Monday, August 30, 2021

1/30 Dear Body

Dear body, I will not do to you what people have done to the earth. our streams will be clear our limbs will stretch & grow tall I will not cut you down nor cut you up
Dear body, I am sorry I have made mistakes I have medicated my consciousness tried to numb emotions and sense which are your life blood I am sorry that I never thought you were beautiful that I covered and hid things about you which I couldn't accept You were always the more honest part.
there are still places on my skin that I face with barely more than a wince.
I am changing. you've grown on me
teaching me that it's okay to hurt I will heal. our soft places are a source of strength I have the power to grow these bones  out from under me though I've spent most of my life chasing after their brittle giggle just to feel my foundations quake.
I don't love you quite yet, shell of my ghost skin over my bones but I'm definitely in like with you in the headwater-  the pollution began with my thoughts that together we could never be enough that the damage began during conception it wasn't the line of my fault now I see, we are the same you are not just the vehicle for my soul you are the measured seconds of the time I have left
I will worship you with kindness adorn you with comfort hear you when you call revel in your awake I will see that the lines between us  are not precise therefore where you fall, we fall
Dear body, I am on my way to you.


Wednesday, July 21, 2021

To the Real Child Whose Real Parents Named Him: Whiskey

I hope your siblings are named Rum and Tequila
and not Ruth and Timmy
I hope your Mom wasn't trying to name you
after your Dad
I hope the kids in your grade school
had no concept of Whiskey as a noun

I hope you're not related to the baby named Hashtag
I hope you both know you can change your name
I hope you do
I hope you don't

I hope you love your name 
I hope it isn't Bobert Baratheon Catastrophe
I hope it is
I hope you're the first of many
I hope I live long enough to meet
Whiskey Bobert Baratheon Catastrophe the fifth
I hope people never stop asking you if it's ey or y
and when they do, 
I hope you say it's neat with a beer back



To the Real Parents Who Named Their Real Child: Whiskey

I have nothing to say to you.

Saturday, July 3, 2021

Nectar

There is an hour in my mind
when we are like Gods
& I sucked nectar from your lips
           Remember?
I swore we’d never be hungry again.
But, now, my stomach rumbles
           Like an oubliette.
A lonely galaxy speckled 
like isolated prairie campfires
we don’t know our neighbors
anymore than we know ourselves
grunting cavemen pointing at their own fingers
& maybe it’s only this festering vacancy           Where God used to beI’ve tried to carve a purpose into it     What purpose can I have without a creator?     What meaning without a beloved?There is an hour in my mind when there was nothing as sweetas the nectar in my tongueor as meaningless               now that I am gone. 

She

She was a soul-renewing
gift from the universe
straight to my
earthbound experience

She was a newly hatched maggot
writhing under my skin
devouring life as she met it
in my most delicate places

She was unimaginable 
pen-to-poet contours deformed shadows
      Of a touch
      Of a whisper

She hurried in like hunger
and stayed like an unbreakable fast
regardless of how I feel, I was never 
      sated.

She snuck in like mist
and lingered like a rolling monsoon
regardless of the dreams I wanted to bloom-
I flooded

She was better from a distance
She was the put of napping kitten
and the mystery of the sound
Slick red nails sliding on slate
and the desperate need for it to end

She was gone before I was ready
and echoed the sound of mostly
never knowing her
at all. 

Sonja

She sees my almost tears
the lightening of letting go
from the dust on the riverbeds
begging to water my cheeks

She asks- will we ever go home again?

I dance with a crooked smile
because it’s easier to chew a cliché 
than a knot you can’t swallow

No, I say. We can’t go home again.

I was raised in paradise 
by two broken parentheses 
strangers came and held the truth of my family
spread open
dissected
An experiment in tragedy
Undigestable.

Sonja said her father touched her
Asking in a tiny voice for me 
to wipe the slate clean
What does untouched feel like?
I try to relate
My sisters were taken away
Incest was exhaust fumes in a car left running
going nowhere
Purposeless. Deadly.
Pulling back skin from innocent bones 
that now only grow
crooked.
What does untouched feel like?
How does safe taste?
Clean isn’t clean without dirty. 
Home isn’t home without homeless.

No, I say. We can’t go home again. 

Friday, June 11, 2021

Memorial Day 2021

We left Galveston for the red dirt
I ached leaving the ocean
Deep wounds in my body that never close
They bleed fresh, salty, sad.
Yet something was healing
Our blended family for the first time
Together
All chipped porcelain in our own ways
All not the shapes we were expected to be
Yet, together
Then
A man sideswiped our bubble
I revved to 90
Knowing we had to get his license plate
Understanding he was running from his mistake
Finally, he pulled over and my someday wife,
Said No.
What he did to us was not okay.
I turned to ask our children
If they were okay
Assuming they’ve ever known “okay”
Assuming I was okay enough for them to say they were not. 
Slowly, I recognized, my goal will never be to protect my wife or children 
Because, I know I never can
But to be a person they can say when they are not okay
And for each of them to know, 
I will defend our bubble.

Memorial Day 2021

We left Galveston for the red dirt
I ached leaving the ocean
Deep wounds in my body that never close
They bleed fresh, salty, sad.
Yet something was healing
Our blended family for the first time
Together
All chipped porcelain in our own ways
All not the shapes we were expected to be
Yet, together
Then
A man sideswiped our bubble
I revved to 90
Knowing we had to get his license plate
Understanding he was running from his mistake
Finally, he pulled over and my someday wife,
Said No.
What he did to us was not okay.
I turned to ask our children
If they were okay
Assuming they’ve ever known “okay”
Assuming I was okay enough for them to say they were not. 
Slowly, I recognized, my goal will never be to protect my wife or children 
Because, I know I never can
But to be a person they can say when they are not okay
And for each of them to know, 
I will defend our bubble.

Saturday, January 16, 2021

We are Gods With Our Senses

we are gods with our senses
judging what 
looksgood feelsgood isgood 
from what does and is not
all roads leading to evolution
however winding they seem
we have every right to grow however the sun awakens us
and find a water source even in the hardest rock

I have stumbled on many rocks

in some bitter moments
I have known the bite of a thousand dirty hands on my tongue,
silencing where they touched
touching where I hid
forgetting to feel the pleasant things
that hadn't left yet
still feeling the invasions
that were long gone

this morning I looked through blinds
and in that half-inch second,
the whole world was one blue sky

I don't have a point if you're waiting

this is a poem about the way we censor our joy
& our lives together
but I’m stumbling
the lines between brilliant and distasteful overlap
we are that flavor

I know it's a cliché but I don't love anyone as much
as those willing to cut me up
those able to say 
they see through the façade
and love me anyway

I don't have a point if you're waiting

I think we should give love lost a proper burial
burn it like an offering of gratitude, 
to any eyes searching the sky for hope
Yes, Virginia, connections are tenable
and yet tentative in every moment

she asked me, calm as you like,
If I remembered when we were dinosaurs together
I pulled her into myself
and split my ribcage to nestle her in
I discovered in her midnight fingertips-we are all the fingers of the same god's hands
I discovered we are all
remembering how to live for the first time.
and yet again in every moment
and I never wrote a poem as true
as the scream I gave with my first breath
so, if life's worth comes from honest pain,
I will accept nothing less