#bildungsroman
it's highschool recess and my best friend and i watch the seventh-graders
from our perch as 'older boys' with minimum-wage jobs and harder homework. one is handing around a gleaming can of monster energy like the blood of christ himself and everyone wants some. they treat the factory-issue can with such tender care, flushed fingertips on cold metal.
"why are they so excited about a monster?" i ask.
("what does it taste like?" a wide-eyed friend's younger brother asks.)
"because it's novel. it's their first taste of freedom." my friend says, and
then suddenly i remember all the times we've done the same with our friends.
first, in an airport because me and my shaking hands couldn't finish it ourselves. outside school, warm from the flesh of someone's school bag all day. under the table and the teacher's nose because i stayed up too late, comuning with other friends in the blue dark. no matter who buys it's always for all of us.
("have a sip"-"i don't like this one"-"the juice one is my favourite")
like maybe the 58g of sugar and 600mL of caffeine is okay if it's split between us. like the sharing of spit is holy. i look out at the small crowd of seventh graders and realise they are just beginning to learn:
what is communion if not half backwash?
what is holier than ingesting your friends?
what is holier than killing your hearts together?
Sep 14, 2024
Sep 14, 2024 at 8:21 PM UTC
freakout. let’s all hide this from our parents together
i want so desperately to impress you, i want so hugely for you to like me
i love nirvana (as of this morning), but i’m not faking
i really do love Floyd the Barber (as of hearing it this morning)
Kurt Cobain died on the cross almost thirty years ago
he’d be fifty seven and I have a headache
this **** smells like that guy who gave me my guitar
my godfather (close enough), my childhood (ending rapidly)
and barbecues in the backyard
douse me in axe body spray and tell me it’s lynx
it is lynx, i’m the one who’s wrong
i feel real for the first time in years, and shorter than i thought
5”4 and sinking into the ground, so dance with me
let’s take our shoes off in the street
two songs, one movie, one podcast
all playing in the background, and we’re off every beat
I love nirvana (always have), I have a headache (always will)
I’m teetering between high and not
is this the kind of **** that makes you creative?
look at the little bag you brought, it has bats on it
it makes you so happy, look at you dancing
look at you on the driveway, in your Kurt Cobain sunnies
this is what he would have wanted
Jul 18, 2024
Jul 18, 2024 at 8:05 PM UTC
A boy, sketching
His friends, fellow neighbours, skinny dipping
This is not the first time,
but what is indeed new are the imprints
of streams, droplets;
yelps, giggles;
the force of a tumbling body,
or limbs on limbs,
shivers and waves in his very young heart.
He finds his nib forming strange contours,
fingers tracing the imprints as much as his
eyes could picture,
only to tear the paper, later,
ripping out a flat, grimacing tangle of lines,
his friend, grotesque on canvas.
Night beckons;
his sketch, made anew, alive as
he lay within burgeoning wants
that he never wished
before
May 18, 2021
May 18, 2021 at 10:29 PM UTC
I've been saying that a lot recently,
not sure how to stop,
Anyway.
I'm okay
Just a little misplaced
Starting to think its really a
Personal Problem
Who the hell am I,
anymore,
Anyway?
I'm back home and being sober
For a while
Trying my best to figure myself out
Before it's too late and that's all I have left to do.
These thoughts arent shocking
and aren't new
when I cry in the middle of the night
in the middle of my new bathroom
These thoughts are piled up like my ***** laundry that drives you
Away.
Like you, I miss who I was
But how can I give up
again,
anyway?
How much letting go can I do
In my Youth
before all of who I am to the world
is lost
to painful, past potentials?
I am afraid
what's happening
was always inevitable,
anyway.
Because between the situational and unconditional
I don't know where we lie
so now I lie to myself
To feel a whisper of the warmth
to thaw this unrest of loneliness
and melt into my purpose, defined.
Anyway;
Apr 11, 2021
Apr 11, 2021 at 6:48 PM UTC
Bygones will be Bygones
and their baggage shall beg
to plow again.
Between the gains and confines
of the wrestled soul,
resinous,
behind his silver buttons
and navy knitted nylon
beneath it grey,
cunningly,
breathes the pain
of his flourishing.
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 7:02 PM UTC
momma said she found me
ten steps from heaven’s porch,
nestled in bloodied saw grass, flickering
fireflies circlin’ like anxious cherubs.
i forgot what i was doing out there—
waist-deep between heaven and hell,
sleeping in Shiloh where bones
rattle and beetle shells fixed with chitin
hum steadily in the dead heat.
“you too young to die,” she says to me,
face all red and sunburned and marred
with tears. sadness becomes a part of her,
alongside mother, and farmhand, and guilt,
and miracle.
my memories slip past me on copper scales,
swimming underneath the current. i am ten
again, wading in the river, pockets full of
rocks and sea glass. i am twenty and the river
has become a fragile stream. i am thirty and
there is nothing but dirt.
i feel my childhood bleeding out of me,
a mix of red crayons, red paper plates
cradling birthday cakes, red kick-balls
at recess, red tulips pressed into my
sister’s cold hands.
momma said she found me
ten steps from heaven’s porch,
just out of reach of the lamplight,
where i left my childhood.
Dec 18, 2017
Dec 18, 2017 at 9:43 PM UTC
This part of my day is called
A Fistful of Muddy Mushrooms
Because I feel like the embodiment of
something edible, yet poisonous;
Pure, yet filthy, putrid, covered
in the refuse of plants that die.
Maybe they should have refused
to die,
Maybe they should have
Tried
to reach their leaves up and up
until
an ant at the bottom felt
like they were BIG ENOUGH
And a giant thought they were just the
right size for dinner salad,
Because when I speak,
My heart strangles my vocal chords,
And my words sound much less of the
perfect
role model I really am.
How could I not be?
I serve young minds and cater to
small minds,
Much smaller than those they serve.
No one told me that growing up would
R.I.P the arms off my former child self,
Dangle the appendages in front of me,
while I watch monster after monster
Eat my flesh. Slowly. Delicately.
Like a dessert.
I wanted to grow up to be a kid.
I got my wish.
At the cost that I
Do Not
Belong
to the good graces of the Good People
around me
and all of us
scattered like leaves on the ground.
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 2:49 AM UTC
"This won't hurt."
"Maybe later, darling"
"Yes, we're nearly there."
"Nothing's going to change, it's just Daddy will live at his new house, and Mummy will stay living here."
"Things will be so much better when you get to secondary school."
"You'll definitely use what we learn in this lesson in future life."
"No, it's Daddy that doesn't want you to get your ears pierced, I'm fine with it."
"We'll be best friends forever, won't we?"
"No, I liked him before you liked him."
"I hate you."
"I love you"
"These exams are the most important things you've done so far."
"That haircut looks so good on you!"
"Of course I know how to pierce ears, who doesn't?!"
"These exams are the most important things you've done so far."
"Things will be so much better when you get to university."
"Nah, no-one's actually allergic to MDMA, I reckon it's a government conspiracy."
"Seven inches, swear down."
"Oh, that assignment? It's at home."
"No, honestly darling, I love your tattoo!"
"I love you."
"I won't be late."
"Now you're in the real world!"
Any sentence that starts with the words "When I was your age..."
"It's not that I don't like him..."
"Oh come on! It'll be fun."
"You're too young to be this sad."
"This won't hurt."
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 4:26 PM UTC
She woke up early
To see what the Easter Bunny brought her
And she fed her dog jellybeans
And she put on her new baby blue dress
With the matching hat
And couldn't sit still in Church.
She woke up early
To find that the Easter Bunny only brought Dad’s favorite candy
And her mom sat her down
And said, “The Easter Bunny is a fantasy”
And her dog got stomach cancer and couldn't eat the jellybeans.
Her baby blue dress was too small
But she wore it anyways
With pants underneath
And the matching hat,
And she got a cramp in her neck
From counting the ceiling tiles in church.
She woke up early
To the sound of her parents fighting
And she climbed into the bed of the pickup truck
And told her brother about Easters he was too young to remember
Of baby blue dresses
With matching hats
And how they used to have a dog that ate the jellybeans.
She wore her pajamas to church
And refused to get out of the car.
Not even when her mother cried.
She woke up late
To the sound of DVR’d episodes of Pawn Stars
And her dad told her that taking the SATs once was not good enough
And her boyfriend needs to take driver’s ed.
And they didn't go to church
Because her mom didn't live there anymore.
So she put on a different dress,
Dark blue with no matching hat,
And drove that pickup truck off the bridge.
Laughing as the cab filled up
With death’s cold fingers.
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 1:20 AM UTC