Yesterday was your birthday

All day, my hands weighed me down

With the itch to text you to wish you a good day
With the need to grip a steering wheel, navigating me to your house
With the idleness feeling sinful as I wasn’t baking you confetti cake
With the feeling of being misplaced against anything that wasn’t your skin

To keep my hands busy I piled memory into a grinder
And
Ground
Ground
Ground

Turned the parts as if I was winding up a music box
Because this sound was full
In comparison to
The pit of my stomach that was still waiting to
Share your birthday cupcakes with you

When the flashbacks filtered into my brain
The high was pulled lower still
By the weight of my hands
So that all I could do was cross them
And pray a prayer worth all of the birthday gifts I’ve ever given

“Please, God, on this day make him forget himself.

Please, God, let him find a sweet tooth for things other than the melancholic poison he puts in his coffee

Please, God, let him not remember the time when he broke open too wide and let me slip out of him

Please, God, allow him to feel something, on this birthday, even if it’s just his birthday candle blisters

Please, God, give him his heart back, as it is buried in the past that I was never gifted to know

Please, God, let me not weigh him down with a guilt seed that would root him to a chapter in his life that he wishes he could rewrite

Please, God, let me stop dreaming of him.
I know what it means when I dream of someone.
I know it’s your way of wordlessly telling me I’m being thought of.
Do not let him think of me.


Please, God, fill the parts of him that his worker’s hands have carved out of himself so cleanly.

Visit the wounds that sit in his posture
Will his veins to carry his soul back to his heart

Remind him that his sadness is his own special brew
That he continues to sip at his leisure

Help him understand that feeling lonely
Comes from his own brain that remembers isolation better than love

Please, God, give him
A better year.
A good year.
A year when his time won’t be stolen by someone so insignificant
That he has to translate her words into the language of gibberish,
Until they mean nothing at all anymore.

Please, let him find someone.
Please, let that person captivate him.
Please, let that person know him.
Please, let that person sit in bed with him and feel their good fortune in their bones.
Please, let that person see the moon in his fingertips and realize that they can control the tides, if he wants them too.
Please, let him smile at this person, in ways that would be ugly in pictures, but beautiful in my memory.

Please, God, let that person be HIM.

Please, God, if you won’t cut the ribbon to the start of his new life, at least give him the scissors.

He will say “No, Thank you.”
He will say he does not need your help, because he knows the power of his paint brush,
and that he is too busy washing color out of his brushes to take hold of the harsh metal,
And then he will make confetti of your offer.
He will shred every pleasant thought that comes his way.
He will cut himself open and gaze at every beautiful thing, insisting he sees the wonder.
He will not see the wonder.
He will say he understands the things that live inside himself.
But he will turn their volume down
And tune deeply into the metallic music of sorrowful hollowness
He will go to extreme efforts to ignore the starting line that sits just outside of his comfort zone.

But, God, Please,
Send the trees to trip him
Make the animals chase him
Let him
Throw tantrums that are disguised as the silent treatment

But wrap him up in his ribbon, so that the only way he can move
Is forward.
Remind him that the scissors are always in his hand,
And he needs to learn that
They need not destroy.

Make the clouds rain on his new life,
And remind him that he has a knack for watercolors.

Lure him with oils
Guide him with spraypaint

This Year, show him the paint that
Will reteach color to him.

This year, let him understand that colors are bright,
But not the enemy.

Let him not fear red from the times that he bled,
Let him not cast away yellow, because the sun got in his eyes,
Let him not hate blue, because he almost drowned.

Build in him a reservoir for happiness, that could sustain him through this life that has already been too tragic.

God, on his birthday, please indulge these heavy hands so that they may not cross the fingers for his return,

Because God, it was not I who was born today,
And it was not me who was stiffed on birthday cake.

And though this prayer is selfish,
It is the only thing I can give him,
That he cannot refuse.”

And as I looked down to see my clasped hands, I couldn’t help remember
When one of them was yours.

And for my final birthday wish to you ,
I hoped that only your sleep
Could be relieved of the white knuckle tensions of restlessness

So that you may sleep, and know the peace that I felt,
When I slept next to you.



Happy Birthday,
I miss you.
Happy Birthday,
I’m sorry.
Happy Birthday,
This is selfish,
But Happy Birthday,
So were you.

.i like the night... it's the one time in the count of 24 hours, that i am free from owning a shadow.

a shadow it like an itch,
a spot of eczema -
     itchy ******* thing...
mind you,
i've become a person
equivalent of an anti-narcissus:
i felt in love with my shadow,
an image reflected
in a mirror,
has no potency,
    no, potential...

- danzig's 1000 devil's reign -

you could have played
the identity politics card,
you could have...
hmm...

          but then the identity politicians
played the grammatical
****-poor politics game...
sorry... how can i play
identity politics,
if i am a pedigree Pole?
   you want me to fake my
land of birth, and the language i was born
into, and speak it?
you want me to... what?!
unlearn it?!
      Jews unlearn Hebrew,
and speak Yiddish...
       to i have to be the one
who was baptized
to reteach then the Sefirot tree?
mind you... i also want to learn it...

feral ferocity for learning...
a Faustian complex...
   those three years at Edinburgh
university taught me one thing,
and one thing alone...
apart from the bogus
   organic chemistry
schematics of electron migrations...

so...
     ⠽⠁⠓
   oh it's there, in the Sefirot...
      chokhmah
   (wisdom)...

   there's even  (  el  )
                   ⠑⠇
chesed, i.e. love...

              next time i'll be writing
Hebrew, i'll be writing in Braille...
Braille is the new Hebrew for me...

and have you noticed?
given this pitiable Latin alphabet?
vowels, consonants,
consonants being the syllable
architects...
  but only one letter compounded
to a noun...
namely?
        'double u': W...

  and the greeks? omega,
omicron, alpha, beta, gamma...
      no wonder Greek pursues
its prevalence in the sciences...
no actual name given to a letter
in Latin...
no covert meaning...

way too ******* apparent, and weight gain
incubating...

but where is the meaning
of ⠺⠑⠓?!
if there is a ⠽⠁⠓ in the Sefirot,
and there's the over-simplified
   ⠑⠇?
   where the **** is ⠺⠑⠓?
    so the second syllable count
means nothing to ⠓⠁_ ⠎⠓⠑⠍?

greek actually have names
for some of their letters?
what do the Romans have?
castrato choir practice
of a sing-along?!

          so... i'll ask again...
truthfully?
  i'd love to be an interrogator...
i'd ask the questions,
then ask for the torture...
and then do the same torture
to the person being interrogated...
and then tell the interrogated person:
you don't receive third-party
privileges!            
      
i hate the fact that girls cut themselves...
not that i'm haemophobic...
girls leave such a mess...
i'm pretty sure heating up a pair of
scissors, and burning your flesh
can lead to a more, "productive"
excavation of the masochistic reasons
with a tangible genesis...

          cutting is such a barbaric
practice...
     burning?
       mm... you get a chance to sniff
out a perfume of burned flesh...
which is added brownie points...
            
           what a blind man's circle...
having found the yah...
but having to persist in looking
for the weh;
doesn't help that i don't speak
the nomadic tongue,
that hebrew is...

            it's almost like they
want to forget it...
     speaking it only among
orthodoxy,
   and religious practices -
but never in public...
   i'd loath to abandon my mother
tongue...
             for a whim of
multiculturalism,
having learned that...
someone in England, at some private
school, is embarking on
learning Russian or Mandarin...

to the assimilation police i simply add:
you want my mother tongue?
and don't respect my learning
of your tongue?
   come by, with a knife...
AND CUT IT OFF!
                
oh the joys, of originating in a non-colonial
peoples... living in.
a post-colonial people's hellhole.

i guess i thought that i could learn how to drink away this lump in my throat

movies always taught me that when i turned 18, i would start shedding my skin and breaking down my walls but i didn't have any walls to tear down.
so i tried my hardest at age 18 to build them up, with the only things i had - boxes of matches
left over from burning down so many bridges

all because of some pieces of twisted metal,
i had to reteach myself how to drive.
and now i'm always 5 under the speed limit
i stop at every stop sign
no matter how angry i get

no one ever told me whether or not boxes of matches float
or why my neighborhood always looked so dark
and made me curl up like a dead spider

so now i stick my head in the freezer,
so i can get used to the feeling of my thoughts being so cold

now i kiss people just so we don't have to talk.

today i woke up not knowing where i
was or how to get back home,
(or if i would ever feel at home again)
because although i awake in the same
bed every day, this room is unceasingly cold
and i find myself more and more lost in these
sheets that i don't know as my own  anymore.

i had lain there for forever trying to remember
the last time i had felt comforted by sleep-
when the only thing i could find under my pillows
were nightmares about empty skies and
words that got lost in translation, i had to stop
in my tracks and reteach my self how to breathe.

i'm starting to get this awful feeling
that i'm not always going to fall asleep alone
but i'll still wake up terribly lonely.

A single soul among many...
Struggling against the pushing desires of the engulfing mob.
Searching for a chance to break free,
To induce the life that he needs.

A single soul among many...
Enters the throng with known purposes,
and becomes one with it.
The water flows over his soul and he barely lives.
The drowning water of the other side's essence
barely leaves room for breath.

He discovers the core of his soul,
The single pulsating, vibrant core
and suckles energy from it,
like a newborn baby feeding from his mother's breast.

He feeds and feeds
focusing his entire being on that core,
until he is full yet once again,
breaking free from the shackles that hold him into this existence.

He flies on the knowledge of his empowerment,
relishing the other dimensional view.

Until a well placed negative thought
ambushes him from behind,
and the clanging of shackles closing over his soul yanks him back to the old world.

He has to reteach himself the old ways.
An endless cycle, each time
he flies higher and longer,
each time harder then the last.

I destroy my imperfections with methodical, practiced precision.
In the mirror.
Face to face with the witching hour.
I swallow them whole like oysters in the moonlight,
ripe and swollen.

I strike when I am the least opaque.
Which is, of course, when no one else is looking.
My belly swells to fullness with my mollusk sorrows
and all the ways I hide them.
I admire its roundness, and caress its crescent shape.

I am alone on this plane, with my hands,
Where every night I digest and birth myself
in endless cycle.
Until morning.
Daily, I reteach myself my own history in pictures
And try to remember how to love.

a body speaks a foreign language,
never taught, seldom misread,
till you grow up, up and away,
go to places of higher learning,
Hope to increase the dollars earning,
they reteach you to read, a person,
Like a book, ****** expression,
a sign of misdirection?,
hat and sunglasses, ******* jewellery,
orchestrated instrumental,
body parts, don't like the stuff,
dreams are made of, then bluff,
You can't choose the cards dealt,
all to get a big name and wealth,
with somebody else's dime,
credentials?,
oversized ego in stretch fabrics,
tailored to fit in while, I
Attended the U of P,
first in my class,
to go I all in,
on a hope and a prayer,
that have nothing to do
with the chips that slip,
not roll, through not across,
these worn out knuckles,
audience chuckles as they
would love to sit where I am at,
one bluff away from heaven, and
one raise away from hell.

I’m afraid to say it I’m afraid to pray it I’m afraid to breathe it into existence what if that’s what this is what if that’s what we’re doing we’re just learning how to pray from the time we were little babes till the time we’ve grown up all the way teaching ourself the same things teaching our friends and familys our upbringing reteach reteach redo redo it’s all a circle in my mind boo

I’m weeping,
I forgot how to love, I need you to reteach me.
Been abused so long my heart’s no longer speaking.

Want to tell you all of the secrets it’s keeping.
You’re being so patient, I know this isn’t easy.

A prisoner of my own past, I just wonder can you free me?
Tried to hide it so long, I’m so glad that you see me.

Love has been a travesty for years.
Everything I knew just disappeared.
I want to spend more time with you.
I want to love just like you do.

Apathy hit me so severe.
I want love to be something I revere.
Love came back on time with you.
So let me take my time with you.

I like how you play with alaysha
And help your brother with his homework
That you are patient with me
And that you see the beauty in your mother
That you'll make breafast and reteach me algebra
That you'll wait all week to play a silly game

I love how you let the world roll off your shoulders
And how you tend to forget old inconveniences

I roll my eyes but I'm glad you like
Dragonball and silk jackets and your friends' hiphop
That you point out food process machinery wherever we go
And know the model of every car on the street

I'm relieved you'll laugh at a bad pun
Let me ride shotgun, send a pic of a pug with a manbun

Dear Shueyfufu--
Keep wearing your earrings,
Be nerdy, be hood
Be Mexican and Tech all at once
Live in the Mission and hold back when the documentaries ask you to be angry about gentrification
Buy expensive mango whipped cream cakes from Dianda's
Ride a bike seat too high in Golden Gate Park
Make the sun and grass in Dolores our Sunday chapel
Think about right and wrong and God and Black Mirror society

Have mixed feelings about knock-off street clothes
Get upset that sports wear and vinyl are popular again
That underground artists aren't so underground
That it's "milennial" to hate the gap between the rich and the poor
And that battery technology is a trending dream career

Superglue your glasses together repeatedly
Squeal when my hands and feet or the toilet seat are too cold
Smile with your squinty asian eyes that aren't asian

Watch Bob's Burgers with me
And be upset everytime you realize I watched it without you
Sing "Yesterday" in the car and Vampire Weekend
Play old jazz songs and Chance and Selena
Show me music videos from Calle 13 and Danny Brown
Watch cooking shows and Vice News and Travel Vlogs
Ask Alexa if she loves you and ask her to play December 1963 in the kitchen
Tell me she's listening to everything and advertising to us based on our conversations
Give me motivation to read 1984
Laugh at slapstick gifs and blankly stare at dry British humor

Let's exclaim "Orale, ****" and complain like Brandon, "Ugh no one understands me"
Let's take Ah to the Kawaii store so she can waste money on Squishies
Let's make Brandon try more asian food and show him anime he hasn't seen
Let's dance with your mom at parties and take pictures of her all dressed up
Let's play Clue and Forbidden Island and never play monopoly or the game of life ever again
Let's buy Mario Sunshine and Rock Band and a fancy bidet and eat at michelin star restaurants
Let's save a bunch of money and all go to Hawaii

Once upon a younger year before the pain before the fear
I had dreams and aspirations
Schemes to heighten my elation
I gave up somewhere along the line
No more joy or peace to find
And yet life kept pushing forward
While my mind was continually tortured
Until it snapped completely
No more sanity
Everything I know gets called into question
My mind - far too open to abusive suggestion
Now slowly rebuilding what has crumbled
Ignoring snide comments mumbled
While I try to heal
While I reteach myself to feel
While I try to help myself deal
And collect all the good moments I can steal
I must be patient with myself
I must take my life off the shelf
I must do more than just survive
If I'm ever going to feel alive