SUMMER 2024
Subject,Object, and Time
Words soothe me;
Motion moves me;
Space fills me, and Time
passes by.
Life lives me;
Take gives me;
Breath fills me, and Time
Pins the sky.
Light sees me;
Sound needs me;
Fear fears me, and Time
Shows me why.
Hate hates me;
Love loves me;
Push shoves me; and Time
Tallies high,
Mind embodies me;
Body atrophies;
Soul remedies; and Time
Is but I!
7:14:2024
My intuition is derivative,
Above all else, inquisitive.
It looks like this:
Hmm?
Hmm…
Oh!
…Oh.
Or, at least, these are some words which
My body seems to know.
Usually, I feel it more than anything;
the sensation itself is knowledge,
Figuring her speech out of body’s language—
Or perhaps as I've seen it heard,
As some higher orders of nonsense prefer,
I should call this voice “conscience”,
A God/Head incarnate—
But in my estimation,
Once names are given to others’ approximations,
One becomes far too selective over
The ultimately absurd.
So, which parts are me,
And which are “the Word”?
My intuition knows this sweet life
Much better than I do:
After all, my body doesn't need
any of my words
To be true!
To her, knowing is its own infinitive:
Wondrously new, elegantly primitive—
above all else, inquisitive!
Referendum
I did all your dishes last night;
I'm not really sure why:
I know for a fact that
You’d “eye for an eye”
your way into a fight
(Or, at least, that's how it was
Every other night / day), but hey—
At least you showed love
In other cryptic ways.
Solemnly, I realized
That I'd never see each dish dry
Again, but then,
On paper, I'm the one who made it so,
So, you know. Touchè. Amen.
I did all your dishes last night,
And I maybe know why:
I love you, of course,
And God knows you torment yourself
Something much worse,
Gatekeep your own score
‘Till you're angry and sore;
Knowing you, you ignored
Those three, four
Mugs and the scraps on the floor
‘Till they started decay,
And the house got so gross
That you paused at the door
Before turning away.
I did all your dishes last night
‘Cause I came to find peace
In that sink;
There was only one place
In that house where reliably,
I could be left to just think,
Where, to make you feel big,
I don't have to play “shrink”,
Where a bowl’s
Just a bowl,
And there's localized stink,
And I'm not made to sip
What your fear
Made me drink.
I did all your dishes last night
So you'd come home today
And you'd see
My old key
And admit some conceit
That the problem was you—
But it won't always be,
That the best you could do
Wasn't too good for me,
That in spite of the truth
And the lies that it breeds,
You deserve to be loved,
But that love is
Empty.
8:11:2024
Just one word comes to mind
As I try to describe
What the light makes of trees
And their leaves so divine:
Glory, Glory, Glory!
Just one truth comes to pass
Like the wind over grass
Or the river like glass
Ruts the mountains’s sure mass:
Glory, Glory, Glory!
Just one sound I can make
As the body's earned ache
Giving all it can take
Gently bobbing time's wake:
Glory, Glory, Glory!
Just one life I can live
As my time’s sensitive
To the joy it fore-gets
And the pain it fore-gives:
Glory, Glory, Glory!
The Freedom Contract
Freedom, above all,
Is a practice.
Deliberate as anything else in this world;
do you think that your life
will outlive you?
Or will you recognize
that this Life isn't yours?
Freedom is found in the pulse,
In the moment of silence
From which all unfolds,
in the wavelengths caught practicing,
tracking their source—
Freedom, above all,
Is a course.
Accidental like nothing else in this world;
Do you feel that your death
will outdie you?
Or can you real-ize
That this Death isn't mine?
It was dead all this time;
Language won't even try
To waste why’s on whatever's
Temptations, sensations of lies,
And neither will I—
Freedom, you'll recall,
Is the eyes!
Beautifully branded
Beheld and beholder,
Named by a brain
Who informed them to smolder,
Abstract sight from seen
As if fiction from fact,
Segregate one's machine
From its own funny pact:
Occupy time and space,
But dare not inter-act—
Freedom, above all of this
Yet below all of that,
Is nothing—
That is,
Nothing
If not
already
lacked!
9:11:2024
I want to write a poem
About the space
That haunts the wealthy,
About the lonely echoes
Of their oversized homes,
Sound ricocheting off of
sleek countertops,
Pinging aimless from place
to place,
Never settling,
Always straining to win
Some believable race;
Their sound never buries itself
Into crevices
Of downtrodden clutter,
Never knows
The sweet prose
Caught like flies sticky-sweet
In the poor man's deemed trash,
Treasured laughter
Spiking through heaping piles
Of love and ash:
Way down here, we make do,
We make don't ‘s,
We earn cash,
It's this physical thing, paper—
Or in coins as they sing
Their binaural backlash;
It's not something abstract—
It is taking up space
Before giving downtime;
It is atoms’ flat face
On someone else's dime;
It's the shiny pin dropping
Cold hints on bland tints
As the home fades, replaced
By a house that won't stay
Any longer than your welcome:
You're welcome!
You're alone!
It's so good to hear from you;
It's so good to be home!
Territories
9:18:2024
When we think we're about
to feel pain, we contract
into ourselves, attempt
to minimize the damage
and cut all our losses;
When we get angry
or sad,
we boil over our
notions of who we should be.
Our minds try to
reign us back in, tell us to
come back here, where it's safe;
this is how you should feel—
and sometimes this works
(however temporarily), others;
our bodies retaliate more
and we rage even louder, cry
even harder
until we are forced to expel
our old identities,
redraw our territories,
settle back into our selves
and try again.
Everything I know
about freedom
I have learned from
its opposite.
All that I know of my self,
I have stolen from the world
or spit back out.
In fact, the only thing
that I know of
unbound by opposites
or boundaries
or any lack thereof—
(Contract!)
is Love.
Miracle Workers
9:20:2024
My mother,
Yonic,
Took Pain
and twisted it inward—
Inevitably outward,
Of course,
But always filtered first
through the self
Before then cursing the world.
My father,
Phallic,
Took Pain
and twisted it outward—
Inevitably inward,
Of course,
But always filtered first
through the world
Before then cursing the self.
It's a miracle
I even know
what love is
at all,
I catch myself
thinking sometimes,
knowing full well
that love was hidden
in plain sight all the while,
in the taking
of Pain, the twisting it
inward,
outward,
a curious kind of dance
that can only be appreciated as such
once the music stops playing.
Well, I make my own music now.
And sometimes it's yonic
and sometimes it's phallic
but no matter by which method
I choose to answer the call,
the response stays the same:
It's a miracle
to even know
what love is
at all.