Scars make martyrs and monsters.
Idolizing the villains who were yesterday’s anti-heroes
Waiting for them to burn their capacity to create.
The angels burn brightly, softly, sensationally,
To follow chaotically into a second fall.
Exactly as dulcetly as they first sang,
They clash crassly against some new foe,
But the only ones standing in their way
Are the ones burning as brightly as they.
Allow me to indulge my radient ideation,
A spectacle of bittersweet sunbeams breaking through gray skies,
Eeking their way into my ugliest days
Like transcended smiles projected from the purest celestial lights.
They reach me bedecked in wilting blue flowers,
Exposed to the heavens in a gown of silk white,
Seduced into a dream that lasts for an eternity
Between the fragility of a body and the soft sting of twilight.
It’s wearying to be deranged for the sake of beautiful things,
And as they dull, to come to know, that madness still remains.
A song I knew grew up to be a different kind of tune,
It plays the notes that made me up and broke away from me.
Intoning prose for my own health prolongs the point of breaking,
And sharing them from mind to mind is life that’s worth the saving,
To make a scene of who I’ve been to stimulate your feelings
Is all I need to brighten up this dream I can’t stop dreaming.
Burn me with the autumn leaves, with cardamom and honey,
Leave a house to my mother on the shores of a lake that’s crystal clear and foggy.
Find me there in ashes, free from poverty and wealth,
Dead to all the world, but not dead to herself.
Some people can’t be reached no matter what you say,
Who probably wouldn’t care to feel your touch anyway,
And for all those who need, in some way, to be reached,
Our fingers might wave but they rarely ever meet.
In a dark windy heart there’s cracked glass in the rain,
Palms still untouched can be cut all the same.
Quieting the air with a gesture, I find
It helps, when you reach, to shield your hands with mine.
Those stinging cold moments with warmth underneath
Pour lakes into places overridden with dead leaves,
An Autumn-stained blush from a spring-tinted gaze
Briefly turn skies that were black back to grey.
It’s over and begun again
Before I was awake to contemplate my place therein
And now there’s decisions to make before another day is wasted;
Time to get out of bed and make the most of who I am.
Sixteen hours to occupy.
There’s money I need to make,
Feelings I need to hold at bay,
Friends I ought to engage with
Dreams of mine to explain;
I know I should write another poem,
I know I should do more for myself,
I should work harder to realize my potential,
To help others and bring more beauty into the world,
Oppose oppression and lift up the beaten down,
Make new memories and new connections into love,
Write meaningful stories as impactful as I am able,
Speak truth to power and lead others to something more.
Sixteen hours.
A day’s weight to carry and divide
With all the urgency of our dwindling time.
My God, I need a release and space to hide,
Some poison to feel temporarily satisfied,
A window to the make believe, to live a life that isn’t mine,
Immediate pleasure, to be ok alone and pacified.
A day’s tension and relief , begun again, immobilized,
Consistent as death with all the awareness of being alive.
It needs to end, this state of being that leaves my paralyzed,
Because all the stress within a day hurts less
Than witnessing your life go by unrealized.
A neverending summer is coming
And then, will all of us live authentically
With space to grow?
On a transformed planet
How deeply will we confront ourselves
To become something more?
Our chaos, our need, drives far ahead of our rationality,
And rationalizing our needs only breeds further chaos.
The narratives we believe in feed the roots of our beliefs.
Skies burning, tensions rising, anger, anxiety, malaise.
Nature pressures us from every angle,
Guiding us forward to communities of love and
Societies of strength.
Flaws and preferences notwithstanding,
Will we shape ourselves to live abundantly or
Apply pressure to stay restrained?
They say love conquers all as strength enslaves.
Compassion may carry us through tumultuous times
As Egoism may grind us through arduous days,
And how will we console ourselves when the hot breath of summer comes to stay?
Far be it from me to tell you
What a woman is or isn’t
Because even the act of living it
Leaves ambiguities.
Do you believe identities
Are something we experience internally
Or something we’re assigned
By nature or how we’re perceived?
There are hormones and chromosomes,
Patriarchial structures and feminine superstitions,
Poems and stories devoted to Goddesses,
And those who break away from all traditions.
Desire, lust, and expectation,
Something defining or something latent?
A human being entrenched in Image
Or a depth of feeling you simply experience?
That which is not man
Or that which is only artificial,
A culture, a gender, a sexual character,
Someone you recognize but can’t quite decipher.
Style, substance, intuition,
A history of subversion and subjugation,
A relationship with words like “beautiful” or “pretty,”
The feeling of being prized or hunted.
A mystery, a darkness,
A power not delicate but malleable at the edges,
A subject that either fits you or doesn’t
But not a thing that can ever be taken or given.
There are characters and stories I’d always imagined growing old with,
Looking back on forever as formative to my being,
But while growing up changes a person and our worldly understanding,
Stories often remain undeveloped and unchanged.
There are moments in books that once thrilled or astounded me,
That were once profound, insightful, or full of mood,
And while many of those words still make me feel something,
Their meaning seems to change as often as I do.
Themes that represented the concepts I believed so perfectly
Have revealed themselves to be shallower over time,
And writers whose minds seemed so beautifully percipient
Have fallen behind perceiving the experiences of life.
It’s sad to watch something beautiful be diminished
When circumstances change how it reflects in our gaze,
And characters that fell so easily into our hearts
Transform into beings from which we’ve become estranged,
But, if there are stories we’ve grown away from
It means that we’re growing all the same,
And becoming new and better people will always alter
Our understanding of what the past means.
Sentences and ideals that mattered then can still matter
With new understanding settled into the narratives we’re making,
And the stories we’ve left behind can still inspire us
As we renew our loves and troubles into characters worth creating.
There was a house in the woods
Bordered by a ring of brambles and thickets
Encircling lush ambrosial gardens
Fed from a narrow cascading stream.
It was concealed by enchantment
From the designs of outside eyes,
Untouched and immoveable,
Unfazed by the works of time.
There, knowledge distilled to one question,
That of pleasure between souls,
The unfurling of tangled psyches
Like fine beaded twine softly pulled.
It was home to several dozen
Who stole away from haunted homes,
Caught lost inside the darkest forest
And running from the world.
In place of statuses and structures,
There are faces always warm to you
And hearts always open
Never asking for or taking dues.
Nothing you thought you were
Or what others did to hurt you
Need go unspoken or lamented,
There’s time to attend your wounds,
And ambitions have all died
As did the barriers between minds.
The house that’s in the woods
Holds space for passions to spring alive.
People who deny
You the chance to act honestly
Often undercut empathy
With the fear of being erased.
To be oneself
Has almost always proved risky,
But it gets frustratingly
Arduous when one’s identities are retraced.
It tears at the nerve
Between confidence and sympathy,
Criticism from complacency
Cutting crosses in your face.
She says she’s afraid
Because her very being is threatened,
She who’s being
By that standard subjugates.
Equally communing
Past your deliberate segregating
Proves tryingly absurd
As you blocked yourself from seeing.
Look at me
Without holding back your feelings
And tell everyone listening
What your posture really means.
When it takes volumes
Of vehement talk and effort
To express a single truth,
Singed by rejection,
Denial, the negation of being,
Choking on what’s unexpressed,
With desperate passions
Unbound against callus walls
Of corroded empathy,
The need for action,
Reclaiming vital recognition,
Becomes irrepressible.
Buried tension still bleeds
As the unmoved try to move on.
When words and reasons fail,
How can you make them feel?
