I planted my flowers in a storm without a center.
Everything they needed poured onto them from the wind.
The higher they grow, their roots go deeper,
And the more they feel the pouring sky above the heads.
They asked me when the rain would stop, and I answered,
Telling them they were planted in a storm without an end.
Since then my flowers have gotten quieter,
And I don't really know what they perceive or understand.
The answer was simple, but they seem desperate to comprehend.
What it means to be a flower is beyond me,
And beyond them, I'm beginning to suspect.
They were lost in the storm and looking for themselves.
Growing up and growing old, evolving in place.
Whatever meaning they may have, might blow by them perchance.
Unfortunately, they're all quite mad.
Tag: identity
Genderless Winter
Blank and white with a frostbitten edge,
Like silver knives stinging in every little breath.
Too cold for sex, but perfect for a touch
From fingers warm that don’t sink too much.
It starts with a trance, to the depths, to the roots,
And the emptiness inside, uncluttered, unpoluted.
A masculine abstraction made with feminine grace.
Insensitive seasons reflecting nature’s soft face.
A hunger in a dream, cutting straight through my words,
A silent understanding, an intuition unheard.
The loss of all heat and the induction of warmth.
Pining for nothing and weighing all its worth.
Ambiguities vanish, there’s only one choice,
To relinquish and recover body, disposition, and voice.
Fear From Complacency
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.
Snippet Of A Conversation
“Confront the facts!
You’ve hated yourself,
You’ve lived a lie!
You’re not what you present!”
“Shut up.
All persona is presentation,
It’s all a lie anyway
So what does it matter?”
“Represent someone else
And hide from what you really feel.
Is this what you really want,
Miss Freedom of Expression?”
“I’ll express what I choose.
My secrets are my own,
And does anyone really care
What I feel inside?”
“What does it matter
If anyone gives a damn?
What satisfactions comes
From dishonest expression?”
I Found Myself Buried
I was naked, around twilight,
Covered in dirt and leaves
Having been buried alive,
By life buried.
A crawling mass of moist earth
Composed of dismembered deaths,
Colonies of feeding decomposers,
And my own fragile ego.
I must have sunk
From grace down to dirt
And been planted face-down,
Neglected and self-misused.
I suppose I slept
Because I dreamed vividly
In colors more vibrant and varying
Than I ever felt before.
I’d visited myself,
Seen the spectrum of my being
Like so many blends of fantasy and memory
Shifting perpetually within.
Only after waking
I recognize the implication
Of finding myself alive,
Head-first buried in a hole.
What Carries Over
Sometimes I feel better when I imagine my own conscious thought is all that exists.
The feeling of being a disembodied psyche in friction-less space,
Emptied of all but the most critical pieces of my identity
And reassembling my complexities into a more beautiful shape.
As many times as I’ve done this,
There are thoughts and patterns that persist through me,
Some I’ve cherished, others I’ve hated,
And some I couldn’t understand or even properly explain.
There are pieces that never seem to come unstuck,
Fears, attachments, and my deepest memories.
There are images and vague connections I retain,
Like pen-strokes which remain even after they’re scribbled over.
A vague, off-beat rhythm seems to drive my actions,
Unfocused or out of sync with the environment I’m in,
Curiosity, obsession, and paranoia distort my tempo,
Playing my own tune, in spite of what drums beat around me.
I’m liable to fall carelessly into the beautiful or intriguing.
My heart snaps alert, when a note, by happenstance, complements my own.
There are ideas, perceptions, and sequences of thought
That feel more like hell and like home than any real place.
Whatever I do or imagine myself to be,
There are elements of myself that remain true.
Burdens I carry, gifts likewise treasured,
And I expect they’ll remain until my mind is permanently changed.
Transition Through Fear
Control your fear,
Deaden your senses,
Listless solitude is the perfect fuel
For an existential crisis.
I’ve slowly eroded,
Turned to dust and resurfaced,
I’ve un-become the thing
That hated who I was,
The thing that hated everything
To escape what it hated being.
I can remember trembling,
A dead weight swiftly lifted,
Before recognizing myself clearly
And collapsing to the dirt.
My body is a prison,
My brain the sadistic jailer,
Holding down its prisoner
At the bottom of a well.
A glimmer in the chasm
Made to bury shameful secrets.
Looking out, it screams,
Being seen like naked eyes.
Repression is a disguise as
Recognition imbibes pain.
I am the thing that hates,
Projecting but what it contains,
Nothing but the distaste
For what I was afraid of being.
Captivity is a ritual,
As survival is to pain,
Avenging a broken heart
Buried beneath cold sentiments.
Weakness, being me,
Being something ugly,
Guilty and fragile,
And tempestuously charged.
I’m become the domineer,
Steering everything to crash
For bitterness, the sake of
The empty shape I cast.
Without a real feeling
To tamper my identity,
I freely hate the feelings
I’ve hated holding in me.
You’re everything I need,
That I vehemently despise,
Reminding me what’s real
And why I’m not really fine.
My blood draws a stop,
Distress signals overload,
Impulsively shutting down
Self-awareness and empathy.
An empty shape won’t ease,
It’s an insatiable thing,
And I’ve almost eaten
Everything I truly love
To blind myself from seeing.
Now, I’ve given in,
Unearthed the buried creature
I’d sheltered in a cage
To keep it from ever feeling.
I needed space to breathe,
Shelter, so I could think,
Awestruck by the callousness
And brutality of living.
It’s a graveyard
And a hornets’ nest,
Fear not to be feared
Not being dangerous.
I’ve tasted the comforts of malignancy.
I’ve torn my ego from its shell,
That agoraphobic parasite
I clung to like a life-vest.
I needed strength,
And the safest place to hide
For a fragile little thing
Is deep inside its mind.
Revealing an honest form,
Freshly embracing empathy and connection,
I can finally face your solemn eyes,
Even though I’m terrified.
I’ll live with myself,
Finally, I’ll risk being me,
To live for these moments
Without regret in the way.
I cannot be changed,
But I can grow and adapt,
And if we can share a love,
Or a struggle, I’ll do my best.
To Those About To Define
I am a fractal
And all life is shapeless energy.
It exists in motion,
In a flux, or not at all.
Emotions are like fire,
Easily felt but hard to grasp,
Constantly in motion,
Never simply happy or just sad.
We’re all non-linear,
Even acting like we’re whole,
Pretending space is flat
And that basic shapes exist.
Defining us in terms
Of euclidean simplicity
Is an insult to reality
And the complexity of our souls,
Our being, our essence,
By any other word
Is too broad a subject
For your dismissive unambiguity.
No pill or prayer,
No final solution,
No common sense parable
Or well-meaning lie
Can fill in this space,
Open to interpretation,
Of dimensions vast outweighing
Your shallow view of life.
Vibrancy, The Shadow Unraveling
A braver me
Once hungered for the most radical,
The depths of pain and heights of pleasure,
Arts forbidden and obscene.
Looking for shadows,
The silhouettes of hidden meanings,
In music, words, and old philosophies.
All or nothing, or perhaps just me.
Everything to know,
To intercept as we compete.
Learning to express my ailments
Devoid of my identity.
A wiser me
Found meaning in shattered pieces,
Learned respect for my flaws,
And earned the rites of restoration.
Feeling through my being,
Pursuing dreams to their bitterest end,
Swallowing whatever lurks there,
And tasting something sweet.
Unraveling an eon
Of silent fears and insecurities,
Traversing the deathly path of nihilism
To know what I truly love.
For No One To Find
When you can casually bleed
While your psyche screams,
Congratulations,
No one else will ever see.
Your imprisoned esteem
Only needs to breathe
Once in a while
To keep from getting free.
At persona’s relieve
Feel free to release
In humbled bursts
What trembles underneath.
As awful it seems,
It’s only a need
Left unsatisfied
By conventional means.
Carry on incomplete
In your vital deceit
Until maybe one day
You’ll be eased.
Poems and Short Stories 