SPRING 2023
4:6:2023
(auto-complete poem)
I'll be here in about an hour's minute or a half later I love it all good I'll be home in about an hour I'm so sorry I'll let you know if I hear back I'll be home soon love to see if I could get some more stuff I just need a couple more days to do that I can do it I'll be there at all I can get it done I'll be home in about an hour I didn't get it to be like this but I'm still doing good things I'm sorry I'm just so tired and tired I'm sorry I'm just now I'm getting my own right I'll let you know if I have a chance I can just go to get some sleep I just need a couple things I can just go to sleep I don't have a problem I don't have a good night I'll be there at all I hope you have all the good stuff I just can't believe that I don't have to be there any longer and I'll see what I have I'll see what you think of me and I'll let you know when I'm going I'll be there in about a minute to come back to work I'll let you know if I have a chance I can get it done
PostElectionDay (4/12/2023)
If I were to elect my own fate
Through the stuff of campaigns and debates,
I would do what the rest of us do with our hate:
I would use it to choose which one told the best story,
Which one charmed us enough to receive
What it wants us to see about reality
Insofar as we needed to believe it
Before gaining the half of our thoughts who upheave it.
If I were to elect my own fate
As if it were some body-minded politician,
Compare life’s great escape
as I contrast my indecisions’ conflicting partitions,
I would bet on the ruse how the rest of us do:
Seem to myself that the former means hell,
And suppose that I might as well go for the latter,
Head towards the ladder instead of the shoot,
Make something matter despite lack’s pursuit.
If I were to elect my own fate
Using boxes and ballots, gavels and mallets,
Programs and host scams and
A million other hokey master plans that all
Scan so obvious yet somehow demand
I must stand to just damn what I can’t understand,
I would rape data true like the rest of us do:
Scrape my namesake back up,
Lap up lucky upchuck and thank fuck
That however corruptly obstructed it all leans to be,
My one miserable little constituency
Is so small that the blame surely falls
by my identity in no meaningful way
Post election day.
Post election day.
4:14:2023
I like to take my time and spit it back out,
Take it on walks when the weather's nice,
Breathe it in and then back out of it,
Auto-correct the deficit,
Pretend that I’m taking no part in it.
No one question could possibly
answer all of this; no one's questions
are getting at something that quells the itch.
That's where it all went wrong, isn't it?
It isn't a question, it's the state of a quest
so caught up in misdirections that it forfeits
the only thing left for inspection.
Why’s not a question that yields any fruit,
Answers lazy pursuits.
Troubleshoot the old to take in all the new:
if you lose, we all lose.
If we so choose, we are likely to find
temporary grievances caught still gnawing,
but I don't mean to pick fights—
I just need to be right.
It's not fair to dangle despair,
but what's fair in a world like this one?
Some intangible term
as another question unturned.
My god, I've so much yet to learn.
4:29:2023
The layers don't actually conceal
some hidden center; they are defined referentially,
by merely intangible quality
cast like a spell inside-out of itself.
I can only assume, it would have me believe
that as I picture Death, so this Death pictures me.
Of course it is our opposite state
which informs of our fate:
Life needs that we reciprocate!
For time being, we are blessed with relatively stable agencies;
and our brave counterparts
have the honor of being Utility!
Pure potentialities!
Information Itself communicates with me;
what you don't know comes true
through its own revealment!
Your own concealment!
Ultimately, symmetry is perpetually achieved;
after all, even The Odds
can't escape Death's success rate.
And these stats come from somewhere;
the numbers are real (some of them are).
Whatever remains must span larger
than we can remember and/or articulate,
larger than life and well-worth its weight,
primally cardinal, finally utilized:
centralized prayers-to-date.
4:20:2023
No one's a man; everyone's a man
when it counts, and sometimes
even when it doesn't— but that's
besides the point.
Every one is a man because no person is;
are you really your body, your mind?
Should you use them to say who you are,
who I am? We dare not identify as one thing over another.
Your precious alibi cornered me on the street the other day;
He told me that identity is resonance, often dissonant,
doesn't play by the rules we all made up one day.
"Man", after all, used to mean "everyone"—
and why should ancient history have all the fun?
Why let sleeping dogs lie when you want a dogfight?
Because "man" isn't wrong;
it's not right. It's a good note to take;
it's a common mistake. If I am a "woman",
then so too are you. If I'm not also a man,
why distinguish the two? I have a bad habit
of using one word when I really want its opposite—
I think it's because
our polarities cling to prerequisites.
4:28:2023
The layers don't actually conceal some hidden center;
they are defined referentially, by merely intangible quality
cast like a spell inside-out of itself.
I can only assume, it would have me believe that as I picture Death,
so this Death pictures me.
Of course it is our opposite state which informs of our fate:
Life needs that we reciprocate! For time being,
we are blessed with relatively stable agencies;
and out brave counterparts have the honor of being utility!
Pure potentiality! Information Itself communicates with me;
what you don't know comes true through its own revealment!
Your own concealment! Symmetry is ultimately always achieved;
even The Odds can't escape Death's success rate.
Numbers are real—
well, at least some of them.
Other numbers span larger than we can remember,
larger than fate, primally cardinal, finally utilized:
centralized prayers.
5:4:2023
I can’t say that I’ve ever had a firm grasp
of the calendar year;
Dates and numbers tend to smear
together depending on my current pace,
Space way out or condense down in here,
Files erased, replaced by new moments
That perpetually disappear.
But when the seasons change,
They speak in a language my body knows well,
Tell me that things will always be this way—
Always change, always never in quite the same way,
Never tomorrow, always today:
The sun sprawls out his fingers;
he has his hands in everything, you know.
You might not be listening,
but he’s sure always telling you so.
The wind gropes and prods at your face,
Whistles a tune in your ear,
Marks out your impression, shows how you interfere,
Reminds you that you’re here.
I can’t say that I’ve ever had a firm grasp
of the calendar year;
But when the seasons change,
They speak in a language my body knows well,
Tell time in a way that my body can tell.
5:5:2023
There's something at the tip of my tongue;
Maybe I should cut it off.
I'm tired of listening to my own ears,
you know? They ring like church bells,
tell me lies about how life must go on after death,
must keep sounding after I've taken my last breath.
What's in it for me?
Nothing, I can see. And theories are just theories,
and real life couldn't even come close to these family jewels,
whoever their heir may loom, whatever it may be.
May be, it may be that one thing is so.
Every where that there is isn't here,
so I'll never get there. I can see visions if i only focus in enough,
call my own bluffs— only problem is,
I can seem to catch my breath's new direction.
But there is a direction,
some way that my questions keep calling,
some implication that my friends and enemies alike
agree upon. The ones that don't
win the ultimate argument, I guess.
I don't know; I guess that it must be so.
It's the same guess that I hold
like a ransom in my lungs,
shield like a shadow's light from the sun,
bite like the words off my tongue.
(5:11:2023)
I have to make peace with this thing
before it swallows me whole;
I have to surrender
before I win-lose control.
Somehow, I have to tell you something
without reality re-lapsing,
synapses re-acting, sensory bypassing
as the story’s bored collapsing and
grasping at straws,
needles stacked taller than probable cause,
feeble backed dollars
and luster-lacked laws. Slacked jaws
and wishful thinking never told me
who I was; they only showed me
who I’d lost.
Even if the cause is lost, that means
it must be out there, somewhere,
collecting dust like participation trophies,
noticing me without knowing me,
staring curiously back.
Maybe that's why this peace
is my white whale to catch:
maybe peace is created relationally,
between Me and NotMe
as both breathe to keep track.
Exit Wounds
Is it really so wrong to just bite the damn bullet?
I'm not ashamed of my faith;
I'm ashamed of my inkling to give it a name.
I can't undo subject from predicate,
renew attention’s deficit and just
make the best of it—
no; I've got this new thing
that I'm trying out now
where half of the time
I've actually got a plan,
and the other half stands
to correct what I didn't know I needed
to understand.
But oh, there's that middle bit again,
the guts, the glue, the gore, the glory:
giving context to my bones
like some fleshy allegory,
meaning what is meant
without telling telling stories;
this ceaseless senseless defenseless purgatory
who does everything and nothing for me.
I wish I could say
that the middle’s what bores me;
unfortunately,
I'm just not sure which ballot
my body should cast,
onto which prayer my mind ought to latch,
which impossible bullet could be my new last.
5:20:2023
All of these numbers beg me to realize them;
half of the time, I don't even have the time to halve what's so clearly whole,
split the atom into more of the dictionary's long lost soul. It's a wild, wild soup:
shapes and forms poking out of some ancient broth,
an intelligence that angels whisper constantly.
They don't seem to care whether or not anybody's listening;
I've always admired that about them.
A talisman is perched innocuously at the end of your nose—
but if you zoom in too much, you won't even be able to tell them apart.
Tell tales apart from one another while you still can.
You can't, but at least you're unlucky enough
to have the opportunity, right?
Segregate wrong from right
as if doubles really give you standards fit for fighting
once the daytime surrenders its light.
Every sunset screams the same tired velocity,
siphoning one from some other brave number's prosody
6:4:2023
It's all a balancing act, isn't it?
One spilling over to two,
Old tipping into the new
just to sway back again,
an irreparable pendulum
stripping down to its own center
as the data display:
bell curves and shushed words
and half a mind to sink the pot,
to will again what I forgot—
it's not a lot; I tend to end things
well before that point,
unaware of ache’s sore joints.
But God, they sure do love it when it rains,
don't they? How they sweety take the reins and make in sane—
excuse me— believe.
Make yourself.
A poem for Grammy
You're on the riverbank now, wilting gracefully
as you wink at another new daylight gone by,
fears and frustrations weathered away
as the stones shed themselves in the current.
Childrens’ childrens’ children
roar with the force of the torrent at your feet,
alive with a joy that they don't call by name,
passed down unto them by the same God
who gave it to you long ago.
The wind carries love letters sent by the trees,
glittering confetti
that tinges your lungs something sweet.
Birds sputter hymns back and forth
through the heat.
Have their accents ever changed?
I'm far too young to say— but I know
that their praise resonates
with the cause of Life’s ways.
Grains of sand wait their turns patiently,
knowing only to be,
how to set a good scene.
And the fish in the stream
do not know what it means to be wet,
to be dry, to be free,
yet they swim easily.
Sometimes, your eyes trace the trials
of debris whisking by; others,
you set your gaze wide as horizon,
yielding to peace as the mouth meets the sea.
Death XIII
(6:14:2023)
I see the cadaver now:
all of her hatred digested
by maggots and worms,
filtered through the earth.
The trees strip her anger
back down to their roots;
they drink of her sadness like nectar.
It feels good to shed these thoughts
like old skin, to give birth
to new deaths and keep weathering.
Grief doesn't have to be heavy
to be seen:
Sometimes, I let mine preserve me
like salt flakes, frozen in place
like a slab of lone meat
until I can re-member myself,
give my body a shake,
let the melting take back to my shape.
Other times, I let my grief like heat escape:
purge it out of me as sweat percolates,
sweet-and-sour relief, drying and dying
to rejoin the atmosphere
as if it was never even there— and I'm still right here, peering up and out
and left wondering what
all of the fuss was about.
I can see my own cadaver now,
in that gnawing thawing doubt,
in that rite from rain to drought,
through my imprint pressing out.