I walk through life with open arms,
Catching all the rage, and anger and pain.
I don’t try to block emotions that are true,
It’s just something that I’ve always seemed to do.
I might seem quiet or shy,
Well not shy, but closed.
Shielding my own emotions,
That I don’t want others to know.
I’m a blank book.
I want answers and words
I crave emotions and purpose.
I strive to be heard.
I have so much to say,
But I don’t want to be judged
Because of silly questions,
Seemingly misguided pretensions.
I just want to learn.
I want to know you
How you feel.
How you think.
If as a baby you were washed in the sink.
These things might seem venial to you,
But emotions and experience,
They are what you always know to be true.
Even what’s in books I do not believe.
Yeah, sure I might surfacely perceive.
But knowing and believing are two very different things.
There’s knowledge and information.
Theres feeling and soul.
Theres what you learn in school,
But that kind of knowledge is not my goal.
Temporary fulfillment and satisfaction,
From praise and worldly choice of action.
But that’s not what I want.
Not truly what I crave.
I want something substantial,
Something personal with age.
I might write poems about death and fear
Or love and power, a glistening tear.
And sometimes I admit,
They are just words,
And sometimes my poems are rather absurd,
But for the most part,
I write about how I am feeling,
About life’s complications,
And how I am dealing.
I might come off as gleaming and happy
When inside I’m enraged.
Or insincere,
When my feelings can’t be described by words on a page.
I might seem angry when really I’m scared.
Facadely confident, but really disbelieving and bare.
Embarrassed when inside I’m just shy.
Inspired when I’m really bone dry.
Enthralled when I’m extremely appalled.
To seem so knowing,
When inside I am lost,
Sometimes I can’t even translate my own thoughts.
Awkward because I’m showing you me,
And that’s someone who I’m petrified for you to see.
I’m shaking right now, because I’m so struck with emotion,
I love writing and speaking and poetry in motion.
And I’m honestly sick of superficial devotion.
What does it matter?
All those words written down,
When there’s no feeling inside in which to drown.
I could get up here and speak for hours about whatever you want,
But I’d be empty and you’d be bored with my personally unconnected front.
Okay, fine.
Fake tears.
A sigh inserted.
Personification of... whatever.
It doesn’t matter.
Well written but lacking emotion.
In all sincerity, if this is why you write,
Stop.
In the end It doesn’t matter.
You’ll end up published, maybe,
In some periodicals or maybe even have your own book.
That’s all great.
But where does that leave you?
Empty. Unsatisfied. Void of purpose.
I want to leave my mark on more than just the surface.
I yearn to get inside your head,
Make you think when you can’t sleep,
And tossing in bed.
I’m beginning to see the worthlessness in worldly gratification
And though I might still write for fun and meaningless narration,
Those are not the works I wish to share,
They’re simply just there.
Stolid in meaning and interpretation
Entertainment and trivial exaggeration.
Out of all the poems I have written thru now,
This is most me, still closed, but seemingly loud.
I hope I’ve made you think,
And I hope I’ve made you question,
And if I have not, I’ve hopelessly failed my own pretension.

There are only two ways to truly know someone: sleep with them or take them bowling.
Phoenix Aime was the woman of my dreams. So, I took her bowling.

Paid for a game. Rented shoes. Got the little, sticky bracelet thingy that said Slippery Joe Lanes.
That way if we got in some sort of accident on the way home,
the guy at the morgue could identify us as bowlers. Anyway, here's the bulleted list of what I knew about Phoenix up to that point:

• She looked like Diane Keaton circa 1972
• She talked with great pretension concerning craft beer
• She only patronized two restaurants: Denny's and IHOP
• She was eight years older than me
• She kissed my sister once on a dare
• Her shoe size was 7
• She was perfect or a near synonym

The bowling alley was empty save a World War II vet in a wheelchair and his wife at lane six,
and they were barely there. Country music played over the loud speaker. And I felt cozy. Predictable. Like a payment plan on the QVC.

That was until Phoenix said, "I forgot something. I'm going to go talk to Mack real quick."
Mack worked the front desk, according to his name tag. Talk to Mack. She just talked to Mack. Mack was sleeping with her. I untied my shoelaces. Oh, Mack, love your red polo with blue tiger stripes.
I pulled my sneakers off. Oh, Mack, I love it when you dip your finger in nacho cheese and feed it to me. Slid my right foot into bowling shoe. Halfway in with the left, and my socked foot struck something plastic. A stick of tiny deodorant. Like unsavory truck-stop-to-truck-stop deodorant. Oh, Mack, I love it when you deodorize -- so hard. Pull the strings tight on the left shoe. Oh, Mack, rub the deodorant until your underarms are SO CHALKY AND WHITE.

"You okay?" Phoenix asked.

"Yeah, what do I look like something's wrong?"

She carried a seafoam green bowling ball with a ****** Mary insignia. "It looks like you triple-knotted your shoes there."

And I said something dumb like, better safe than sorry.

"Sorry about leaving you all alone. Mack holds onto my ***** for me," she said.  I bet he does. "I hate talking to that guy." What? "He's a vegan."

Now, at that time in my life, I was a vegan. And had planned some stirring remarks about the processing of sweet little piggies into cancerous hot dog machines on the way to pick her up. Thought she would think me full of passion, "on fire" for a cause, you know? The wise thing would have been to say, oh well, I'm a vegan. But instead I asked, "What do you mean?"

"You know serial killer's get a last meal before they're executed, right?"

"Right." Where the hell is this going?

"Well, have you ever heard of someone on death row requesting a last meal that didn't involve some sort of animal product? Gacy had buckets of chicken, Bundy had a medium rare steak, even uh, ****, what was his name, McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh he had two pints of mint chocolate ice cream. Dairy."

"I'm not sure how this refutes veganism."

"Nobody is a vegan for their last meal. Nobody. I'm not going to subscribe to a diet that I can't follow until the very end. Live every day like your last, that's my motto."

"That's your motto." I said. To be a great listener, just repeat the last three or four things anyone says to you and raise your eyebrows a little bit. (Examples: "My dog died." -- "You're dog died.", "I never ate breakfast burritos again." -- "Never ate it again.", "I love you." -- "You love me.")

Over Phoenix's shoulder, over by lane six, the wife wheeled the World War II vet up to the lane. And he tossed the ball. Good team, I thought. Want to know someone take them to the bowling alley.

Phoenix removed a glove from her pocket. She had her own ball. Brought her own badass, jet black bowling gloves. And if her carnivorous tendencies hadn't already put a ***** in the Golden Days of Josh and Phoenix, that glove did.

She typed her name first on the scoring computer. Didn't ask if I wanted to go first. That's fine. Approached the lane, three fingers inside the ****** Mary. She brought her bony arm back with the grace of a ballerina tucked away stage right in the shadows. Mary cut from grace slid down the lane with a spin.

Strike. I couldn't really see the pins from my angle. But I recieved a transmission via the "yes" and arm pump. That was two marks against her, and I was going to three. I'd call it strikes, but well, the whole bowling skew.

Here's a bulleted list of what a "yes" and arm pump immediately taught me:

• She takes bowling serious.
• If you take bowling serious, when do you relax?
• She'd never relax.
• My life would be tucked shirts, matching belts and shoes.

For six frames, I picked up fours and sevens. Phoenix, though, nothing but strikes. I threw a gutter on frame seven. Like a normal human being, I shrugged. Made a face out the sides of my mouth. Kept it light.

"I thought you were a grown *** man," Phoenix said.

"Me too."

What happened next, I willed. I'm not god or anything like that. At the time, just cosmicly ******.
Her step stuttered. 7-10 split. "Mack!" she screamed. "Floors are slicker than a used car salesman's hair."

From across the alley,
"Sorry, Phoenix, baby. I'll bring you some nachos. That make up for it?"

"Ain't gonna knock down two pins is it?"

"So, uh, no nachos then?"

"Actually, go ahead and bring those."

She lined up. Back straight. Legs together. She rolled her neck. "You're about to see how it's done."

And I didn't. She broke it down the middle. Field goal. In that moment, that holy moment, I was knowledge plateau. Vindicated.

For about 10 seconds.

Mack swaggered over, nachos in hand. "Phoenix, sweetie, you okay?"

"Do I look okay?"

"No, that's why I asked."

"Just give me the nachos."

"Ah crap." Mack had gotten his pointer finger in the nacho cheese.

"Let me see it."

And right there, right in front the ****** Mary seafoam green bowling ball, she slurped the cheese off his finger."

Frame seven, a good as time as any to call it a match. The wife of the World War II vet kissed her husband's forehead. Handed him a ball. As I walked by, hand on shoulder. "Struck gold, dude."

I've sat here for 21 years
Watching all this go by
People say things cliché
With pretension in their eye
I'm tired of hearing, everyday, what life is all about
Reality is getting boring, let's tune in and drop out

Have you heard the one
About the killer and the priest?
One blesses people with less and less
And one is just a thief
In "somewhere else" my mind is broken down
Reality is getting boring yet still its name resounds

There's stories everywhere you go
And all of them the same
Reductive plots and happy endings
Just under another name
I'm quiet as I sit and listen to what they all say
Reality is getting boring, maybe I'll revisit it some other day

It was and is
not easy for me
I beg don’t make it harder  

You will not understand
and I can’t make you to feel  
how it feels
when your body can’t hold your heart

How it feels
when you know in your veins
what you feel
but barricade between your body and mind
will not let you
feel your feelings  

How it feels
when the world address you  
Dude
and you afraid
the girl  you are trying hard
to coffined in your heart
will show up  

I wish I could show you
my pain filled abortive trials
to push hard  
even the tiniest bulging meat on my body
deep inside into my skeleton  

I wish I could show you
Pain of pretension
  
Pretension of walking straight
Pretension of speaking loud
Pretension of being brave
at the time of drooping in fear
that you will be identified
and termed as a queer  

I wish I could make you realize
helplessness of being a public secret
anguish of dying out of respect
and living in agony
because your body  
is not answerable to anatomy  

When you all wanna prove your identity
I am begging you
please let mine go

because
my identity
can not be identified
by the tiny part between my legs  
Please tell me  
how long I need to beg  

to find the place
where my body will not be dissected
to discover
my hearts gender
  
Please tell me
how long......?

Pretension, oh beloved actor, why do you do?

Conceal, do not reveal, the twisted grimace upon your face

While you smile the smile like a mime, benevolent, kindly, my dear angel

Upon the stage, where the spotlight makes you glow, makes you look pure

You begin to believe that you have a pure heart, and that you can’t do any evil

Even when the curtain closes, and the lights fade out, and you step offstage

You forget that your rosy makeup still remains

When you wipe off the layers caked upon your face

Do you know when to stop, do you know when you’ve reached the real you?

You pretend you don’t care when you actually do, for fear, perhaps?

Or you pretend you actually do care, when you really couldn’t be bothered – why that?

Pretend, deny the real you, ‘tis but the only way to survive, is it not

I will cultivate thee,
With my Herculean word spree.
Pour my divine rhyme,
Into your truncated mind.
So profound, so intellectual, how can this be?
Revere me! Revere me!

start
set the scene...
somewhere enclosed, close and closed
like a bed
(tight, restricted like, uh, the world all around me, how fitting
now it’s political)
on a morning
and maybe the sun will be rising,
or setting−yes−to represent the ethereal dusk of my cognition,
Say I’m with someone−don’t identify whom−it’s meant to be a mystery:
unfinished, left.

it could be you

and I’ll search the dictionary
for words to make my pseudo-philosophical, imagist, absurdist poem obfuscated, esoteric,
tanquam yet favillous; beyond recognition
So that it sounds like Dr. Seuss,
that is, a Dr. Seuss that knows Althusser, Derrida and the early writings of Flaubert.
add some random enjamb-
ment.  cut out the capitalizationandspacing. start a sentence;
end it. Section break

Oh, I’ll need more words, you know, to remind my peers of my intellectuality,
-out of place words that don’t actually mean anything:
Specificity or
literati
that’s good. Now, to end-

bring it to a close in one all-encompassing word:
(to be read over-dramatically)
pretension.

Looking upon this tree with its quaint pretension
Of holding the earth, a leveret, in its claws,
Or marking the texture of its living bark,
A grey sea wrinkled by the winds of years,
I understand whence this man's body comes,
In veins and fibres, the bare boughs of bone,
The trellised thicket, where the heart, that robin,
Greets with a song the seasons of the blood.

But where in meadow or mountain shall I match
The individual accent of the speech
That is the ear's familiar?  To what sun attribute
The honeyed warmness of his smile?
To which of the deciduous brood is German
The angel peeping from the latticed eye?

She kept her heart encased in glass
  Or elegantly displayed
     On a moldy old canvass
   For callers by of gilded
      Or passing note

Wrinkled skirt crumpled in the
corner of the hardwood floor
poised to take the stand
and testify about the madness
and the lines of demarcation,
    The hollow harrowing haunting
     harbringer of the haughtiness
     that once served her so well;

I thought I spotted her reflection
in a magazine,
soot stained pages outlining
the continental shifts in her veracity
and the keloid cracks
running along the base of her foundation
a wrinkled old romance novel
in today’s latest fashion,
pretension the wayward child of passion

Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless errand;
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What’s good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others’ action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by a faction.
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition,
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most,
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending.
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion;
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it is but motion;
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention:
And as they do reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay:
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it’s fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing—
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing—
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can ****.

the only lines that are blurred are the ones that you're crossing
close your ***** lips, time for us girls to do the talking
you say you want a good girl
and the alcohol is your weapon
Acting like an animal
but self respect is my blessing
yes I got the power of resistance
as soon as you grab me, I've made my decision
keep ya distance
I've got my own pride
girls by my side
run together like felines
I dont want
and I don't need to be domesticated
if I say no you feel emasculated,
but I'm not your wifey
I'm not your mid life crisis
much more than plastic, my love is priceless

you’re quick to assume my dimensions
but the desire is 1 sided
my potential can’t be contained
by someone so small minded
i’m not going to lie,
there are times i did sing along
but there was always a part of me
that knew that it was wrong
degrading myself through the words in this song
i’m my own savior, dancing on my own
keep your striped pants away from me
and your fancy cologne
never impressed me anyways
cuz who’s gonna want you
when you’re long past your glory days
maybe you’ll actually have to start
remembering her name

if incoherence is a turn on
you can leave with whatever you got from Jamaica
you write a song talkin bout liberating me
read between the lines, verbally date ****** me
talkin bout gettin blasted, blurring judgement slurring words
you've supplied enough nastiness for the night, you don't need help from the girls
this song glamorized by the women it defeats
it doesn't count as seduction when you're invading our sheets
don't belittle me when your restraint is as small as your comprehension
I never said wanted you so drop the pretension
I don't wanna get nasty, I wanna get away
good looks and a catchy chorus doesn't make misogyny okay

I heard this song on the radio about 5 times a day
the world couldn't stay away
never listening to the words
singing along with no shame
maybe it's empowering to the girls that sing along
in the heat of the moment it doesn't feel wrong
but you're 100x classier than words in this song
worth so much more than ***** sheets
you wanna feel loved, so you slip into a dress and he slips into your drink
this is all a release, but you don't have to be the dizzy slam piece
just remember who you are
and what the world is saying
growing up,
they wanna invade your innocence
take your impressionable mind for granted
*** on the radio
violence on the tv
models in the magazine
but you're gonna have to tune it out
live on your own
live for yourself,
remember what your mama told you
keep your chin up because they're gonna try to break you

what rhymes with hug me
babe, you could never love me
cuz first you gotta respect me
accept no because maybe she’s just not ready
i’m not a piece of meat
you get to use, abuse
for your own personal grinder
be the one by her side
not the one lurking behind her
music is power
you’re adding fuel to the fire
women in music nowadays
yeah, we’re the survivors
against the cheaters and the liars
contributing to a mindset holding us back
so we gotta rise up keep
their pants up, and their minds on track
sincerely, every blurred line that never went back