Bones for Breakfast
July 2014

Bones are like peanut brittle.
Gnawed on til toothless,
by us old mangy mutts.
Tastes sweet tender as a drop 'o dew,
Feels soft in a bride's whisper, "I do."
But speaks crunchy crackles of Tic-Tac language,
instead of ******* out bad breath breathe shards in.

Although bones may break,
become buried under archaeologists' noses,
slip through crevices cracked and crumbled.
They were once anything but brittle,
covered only by skin yet to be bruised,
backs yet to be battered,
blood yet to be spilled,
faces yet to witness the history yet to be written.

I do not believe we are supposed to eat bones,
but we break them down into shreds of paper-back tidbits,
consumable by children during the snack time called 'history class.'
Our teachers are creating cannibals,
consuming culture on textbook platters,
but pay no mind while wearing bone bibs,
they leave out the thickest cuts of meat and just eat the ribs.

History is a living thing, dressed to deceive those who blindly believe.
I remember reading George Washington's claim to fame,
"I did not chop down that cherry tree."
But Mr. President, what about your enemies?
Because every revolution needs people to die for the revolutionaries.
Ain't that a sweet piece of cherry lie pie?

I learned Genghis Khan sure got it on with many women,
but didn't read about Alexander the Great's great ***,
much of it involving a same-gendered mate.
Wait, was that a mixture of patriarchy and hetero-normativity?
Words that weren't worth the pennies to print?
Who hired these fact checkers for the publishing industries?
I'll give you a hint,
Learn who has the most to gain from condemning intellectual content and corrupting it with a corrosive lack of social conscience.
As textbook reps tell professors, "Buy our books with cute new features."  But since when was that what made good teachers?
And so, these chapters get served to us on poo poo platters,
passed off to be refreshing as fresh mint pours in for corporations like Pearson Education.

I surveyed the lay of the land in Egypt,
purveying the literature of pharaohs.
Pyramids meant to portray a portrait of powerful people,
not a foolish riddle.
"Who built them," we ask.
But not of curiosity for whose backs broke building.
Its whose bones mummified beneath are made into mythological creatures along with Sphinx features.

I was taught the Holocaust was a unique horror story,
along with the catch phrase "never again."
Yet those 600 pages neglected to educate about the "re-education campaign" against the Cambodians.
Where was I to learn of the Rwanda civilization's tensions and exterminations?
Perhaps those pages were buried in the mass graves and dirt ditches, deserted and desecrated like the indigenous individuals we now call Native Americans.

Tell me more about art again.
It conveys a message about the historical humans experience,
but I think that message got lost sometime in the Renaissance Period.
When men had beards and wore colorful clothing,
but now that is either unprofessional or deemed gay as a bad thing.
When women were depicted full-bodied as that meant social status,
but now they are painted in photo shop with air brushes and slimmed slick.
We've created a glorious new empire of gastrointestinal bypass Groupons, and have either **** out or surgically removed all the bones we swallowed to get here... So, who's ready for lunch?

I forgot to take my medicine.

Don't freak out, but I forgot to take my pills.

My veins are not swirling and dancing and wait actually the pills probably slow them to stop swirling and dancing so I guess now is the time for said swirling and dancing, is it not?

I can feel a bit of mania in my head, so excited and so alive and so real. I can tell because there goes periods, out the window, never to be remembered or recollected or what was I talking about?

Its twitching and hopping and like Wonderland and here we go, no ashes, just painting the roses red, painting the roses red, here comes the queen of hearts and off there goes my head, we're painting the roses red, until we end up dead.

Am I somberly manic, or maniacally somber or am i even sad? I don't know its just the twitch, I can feel it, so Chesire under my skin, the smile is coming through and my head is racing and my focus is wasting away under the hot spotlight of my own personal theater. Bravo, Grace, take a bow!

Letters and figures and math and language, so different but so funny because people speak both, why do mathematicians not count as fluent in another language, because its certainly foreign to me.

Ooh, I probably should alert the one I never expected, tell him how my head's a twitching and my fingers a fluttering and all of it a maddening. I missed this, I'd hate to admit, with the progress and the productivity and the beauty and the wonder and the land and the magic carpet ride. What land am I in again?

How funny it would be to see an intoxicated me. Am I intoxicated now? I don't know, I act like it but nothing's in my veins to even the pills am I born intoxicated, am I intoxication incarnate, am I addictive, am I a problem?

I like my sweater today, its got words that I love and words that I feel, to be or not to be, that is the question, **** it feels like I'm on fire, my limbs are burning and I am flame reborn. Maybe I should take off my hat and let out some heat, but its a pretty hat and it might feel bad if I ignore it.

Time to go back to busy life, where the life is dull and i am the fire but I love the dullness and the normativity because it involves my wonderland friends and the one I never expected. They make me happy, which lets me fly like this. The flying fire is me.

I am an introspective extravert inexplicably exerting determination and ******* of normativity in my delivery. I am a Neo-narcissist, a true self-arsonist surrounded by crumbling spires of self-respect, yet I refuse to neglect my superior intellect, but my ego exemplifies my worst and testifies to my selfish intents and purposes and even worse is, my flaws. And now all I can do is pause and reflect upon what made up, makes up the mind of man in me and whether or not we are all slowing, and lazily going crazy or just me.

as a person in my position, i have very little right to write about prejudice. being a christian, i am taught about persecution but i don't really face it considering it's one of the world's most popular religions. the biggest so-called aggression might be a coffee cup that adjusts its design to include all people and all celebrations held in the winter time, or maybe a national pledge removing mention of my deity in order to apply more to everybody, especially considering this country was founded by those who wanted to practice their respective religions freely. i have no right to speak for my muslim sisters and brothers who are forced to apologize for the islamic equivalent of the ku klux ****. what happened to 'all lives matter' when the matter of syrian refugees drifts up, carried by the streets paved in blood, carried by boats across oceans and for some reason these lives don't matter?
to add to the injury i am a middle class white kid, and i hate to break it to you but reverse racism doesn't exist. institutions are not arranged in a way to put me down and keep me quiet. i am rewarded for my successes, called 'bright,' and when my sports team loses i am allowed to cause more damage than those who start a riot over injustices worth having a voice for. i can join the marches and use my position to raise others' voices but i must be careful not to drown them out, because i do not have authority to place my voice above those who have lived the experience
but i do have a different set of experiences my own:
biologically speaking, i am female. according to consumerism, i want a thigh gap wider than the wage gap-- oh, wait, statistically speaking that can't exist, not when we are discouraged by ongoing systems not to discuss salary, conversations that might shed light on evasion of what i deserve. bring up feminism and the first thing you'll hear is "oh, so if everyone is equal, i can hit a girl, right?" no, because i don't want you to hit me. because you shouldn't want to hit anybody, regardless of gender identity. how scary, how scary, that the first thing that comes to a cisgendered male's mind when he thinks 'equality' is abuse. another thing you're bound to hear is "well then i shouldn't have to hold doors open for women" as if politeness is taken away when you stop seeing me as something weak. hopefully you've been taught manners at some point in your despairing life.
i can't even begin to approach the topic of the persecution of trans women, but i can give you the horror stories of my sexuality:
lesbians hate me because how dare i also like guys, straight guys disgust me because they only think 'three-way' when they see 'bi,' gay kids just tell me to pick a side, and my mother will say how it's one or the other as she rolls her eyes. if i date a dude, they tell me it's hetero. if i date a chick, they call me a *****. it's like my identity is only valid when i'm all alone: otherwise i'm either not welcome at pride parties or not welcome in my own home. don't get me started on the poor pan kids who are told that they're just being pretentious bisexuals, or the ace kids told that they just need to be fixed, or the kids confused about the difference between a sexuality and 'political correctness' (news flash: you just have to respect someone's humanity)
here, i'll repeat it: respect someone's humanity.
if someone tells you that you hurt them,
you have no right to decide that you didn't.
when a marginalized group makes fun of you, it is not a reverse anything because all they are doing is hurting your individual feelings, whereas they are put down by the normativity engrained in us from cradle to grave. you tell us to stop being so sensitive but then get angry when all the fed-up trans kids shout "down with cis!" or all the black voices rise to rally "black lives matter!" or women saying that they "hate all men!"
after all,
if i told you i had a plate of cookies, ten in total,
two with laxatives and one with cyanide,
would you take the risk?
or would you just assume that all the cookies are potentially poisoned?

I've been breaking my bones trying to reshape them to make your eyes comfortable
I've been going under cognitive reconstruction to shelter your mind
I've been feeding spars flames to this piece of firewood just so I don't burn you

I will no longer dilute myself just to have the right to exist
While you flaunt all your raw intensity
Just because you have normativity holding your hand

It’s just a common essence to
deliver such a presence, not
relying on the presents so that
we can learn some lessons. Drift
off, far from being found. Scaling
mountains in a single bound.
Reaching a commonality, between
our normativity believing in controllability.
We sit, we relax, we breathe. It’s all
okay, nothing but a real dream, dreaming
about reality. Drifting out to sea, seperating
everything between you and me.
We beg, we plead, we cry. Wanting
nothing, but for this dream to stay alive.
Without each other we feel lost, with
no place to hide. Pushed further away by an
increasing tide. Skies turn to black, before a
flash of light. Dream forgotten with the delivery
of sight. A flash of black and then light again,
the thought of such a dream, crossed the back
of my head. Dreams do come true, it just takes
time. I start my day, like any other,
drinking coffee and blowing a line.

It’s just a common essence to
deliver such a presence, not
relying on the presents so that
we can learn some lessons. Drift
off, far from being found. Scaling
mountains in a single bound.
Reaching a commonality, between
our normativity believing in controllability.

We sit, we relax, we breathe.

It’s all okay, nothing but a real dream, dreaming
about reality. Drifting out to sea, separating
everything between you and me.

We beg, we plead, we cry.

Wanting nothing, but for this dream to stay alive.
Without each other we feel lost, with
no place to hide. Pushed further away by an
increasing tide. Skies turn to black, before a
flash of light. Dream forgotten with the delivery
of sight. A flash of black and then light again,
the thought of such a dream, crossed the back
of my head. Dreams do come true, it just takes time.

I start my day, like any other.
Drinking coffee and blowing a line.

Loving you is a political act

A radical act of revolutionary love,

Loving you in the morning, in the middle of the night,

Loving you in a time of war,

Loving you: your spirit, your skin, your depths,

In a historical warfare where we are not meant to be wanted,

But gunned down in the streets,

Detained, criminalized, displaced.



My tongue, which is supposed to remain silent

Turns into poetry at the contact of your lips,



My accented language turns into lullabies of love

Asking your body to rest, your soul to rise,

Your spirit to become one with mine,

As we shield each other from this world of ****

And whiteheteropatriarchalcitizenist normativity

That we love to interrupt as we breathe

Against each other’s flesh.