~
find your torch
light me up

brittle and cracked
I like feeling this incomplete

I hope the nightmares don't start
without me

but if they do
let them stir
as the crow flies away
on dangerous days

with a host of stars
fiery god-smacked
in the vast well of night

where I could play king
for an hour
to a wounded land

and a pair of queens
kept in high dudgeon
lest they sing

their burning song
in rich hues
and deep tones
painted on the warm
analog tableau
on my skin

distant
distillation
happiest when sad

with time and space, some
of the intricacies
can be airbrushed out

but I don’t think
imperfect love
can take too many fires
like that, because then
a renaissance heart
would certainly go black
~

In kindergarten we learn the alphabet,
We color and make terrible art,
And that sharing is caring.

In 1st grade we learned bigger words,
With the worst thing we had to worry about,
Was yet a simple spelling quiz on Friday.

In 5th grade we learn numbers are confusing,
And learn about the planet we live on,
We find out why the moon goes away.

In 6th grade we learn about morals and sorrows,
As we're quickly taught the horrors of our history,
Of all of the pain, torture and lost of life we caused.

River in search of a sea
imprisoned blood
on the killing spree

sea in want of rivers
cold remorseless wind
gives our wave the shivers

look how high the water rises
see how far removed the sun
so blind now to compromises

we remember songs no more
confronting one's darkness
from the farthest shore

in eclipse the river runs fallow
to light a candle
is to cast a shadow

I have studied **** Germany
Someone stood and preached to me
All the ‘important’ names
All the ‘important’ dates
I wrote them down like longshore secrets
And debated over them
Like they were the pencil sharpenings
With which I littered the floor
‘Excellent analysis’ she said
I have even stood by the gas chambers
And the gallows
At Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
And written insensitive poetry about insensitivity
But have I heard of Hans Litten?
Of course I haven’t.
I have stood in the Berlin gestapo office
And formed philosophies that feel more like profanities
Wondering how it can ever be appropriate
To take a school trip to a genocide
But tonight my ‘important’ education
Feels like the greatest atrocity
My guilty ignorance beats almost unbearably
Around my rib-cage
And waits for the shatter and the shards
Because I have never heard of Hans Litten
We all know six million
But who knows the six million?
We remember names that we stored away
Because mentioning them in an essay
Might bring about a higher grade
Displaying ‘a highly developed and complex level of understanding’
We remember names like we remember shopping lists
Or science lessons;
A few particular points
No attachment necessary
In fact, clinical detachment is far more becoming
When it comes to essay questions
They never told us about Hans Litten
Or about the men who also ran in the race to be in history books
Or about their mothers
And their fathers
And the people they shared cells with
And the people they shared graves with
My God, they never told us about Hans Litten
And Hans Litten is better known
Than most of those phantom dead
Those cracked-open voices that dared to raise
Until they were too loud for anything but the conveyer-belt
Concentration Camp system.
And the thing is that six million is not such a big number anymore
Because there are 49,506,514 views of Simon Cowell crying
And nearly 300 million of One Direction singing a song which is not so beautiful after all
And people are so desensitized to the number six million
That they believe that the world
Would not have enough **** in it
Without them posting hatred after obscenity after hatred in the YouTube comments
And Hans Litten, I can’t help feeling that I’ve failed you
My generation could tell you the private lives of their idols
But would not know your name
And we will still pour into school on Monday morning
And chorus our tireless fatigue and our lack of motivation for life
And I will still pour into school on Monday morning
And let myself complain and moan and grapple for sympathy.
I’ve acquired this abstracted self-loathing recently
That is less a hatred of myself than a hatred of what I have made of myself
Of my ingratitude and self-centred inability
To compose poems that do not start and end with Me
And of my procrastination and my ceaseless desire
To live something other than the life I’ve been given
Like I asked for extra cheese and got given Margharita
****.
I’m insufferable.
Hans Litten your list of injuries was ten times longer
than the list of all the wrongs I’ve had done against me.