Sacrifices

I said poetry was my lifeblood and it very much still is
I said I give birth to poems, the only children I’ll ever have
I hung onto my own words-
And hung myself
I sacrificed myself for my children.

(November 6, 2022)

Consumption

I want it to rush with a flowingness

I don’t want to be scared

Of something I’m not even sure is real

But when I feel it it’s real

When I feel it it’s a cascade, it’s a tidal wave

I am taken,

I am drifted

I am drowned

I am drowning in the possibility of a future

Either way it hurts.

There’s danger in abundance

When you come from scarcity it feels threatening to know when your next loving will be.

I’m not sure I can love in a way that does not consume me.

Can anyone?

Would they want to?

(January 10, 2023)

Empty tombs

Bodies scattered around rooms

I thought I died when you left me.

I failed to take one breath,

Then another,

Then another

Isn’t it better to marry the earth?

Isn’t it better to surrender suffering?

I failed to take one step

Then another,

Then another

Isn’t it better to never know?

What would we have been

If your roots would’ve charged through me like veins, like a virus

Isn’t that what love is?

I turn to the toxic ones like a smoker with their fix

I cannot tell if my breath is becoming deeper or more shallow

Does it matter?

Does it matter, as long as the breath continues?

I’m not a champion

You were the athlete

I was the passerby,

Turned victim

You were the victim,

Turned perpetrator

The lines are so thin they bleed

The world is close to ending

Is as good a reason as any

To end mine

All paths lead to death

Is as good a point to make when you’re covered in shards of my heart

And I, still dancing with shadows

The visions blur and I wonder how many more breaths until the last breath

It doesn’t matter

I’m breathing,

In your mouth, my final organ beating

Do you hear the music?

Do you speak the language of living?

You must, with the delicate disaster you’ve made of me

The blood spatters like Rorschach plots

This one looks like murder,

And this one looks like love

Same eyes, disparate vision

Here lies my last decision.

(March 9, 2023)

Anyone

I’m smiling

I’m giddy

It could be anyone turning the corner

At this point it could be anyone

For a second, I forget

Who am I meeting?

The faces and names blur from the past and write a story of deflated nights

They started just like this

The smile, the glee, the little hop when you turn a corner fast so you can get to them sooner

Who are they?

What are you basing your excitement off of?

The story they told, not in words, but emojis

You’re adults, why are you communicating with little pictures?

Is that the best you can hope for?

You, a writer

You, a speaker

Them, someone who always seems to talk at the wrong times

You, shutting your mouth so you don’t seem too eager

You, playing the game

You hate games

Poker, chess, whatever game where the rules are simply meant to fuck with your head

Whatever game where genuineness is a loss

That’s what this is

You’re turning the corner

Who are you meeting?

Who are they meeting?

Certainly, not you

A lesser version

A bottled version

A coddled version

An “all I want is love please don’t leave me” version

They never love, and they always leave

You could’ve predicted it with your eyes closed

It doesn’t matter who it is

It’s the fact of anyone

At this point it could be anyone

At this point it could be anyone

Until one day,

The face changes and you remember

It’s this one

The others fall away

There’s no more dancing with the past

You’re solid in the present with their presence and you remain you

That’s what keeps them turning the corner

At this point it could be anyone

But one day it won’t be just anyone.

(August 22, 2023)

The pebble

Most of the days are the same

Every once in a while one feels different

The sunset colors are more vibrant

Every once in a while the day hits me in the chest like a bullet

What am I supposed to do when that happens?

Every once in a while

My life doesn’t feel like a painting

It’s like I’m breaking through

Some people live in places where an eruption can happen at any time

I feel no different, when

Nothing resembles each other but everything blends together like I am that painting

A rushed watercolor with colors scattered like pebbles in ponds

Every once in a while

I feel my heartbeat and it grounds me

After shocking me

After urging me to live like I’m alive rather than dying

I read the bell jar recently and Esther lost control skiing and flew like lightning through air

She broke her limbs just to feel something

I would rather break the silence with a dance, or a fateful song

I’ve lived long enough to know self harm keeps on hurting

Sometimes enduring the senseless monotony is better in the long term than violence

Because I don’t like to clean up my own messes

I don’t like to overdramatize the very real aspects of my existence that wait at every corner I turn

But they’re still there

I think every moment will turn into horror and I’ve lived on knife edges for years

But somehow I need to articulate the awareness in this body

Somehow I need to sense the life around me just so I can feel real

So I can feel a part of something

Moving is all I do but there’s no meaning

Because I’m not moving towards something I’m moving away from the vulnerability I need to have

When I’ve felt alone for 100 days I think turning inward will cause insanity

And there’s only one way to find out

I’m trying not to color the emptiness with despair because I know everything is born neutral

And I feel it’s my obligation to live in a way that doesn’t bring others to their knees

What happens when I’m gone?

What proof do I even have of being real?

In this place it’s all my work to do and I’m tired

I feel the colors becoming more saturated

But the light is fading

I need confirmation that what I’m seeing is real

I need the universe to reach out and grab my hand and tell me “you matter”

I need the wind to hit the side of my cheek at the right angle to inspire some sensation

I need my dormant spirit to turn and tingle

I need to waltz at sunset to the sound of nothing

And I need to be okay with there not being anything appealing before me

I need to accept, maybe even appreciate, the days that just hold my existence in their hands

Nothing more and nothing less

I need to learn that time is a construct and every second is both meager and meaningful

I need to find the cravings and the sensations within

So I can just enjoy what’s outside and not put pressure on it for my enlightenment

My goal is to hold my humanity high and maybe even something more, something magical, something undefined in this dim light in which my soul stirs

Maybe honoring how much of this poem is unspeakable

How much of my life has not been translated into poems

How much of my moments will never be shared or understood by others

How much my life resembles the pebble, trailing blue energy, flying not fighting, letting the guiding hand do the work.

(July 11, 2020)

Untethered

I’m starting to look more like my mother

And act less like her

I’m untethering the tether that ties us from birth

Birth means nothing

Death means everything

Untethered I become

My own entity I am not in her shadow

I am her shadow, her subconscious

The half of her spawn who refuses to endorse the sins written in blood

She lives in a deep dark abyss

I am the light she cannot face

Lies that tear a family apart:

Where have you been for ten years?

What drains your pockets?

Why do you always have another home to run to?

What are you running from?

She’s never at home

She builds tiny sand castles too close to the water purposefully

She self destructs,

And not only self

She destructs her tether

She reaches into the pit and pulls out my heart

I cannot imagine carrying a baby for nine months, then nine more, then slowly,

Day by day,

Year by year,

Dropping them.

Your lies sprouted from the ground like weeds

There were too many to conquer

I was wrong about the fatal one

It was the tether all along, itself an illusion

“Mother” is an empty promise

“Womb” is a hollow home

For all the time we spent shackled together in the beginning,

You could never tell that now

I’ve had strangers show me more warmth

I was trapped in your body and my escape was a revolution

You love control, I was uncontrollable

You love facades, I am the truth

You bury your secrets amongst the dead

I am your shadow self

You cannot face me because you cannot face what you’ve done

You’ve accepted another casualty for your ego’s war

There’s no war

You’re only fighting yourself

(June 2, 2023)

You were not deserving

You never ever deserved access to me

Giving you a glimpse of my innards was a mistake

I labored through the upstream to carry my dreams to you

You poured them back, and floated away

I will never lose my breath for someone as lost as you again

I mistook your delusion for direction

I mistook your desperation for decision

You can manipulate and twist and warp every small detail but you can never erase the truth

I would’ve never treated you as you treated me

I would’ve never been so irresponsible, so careless, so selfish, so greedy, so cruel

Intention doesn’t matter when the impact is splitting someone in half

You were never deserving of my energy

You deserved none of it, not an ounce

Not a shard of glass

Not a piece or pebble

You deserved absolutely nothing

You can’t even love yourself enough to treat others with respect

You’re lost and confused and dragged me into your chaos

I don’t know what story you will tell yourself

You’ll probably pity yourself and claim victimhood

You’ll probably act like this was out of your control

Some things just don’t work out

You’ll probably fail to acknowledge your role in your disaster of a life

The story you will tell will be lies held together by denial

The story I tell will be strands of understanding, and hope, and self reflection

The story I tell will not be of victimhood

Some people are lost and you can’t help it

Some people are lost and make their trauma your problem

A lot of people need healing and growth before involving anyone else in their process

A lot of people can’t even utter the words they need to release

I will never be one of those people

My words are my primary method of resolution

I will never keep my pain captive

I hope someone can learn from the stories I tell

I hope I can let go through this process of documenting and validating

The pain is real, the feelings are real

And so is the possibility of moving forward

Making you nothing but a memory.

Because I was willing, but am no longer

Because I was willing to walk to the ends of earth for you after only knowing you for a few weeks

Because I let you take up my mental and physical space

Attach to me, become a part of me

Because I opened up and went against my better judgment to trust someone who told me they were horrible

Because I played the fool and trusted you so soon

Believed you when you said you’d never ghost me

Would be there if I needed help

Would potentially love me

Travel with me

Be with me for at least a little while

Because I believed everything you said like I knew you after so short a time

Because you were really a stranger I met online who I convinced myself I loved

Because It’s my fault I’m suffering because of what you did to me

I’m letting go of the illusion of easy love

Love takes years

I thought I loved you at first sight because of the strong connection

But I didn’t know your faults or how you’d hurt me

I loved the idea of you

I loved the idea of being loved

Without knowing the lover

Know your lover better than you know yourself

Know that pretty words can mean nothing

Know that relationships take time and work

Know that nothing is promised, even promises

Know that we let our faults destroy us

Know that we’re all guilty of hurting others

And being hurt

Know that I know you’re human and I wish we had recognized that in one another

I don’t want to hold humans to high standards anymore

I accept your mistakes

But do you accept mine?

Or will you punish me for eternity for one slip?

The punishment doesn’t fit the crime

Whatever love you put out there,

I convinced myself belonged to me,

It was never mine.

meditation over my death

I feel like I am opening up even when I am closed

I feel that my words are falling on deaf ears even when I am silent

I feel every part of me is disintegrating with each passing moment

I feel I am becoming my own nightmares, and dropping my organs off cliffs one by one

Destroying my own body, which is only a shell, only a case for who I really am

Bleeding my own blood, which is only a paint which etches my pain into other surfaces

Constricting my own veins; I am my downfall

I am immortal until I agree to succumb to otherworldly forces

I often do not feel I am the same as other creatures, and lively beings, on this earth

I often wonder what happenstance combination of atoms and matter created so provocative a being

How thoughts rose from lifelessness, and how my revolution will cease the same way it started

How one of these days I will meet you all in the grave, although I never wanted to be in the ground

I wanted to decompose, I wanted to biodegrade, I wanted to fertilize the soil of someone who can continue the dream I once had

I wondered when the instant of my termination would arise, and how I would grapple with its reality

Now I don’t.

I have accepted everything that happens to me as happening precisely the way it should

I am living and dying at precisely the same time

I reek of both desolation and ecstasy

I am embodied by nothing; there is no single word, or symbol, or parameter that could contain the fragments of my soul, strewn about they are inside of me

The place in which I reside can be inhabited by no more than one. With one it already faces the danger of overpopulation

Too much happens here, and none of it is reported

Sometimes I believe I am living the most interesting life to have been lived

Sometimes I stop everything for a moment to bow my head in silence,

Breathing in the essence of exactly who I am.

It’s been twenty-one years and I still can’t put my finger on it.

 

detaching

I wanted to be the sad poet but I couldn’t handle it anymore
This drowning myself with my own grief
This taking every weight upon my back like it was mine to carry
Like finally crossing the finish line would amount to anything but my own demise
Making art from pain is healing
But only making art that hurts is a form of suicide
I was destroying myself for the greater good
Sacrificing my innards for the sake of art and what beauty it brings forth
But all I ever caused was the release of more pain, urging these tortured artists to keep being complicit in their own suffering.
I can’t stand by idle as my body degrades and my soul tears off a piece every day
No piece can justify my death
No lived experience is worth re-living, if it brings me to my knees and drags me closer to the ground
Where I convinced myself I belonged, amongst the insects and the roots that ground to the earth more beautiful things than me
Does any artist realize how important they are?
How humans need art, to revolve around, to live in the shadows of, to bow to and to be taught to surrender?
Does any artist allow themself to detach from their art?
To measure their self-worth in other ways, like their positive interactions with friends who don’t read their works but care about their journey
I’ve been read by some and not read by many
I’ve been read by myself the most, by far
I’ve been torn apart and fallen back together, naturally. Like the creation and destruction of the seasons.
It’s a cycle.
But I must liberate myself before my passion becomes my vice.
Before my oasis becomes my prison and my words become my weapons.
I am powerful, whether I harness this searing energy or not. I can create just by being, who I am, where I am, at this very moment and taking a step back to breathe in what I’ve made and assess if it is what i need to move forward on a path that speaks of progress
And not burying myself in a wealth of trauma,
I said poetry was my lifeblood and it very much still is
I said I give birth to poems, the only children I’ll ever have
I hung onto my own words-
And hung myself
I sacrificed myself for my children.
But poetry cannot be the end for me it is merely a place to mark my words and I can’t keep moving forward if I keep recording and re-reading the past like my obsession. I have more to offer. There’s more to hope for then turning pain into beauty.                                                                                                                             Sometimes pain isn’t beauty.                                                                                                   It’s just pain.