they exist
in perfect stillness,
surrounded by
flowing water and
comforting earth--

the tree extends
it's spider legs
serendipitously over
casual rocks and crevices
to reach the Mother's stream
of which life truly flows--

they come to heal
heavy hearts
beneath the warmth
of winter's light rays--

blessed anew,
they carry on--

1.
Silence
She opens her brown eyes wide
But shuts them tight quickly
Time passes
She tries again
This time squinting
She looks at the clock
So carefully arrange on the bedside table
7.03am

2.
Silence
The world is gently stirring
Soon people would be making their way to work
Like ants filing out of their nest to forage
Five minutes more pass
"I'll get up now" she thinks

3.
Silence
Broken by sudden noise
The air around crashes violently
Heat and noise invades her sanctuary
Explosion, the whole room rocks and shakes
The silence and dust

4.
Catherine Maddis was her name
It stated that upon her door beside the bell
Which lay across the floor in the hallway
Shouts, screams and pleas pierce the haunting silence
From beyond the hallway
Footsteps echo

5.
The dust settles
Smoke seeps into the room
All is still, the pleas fade
Slight movement, a spark of life
Her arm falls, a trickle of blood trails to her wrist
She looks so peaceful

6.
So quiet
Broken by the increasing sound of footsteps
Far, far, nearing, nearing, faster, faster
Faint echoes and scrambled words
Finally a peaceful silence remains
Fade away

sometimes I think I am loveless and cold, and that's why I hate the heat and get sick all the time
but she reminded me of all the love I do have
love that fills the room and echoes like a choir's song on a Sunday
love that burns through me like a match in a grassy field
I have love for the trees and for the river and for the smooth rocks and even for the jagged ones that cut my knees
there is love every time she forgets to put on sunscreen and there is love when I take care of her so she can be high on acid
I give love to my father and mother, who watched me destroy myself for years and held my hand as I walked out of the darkness
but I think most important of all
is that I have love for myself
for my scars and my freckles and my stretch marks and my illness and my flat feet and my small hands and my messy hair and my sweaty palms and for everything that makes me who I am
I have love
-

We pull, into the
Grand Canyon,
at sunset.
We toss and fling
giant rocks, boulder-
esque chunks of
Earth, off of
the side.
Someone screams,
they are upset, but
no regrets,

Am I evil?
   (All poems containing a question)
Am I pensive?
   (All poems containing an affirmation)

Blazing across Arizona,
dead dogs grovel,
strays, orphans searching,
seeking, looking for a home,
******* and copulating,
in, vacant gas station
lots. Not a bone,
to be thrown.

Where are our owners?
   (All poems containing a question)
This is enthralling.
   (All poems containing an affirmation)

Fear and faith,
carry us riveting,
through rivulets of clouds,
we sore, flying above,
searching for peace,
doves.

The woods would be very silent indeed,
if no birds sing except those who sing,
best.  

But,
she wants revenge,
with
a thirst for pain, I cannot
contend.
And
as the rain pours down,
sorrow falling from the
clouds.
She wants revenge.
And,
I simply cannot even
contend.

Laying lines out on
the metallic surface, of
With the Lights Out,
white powder flaked
along Cobain's black
and white face.
The drugs which killed
him, no longer causing
him any more pain,
merely giving this writer
some idolized thrill and gain.
And then high, reading
about one more creature,
dizzy with love.

*God gave us memories so that we may have roses in December

I found rats in my hair, ***** of yarn, thickly matted
from daytime naps and rough nights of sleep.
run your fingers through this muddy cane-field,
drenched in the swampy summer rains.

My moon-kissed skin, where each freckle is a drop of coffee
the sun spilt on me while reading the morning paper.
it stretches over my broken porcelain collarbones;
edges jagged and protruding like barbed wire.

Teeth I wore down, chewing rocks, eating sand,
and yellowed with acid and smoke.
and my lips are chapped, small, puckered into a constant
apathetic frown. Too dry to smile, that's my excuse anyway.

Irises like drops of paint dripping into thick milk,
pupils stirring them, mixing them into a foul blend of night colours.
and wrists like a battlefield, fingernails like shattered glass,
razor sharp, bleeding bad habits.

Thighs like hot chocolate, melting marshmallows dripping
down each one - drinking me down by the firelight.
and **** like tennis *****, cut in half and slipped under the skin,
two little speed bumps on my body's ribcage highway.

a body like a corpse,
a heart like a zombie,
and a soul like liquid titanium.
and it's all just whispers from the mirror,
whispers I put blind faith in.

She was a mystery.
She gave me her heart to understand the type of music she listened to.
Her playlist was filled with trap beats before it became fashionable.
The rattling of empty trunks.
The rattling of sticker covered tags.
This is how I saw myself before she gave me a pair of headphones. I asked her for more.
Not liking the way track six ended.
Track 7 and 8 captivated my heart.
Keeping it all to myself.
She fooled me.
Her playlist composed of the same beat over and over.
9 tracks with something added.
Another taken away.
Overtime it would become all that I listened to.
Her influence over two rocks shaken in a can.
My heart.
Beginning to nod my head and cut the volume to the max.
I played it at work. I listened to it in the car.
A natural disaster to those that I passed.
The rattling of my trunk almost non-existent.
A more crisp sound coming from the speakers.
It was Summer.
Before I heard her playlist in the hands of someone else.
She placed her heart inside of the music knowing I'd stumble across it first.
Unsure if I'd ever find her love.
To participate in the aggression of her love.
The originality of all that she was.
I listened in silence with the headphones she gave.
To be surrounded by everything I love all at once

You're the king of this place
But your legacies been set on fire,
All the peasants are screaming revolt
As they throw rocks at your glass castle.

You need the right armor-
A shielded protection
From toxic arrows and blood spilling sparrows.
Just hold strong for the white horse to ride
He's on his way to save you...

Meanwhile,
the Dragon breathes fire
Into the realm where all the fairies live
trying desperately to scorch their desire to create all things wonderful.
They won't let him win Dear King-
They'll fight with a vengeance of light and laughter

The kingdom is falling apart,
Be sure to hold tight to your crown-
Or better yet,
Your heart,
Cause Sir King...
It's all you really own
In this unruly kingdom of
"Allalone"

he carries the forest
in the rolled up cuffs
of his black slacks

the finely creased lines
right down the middle of each leg
have now turned to wrinkles

the rocks and the twigs
deep puddles of rain
soak and scratch his ankles

what once were proud and powerful
wings now drag behind him
burned black from his shame of falling

there are holes in his shoes
but he harbors the promise of the sun
shining again between his bare toes

It makes me go "Jesus Christ. Look at the view"
Middle of October, birthday,
Driving past Bantry bay
Treading boots on a carpet of brown
Leaves, the forest walk in Glengariff

I walk and wonder
Why the ivy leaves sprout from the mud  
Scattering green shapes on the ground
Spread across the floor like mushrooms

I see the thin branches hold a preschool painting
A trillion burning instances of colour
And nothing is human here, but you
I am only the moss that clings to the trees

Like a pointilist masterpiece
The apple-green and autumn yellow spots
Gather in canopies above the rocks
While the white streaks and dots
Dance wildly in the black stream

And so
The orangeness, as I turn, flies diagonally,
Looking down across the dampened stones
The colour of fire paints the falling petals
That flip like red feathers

As the stream flows clear as molten glass
And the foam, so dove white on the surface
Bubbles against the edge of it
Splashing boulders,
Rinsing toes

My ancestors followed the stars
And I can't even follow my own heart

I am a refugee from the City upon a Hill.

My homeland once a resounding light to the nations; has become a convulsing black hole, threatening to devour any semblance of civility.

My City, once a radiant promontory of enlightenment, its illumination of liberty’s searing torch revered, it’s practical striving for democratic wisdom shaping the long arc of the moral universe emulated by people of good will across the globe; now lies in state as a mordant corpse, serenaded by a funereal chorus of laughing griffins, a dead patriarch surrounded by the ruins of a once opulent now sacked city, a bygone home to the scattered disassemblage of a once noble people.

I recoil from the rancor of extreme partisanship, the gerrymandered apportionment of citizenship rights, the buoyant vindictiveness celebrated by small minded ignorance.

The blind allegiance to jingoistic nationalism, the adulation of Blueline authoritarianism, the fealty to imperial militarism and the dangerous trajectory of it’s awful consequence yet to come, enthralls me with dread.

Compelled patriotism enforced by threats of faux patriots, amoral ammosexuals, their small hands stroking quick triggers of long guns, genuflecting in mastabutory glee to the preeminence of 2nd Amendment atrocities, angling crosshairs of resentments to firmly fix a promise of ghoulish body counts, a rationalized apocalypse a captive people must suffer to underwrite profiteering gunrunners who blindly defile the constitutional tenets of life, liberty and happiness, the blood splattered keystones of our true exceptionalism.

Xenophobia and racialism, are stoked and celebrated by the City’s chief executive, his impish smile mouths Blood and Soil sloganeering, he solemnly salutes the Confederate flag while cheering torchlight processions of enraged White Nationalists marching to the drum of the Grand Republic’s midnight dirge along the once hallowed trail of Jeffersonian Democracy and a sacred place of secular enlightenment and higher learning. His gleeful decrees tweet the destruction of families and his police agents mouth holy scriptures to justify the imprisonment of children.  These vandals rhapsodically paint images of phantasmagoric nightmares trampling and mocking democratic ideals, resurrecting long settled conflicts, terrible tests a once great City rose to extinguish, now swelling numbers of craven citizens ardently embrace Klansmen, insurrectionists and ****’s as righteous brethren.

The madness of chauvinism and racial supremacy has fully metastasized within the body politic, polluting the mind, infecting the bloodline with a virulent strain of a white blood cell disease coursing through the veins of republican citizenship.

A City stolen from the Native inhabitants, ethnically cleansed and its former inhabitants remanded to the prisons of reservations, a City constructed on the backs of chattel slaves, erected on the graves of exploited wage laborers, provisioned by the ruthless denigration of the earth’s bounty, law and order mandated by criminalizing the marginalized, repressing the civil liberties of outliers and subjecting women to a perpetual status as the second *** underclass; has failed to repent and steadfastly refuses to make reparations for its sinful past has made the City uninhabitable.

The embrace of tolerance and diversity is the balm, the curate that can salve the oozing sores crippling the City. Nativist prejudice is a long protracted path that City citizen’s find impossible to exit. The malevolence that consumes the mind and moves the soul of a desperately spiteful people, who take delight and find it necessary to dehumanize and imprison alien races and creeds to maintain vapid notions of superiority, profane the ideals of a republican calling. They ruefully ignore the beacon of light warning of the dangerous shoals that lay ahead. The ideals of the great democratic experiment on course to be dashed on the jagged rocks of ignorance, fear, and anger. The doomed City has set a course that endangers its embargoed citizens. Travelling in steerage, a captive body, believing they are on a course for the rebirth of the City’s greatness are emboldened and chained by the delusions of their self destructive steadfast resentments.

My home City has become unknown to me.  I have become a stranger in this strange land. What was once beloved has become insufferable. What was once treasured has become burdensome. The familiar has become fully alien. A terrible avenging apparition haunts and mocks people of good will. My heart is disheveled. My spirit bruised. My body literally aches from the wounds exacted from the deconstruction of my beloved metropolis.

I stand stranded at the border of incivility. Bewildered I peer through a protective wall of concertina wire, eyeing the imprisoned haughty souls of fully enfranchised citizens, bellowing self righteous psalms, singing interminable lamentations of terminal ignorance.

Condemned by their belief in the salvation of violence and recrimination, secure in their faith that their moat of self righteousness shelters them from the gulags of perdition they eagerly proclaim for others, feeling recused from the bane of sinfulness by meager tithes, tumidity and scriptural specificity and the sweet delusional conviction they are the chosen tribe of God’s favor; their aspirations viscerally dashed in blizzards of metaphysical illusion strewn like meaningless confetti onto a passing parade of barbarians who have taken the City as its grandest prize.

Sadly I must withdraw from my beloved City. I retreat to a refuge where the barbarians dare not enter. Their ignorance and stasis weds them to a place far from my sanctuary of choice. May my sanctuary restoreth my soul!

I find refuge in the temples of jazz. I sing arias of lucent improvisation. The freedom of unbridled expression reinvigorates the mind, alighting the emanation of our better angels. The music calibrates my soul with the syncopated beat of an irrepressible life force, the humanity of my welling heart swells on the sonorous oxygen of a lyrical free spirit.

I take refuge in our vanishing mountain wilderness. The natural world offers a solace of solitude, a unrequited impression of scale and a transcendent communion immune from the trampling cacophony of gleeful vandals running rampant through the streets of the City. In winter the summits are capped in crowns of viginal snow, spring awakens a dormant flora, autumn leaves shout the chorus of a seasons glory and summer flowers bloom in multitudes of brilliant colors marking a startling contrast to the fifty shades of gray tattooed onto the City’s restive souls by the purveyors of power.

I find respite on the friendly banks of rivers and breeze swept ocean shores. The perfume wafting along a rivers streaming eddies or a briney snort gulped from the foam of a cresting wave invigorates the lungs, strengthens the heart and clears the mind. The flow of living water heals lifes wounded spirit. It quenches a thirst for justice and nourishes the hope of freedom for all incarcerated souls. The ceaseless roll of the ocean waves prove the enduring power and inevitability of liberty.

I find a good refuge in books. Here I discover a fleeting glimpse of our forgotten love of knowledge and pursuit of truth and rational thought. Enlightenment is the plot of every storyline.

I take refuge in art. I escape into the multiple dimensions of aesthetic beauty trouncing the twittering banality of fad, pornographic affectations and consumer fethishism. Glimpsing beauty while beauty is there to behold and the diligent practice of its creation is an answer to a higher calling.

I take refuge in my dog. Unconditional love and trusted friendship are values at peril in a transactional world; virtues nobily demonstrated and freely given by our canine and feline friends.

I take refuge in late night comedy. Working the midnight shift, whistling past the graveyard with a hearty laugh helps to while away the desperate hours. The rancid fruits of our labor leave a bitter taste in our mouths, humor is the bread of life that clears the palate and makes the terrible sufferable.

My lasting sanctuary is the stronghold of faith, forbearance and tolerance. I trust the long arc of justice will bend toward the righteous and offer a pathway of redemption for all desecrated souls.

I take refuge in the Blues. Let my lamentations turn to songs of joy and deliverance.

I take refuge in prayer. May my places of exile restore and heal my denigration. May God deliver us to a good destination. May our generational wanderings in the desert of desolation end in the discovery of a good place of habitation.

In the solitude of prayer may I experience catharsis, may my petitions find an open ear, may I achieve clarification, may my pious supplication be genuine , my conviction firm, a direction found, a decision made, a call to action clear.  May I become a healer of the breach.

May Your grace be sufficient for me.

I declare my exile over. I will return to my City. I will attempt to rekindle the extinguished flame of liberty to dispel the darkness enveloping my City.

Selah.

Mark Almond: The City

Puyallup
6/30/18
jbm

The pull I feel from your body to mine
Your crooked smile sending chills down my spine
The sparkle, it’s rare, but it’s there I see
In your eye, catching light, when you look at me
The world you seek may not be hard to find
Forget your thoughts and just open your mind
The possibilities that will unfold
Begin your life, you are free of the mold
You know where to find me, down by the sea
The sparkle is something I’d like to see.
We’ll sit on the rocks, waves crashing beneath
No words spoken, we will sit and just breathe.
Take in all the sounds and scents of the waves
We are free from worry, no longer slaves
Free to love, to relax, to seize the day.
Open your heart to the words that I say.

synapses firing
sleep, so smooth, is lost

carpet stained, walls talk
voices cleave, claw, claim

a love has been found

infer: ephemeral, impermanent
believe: indelible, predestined

bruised knuckles knock, knock, knock
and one rock, rock, rocks
back and forth

"the moon," he calls her
the moon; he claims her

a world lies between

The sea is deep but he can swim.

A cry for help in a helpless city
Beneath the rocks is the vibe of many
Can’t expect to see things change
Have to accept that I am strange
Continuing on with my own life tasks
Forgetting that all I want to be known
The idea’s that can’t be seen without masks
Hiding the  that we are together alone
Together alone; is what we are
Together alone; it’s what we are
Keep losing and you’ll doubt
Keep lacking and you’ll feel
That your knowledge is only of the known
Seeking for the unkown
In all of us can’t we bring
The control of feelings
It’s when I’m like this
To comprehend my line
So far gone from the strips of teaching
No rules
A particle in the ocean
Others touching
Others leaving
Others sticking aside
To see in their own way
On How we collide
No proof
No fact
But we think
That along we can ride
It’s when I’m like this
No words can express
To pin point success
Shaking from not being able to explain
I am alone
I am crazy
My art ***** pleasingly
I laugh at my desperation
I cry about my satisfaction
Vice versa
And beyond
Cleaning up my head locked bind
If you can comprehend
Then you can understand in your own way
Hopefully you do.
Out connection is my quest
******-delic
Such a silly name
But I can’t
Recall another game
I don’t even  
I love and I hate
Disconnected fate
U know who you are
But not what your apart of
From always knowing me
This place I cannot see
I can’t ever wright enough.
My writings will loop again.
Such shame.
But every coin has a different perspective
I am ******-delic

Copper bees on earings
or wresting on flowers
smoking a cigarette, disheveled
outside the bar after hours
Maybe I've been selfish
and rushing like a manic
into many different spaces
all draped with potential
Just trying to find a light in
a very dark tumble
And the more I've become
aware of my cyclic mechanics
was where I felt hopeful
What is your dream like?
The less I fear I'll ever be content
He's like a quite lake a
mountain of sturdy grace
His buttons all in place
Sometimes I feel shapeless and
drifting
But he's an anchor in drizzled
mornings
I'm trying to find the gap
where God and I coalesce
It's hard to express
It's a titillating quiver
To make peace with the remnants
of a stranger
In my head
the voice still there
Memories of bee stings
from throwing rocks
at hives.

1

in sea-guarded silence
the sun climbs
behind the eastern hill
showing elaborate head-
dress first of feathered
light purple red orange
gold these colours
absorbed into
the facing sky just
as a sea-sand stretch
might gather waves
inexorably into its
surface self

on the islanded horizon
a northern  light
flashes flashes flashes
the final sequence due
to a night passing
to dawn to day

a seascape with
still-resting birds -
forgetting to breathe
waiting on the sun’s
rise

2

rising with the sun
the front rooms
are flooded with
golden prospect;
a fine day
and whilst everything
remains fine here
the weather still
rules the spirit

beyond the window
grass shivers
beyond the grass
rocks stretch out
to a cold sea
and on the horizon
a cloudless sky

on the page
the breath-pause hovers
to catch thoughts
on the flood
and seizing
the moment mark
and separate
to form sense
of unbidden  words

from what deep place
do these lines surface
without deliberation due?

as if poised
on a lip above
the teeming life-pool -
to take the plunge with
the air fresh on naked limbs
- there is a waiting
for the icy touch
of  a water-world of words
brought upward
in diurnal migration
only to sink in slow
elliptical turns beyond
imagination’s reach

3

pale the sky:
walking again
the sand-strewn track
banked with grasses
small reminders of  flowers
proud stalks of oats
flown from a nearby field
they nod and curve
in the evening air

in more than wonder
a day fulfilled by
coming again
to this slight path
above the home beach
its lapping tide is
coloured by a coming night
edged now on the dunes’ rim
where beyond a greater sea
pounds an unseen shore
with longer strokes of waves
falling -  then pulling back

as in counterpoint
the nearer sea exhales
and in that space
the farther fills with lower tones
almost ominous inevitably
strong in spread
and crush and cluster
the close-pitched sounds
falling onto the white sand
hard from a day’s sun
and steady wind


4

dawn just
in the foreground
the bluster and shake
of the matt-green reeds
but widening the view
the eye rests on
two reflections of sky
brush-stroked
water-washed
pinky hues
faintly yellows
absorbing into clouds

aloft
and
motionless

standing far above
the turbulent flow
of the ground’s wind
cloud-cover for the grandeur
of these dream-shaped hills
rising out of the land
to meet the sky
bringing heaven-ward
the earth beneath

Way up on the mountain
stands a tree so tall and bare
leaves once growing
a life without a care.

And way down in the valley
lies a stream so long and still
rocks a million
rolling down the hill.

Go ahead, take a gaze
read the horizon like a book.
Go ahead, be amazed
at this panoramic scenic over look.

Look up at our sky today
the clouds are morphing in their form
a darkness creeping
here comes the storm.

You can feel the electricity
in the air
a cool front wind
whistling in your hair.

You can hear the heard from here
running miles towards their den
flocking together
looking out for the kin.

Go ahead, lay down
feel the rain kiss your skin.
Go ahead feel the ground
and let the vibration in.

“delete history”
I think it’s pretty gay for a bunch of sweaty queers
To be sharing spit w/ each other
In a ******* closet
I think my ***** smells like macaroni
I used to ******* to animals beign tortured
I used to tell my mom
Im not pretty
Im not pretty
throw rocks at your garage
"BAAAMMM"
It’s hard to come up with 4 things at once,
I want to play violin in a bathtub at 4 AM
Because 4am’s cool
And it’s not really night or morning
It’s just stinky
Im just a kid with their stinky feet on a splintered stool
Watching suite life of zack and cody
In a pair of boxers they/i haven’t changed for like 3 days
I have a bic pen bumper sticker tattoo on my ***
You made me **** your **** and feed your bunny
And you made me hate white boys
I generalize
I forget to feed my tortoise sometimes
I don’t forget to feed myself
Im not cool and skinny and white
Im fat and
I never forget to feed myself
I eat the stuff on my body
Im my own **** tree I beare my own fruits I think you
Should get used to how GROSS I am
I got heartburn
In all the wrong places
I got an ache below the waist
and a cold sore on my heart

The air thrums with the song of cicadas
And midnight wind playing through the trees.
Far above the corporeal, I stand
Peering over cliffs into the jet black seas.
Chaotic waters crash against the rocks
And rage and burn to sweep away the earth.
Tempted by the waves to jump, to fly,
I search the skies for some last sign of worth.
But when at last I reach the very edge-
A breath from tumbling off the precipice-
Soft sunlight spills over the horizon
To chase away the dark of the abyss.

I would have posited longings ago
this short-shrift to-do over such a curt list undone
was inconceivable
outside
the pages of deceptively practiced perceptions
published in a pop-up book smirk,
or beyond
the canary-yellow frames of a cartoonish
distortion relishing its mired but spongy giggles

A
Been-here-all-along,
you’ve-never-bothered-to-look­
lake sleeps implacably
at the bottom of an irascible ocean

Be
Whatever it may,
you can’t deny the wantonly
watted life teeming pretty as it pleases,
untroubled by a hollow-core belief
or the extremest demands of our foul temper

See
How I could have,
if I’d only swallowed
those bubbled-up blurts
ring-wronging the tip of my wriggling tongue,
never been audibly
landed by one alluringly barbed certainty

There are supine bodies—
stagnant, quicksilver pure—
no material ship navigates
and no intentional intruder can swim
without
emerging atypically
unsettled by the caustic exposure

Tread lithely
when you go;
this shoreline bites.
Its clustered rocks will snap shut around you
after digging in below you with a protruding toe,
and its carmine stalks will sting you
as they writhe past you
to mime a part-less goodbye

Here be where
the monstrous cold seeps
and a hellish hot vents
in compliance with this centuries-old complaint:
too-short was the time we wept
for those wiggly wonders
we could have kept
if we’d only octopus-arm embraced
the inevitability of their bandy-legged escape

We are lost love ~
Beneath years of expectation and doubt ~
Struggling against the rubble with the hope to stand strong again  ~
Days drift into night and I am weary from collecting moments without you ~
Hold tight onto my hand ~
We will lift these rocks and allow the sun to penetrate the darkness ~
We will see each other's eyes for the first time again ~
We will let go of old habits ~
And start our path anew ~
We are lost love ~
But together we'll find our way ~

Copyright © Tia Jane Fajardo

What have I done?

I ****** up bad. I ****** up so bad.

I did something unbelievable. I'm not sure if I was supposed to do it.

And I don't know why it happened. I can't believe it happened. I just know it's bad.

So so bad.

See,

I think I might be in love.












Like I said, bad.

_________

I'm not sure when it started.

Maybe it's been like this since that day we first intertwined hands, and you made me into something I had never been. You made me yours.

Maybe it was just at this moment.

Maybe it's been every single day from the first time I laid eyes on you, you beautiful, beautiful person.

_________

I'm terrified.

So scared.

Scared because I might be too young.

Scared because others might not approve.

Scared because you might not feel the same way.

We only like each other. Not love. It hasn't ever been love. No one imagined love. Not until now.

Not until me.

_________

I've never been like this before.

These emotions flow.

They flow the way a storm rocks the entire ocean, the way waves crash against a boat and smash until there’s nothing but driftwood, the way a tsunami rips apart a city and washes it clean leaving the people frightened and forced to start anew.

They do not flow.

They come strong, sudden, beating against my chest, pushing up my throat, clawing their way onto the tip of my tongue, a second away from rolling off into the world before my teeth clamp down, pressing them back down into the dark crevices of my heart.

_________

My heart.

Not yet broken. Not yet whole.

In between. Struggling. Searching for the part that perfects its ever-pumping machine, but when it finds it, it wants to shut down, because how can you tell someone they are the thing necessary for a heart to truly live and thrive, for life to bloom and color, for dreams to waterfall into reality, and expect them to say it back?

That part is essential. But maybe not ready. Not ready to be a part of a bigger ensemble. So the heart survives anyway.

And it despairs.

_________

First love.

This is something that cannot be erased. Ignored. Forgotten.

Like the stars.

They paint a picture, a canvas the size of the universe, trying to encapsulate a feeling larger than life itself and everything that exists into two words.

First love.

It's something you do not want to let go of.

Like a blanket.

A childhood teddy, a token of youth and beginnings that you carry with you in every place you visit, it is like a limb, the thought of separation is unfathomable but someday, it is gone, it will leave, because it is no longer the thing you need most.

But like stars and blankets, when elsewhere, it is missed.

_________

Fear.

Fear and love. Never far apart.

Fear of gaining love.

Fear of having love.

Fear of losing love.

Fear of love.

Love is everything. It is what motivates. Every. Single. Person. And every action. The little ones and the big ones. Every act of every level of importance is fueled by love. Love is the founder of war. Love is the mother and father of death. Love is the force of destruction.

Love is ruthlessly sought after by all.

That is why it is feared.

That is why it is loved.

_________

But for there to be destruction, there must first be creation.

A gentle bud, pushed through soft earth.

A spark between two rocks, sudden, shocking, and gone.

The first breath of a tiny being, still pink with newness, living only on warmth and wonder.

We **** for love. But we live for it too.

And that is so much harder, but so much more worth it.

Love is worth every price you could pay. And yet it can never be bought.

It is simply created.

Often accidentally.

Not always conveniently.

But always important. A new stitch in this fabric that has been unfolding since the first second of time.

Whether a love is screamed into the tense air between two charging armies, or is never more than a whisper in the back of a mind, it is important.

_________

My love.

In one word: painful.

I cannot cope with this. I was not prepared to manage this sentiment. It is exhausting and inconvenient. I do not know how to handle this emotion.

I do not think anyone is supposed to know how to deal with love.

We must be ****** into it. Use our instinct. Learn on the job.

There is no guide or manual. No one can teach you. They can explain what love is and they can give love to you, but they cannot tell you what it is to give love away.

__________

My lover.

My roots. My stem. My core.

They are the inventor of light.

My dark sky was only dotted with little stars before they came. They surprised the world, my world, as they burst into brilliance, into glory. A sun. A sun to illuminate and warm a small planet. Special, and just a bit more important than the other stars. Because this one is radiant. Scintillating.

And chill.

They are smooth and cool. A calm. The centre of the hurricane. Untouchable by the rage and chaos that bubbles beneath my skin. Instead they cleanse it from my body while attaching an anchor to my heart. When the storm arrives once again and the ocean chews and swallows me like a monster made of liquid fear, I survive, because even though the anchor drowns me it also saves me. Saves me from floating off into an endless void of heart shards and loneliness.

They are the grass, still wet from the rain, between my toes.

The sand that scorches my soles, forcing light, quick steps.

Snow numbing my nerves as I run shrieking back to the friends who dared me into this freezing adventure.

But most importantly, love is a warm rush, like the sun is in my stomach, and a furnace is in my chest, and there is nothing I can do to tamper it. It will always be etched into my bones, long after they have washed up bleached on the shore. A fond scar on my heart, for this love, and the next one, and every love I will ever fall into. They mark us, leave something in is, shift our inner mechanisms and cannot be undone. We carry our loves with us forever, and remember them once in a while with a soft smirk, a dull ache, a bitter tear, or a wistful smile.

I will keep my love for you in me until the stars have all burst, and the void is everything, and existence ceases to exist.

And I can only sit here and hope that you will do the same.

Keep throwing your rocks
And watch me fall
I'm starting to crack
My heart hurts
My minds dying
But keep throwing your rocks
Say more hurtful words
**** me even more
I'm falling apart
I can't take much more
Keep throwing your rocks
I'm a person made of glass
Keep throwing your rocks
I'm ready to leave
Please make me disappear

Denatured barbie dolls bowling
over boys donning construction caps and
destruction maps making a highway
over natural habitats holding the
handle of cellar doors open and shouting
"dissent no more" please
implore me to bore you and
spit shine your mirror toe shoes
I know you once we met on the avenue
sector of humanity devoid of trees and
afraid of honeybees traffic tinged memories
haunting back down the street
hampered under sweaters and smelly socks wondering
how many feet beneath rocks something can escape
half baked holy water holding the cure of all curses and
worsening purple pillars of preconceived pastry dough
growing moldy head to toe finding flow
amidst garbage between sinking archipelagos

How to start a conversation?
That's the question, isn't it?
Don't you dare try to tell me I forgot
What niceties bear the *****  of tightness
I'm here, aren't I?

So how are you? insipid
So where were you? cutthroat
So what can I call you murderer
Since you left?

I heard once
You broke formation, and told the wave of indifference you'd call me...
Where was that, that
Stuttering star sign
Supposed to make you divine for me?

The truth is I'm lonely,
But not worn, like
So many rocks in the ocean,
I think I prefer the company of schools of fish
And dark things from the sea
Than... Well
You know

But how to end a conversation?
You're the best at ending things.
Lonely? What's to be alone?
Better, you said it yourself,
Better than being apart.

For G.S.L.

Lover:*
Write, we must of the moons we spent
Weaving our alien languages together
Deriving meaning from each other
by what it meant for us
to be home in our shell.

Words we've bound each other with
With histories of our forefathers,
How we delved in the intricacies of the mind
Carefully, and as surely as the waves
Caressing the shores from distant seas.
Coupled with the cresting of the wave,
An ocean's promise lies in wait.

To you I am like the soil that does not empty
Its thirst for answers from the rain.

Yet you cannot give me access to your inner paths
So instead, I have knelt down in silence
and cupped your hermit house to my ear.

You have found speech for words you cannot say.
And I am like the shallow portion of the sea
Where you can clearly observe the rocks and stones
That cut, as well as the coral that thrives
Like fiery corals attracting fish.

We are of different tongues,
Yet despite the separateness
Our strangeness connected us to each other.

You have raised old foundations
And pulled the sea to come to me.
There i knelt on uneven sands
Confident that your own voice
Will lead us to the birthing dawn.

Now it is not just the sea that divides us
but the very same wildness, that impetuosity
that gleamed at dawn, Which led me to you.

Where now is the cradle
for the pearl of the night?
How you have drifted away
I cannot know.

Birthed from sand, Foundations crumble.
Your words are carried away with the rising
Of the tides. Numbing the island in me
Leaving a mark visible only in old maps,
Which sunk the moment you left.

On the very same shore
I found you searching
For what you have lost.

- 13 November 2015

When the cards are drawn from a deck
you have no choice in the matter, it is left up to chance.
And if you're so willing interpret them, to rely on your intuition,
tuning into the primordial hum of cosmos, it becomes divination:
A direct pathway of communication with the divine.

---

we all have storms that torment us,
it is the natural order of things.

these winds answer to no one
blowing relentlessly
thrashing waves and high waters
rarely in touch with the earthly ground
i am either cast up or sunken down
highly preoccupied in my books and towers
a self constructed world
of bittersweet sea-vines and flowers

blinded from staring into the sun
intoxicated under pure starlight
emotions considerably magnified
all my good reasoning has come undone

these quantum particles are forcibly contained
mistakenly welded into a carbon composed body
an entire being is restrained,
wanting, wishing, craving
trapped inside a shell so limiting

strapped down by a dual personality

–– there is a reason storms are named after me ––

and so i responded to the fire in your heart
by drowning it in muddy waters, but don’t take this personally
because this is what happens when a great deal is asked of me
i only ask for an attempt to understand

if i let myself evaporate into the sky
bearing messages of apology
how soon would you wait to forgive?

my earth, rocks, and trees,
would you be able to forgive the sea?