"hesse" poems
Memes! Angels, aberrations of opposition super standing
overseeing you,
The screamin' heebie jeebies.
Yo, where you wanta go, you axin me we just go
with it, the flow 'know?
What I mean is, are we memes or mes or messes of yeses
gone all johnny rcome late-rotten scarred scared, some thing not so far
from sacred when you put your mind to the whole idea of life being
at all. Thinking this is not easy. We are Able. Our belly's living waters cry out,
you are your brother's keeper, yes, you are.
Be leavin' that be, I am is, and you is,
too. When you apprehend the meme named
war.
That meme has led the me-me mob for as far as men
remember, but
now, machines remember for us, all the facts, just
the facts, ma'am.
Why'd the d go into a comma, Pop?
Welt (Duetch, bitte) Enshaung, glaube ich, vie leicht, aber
are we ever going to filter out these German bleed-overs?
stay tuned, next week the meme beacon is pulled down,
who shall pre or post or ex maybe vail, travail, like
trip
wow, I hate being a 20 year old vet back in the U.S. of A.
FTA All the way, Airborne
******** Herman Hesse ********
Jorney to and fro the east to west, and soon, et
cetera. Siam is a mere myth now, eh?
As the Narnia thing not called a heathen lie was allowed
allowable in mere Christianity.
I've only seen the English POV's on PBS, they may be filtered through
feedback, meme belching bursting bubbles from new wine 'nold vessels about to plode into eternity, singing along.
Thank you, very much. May I introduce, duce, intro duce, y'gittin this?
Duce means 2 if you see e squeen between, you see that?
Fun. No reason for fun? Who here, now, believes that or, no,
bees leavin' those lies be told?
Hunh? Y'know? Watch man, waht of the night?
See, what I mean? All this from me hearin' some guy say,
"Come and see, like that was okeh. For any body, n'me, too.
Thinking, as a past-time, is pointless. You know, if you act like it.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 1:21 AM UTC
The speaker in this case
is a middle-aged witch, me-
tangled on my two great arms,
my face in a book
and my mouth wide,
ready to tell you a story or two.
I have come to remind you,
all of you:
Alice, Samuel, Kurt, Eleanor,
Jane, Brian, Maryel,
all of you draw near.
Alice,
at fifty-six do you remember?
Do you remember when you
were read to as a child?
Samuel,
at twenty-two have you forgotten?
Forgotten the ten P.M. dreams
where the wicked king
went up in smoke?
Are you comatose?
Are you undersea?
Attention,
my dears,
let me present to you this boy.
He is sixteen and he wants some answers.
He is each of us.
I mean you.
I mean me.
It is not enough to read Hesse
and drink clam chowder
we must have the answers.
The boy has found a gold key
and he is looking for what it will open.
This boy!
Upon finding a string
he would look for a harp.
Therefore he holds the key tightly.
Its secrets whimper
like a dog in heat.
He turns the key.
Presto!
It opens this book of odd tales
which transform the Brothers Grimm.
Transform?
As if an enlarged paper clip
could be a piece of sculpture.
(And it could.)
4k
she posts her credentials
privately, to just you,
in the din of a currently popular
university barroom
and you dressed in your
pick up best,
plumes of all male grinning,
reeking in thinking -
oh yeah!
va va voom,
lucky
laughs and liquor,
cheap 3.2 Ohio beers on tap,
come super highway fast via
as my finger flick be wagging
to an attentive bartender
who recognizes,
a new venture worth
his investing in a newly forming
gene pool of the
collegial world of what you children
can google as
The Sixities
you see, she says,
she is minor famous,
had two minutes in a movie
called Woodstock,
instantly recalled distinctively,
which you honor with
a dozen roses rising of
very cool
and a few daisies of
wow
so young,
she's hitch hiking thru life,
karma, ying and yang, Sagittarius and
Hesse's Siddharta,
a little ****** break out back,
our lives have intersected in
Cleveland in 1969,
and there is no question unanswered,
your bed, is her bed,
this night
you puzzle yourself,
memory recycler,
why in 2015,
you celebrate a one stand,
a single strand
excavated from
the meta data of your brain
tonight,
from among a hundred lifetimes previous
*Why Woodstock Woman Wonder
and you do,
why, wonder,
have you stayed with me so long,
that your face is indelible tattooed,
easy extracted from ancient cells
risen by this
dawn's early light?*
are you pining old man,
are you dying old man,
trying to write it all down
before the insurance company
grumpily has to pay up?
this carefree woman, no,
young forever girl,
looking up to you
asking where can she crash tonight,
answered in a single guttural
exclamation sensation,
with me babe,
with me baby
fifty years later,
crashing you,
crashing with you,
with roses and daisies that never died
wonder where she is today,
a grandmother multiple,
or sleeping gone from an overdose
of stuff you occasionally fooled around with,
or are you spending another night
in your tripping life,
with another
one night man*
no answers given,
but it is, it was,
a single dot on the trail of dots and dashes,
the existential Camus moments of
of two ordinaries that intersected,
however briefly,
and you wonder,
not why, but if,
*Woodstock Woman,
do you remember me?
I need you to,
I want you to,
explain better
why we are crashing together
one more time*
~~~
August 20, 2015
5:32am
nyc
Aug 29, 2015
Aug 29, 2015 at 1:05 PM UTC
_the mythic Esther notwithstanding_;
the only Jewish Miss America was
Bess Myerson; Miss New York, &
exemplar of classic beauty c.1945
studying German philosophy
living on the upper east side;
surrounded by rich Park Avenue
Jews - spewing Nietzschean
Nihilism causing them to _shudder_
at the thought of relatives dragged
from homes never to be seen
again; they don't want to hear
that **** - my buddy Mingus Jr.
bringing mechanical bebop to
his constructed paintings;
on
the other hand, I'm going on & on
about Heidegger & Schopenhauer,
Brian Eno, David Bowie, Hegel,
****** Goebbels & Riefenstahl;
my paintings are violent; as if
Jack the Ripper & James Whistler
were the same guy; all women are
beautiful by nature, but I would've
done it different - put the snooch
on top, the udders on the bottom,
*** in front, arms & legs splayed
out to the sides; yes, that's better,
Diane Arbus, Ann Frank, Hannah
Arendt, Dori Bernstein, Alison
Linefsky & Eva Hesse are more
beautiful than Lilith & Eve mixed;
I hate being called a antisemitic;
it's a painful reminder that at the
moment I don't have a Jewish gf
Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018 at 2:17 PM UTC
Α♥Ω
GNOSIS, my friends, is alive and well,
corrupting the hearts of the masses.
They fashion a fable to fit their need until their crisis passes.
An idol from here and a text from there – just a little dabble do…
for a do-it-yourself epiphany as the counterfeit passes through.
They lose themselves in names and mantras,
thinking they’re mining gold –
while the god of this world enhances the shine of spiritual lies retold.
So get out your old Santana records, pass the **** to the left.
Listen to Jimi and Marley and worse; it will leave your soul bereft.
It’s the same old trip – the first century
has seen all of it come and go:
such transcendent explosions of heresy
are worth less than the price of the show.
In the local body of Iesous Moshiach our pastor has faithfully showed us:
nonsensical notions of Gnostic obnoxiousness
fail to enlighten – but load us
with half-truths and fantasies, cosmic conspiracies,
spiritually false revelation;
which turn on the blacklight and dazzle the mind
but maroon you in dark desolation.
So I’d like to prepare you for several short poems
exploring the way of the Gnostics.
Though I love Elaine Pagels and Demian‘s Hesse,
they fail to provide diagnostics…
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 10:33 PM UTC
His hands stretched out as if in the
Shavasana pose, only he was
Wearing his old jeans, chequered shirt
Black laceless converse shoes
His head on the lush green grass
With Hesse’s Siddartha in his left hand
and a magical airbrush in his right hand
He gazed at the cloudless blue sky
Like an artist in front of a canvas
he drew the people he wanted in it,
The boy with the inquisitive big brown eyes
The girl at the bus stop carrying a tote bag
the things he wanted to do,
Climb the highest mountain peak
Do the tango in Buenos Aires
Vagabond across South America
the sunsets and the full moons he wanted to see
the reasons he was willing to suffer for
the smiles he wanted to have.
A masterpiece in the making
the outline took no more than a few minutes
but the finished piece took a lifetime to create.
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 5:25 AM UTC
I am the domesticated Daydreamer. finding simplicity in the beauty of all things. see through the natural lies and become one as we dwell in the sunrise. keep it light and enjoyable for the days are ours to consume. find no need to pressure forth when this steady pace is mine to adjust. see life in the eyes of a tree so calm and strong these roots within me. enjoy the breaks with a book and some bark let the trees shade you from what has left you scarred. see the beauty inside an uneasy soul its ready to mold and from love be told the steps to happiness. this is the movement of eyes and hands grazing over the incomparable honesty of how the human being operates. skin to skin lips to lips we are just muscles and nerves ending where others muscles and nerves begin.
Sep 25, 2012
Sep 25, 2012 at 5:58 PM UTC
I am the domesticated Daydreamer. finding simplicity in the beauty of all things. see through the natural lies and become one as we dwell in the sunrise. keep it light and enjoyable for the days are ours to consume. find no need to pressure forth when this steady pace is mine to adjust. see life in the eyes of a tree so calm and strong these roots within me. enjoy the breaks with a book and some bark let the trees shade you from what has left you scarred. see the beauty inside an uneasy soul its ready to mold and from love be told the steps to happiness. this is the movement of eyes and hands grazing over the incomparable honesty of how the human being operates. skin to skin lips to lips we are just muscles and nerves ending where others muscles and nerves begin.
Sep 9, 2012
Sep 9, 2012 at 1:49 PM UTC
Only on me, the lonely one,
The unending stars of the night shine,
The stone fountain whispers its magic song,
To me alone, to me the lonely one
The colorful shadows of the wandering clouds
Move like dreams over the open countryside.
Neither house nor farmland,
Neither forest nor hunting privilege is given to me,
What is mine belongs to no one,
The plunging brook behind the veil of the woods,
The frightening sea,
The bird whir of children at play,
The weeping and singing, lonely in the evening, of a man secretly in love.
The temples of the gods are mine also, and mine
the aristocratic groves of the past.
And no less, the luminous
Vault of heaven in the future is my home:
Often in full flight of longing my soul storms upward,
To gaze on the future of blessed men,
Love, overcoming the law, love from people to people.
I find them all again, nobly transformed:
Farmer, king, tradesman, busy sailors,
Shepherd and gardener, all of them
Gratefully celebrate the festival of the future world.
Only the poet is missing,
The lonely one who looks on,
The bearer of human longing, the pale image
Of whom the future, the fulfillment of the world
Has no further need. Many garlands
Wilt on his grave,
But no one remembers him.
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 5:28 PM UTC
I was 18 and surrendered to a Van Gogh sunset,
The Aegean Sea a calm mirror,
Plato’s sun, rose-red and dying,
A shift from wind to breeze,
Each night negotiates a calm.
There were eight of us
Inside the cave,
A cathedral inside a mountain,
Our home, high upside a cliff,
The mountain shepherds unhappy
With our stake,
Until we saved the lamb.
We’d found each other,
An octad to a family formed,
Wandering, drinking, annoying the Swiss,
Our freedom dangerous,
Beyond control,
Our odd desire to just be.
Hell, we were reading Hesse,
One of their own,
Our Swiss welcome spent,
They’d had enough,
And so we left for Athens,
To dance and sing,
And tender the sad patience of the Greeks.
Eighteen hours on the ferry to Eos,
People barfed huge arcs over the railing,
Then sat down to reread the headlines for the hundredth time,
Eos was an island of no cars, sparse electricity,
An abundance of religion
And a constant flow and cask of wine.
Retsina, the barrel sealing resin of the Aleppo pine,
An odd and unmistakable taste,
It left a hangover like a warning shot,
The only cure to drink again.
We spent Easter high on acid,
In the back pews of a church,
A thousand years of candles
White walls black with carbon,
A priest, a chalice, the smoking thurible,
A pendulum of incense and pure thought,
The ancients practiced faith with all their senses.
On cloudy moonless nights,
We walked the miles home,
Sandals slap on a sugar sand,
The beach ours, all of it
So dark we could only hear the sea,
The rhythm of the waves like the downbeat of the earth,
We plodded to its dark measure in a line,
On return, from village, church,
Or a lover’s walk through miles of wild daisies,
Until the rediscovered goat path up to our cave,
A Sisyphean task, a find each time,
Drunk, ****** alive, young, nuclear with hope and desire,
We would change the world,
We would mend kind all the broken parts.
And in our cave,
The sounds of others making love,
Rough grunts and soft sighs, whisper kisses,
I would think and dream,
And ride the silver of those waves
Our lives like skipping stones,
Brief, beautiful, and bound.
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 7:11 PM UTC
I sit here trying to decide what Writer influenced me,
I had my Existentialist Period very young Jean Paul Sartre, seemed dark and Complex, but... Albert Camus Captured it for me, the Emergence of Allen Ginsberg, bridge the Atlantic...the Pop of music influenced it all, from the Doors to Dylan
But Deep Down in the Dark of My soul is Jack Kerouac"who I am sure must have been influenced by JD Salinger" From Keorouac, to Ken Keasy and Hunter Thompson seem to be a good place to end
Others such as e.e. cummings, James Baldwin, Carl Sandburg, Herman Hesse, J,R.R. Tolkien, Lewis Carol, Issac Asimov. Robert Heinlein, and Stan Lee all had their places to... I feel Honored to be influenced By Such Amazing Talent.....
May 21, 2015
May 21, 2015 at 2:33 AM UTC
the deep water I believed to be treading through
was mud all along:
bed side table herman hesse
looks up to see one of van goghs, wants to undress
doesn't have a ****** this *** is a mess
she's not surprised
'cause she's a pessimist.
to her loves affairs:
she's keepin' shut
no more love left in her gut
the feelings escaped her through the cuts
one for every lover
she didn't give a ****
don't worry about her wrists
instead she likes to use her fists,
bad throws, punching chains
lets the men drive, fast lanes.
bruises are the names of the faces she misplaced
in her bones where she resides,
it's a pillow that she lies beside.
she's not a trick
she's not a *****
most feared is to be a bore
so she smiles and speaks,
too much? doesn't grieve.
as long as what she's saying is something to believe.
as long as you're in the mood
to laugh
there's no need
to wear a mask
just leave alone
the aching things
that bring you
beneath
the weight of gravity.
heavy heavy heavy
leave me to my beats
I'll walk the streets
heavy
Jul 10, 2013
Jul 10, 2013 at 5:15 PM UTC
Couldn't even spell Camus,
you illiterate ****
not to mention you never heard of my dudes,
Hesse and Chuck.
I've roamed expanse, of Middle Earth,
watched sun sets, from Martian perch.
You poor ******* can't comprehend
the tortured lives Of Mice and Men.
Fail to grasp the beauty
in Ray Bradburys' words
and you'll probably never know
how Dresden Germany burned.
When "Something Wicked, This Way Comes"
you'll hardly know just where to run.
As Billy P. learned "So it goes"
Soon you too, will come to know
A strange thing I have gleaned from friend,
just "Poo - tee - weet" can mark the end.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 7:24 PM UTC
I passed by that tree the other day.
The one nestled between two thorn bushes
and just past a ravine
along the upper trail of Old Man’s Cave in Hocking Hills,
surrounded by two thousand acres or so
of dense forest.
I laughed to myself because
The old birch hadn’t changed since I had last seen it.
But it certainly felt different.
The same gray cloak of bark
covered the tender matter inside.
Golden foliage still swayed above me
like it did on that brisk November afternoon.
Today is brutally brisk,
but I have to admit that I did stop for a second to reminisce
under the once comforting blanket of its shadow.
I fixed my now nostalgic, sepia-toned gaze on the bark
and traced my fingers over the scar that we left.
I remembered looking for the perfect one with you.
It was this one, we both thought.
And so were you, at least I thought.
My cold blade carved into the robust fortress of its surface
exposing the birch’s reddish-tan, natural finish underneath.
It then became our tree,
not just any tree, in a forest, on a planet full of them.
I remembered you telling me a couple months back about
how much you admired trees,
and how I should read Trees. Reflections and Poems
by Hermann Hesse, and I did almost immediately.
“Trees are sanctuaries.”
was our favorite quote from the poem, we decided.
And it was the most relevant.
Our tree had become a grand symbol
that would carry in our memory,
what it meant to love and be loved.
But now its just that,
another tree in a forest
that we scarred.
And that, now, scars us.
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 12:04 PM UTC
‘We’re floating up with the Angels,’
Said the girl in the pale green dress,
She’d voiced the phrase in German
For the girl had hailed from Hesse,
‘I never have dreamt of a night like this,
We soar like the gods of old,’
Then they came and shut all the windows,
For the night was growing cold.
There wasn’t a shake or a shudder
From the platform in the sky,
The waters of the Atlantic streamed
Below, but they were dry,
A headwind slowed their progress
And a storm was coming on,
The flickers of distant lightning lit
The path that they flew along.
The following day, the coast appeared
But the rain set in the more,
Rather than land, the captain took them
Over the Jersey shore,
The weather was bad at Lakehurst, so
They whiled away the hours,
Floating up there above the clouds
And the steady springtime showers.
They finally dropped the mooring lines
As the crew stood by below,
When a sudden flash was seen up aft
And a roar began to grow,
The ship was lit like a candlestick
As the gas and the fabric scorched,
While a flame enveloped the girl in green
And lit her up like a torch.
The frame crashed down on the gondola
And all you could hear were cries,
It was almost as if the gods had screamed:
‘How dare you enter our skies?’
They say that St. Elmo’s Fire was seen
By the watchers, down on the ground,
But there wasn’t a trace of the girl in green
When the Hindenberg went down.
David Lewis Paget
Aug 6, 2013
Aug 6, 2013 at 8:22 PM UTC
let's do this.
here we are the in-between.
statement nulled of either
side. no history forced
past, and only warming up
in this the current aba-
ting long dark. and sta-
nding this hovel does so
with each glance of wall
left to right. realizing
four's advancement has
aided in absence of post-
humous thought.
canvas-flapped arm, just
to mention for the occu-
rrence of these words. just
to mention recurring thought
not allowed history. not
yet endowed with the period
of a past list. an in-between,
a valley shooting gallery w-
here the soul bleeds out to
drown the vessel. deep analogies.
a deeper long dark thought in
retreat, only thoughts are to
mystified and this proves Hesse
true.
Sep 29, 2015
Sep 29, 2015 at 12:09 PM UTC
*Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. *-Herman Hesse
This willow weeps for no one
It hears the mountain's tears
riding on the backs of slow waves
This willow knows
that the sun's silence
is understood by every atom
It knows
that soon the rocks will rise up and
take arms
They will wage a war against concrete
and flesh
Soon the earth will heave a sigh of relief
and will resume feeding the willows that have
long ago stopped crying
Feb 13, 2018
Feb 13, 2018 at 3:36 AM UTC
Two spirits live, oh, within my breast
So Goethe said, in my chest
A spark of God raging, and Mephistopheles
In the caverns of my consciousness
Jealous of a wholesome rest
And to stop the precedent
The handshake of the worm and the bird
They strive to shake my confidence
They lure me in with decadence
To rob me of my sense
One part of me will blush
The other, cry out ‘yes’
And another laughs at death
And another shakes their head
It was not Goethe who was right
But the Steppenwolf of Herman Hesse
A thousand flowers of the soul
Meek and wild, young in heart and old
And to recognise only two of them
The greatest tragedy of all
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 25, 2016 at 9:01 PM UTC
IM NEBEL VERSCHWINDEN
My ghost sat
comfortably ensconced
in an armchair
opposite me.
A fire roared
between us.
The whiskey glinted
in the glass
like a thought
held in amber.
Outside a fog had
wrapped the world
in cotton wool
like a memento
in a badly scuffed
lacquer box.
As host I
offered my ghost
a little something
"...a G&T; perhaps?"
My ghost slyly smiled:
"I, never....touch spirits!"
"Ok...!" snapped my ghost
looking very pale
"...let's leave reality
out of this!"
"No tree knows
its neighbour
. . .each alone. . .
. . .each alone. . ."
I muttered
in my mind.
But I must have spoke
my mind out loud.
"What's that?"
hissed my ghost
"That's Hesse...I believe."
I addressed my ghostly alter ego.
"...all about being alone in a mist..."
I mused as if it hadn't been there.
Just an idle
thought like
a dandelion seed
getting caught in a sleeve.
"And what has that...got to do with this?"
my ghost looked miffed
"Oh, nothing..." I smiled
"...just a feeling."
"Can we skip
the literary stuff!"
my ghost acidly suggested.
"Of course...of course!"
I assured it.
"Im Nebel verschwinden..."
I thought aloud for the last time.
"And do you mind if we use
...English."
"Yes, yes...!" I said
"What ever you say..."
"I'm here because from where I am
I'm not pleased with how you're leading
. . .my life!"
"Hold on a sec!" I said.
"I'm not dead yet!"
"Are you allowed to haunt
your own self?"
"Do you have to get a haunting permit?
Is it the haunting season...am I game"
And so the conversation
dragged on until
yawwwwnnnnnn...dawn
when my ghostly self
felt it had to depart.
Reality had snuk
back in the back door.
I sat in the chair
dead to the world
become my ghostly self
as it happened
and strolled serenely into
the next world.
The fog had lifted.
Feb 11, 2017
Feb 11, 2017 at 4:06 PM UTC
A young man
Thougb not too young
Carved from flesh
Molded by experience
Came to the river
He'd crossed it before
Before his child was born
Many years prior to
His lover's death
Mother of their son
And his son
Carved from his own flesh
Hated him
Crossed the river on his own
Leaving our hero
To ask his reflection
Clear as a mirror
In the river
"What went wrong"
More than twenty
Centuries passed
His soul was never released
Never became free
As
As a young man
He'd hoped it would be
Our hero fell into the river
The water accepted him
The water permissed him
Join the current
And so he passed
Twenty some odd
Centuries
To become some one
Who hated himself
Who dreamt only of
Oblivion
An unfortunate slip of the razor
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 8:58 AM UTC
Yesterday
I felt like a character
in a Hesse novel;
all I had to show
that time had passed
was the lingering scent
of tobacco smoke,
an empty *** of coffee
and a banana peel.
That, and a vague comprehension
of my impending mortality.
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 5:21 PM UTC
Maybe that was the first mistake I made
there at the very beginning.
I wanted all of it, everything I could glean
from whatever life had to offer.
Not only did I want the beauty of Hesse,
Dante, and all the glories of Old Florence,
I wanted someone like me to share it with.
I wanted to wake up in a room in Tangier
to the Muezzin calling the faithful to prayer
and have some unbelievable soul in bed with me
wipe the sleep from her eyes and kiss me.
They say that I'm a drunk and a dreamer
and they may in fact be right about that,
but they'll never know the absolute glory
that comes from pouring your bleeding guts
out onto paper at two in the morning with
Pavarotti blaring as loud as you can make him.
I'm almost thirty and I've almost given up,
almost accepted that the finer things in life
will only ever be a dream, a fleeting glimpse
into an improbable future that may cost too much.
And then I meet people like her, Artists and Lovers
that cut me in ways I didn't think I could be anymore.
I'll be doing alot of drugs with them, maybe have some
truly Protestant shaming *** with them, trying to
reach out across that ****** abyss and touch their soul.
But I'll never wake up in Tangier with them.
I'll fall asleep listening to Netflix and wondering
who gave her the scars I can feel pumping through her heart.
It'll probably fade away relatively quickly too,
that one real moment when the walls fell.
No matter, I always knew deep in my heart of hearts
that people like me don't get happy endings or to
live our dreams out unless we die for them.
We go our own way, suffering to be who we are,
creating beauty in ****** rooms with screaming
children that reek of cat **** and regrets.
But if it ever gets too much to bear, there's
always truly running, truly giving up on
having it all, walking the **** away
and being insane and drunk in Tangier alone.
Jun 23, 2017
Jun 23, 2017 at 10:00 PM UTC
You asked,
"What if my Sunday has passed?
That the week was all I had,
and I messed it up so bad."
And in cognition,
I ungripped my neck.
I saw a counterpart — I was not the only one.
I knew how it was, to dangle by the jagged pier.
And you knew how it was to choke by disregard,
that floating was impossible with a punctured heart.
When each door meant nothing —
used and crossed out in your likeness.
Where I waited for the Sun,
but my windows stay boarded up.
You scraped bottom until my first word fell.
I said,
"I am a prisoner. And I am the prison."
You said,
"I am a cage, with nothing breathing inside."
I was alone. And you were alone.
And then we were alone together.
You unpicked my fearful lips,
for my throated echoes.
And I reminded you that you
are the reason that beauty exists.
Of the endless books we read,
Auster, Hesse, McCullers, Graves,
we still found ourselves
written on the same page.
Our tattoos were marked like scars —
another hopeless attempt
to speak with ink.
Why not mar the skin,
if we lose only grace?
I used to believe perfection was false,
for I had never seen your face.
You pointed out
my large feminine hands.
Then with your modest fingers,
you screened the chuckles.
And all I pictured from that endearing sight —
my effeminate hands, sheltering yours that frigid night.
No longer living in a future that was all talk.
No longer imperfect — for our scars sat perfect with.
We found Sunday.
I am not alone. And you are not alone.
And we are never alone together.
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 1:37 PM UTC