and i am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware
'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away
& he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, i touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
i never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering
& my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference

Sunrise quiet
hiking through
the dropping blush of autumn

the morning after election day

inside the trails of forested
trees that were not allowed
a vote

coming upon a canyon
splitting
the un-United States
down the spine

pondering the illusion
of human separation

We reach down and *****
a bridge
sweeping
over the chasm

Next,
we tie a rope swing
to the oak branches above

and unmoor the canoes
from the cedar docks below

Americans stand on
each side,
holding up
similar signs
clear in
truth and oneness

our shared desires
and basic needs

The signs
reading;

Freedom
Safety
Health
Respect
Home
Work
Joy
&
repeating grandly,
over
and over;
**
Love.

Slowly,
as the drops
of dew transform
to puddles

and the sun
lifts to crown
us all in lemon light

we raise up
our shovels
and begin
the work of
filling in the
imaginary
canyon

That once
suffered
divide.

Can you unmoor me from these feeling?
The deep dark anchor-anger
Of powerlessness
To my own self

Of never being able
To escape the darkness completely
And breathe solely in the light

Everyone loves me for my strength, but
Can you love me for my weaknesses?

me.gs

“Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

― Herman Melville, Moby ****


One of the most raw and emotional things i have ever read and or heard be read.

I love Herman Melville may his words forever be available for future readers and writers alike.

What I
Cannot take
To the grave
‘Lest it later
Unearth
What I swept
In the cave
What confessed
Unexpressed
I forget
To address
And regret
Resumes reaping
My restless
Decay
And by day
Drone away
In the silence’s gray
When inevitably
I destroy something else
For a long time ago
Did the same
To myself
And continued
To reinvent
New and improved
Ways of ending
What other lives
Need be removed
But still failed
To conclude
That to do so
Consistently
Makes you unmoor
From the anchor amor
‘Till she walked out the door

Life is strange
To some of us, it feels like a fleeting dream
A fuzzy eerie dream that is barely in focus
And I find myself every day in this liminal space
I exist in some half state of life,
Not in full relief nor fading into the background
And sometimes, I feel so strongly
That maybe I am not really meant to be here
Most times, I am certain that I am not really here at all.

I don’t mean “not here” as in
Being absent from the present
Not fitting into this tapestry of life and its moving pieces
Not finding joy in fleeting moments or the explosion of living
No, I strive to anchor myself
Lest I give in to the pull of the infinite void inside me
I try to live life the way people live theirs
Truly, I try and its never enough
My mind always tilts on its yoke,
My spirit years to drift away, like a forgotten whisper

Maybe I am not meant to be here
But while I am, trapped and present
I reach out to others, I bond, I weave connections,
I love, live, laugh and I breathe
I try vainly to mirror the rhythm of the vibrant lives around me
And it all feels like false mimicry, at best a shadow play
And no matter how much I perform, it will never be enough

Maybe I was never meant to be here
I find myself slipping away from who I want the world to see
The nebulous image of a person I feel others would like and love
Each day I grapple with the fragments of my being
Trying in futile desperation to thread the fraying edges of my identity
Am I only flesh?
Am I only blood and bone?
Am I spirit and soul, shaped by the weight of my experiences?
I hold all these pieces within me and yet their sum is now only a hollow echo
Of who I though the world wanted me to be

Maybe I am not meant to be here
But I linger, trapped in this masquerade of life,
Like a marionette guided by invisible strings
I yearn for release, to escape this fleeting dream
But I cannot sever the ties that bind me
I cannot unmoor from these anchors built into my flesh and soul
And so I dance, a shadow on this grand stage of life
Twisting and turning in a ghastly performance of life and despair
Spinning and spinning and spinning till the final curtain falls
And fall it will, soon
And all will become still
And I will not be here anymore