Graffiti

you should know I kept writing

though you begged me to stop

said we weren't doing anything

except digging daggers down deeper

except watering & widening winter's wounds

& I knew, as I usually do, that you were right

I wrote 

anyway

I had to keep penning the SOS with each heartbeat

it wasn't in me to stop

it would've been worse if I had

I knitted you too well to me,

cross-hatched bone to bone

I wrote you in my eyes opening each day knowing they wouldn't rest on you;

in the long lonely walks beneath the spectrum of autumn branches;

in the many meals that had lost all flavor;

in my hunger to never eat again.

I tagged your name everywhere

and added 

some bridges were meant to burn

others should never have been built. 

Weary

I know why my mother moved so slowly,
why my father stayed down when he sat
there is a weary ache in my bones
which sleep fails to appease
it's the hollow of something missing:
youth, or hope, or time
I sometimes feel I am becoming ghostly
before my body has even gone
I sometimes feel my spinning stop
the fertile energy which rotates this space
settles at my side
she relocates her turn into a yearn to
Remember?
Remember.

Circleskirt

she has hips
that could birth a religion
the kind of layers
you'd need a rosetta stone to decipher
on the day she was born,
she was regarded as less
than a charcoal lump of disappointment
the world has not been clever enough
to erect monuments in her honor
most days you can still see
the cracks in her skin where starshine
is draining out
it's only been seven years
since the last time she tried to die
to prove, they were all right
but I see her
she has the kind of hips
that were made for riding love hard
the kind of backbone built
to prove, they were all wrong
on the day she was born,
there was no welcome mat
there was only daybreak
which has tried to break her
and has failed

Tempus Edax Rerum

I used to be a beauty
you wouldn't believe it, to look at me now
I used to be cathedral holy,
before I refurbished this jesus-house
women in my world cannibalized self/other
trying to become something beautiful
the female of our species knows how to be sexy:
cut, curl, diet, burn, bleach, pin & cover
until bile is all that we taste from meals missed and forced down
until we can't even remember our natural hair color
I am not made of rock candy
I was not made to market my funny face
I wouldn't have it any other way
my reflection used to be a quick and embarrassed stranger
until I learned the courtship waltz
of my own full-grown principles
whoever I thought I was dying to attract
could never fill the void
which loving myself has.

NPR

Rethinking every word but standing thick while questioning:
I'm worried because NPR keeps asking for money
like I'm the only one listening
and I'm broke.


I'm worried because I think most people finally fall in love only
when they're losing someone.
At least it's true for me, so I leave a little more every day
as I scream into the loud sound of your silence
your addictive elocution: exquisite
I've never missed the shape of your voice as much
as when it is not on the round-about of my neck
I've said too much
All I meant is here-
time is kinder, softer, sweeter
with you near.


I didn't tell you that I wouldn't mind hiding in your pockets
the soft crevices of your spine
marinating in the words of a book written in a language
that I will never master
even now, my tongue wanders the chapel of my mouth
as a caged bird
rolling each syllable around as wildfire rain
I wanted to be carried around and sprinkle buttercup kisses
on your Everywhere
carried only
until you are ready to let go.
I didn't tell you that I wouldn't mind being
the one you leave.


I still listen to NPR even if I'm the only one.
I like to think the folks there don't mind
speaking into the void
that getting by
matters more than money
that there are things that must be said
even & especially when no one is listening

Royster Bryant Taylor the 3rd

five years ago
I stopped calling my dad
it was his punishment
for being too old to make the mistakes
he kept making
after all, he's the one that taught me
this is what families do
we do not stay to heal what has broken


yesterday I kissed a girl
whose girlfriend did not know
I thought I was too old to make the mistakes
I keep making
so here is where I run
unintentionally bleeding watercolors
and character being the stain after the fade
I cannot blame my father for this


but maybe
he deserves a call

The Color of Sound

I actually thought
ben harper was white
that both jack johnson & tom waits
were black
that sound came in color
as a child I thought
being in love
was like a piñata explosion
bursting with a sunset ride
with the prizes of life
trailing shortly behind
until that awkward age when
growing up was no longer fun,
I wanted to think there was still a knight for me
a fairy tale wedding, picket fences,
pitter-patters


At six I was gonna get big just to eat oreos
and nothing else, all day
I'm serious
I thought adults could do anything
I thought clouds might be made of cotton candy
and if I could find my way up there
I'd leave a disastrously sticky sweet mess of the world
and I could
and I have


I think of love, especially at sunset
when the sky is a confectioner's wetdream
on mountaintops I have felt clouds
slip through my fingertips
colorless, substance-less
this is the love I know


At eight I really thought there were fences
that separated states and countries- just like the maps
I still feel more european than american
& am fully aware I don't know
what either really means
but that it's tragic to only have one hometown
or to ask permission to travel my earth
those lines that I thought were fences,
really are there.


In the space between six and eight I grew a taste
that not everything is possible
I've spent most of my time here learning the rules
and the rest, imaging otherwise
clinging to love's promised fairytale
knowing the whole time that for me,
it does not exist.