you know,
when i was young
i saw the world as a canvas.
a blank sheet of material waiting for my curious little fingers to touch,
to sculpt, to model.
and oh, did i paint.
i moved mountains with my palms, i made rivers flow with the touch of my hands
and you know what?
i thought myself a pretty esteemed artist.
i imagined my future living in a huge penthouse in the biggest city in the world i could think of at that age and that was
pittsburgh.
i would tower over the laborers and the tax workers and the mailmen and the street performers because i was the new “it” girl.
glistening in pearls above the city people who always take life so seriously.
inside of my kindergarten classroom,
i believed everything to be possible.
we learned about Noah’s ark and what two plus two was and i was smart
and quick on my feet
meanwhile some other child was crying and i couldn’t understand why because everything i could have ever wanted was displayed on the chalkboard in that very moment.
the world was a thousand colors in that classroom.
there were always crayons at my disposal, in which i used them to sketch part of the planet that was still blank on the canvas.
i believed.
i believed that Santa still existed and that the tooth fairy would bring me money instead of a tooth under my pillow but guess what?
i didn’t lose my first tooth until second grade.
back when the only worry i had was that my teeth weren’t loose and wobbly
back when the world looked friendly and the only things that were hostile were my pugnacious teeth that wouldn’t budge.
i saw skies where there were vicious mirrors, blessings where there were flaws.
my classmates were foolish but i-
i knew what i wanted my canvas to be.
but
soon
i
started
getting
older
and cancer was a real thing. violence was a real issue not just something i saw in a batman comic. society turned her back on the very children she birthed.
my hands stopped painting with bright colors.
highlighters were stolen out of my hands, pencils placed in them.
gray graphite with no emotion except “do this math problem or you will fail at a future.”
what future am i exactly preparing myself for at this speed?
what happened to the coloring books
and the watercolors and the all about me posters i made?
where did they go?
did they disappear into the void of shame?
because once the authorities took away my liberties; my freedom, i started slacking.
the world became a barren wasteland like the one after simba left the teeming pride lands.
bulldozed over.
all that creativity pent up in me..it had to be slaughtered.
it had to be executed.
so i breathed smoke to **** the formation inside of me
it choked, and so did i
and i
felt bad for it.
creativity was the one driving force, the one constant in my world that was falling apart and making room for the erratic world that punched through the walls of my love for the old world.
what would i be without a classroom full of tools that i could use whenever i saw fit?
this is insane.
people started coming into my life and out and i could not hold their hands and beg for their stay; they would leave me kicked and scarred
and maybe they whispered “sorry” to me because some of their empathetic nature still existed.
some of their light still hadn’t been stomped out.
it was fully wrecked when their parents got divorced
and there were screaming battles
and that’s when they heard that vile swear word that comes up in every conversation now as a teenager
and that word makes them upset
yet
they can’t remember why
just like their parents never understood why their child got so depressed jumping from house to house.
whiplash to the extreme.
and i can’t breathe without the creativity that connected the dots in my childish brain
and now being childish is an insult and i cross out all my experimental portraits and replace them with whatever the teenager next to me is drawing
because being original is easy to pick on.
and i didn’t want to be 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 kid.
no one wants to be 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 kid.
the canvas i once held in my hands is ashy and blackened and
unsalvageable.
its poor soul destroyed by a tiny bonfire by the woods
because no one likes when you decide you want to create the world in your image
cause it’s corrupted in everyone else’s
and they want you to suffer just like they did, to discover that innocence and ignorance are apparently now synonymous with each other and you can’t think otherwise!
what was looking at another kid’s artwork as a child?
there was only seeing that john had the color purple drawn on his paper
and sofia had the new stamps that were put up near the bulletin board.
that was all.
none of this body dysmorphic garbage.
the world isn’t beautiful as it was before on poster board and i don’t remember the last time i was truly physically and emotionally happy.
i now found the art of wanting to rip the hair out of my skull and there are times that i contemplate if i should just end it all,
but then i think back to all those years when i was younger and how big the world felt in my tiny fingers,
though i know—some tiny fingers build rocket ships, some tiny fingers get involved in cancer research to save other people from the same thing their grandparents had to battle with and lose to, some tiny fingers become doctors and nurses and good people with good hearts with hope for the restless world.
some tiny fingers might have lost the canvas and the poster board,
but they never lost sight of what world they were gonna leave an impact in,
what world they were gonna make great one day—one child with a crayon at a time.

Still more, in words

In experience

Confusing Familiarity with Comfort

Confusing Comfort with Peace

Reifying confusion, but not successfully

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Forgetting

Seeing through, a single pinhole in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Pinholes everywhere, more than can be contained

Not containing

Torn all over

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand very still and very quite so I can feel, hear, sense

Perfect realism

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Agitation, but only conceptual

Feeling tight

Feeling rehearsed

Feeling like an imposter

Wanting to impress

Wanting to be convinced of Self, of Realness

Fortified by others knowing, or preferably- admiration

Like being constructed out of sets of other peoples' eyes

Like being made real by propagating in more minds, many more minds, specific minds. In countless beating and virtual hearts, likes, thumbs up

Not wanting to be forgotten, while alive, while dead

Taxed by maintenance and constant imminent collapse

Compassion, like collapsing into a safe lap

Relinquishing

No pretense

Bare being

More naked than when unclothed

Total exposure

Outed, in the light of knowing

Self forgetting and glimpses of freedom

Trusting sighing

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence, visceral

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, brief equilibrium

Reifying stability. Gone.

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also, sometimes, just plain humorous

And absurd

Crying

Loving people

Grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Encountering this, intimate, me, indistinguishable being, but everywhere

Ouch

Awareness

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like the last wring of that silk dress you weren't supposed to squeeze dry

Feeling like I shouldn't know what I know, like I couldn't. This must be illegal, cosmically illegal

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong softness

Loving with understanding

Loving with teeth and nails

Music, lacerating

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. Like physically with my body.

Knowing I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that

Sleep deprivation

***

Guilt

Sense-making and maps of meaning

Revisiting memories

Crying

Staying away from scary corners of my mind

Deliberately going toward scariness

Not resisting

Yes resisting

Respecting resistance

Compulsive tv watching

Dropping or letting go over and over again

Exploring

Curiosity

Forgetting and then remembering that it’s all happening on its own, noticing this, knowing this, realizing this

Realizing that realization comes and goes on its own

Being in love with everything

Crying

Playing with time and concepts

Craving emptiness

Love

Catastrophizing

Ranking what "works" (i.e. sleep deprivation is effective), noticing that the metric of “effective” and "works" is = resulting in greater illusions of "forgetting" with a capital F

Loving everything

Being everything

Self-flagellation

Not really believing any of the stories or narratives

Procrastinating

Being irresponsible

Getting off on self-loathing

Forcing intimacy

Compassion, large, whole, unrelenting, everywhere

Oversharing

Falling in love with a homeless person at a traffic stop

Being bored and sad and hopeless and desperate

Remembering inherent wholeness

Being stubborn

Getting out of the way always feels like dying

Loving dying

Loving mourning dying

Dramatizing dying

Wanting to be seen and loved

Self-loathing

Intensity

Craving intensity

Hating craving intensity

Knowing that nothing is a problem

Suffering

Being impatient

Being very very patient

Feeling like I don’t belong in the world, like people and things and money and social media are alien, foreign and scary

Feeling like I am the world

Forgetting that knowing how to verbalize isn’t the same as knowing

Wanting knowing with words to be the same as Knowing

Wanting knowing to be a Real, solid thing

Fear

Mortal fear

Bewilderment

Constant background anxiety

Hating this body

Not caring for this body

Being burdened by this body

Feeling trapped in a body

Feeling more trapped in a mind

Wanting knowing to resolve everything

Wanting to be saved

Thinking that I probably don’t need to be saved

Thinking or knowing(?) there’s nothing to be saved from

Knowing that I can’t be saved

Feeling open

Feeling vulnerable

Feeling exposed

Feeling bad

Feeling like I'm doing it wrong

Believing it all

Wanting to both believe it and have a choice about when, where, and to what extent I believe it

Not knowing where the edge is until I've fallen off

Feeling violated

Feeling like existence is non-consensual

Somehow trusting all of it, totally, exactly as it is

Watching the panicking

More crying

Being one

Being very very aware

Noticing and letting go of effort in one swift move

Compulsive clenching

Compassion

Dissolving

Disillusion

Dying without the novelty

Being ok vey very briefly and for no apparent reason/because of no reason./?

Wanting distraction

Respecting needing distraction

Getting out of the way of intelligent coping mechanisms

Villifying coping mechanisms

Understanding only in retrospect

Frustration

Compassion, deep, like warm water

Compassion, hard, like being ****** vey very slowly

Torture

Life-giving torture

Never wanting to stop

Marveling

Abundance like grace, like not deserving, like not needing to be deserving, like deserving is perverse language

Tasting everything

Endless kaleidoscopes of being and tasting and knowing

Non visual seeing

Clarity, brightness, nothing is a problem

Being alive

Being sososo tired

Wanting to rest, to die into void and nothing

Wanting to hibernate

Wanting to still

Dying to get off

Begging to get off

Finding the edge more thrilling than the center (because then the center can be anything at all?)

Loving all the previous versions of this being

Needing to hate, loathe, earlier renditions of this being

Hating repulsion

Trusting repulsion

Getting stuck because resisting repulsion

Knowing that there's no way out

Knowing that the way out that I'm seeking isn't a way out

Not wanting to do the work

Dancing around the center, constantly

Feeling dizzy with chaos, with knowledge of power

Feeling comfortable with mediocrity

Hating mediocrity

Waking up with jaw tension from the enormity of my own suppressed power

Telling stories about sensations

Relying on self-bullying methods I know don't work

Perfecting the art of pretending

Perfecting the art of self-deception

Wanting to make the stakes higher

Being overwhelmed by my own storytelling

Not wanting to give stories credibility by dispelling them

Naval gazing

Loving philosophy

Feeling dried up, tired, stagnant, disinterested, not engaged, not here.

Sleepwalking. Sleep writing. Sleep talking. Sleep caring

Not sleeping

Vivid dreaming

High weirdness

Questioning my sanity

Romanticizing insanity

Wanting to blur all boundaries

Wanting to smooth the edges of reality

Questioning reality

Destabilizing reality

Feeling destabilized

Feeling irresponsible

Guilt

Feeling sick and tired

Feeling scared

Feeling hopeless

Wanting to reach out

Feeling like everything is inevitable

Feeling like suffering is inevitable

Recognizing kindness

Discerning well (properly? Clearly? Well.)

Fearful trusting

Thinking too much

Not wanting to love my dad as much as I do.

Chasing the intellectual high

Disappointment

No need for resolution

Feeling caught in existence

Feeling caught up. Like in a potato sack; I can explore the exact measure of my confinement, the sensorial elements, the scratchiness, the filtering light from the outside, the stagnation, the wanting to stretch.

I love this being.

This. It's not a problem.

Confusing familiarity with comfort

Confusing comfort with peace

Reifying confusion, but not really

Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky

Seeing through, like pinholes in a perfectly realistic backdrop

Dispelling everything

Stripping away the Stripping away

Trying to stand still and feel

Wanting to be convinced by rage

Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad

Feeling continuous

Feeling fragmented

Feeling like motion, like flow

Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering

Grasping at impermanence

Resting in the middle

Dancing down the tightrope

Knowing perfect poise, so so brief

Everything is hysterically funny

Hysterically

But also just plain humorous

And absurd

Loving people

Feeling grateful for people

Seeing beauty everywhere

Always coming back

Like an epic

Like a great love story

Like a violin solo in a forbidden song

Like the last wring of that silk dress you're not supposed to squeeze dry

Knowing the inside of my hand

Knowing teenage shame

Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow
hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small, nowhere to go

Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong soft body

Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving

Becoming one single, concentrated point

Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. With my body.

I am not this voice

Or this writer

Or this narrator

Though I am also all that

It's falling, it's falling!

I scramble as it hits the ground—
of what a crash!— How loud is the sound
of losing a bed, the place for my head,
all simply because I'd accidentally lost
a few little screws, and now I'm distraught
as I sit and watch, and though:
a few screws loose—

Where could they be? I did not see
them under the chair, or under the table,
among the tools, nor among the cables—
Maybe I've swept them—
                                          they're not in the trash!—
Did I throw it out?—
                                 but I wasn't that rash!

Or was I?          (I pause.)

I pick up a phone, I dial a number,
his dial tone rings, I disrupt his slumber,
he grunts as I blubber— have you seen my screws?
This is no ruse, I find myself now—
a few screws loose!

I silently wait till he sighs and he says:
Have you checked the trashcan—
                                                       ­ It's not there, I saw—
Or under the table—
                                 have you checked the floor?

It's none of those places, I searched at least twice—
Why else would I call you at this time of night?
Please do me a favour and see if you find
the few screws I'm missing—
                                                if I left them behind.

I'll search tomorrow, he says with a yawn.
I hang up in sorrow, I'll call at dawn.
I'll stay awake, or go to bed late
but

wait

My bed cannot hold my head or my soul—
because of the holes and lost metal poles—
no more a bed than a pile of wood,
it cannot be used, while I am
a few screws loose.

Hey everyone, I was just
thinking about the
fact that poetry has
a long oral tradition.
Wouldn't it be fun to
get a youtube channel and
perform your poetry?
You are all so
great, I just wonder how it
sounds with the writer
reading it.
We could support each other
and promote our writing at
the same time.