Lentes

Distorsionado y grabado, es difícil de discernir

La arena de tiempo crecientemente difumina mi realidad 

He confundido las lentes en mis bolsillos 

Demasiado a menudo, disminuyendo mi mundo con convexidad

Si tan solo tuviera el sentido común de mirar al espejo 

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

Summit

Where stunted shrubs sweep thick clumps 

Of green delight across crumbling taupe canvases of stretched reason,

Unafraid to lick the snowy drifts of understanding prostrated across wisdom's polished crests,

A dangerous seventh wind of that mountain top 

Also inhabits the same body that swims delirious through the landscape of sleep.

As the soul strokes a coin reflecting the aching light of love,

Nine centuries grow pink in the rising and setting sun of samsara.

Reflected in the wet pebbles on a beach of memory,

I stumble over the soft spoken promises of a long forgotten friend, a trembling petal entrapped by an invisible current.

A new season steps barefoot into the mossy carpet of eternity 

Obediently displacing previous instances' murmurs into the intoxicating wash of time.

The suite of worship, radiantly languid as it patiently trickles through porous faith, 

Beckons, standing in the foyer of yesterday,

Rendering ghost and flesh as elaborately indiscernible as rain and river cupped in the same vessel.

Sifting

Grant me the restful slumber of fresh snow upon the streets
Blurring all senses with cold gentility.

Grant me the peace that only meadows know
Of the inauguration of certainty and faith.

Buoy my spirit through the choppy waves of vulnerability.

Fasten the cloak of hopeful compassion around my shoulders

As I face the cold sleet of anguish and despair.

Warm the bones of my soul with
The flames of companionship and community,

And send me with zealous affection
And earnest fondness into each enterprise I endeavor.

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

Loss

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

Grief

I wasn’t ready for this trip.
It was unexpected, and I was unprepared.
And now this journey will color the months of my 30^th year
As I navigate how to undo what has been undone.

Checkmate

Who's ready to play?
Because God created this game
And I'm here to win
I've got the vision
I see the pieces lining up
I'm about to sink some ships

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

Transitions: Goodbye

I left some part of me
When I stepped off the platform
And disappeared into a subway car
To disembark at some unknown station
And she feels lost to me now
But I don't think I'd want her back
Her long green hair fluttering
And two hissing doors closing
That was the last I saw of her
The last bit of her to see.
Now it's just me.

The Bat

Creature of the night
I like you cannot see the light
I am comfortable in this darkness
Eating morsels of my sins
Upside down in my own identity
I slept for so long and like you
I have awoken without a dawn
And flown into the darkness

No Tears Shampoo

I can't cry
Every time I get close
My face twists up into a grimace
Then a smile and relaxes
Though my chest tightens
And a solitary sob is clutched within my throat
Only released once
It has metamorphosed into laughter
For as long as I can remember
I've been this way
I remember being spanked
And my anguish escaped my body
As shrieking vowels of hysterical laughter
The authoritarian always felt
I was taunting them
And though I did not intend to mock
It felt like power
The only power I could hold above them
To laugh in the face of consequence
But my laughter rarely comes from
A place of true joy and mirth
And has mixed into a muddy brown
Of pain, fear, and ecstasy
That I smear on my life
To placate the emotional hunger
Of those around me
And though it has never failed to satisfy or provoke
It has always failed to convey my truth

By Design

Damned to the confines of our own choices and mistakes
Insisting the only way to know each other
Is to tear off our skins
And plunge our hands into one another
To touch their bones and hold their viscera
I can hear the low hum of voices
And the delicate tinkling of forks on plates
From the other room
We are left to imagine, to fill in the details
To eavesdrop and speculate about our own decisions
Omission by design, by spectral plane and dimension
What makes a person so afraid of change
When change is the essence of every reality
Except our own
Our own inability to leave behind the past
And to seize an unwritten future

Monstre

Raise your hand if you've got depression
And the meds aren't cutting it
So you've gotta cut yourself instead
Remember when you asked for creativity?
Beggars can't be choosers
So now you're your own worst enemy
Your most creative saboteur
Make yourself paranoid about good days
How long will they last and are they real?
Celebrate for just a moment
And berate yourself for eternity
When you inevitably fall again
Remind yourself of all your failures
And suggest to try again is hubris
I have become a master in self-deception
What do I want and who am I?
Unquestioned laws of self are suddenly
Up for debate like it's an election year
Trying to ruin my own life
For petty reasons like uncertainty
How do you evict a part of yourself
When you don't even know who you are
Has the monster inside become the majority?

I Know The Way

I've been to hell and back
Enough times to know the way by heart
I know the demons, now old friends
For me, they create assarts
I know very well the way to hell
And better yet, I know it back
And the next time I bring you with me
I'll never bring you back

Risen

I planned your death a thousand times
How I would peel back your skin
And dig for an apology that is buried somewhere inside
Better lock me up, I think you knew
I am your danger as long as I live
Say you're too scared to act with love
But you didn't know fear until you saw me awake
In full understanding of your brutality
For years I never saw the light of day
And suddenly I was the sun
Risen to scorch your earth and feed a new life
You cut me at the base
And I bloomed with impunity despite this

Garden Wall

You had me twisted up like a vine hungry for light
I never realized you lead me in circles
Until I woke up one day and took account of my tendency to spiral
And I saw you had tied me to a trellis
You cut me and you cut my bloom
And still I bloomed in spite of this
But you never tended me beyond your convenience
So I scattered myself over the garden wall
To grow in some greener pastures
Or even between two slabs of concrete
Anywhere but in that wretched garden
And I escaped you again

Happy Pills

In the final hour, the medicine administered
Reduces my thoughts so sinister
Dampening my perceptions and depressive deceptions
Suffocating and smothering my creative conceptions
I find a familiar peace in the silence
Delivered by pill, a miracle of science,
And a dullness that has never failed
To leave me apathetic, a will to thrive foiled

Stuck

I want to go home and never return to this wicked world
But I am too weak to break the chains of my mortal coil
And too soft to free myself from pain by delegating it to others

Aphasia

There are no words in the English language that adequately express the turmoil of trauma or the emotional storms that fill its sails. My terror has always left my mouth as shrieks and giggles.