Handshake

If I believed in the devil
I'd tell you I've met him

He's a silver tongued liar

And the world's best salesman

I met the devil and he lives in my head

He tells me he's got answers

And he'll sell them to me for free

I met the devil and he shows me the truth

Distorted and bent like me

The solution's permanent and less than ideal

But he'll sell it to me for free

Mourning In The Reeds

My love was a cattail scattered to the wind when you disappeared
A soft but multitudinous explosion without a destination
Subject to chance alone and all too unrestrained
You left footprints in the mud of my affection
To be washed away into the floodplains of a lifetime of memories
The sheer aggregation ensuring your opacity fades to transparency
Like a beach subsumes the independence of each grain

Exquisite

Purified the only way you can be
By the loss of your other half
Now you are one, only one, just al-one
This is the finest pain ever experienced
A closer look reveals exquisite insight
Into the origin of your humanity
There is no forgery

River

You were probably a river
Babbling with mirth, bubbling with clarity.
You were probably a tree
Grounded and strong, drinking in the rain.
You were probably a star
Eyes twinkling when you smile as you divinate.
You were probably an ocean
I felt you buoy my soul as you held me.
I think you might be the wind
Stealing my breath and carrying dandelion seeds.
Were you that mountain
Immortal, immense, immovably sturdy?
Did you live as that sand dune
Just as transient as you were in this one?
You were probably a river
Moving steadily through every form.

Barbarism

Laughed at by the gods
Our losses just an elaborate prank
To entertain something more
If freedom and abandonment
Were not loud enough
To put a force in me
To search for my own exculpation
The way a dog subsidizes
Its household's decisions
In a world that is abjectly unfair
Imbued with free will
But forbidden from philosophy
To bring us into this world
Only to discharge us again
Inhuman and hence divine
This is how I know
God is a terrorist

Uncertainty

I grow forests of worries saturated by my tears
They bloom anxieties whose fruit
Is always overripe and so often bitter
I chop them down with my ax of reason
Sharpened on the stone rationale and wet with deliberation
Their trunks fall haphazardly tearing at
My faith on the way down, shattering my ease on impact
But no matter how many I burn
To sustain the warmth of self-compassion
There is still a forest of doubt before me.

Loss

Mediated by the unforgetful soma
It's too hard to convey
The devastation we weathered
That is your latest transmutation

Arroyo

Your love is a dry arroyo that for years sustained me 

And quenched my parched heart with your flashflood adoration

But now crumbles under the footsteps of my words

Greedy for traces of you.

upset

[ verb, adjective uhp-set; noun uhp-set ]

verb (used without object), up·set, up·set·ting.

to become upset or overturned.

Contrition

I have so many things to say
All the shame I've been entrusted fills my mouth instead
And I am smothered when I try to deliver
This depravation is mutilation
And I am still languishing alone

Counterfeit

You can sustain the body
But when the soul flickers
When the soul is homesick for its nest
Away from this sensory coil
Our only consistency here is change and decay
I don't know where to find restoration
When I can't find rest, least of all in sleep where
My past will always find me
The fog and shadows played tricks
And outwitted my better judgment
Somehow I'm left with the counterfeit

Foreigner In A Foreign Land

There's something inside me that's older than I am
And when I feel depressed I feel it stir
It compels me to leave
It urges me to return
And so I lie in the dust
On the floor beneath an altar
Decorated with ribbons
Celebrating traumas survived
And lay cold silver coins on my eyes
Straightening the chain holding my mogen david
Pulling the altar cloth across to repel the chill
And I feel myself sink into the dust
My body biding time before an inevitable decay
And it sinks through the floorboards to meet the earth
Stirring restlessly in the interval
Between ashes and ashes
And it's enveloped by dark musty arms
Returning my body to its home
To which I will soon enough return
I'll be home when they tuck me in,
Softly and gently, pulling the dirt up to my chin
When I am again what I have always been
And I am indistinguishable
I am earth again

Artificial Elements

Used to hate my braces
but embraced them for making me closer
to a cyborg, for helping me approach singularity
And I was ready yesterday
Ready to be unable to distinguish
between what parts of me are organic and what are artificial
I'm ready to leave this body and exist on another plane,
be it celestial or artificial

Boy Bye

I escaped you
And I'll dance at your funeral
Dressed in black
I'll be spinning widdershins
Undoing everything you ever did
I guarantee my memory will outlast yours
You won't be forgiven
But you will be forgotten

Perpetual Issues

I looked into myself,
Gazed past the healed scars,
I reached deep within myself
And touched something raw.
I felt the wounds I thought I'd worked so diligently to heal;
I think now they may always fester
And only sink deeper, nearer to my soul.

(April '14)

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I let myself try a thing I haven't tried in a long time, but I wasn't ready, and it made me wonder if I ever would be.  

It Doesn't Matter That You're Gay

One day, you will die and nothing will ever matter
Not your differences, 
Not your preferences, 
Not your happiness. 
Forget your allies and your enemies. 
Forget your rainbow suspenders, your glitter eyeliner, your chest binder. 
You are not your gender
Not your sexuality
Not your sins
Not your injustices. 
You are not your label. 
You are not your experiences. 
One day, nothing will ever matter.



--------------
Inspired by my brother's poem penned on the inside his medicine cabinet in orange magic marker, apparently inspired by Fight Club.  
NOTE: after some reader's responses, I want to add that, to me, this poem is comforting rather than angsty.  The idea that it wont matter anymore one day, none of it, is so unbelievably peaceful to me.  I hope you find the same comfort one day.  Embrace Inevitability but never rush her.  

Tense Haiku

History, my past,
haunts me like a poltergeist,
dead, unkillable.

I Rarely Do This

But I wanted to show you one of the places I draw inspiration from.

Kai Davis is who I wish I could be.  And this particular video is what I have felt the last two days.

He thought he escaped my gaze.  I planted my sickle in his throat and uprooted his head.  King cobras always fall victim to charms.  

Letters to an Ex-Lover: Uber Nacht

I hope you asphyxiate on every lie you ever told.
I hope the weight of your sins smothers you slowly over the years.
I hope the poisonous evil that you spit corrodes your veins and mind
Until all that's left of you is a babbling shell with a blackened soul trapped inside.

Fear Her

Babe, the devil's coming for your soul.
She's got blue eyes and revenge on her mind.
A molotov cocktail to quiet the nerves,
And off to work we go, scythe in tow.