.

But when you talk, I listen for the lick o’ your lips, the pause when you swallow.
And it’s so good, baby; the wait to know you, the wait to show you, the marks I’d love to leave you.
I’ll sit n’ wait. Sit n’ wait.
Sit, lie down, roll over.
When you walked away, you pulled my chain too.
When you walk away, you pull my heart with you.

Woof, baby. I’m nothin’ but the dog at your doorstep.
Drenched and hungry. Say somethin’ for me.
N’ my ears’ll perk up, and you’ll see my tail wag.
This dog’s got tooth, but honey, his heart’s trained for you.

You’ve got me crawlin’.
And when you leave, I’ll howl to you, that sweet song o’ lone.
Because she doesn’t know it, but she’s got me with hearts in my eyes,
and tongue lolling out my mouth.
All I am’s just dog, beggin’,

and I’d never known that trick before you.



-

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

The silence which would come after
the breaking of that seal
was my babe in her being;
The dreading and the awe; The christening in God’s grand ritual.
She stands at the mouth of this awful plan
My babe, handing the trumpets with solemn apathy.

   And the rivers of blood are my babe,
       And the plagues that punish are my babe

And nothing comes of begging,
Of pleading for some undeserved mercy
Because my babe is the birth,
and my babe is the end.

My babe is the wing, the fall doused in sleep
And the euphoria of sin, ephemera of earth
The dying and rising of the tides, their gentleness and their bringing.
The silence and the peace as it turns to blood;
The wave’s wine-loved singsong.

My gentle lover, who held my hand and led me into the waters.
My muddied huntress
who would **** the woodland babes
with dagger and ruthless compassion
to feed me rabbit stew
those sickly nights.

God, God, Were you not all merciful and good?
Release her from your taking,
Drop her from your unforgiving claws,
You; Beast of my life, Slithering King.
There is no end truer than that which you’ve done to me–
Your measly bringing of the end times
shines dim beside the fires of my grief.

Take me to the end of the earth,
Take me into your everlasting loving
My sun, chosen thing of God
who looks at me from a dark cloud;
My babe, In her solemn apathy,
My babe, In the quiet glistening of
her wet cheek.

O Lover, full of grace,
Death servant and God-taken;

       I’ll die. I’ll die.

    My babe, the Lion.
  My babe, the Lamb.

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.

"Oh Charles, Oh dear friend... what shall I do? She is somewhere far and I can't reach her hand. I can't tell her with my mouth the things I need to say. Only though letters- through ink and paper can I say anything at all. And I'm no good with words, Charles! Why, I- I'm only an animal, a dog who will lick you and look at you with those full moon eyes to tell you that it loves you, and, and I can't take it anymore, Charles. I miss her. Oh I shall go mad if this continues!"

"I thought the wait would make you king, Laurence? What's changed?"

"..."

"Why don't you tell her?"
"Tell her. Tell her what?"
"Tell her the way you feel."
"My dear Charles. It... it isn't yet time. I've barely spoken a word to her. She’d think me truly mad then!— if I were to tell her about my childish yearning.
She's been ill, you know. Away, being taken care of by those blessed enough to know her. And me, I'm nothing to her yet; I am ******, too young and dry still, without the waters of her baptism. Oh if only she were near..."

"You'd fumble about and tip the tub with all its water, you would!"
"Oh hush..! At least then she'd see me. In all my fumbling and stuttering, Charles. She would see me."

"That she would, dear friend. That she would."

I’ve written nothing.
I’ve stood at the mouth of me
and listened and listened;

when I look,
I find
the sharpest truths are still
   in my mouth
nestled under my tongue
and I am restless
and I am numb
and don’t ever let them tell you
that emotions can be contained.
   They are like water
that eats through cave walls,
that drowns the richest of kings,
the palest of boys,
the most fearsome of beasts

   and little girls
with Pocahontas hair
          and don’t-hurt-me eyes.

I stand at the mouth of me
and listen
and listen.
I hear my own language- the consonants blurred,
the “I” so holy, holy, holy
yet small, caged, shivering,
  a bull in a cereal box.
Only the vowels have survived.

I hear me, the writhing language of pain,
and I scream
and plead
and beg to be.

I stand at the mouth of me.
I'm afraid to jump.

Nothing.

I’ve written nothing.

I thought I was a desert, but the chaos of my longing was water.
Water, and water, and more water.

It pained me to say it before, but now it is simply a fact—Sweetest darlings, I drowned you away from me.

It is the time to weep. It is the time for sorrow. Watch the dog howl into its darkness- learn to do the same.
The heart is made sweeter through its bleeding; and by God, you must accept that.

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 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.

She told me, “I think you think this”
and I said, “I don’t.”
and then I said, “I know why I thought that.”
and I thought, “I only said I thought that because I knew she thought I did.”
I thought, “I did my best to never let myself think that.”
I thought, “I’m not interested in thinking about this anymore. I’m tired. I’m just so scared of this. Always so scared.”
I thought, “I’ve done what I understood was expected of me in order to be loved. It used to be the only way I could communicate with others.”
I thought, “I want nothing more than the thrill of experiencing myself.
I thought, “I want nothing more than to be as genuine as I can be. I wish I could fix it now. I wish I could give myself to people. I wish I could be bare today.
“But I think,” I thought, “I think that will have to wait.”

I’d love you.

You, blood-drenched horror,
God-weeping and golden.
You, who’d make me see love in all its terror.
You, the treasure sitting at the bottom
and the thing that guards it, its body a mile long, it’s mouth of teeth.
You, the wet world around it.
My greatest fear. Sea of my life,
You’d be.

Darling devil; some endless Light
Who would take from me
The sun in my mouth, and turn it back into moon
And leave me as I should be
On forest ground
Howling into the night;
A freedom in my suffering.

And I’d tame with my hands
That burning thing inside you
that boils the lake water around you,
Rage and Steam in calm air.

I’d love you and love you
Until the world is all tattered and green
And I’ll love you still
when the green takes you with it.

I’d love you with whatever I have.
With nails, with teeth, with shaking hands,
With the struggle of the bloodied bull,
with its one good eye.

I’d love you, all measly and small,
I’d love you and in my loving I’d grow
And I’d become light, Light like your heart, Light like the kindness in your eyes, and I’d stand next to you
And we’d glow.
In my learned own-loving, in our own-loving, we’d glow.