31 August, 2015

Strange Grammars


The constraints of thought
are drafted by strange grammars

We write love letters
trying to explain Past
flailing wildly in Present

I know how to create Love
without understanding its punctuation

We write down our dreams
We sing them for others
Courage exists

To think without using language
To love without presumption

The first poem was to appeal
to the ancient structure
that allowed it

Words are acts of love
toward human thought

We correct the grammar
and Present turns old
Love is written


30 August, 2015

Speak Plainly Now



I’m tired of metaphor
Speak plainly! Or else
get lost at sea
It may make no difference
but I have vanity and
cannot act insincere around it

I am lost at sea
clumsily using beautiful words
as a raft
I don’t want to sink
These words are chum though
and there are beasts ready

I’m lost and it’s cold
and the metaphors used
for warmth and safety
are not compass nor astrolabe
If I sink, my broken sincerity
will sink too

The words are heavy but buoyant
They need to glisten in sunlight
They are plain now,
as they all should have been
This raft is bare but may yet
stay afloat

Speak plainly now,
for we are here
each on small rafts
waiting for daybreak
or a wave, or a beast
We tire, we sink

29 August, 2015

Testing for Amblyobia

SELF
DISCIPLINE
IS BORING WHEN
THERE IS NO INCENTIVE
OTHER THAN TO SEX UP THE
EGO

Testing for Color Vision Deficiency

THE
SOUL OF THE
WORLD IS
BLACK AND BLUE
FROM ALL OUR
DREARY ENERGY

Testing for Astigmatism

WHY
CANT THERE
ALWAYS BE
THIS GORGEOUS
SILENCE
BETWEEN US

Testing for Migraine with Aura

THIS
POET WANTS
TO INSTILL FEAR
INTO THE HEARTS OF THOSE
WHO HAVE AT LEAST SOME SENSE OF
RHYTHM

Testing for Hyperopia

MY
LOVE IS
SCIENTIFIC
SO MAKE SURE
TO TAKE GOOD
NOTES

Testing for Myopia

IS
THERE
SPACE FOR
REGRET IN
SOLITUDE

27 August, 2015

Shut Up



Once I figure out what solves
the snare between language
and all of human existence,
I will never have to speak again

There is always science afoot
even when lovers love

I continue sleuthing religiously
I bathe in clues
to find the best way
for us all to just SHUT UP

My methods seem arbitrary,
though there is glorious silence with a few

The code can be cracked
if reduced to its pure form
Interaction and interpretation
too often miss the mark

All we do is shout
bruising lungs, pilfering harmony

Once I solve the puzzle,
we’ll all have peace
There will only be silence
as there was at the very start



A Poem Written Between Vacuuming and Child-Raising and Going to Class and Feeding the Cat and Insomnia and Reckless Heartache and Dish-Washing and Working and Sitting Calmly and Writing Other Poems

We throw bullets at one another
and cause impossible tempers
How are we capable of so much
There is something wrong

We fashion black round bombs
to celebrate selfish gods
They are laughing at us from distant stars
that have already died

We present each other with lies
wrapped in ugly money and plastic
We hide our wickedness behind smiles
and kill ourselves, attempting apology

We knife out joy and murder nature
claiming injustice and discovery
We have always diseased
We will always mutilate

We burn each others’ happiness
possessed by hoary egos
We spray clean blood on clean earth
There is something wrong



Skirt


I wear my new psychopathy
as a bright red skirt
You will never know
what you have lost
It is impossible to explain
Greed and selfish vices
blanket you in a confused tantrum
I’m just walking in my skirt
careful not to trip, uncaring
I want to be more beautiful,
if now depraved
Shout all you want
Cry
My breaths remain even and quiet
I feel unnatural, even sick,
but free
Rage is red and I wear it all day
I use it to decorate, not vex
Our childish exchanges have aged
I am graceful now
I no longer need to share
I no longer need to listen
When there is nothing left,
there can be freedom, without fear
More than ambivalence,
I have a simple peace
I walk in my bright red skirt
There is no need for amends



25 August, 2015

Annoying 12th Grade Anatomy Doodle



My legs are for walking
My voice is for singing
My arms are for hugging
My hips are for fucking
My waist is for dancing
My eyes are for knowing
My hands are for holding
My smile is for trying
My tears are for cleaning
My brain is for writing
My laugh is for speaking
My heart is for


23 August, 2015

Monster Vol. 3



How does one become devout
How does one remove filth from the soul
left there by others’ hearts
I was eaten in the desert
The monster told me cowards taste the best
Their loneliness is the sweet fruit from trees
I have never uttered a prayer before
When I met this monster, I felt useful
but we tricked each other into thieving time
I wanted to understand its attention
It asked to eat my heart
It said that was the only way
to give me anything
I taste bitter but am ripe
No one knows how to listen to my scripture
I gave in, and it ate in frenzy
I tried not to feel but the habit fits too well
Yet I still do not know how to waver
As the monster finished, it asked me to sing
laughing at both of our tears,
my blood stained on wooden teeth
I have no faith in commiserating
I kept quiet, the monster stared


22 August, 2015

Monster Vol. 2



I want to chew on your liver,
spit it out, and laugh gleefully
I want to play tricks on the young
and frighten them into empathy
Someone tricked me too
The unruly addiction to feel
now causes hunger for offal
Monsters are ancient and live inside volcanoes
Why does anyone ever try to be kind
Cruelty is elemental
It comes from inside caves and mountains
and the sea
The world gives birth to ghouls
who frighten themselves and each other
with broken teeth and fake smiles
Your organs taste like hot soil
They are delicious
and I want to have all of them
I want you to turn into a ghost
after I’ve snatched the blood inside your heart
I know it will cause my own haunting
All monsters were originally kind
but felt tricked
after swallowing unclear perceptions
of spiky truths
They thought they understood
So instead, they ate and terrorized
and did not blink ever again
I want to eat the past, throw it up,
and stare at it until it rots


4:47am, as Always



I took something to help me sleep
and dreamt I was yelled at in Chinese
because of a joke I tried to tell
The yelling was what woke me up
I woke and the whole street
was a soft blanket of white and grey moths
A man I've never met
confessed his love for me
in the dream
and I accepted his version of the truth
We sat next to each other, not speaking
That’s all I could stomach
It felt forced

When I woke, it was still night
The moths were not moving
and they wouldn't let the world breathe
I tried to go back to the dream
because I was hungry
and was just about to eat a meal
But dreams don’t let you do that
Dreams don't allow truancy or indecision
So I just stared at the moths
until they disappeared into the aurora
Sleep is cheap and brings no truth
Forced dreams and jokes and love
don't let anything breathe



21 August, 2015

Monster Vol. 1



All the headlines reek of murder
by ugly, piggish men with sour egos
It’s really quite disappointing
waking up to fear and bad habit
Strange injustices blanket the meek
a thousand miles away
while I sit on the grey stoop
embroidering words
There are monsters everywhere
and they are candid
And they chew gum
I want to be one
I want to be a monster
I want to reek of fear and breathe fire,
to understand destruction
I wake up to fear and silence
while piggish men try to fool the world



19 August, 2015

Dear, Sleep



Wild and painful suitor
I cling to your visits and uncompromising
indifference
You embarrass me!
I ache for your presence
Dark circles and fatigue are scars leftover
from your inconsistent acts
My wrath against you is laughable
You laugh and join me
at the witching hour
or at odd hours
when I have no time to be seduced
Dear, Sleep,
How many times will you disappoint?
Why must I continue to take your crumbs of attention?
I scream to surround myself with you
You laugh and leave according to your whims
Wild and painful, you seduce
without shame or care
Dear, Sleep,
You are brutal and I am weary



A Meandering Note on Love and Its Many Humors, Described Clumsily Through Excessive Metaphor



And what of Love
The sickness brought on suddenly
by electrons looking for valence
Salt-producing Love
lives on a musical scale
that waltzes through, a reckless host
of prayers and patience

All Love is true, if only momentary
Half moments shared on lawns
and in beds and between blinks
Great gasps of breath demanding
shared company, a salty gathering
of weight and atomic properties
All love is also untrue

The fever of Love is a great flower
sweating pollen onto the floor
Vomit odors hook into memory,
a nauseous bliss
Love’s greed is bacterial
Symptoms producing symphonies
no one has the stomach for

And what of Love
Its faces change shape endlessly
at all moments
Electron clouds exchanging time
The unkind rhythm shifts mid-song
The fever spikes
Truth and untruth have the same pitch




18 August, 2015

A Cornerless Room



I ache my heart in a cornerless room
I don’t care who sees me
Why ruin the view with harsh right angles
The room is silent and cornerless and bright
It smells like the desert

Poets assume the audience
wants to understand
They ache universally

Watch me crawl around the room
moaning at the moon,
stanzas strewn and ignored
Don’t build corners to sit down in
Don’t ruin my desert with your walls

Poets ache their hearts
They assume everyone can feel
as much as they do

If you like the view, stay
in the room, Stay as long as you want
The poet has no walls
I am boundless, like all the sand
in the quiet, cornerless desert




12 August, 2015

43:05:30




The mysterious dead are dead
I cut you out of me
before learning your name
or how your voice sounded when laughing
Now you are the bloodied ghost
of broken love
Mass graves inside minds, lost to time
When will we be free from ourselves
Will those trashed souls ever be found

Whomever they were, they are lost now
You are lost, because I said so
Baking in the sun, wasted

I was not courageous enough
Those with courage
are cut open, to spill water
They burned them and threw them in dirt
And laughed at their own clever depravity
But when given the choice to cut or to sow
I do the very same
Mysteries stay unsolved, veins split open
with machetes and unkindness
Clues are vacuumed out, miscarried

I will never be free from myself
Actions are machetes, splitting open souls
and They will never be found


10 August, 2015

Leftover



I sleep with my head pointed South
Upside down and inconsistent

I cannot speak my wishes aloud
Don’t complain
I don’t get to hear them either

No, I don’t need any sunscreen, thanks
I’m just exploring the depths of the human soul
Sunburns don’t bother me

I stared at the sun once during an eclipse
Most people lie and cover it with fear
and crepe paper
My eyes were fine and the sun didn’t care

Silence and inaction are murderers
If you face South, you’ll spill less blood
Of course I'm being serious

I only intend to speak aloud
if you keep the words in a treasure box
with all your treasures mixed in
so we forget whose is whose
and eventually throw the whole thing away


07 August, 2015

To Inka


My comet,
something to follow, in orbit
You are the author of my patience
We sing gently to one another, at night
We were born at the same time
Your breath reconfigured me
The past ended when I shook,
when you shook free
Our orbit is fearless
I can hear your heart inside my ears
while looking at the Moon
I have always heard it
I sing gently only to you, at night


Fever Haiku




Boiled blood beneath skin
Most contents under pressure
Hot reset button









04 August, 2015

A Poem about Luby’s, Written as Very Short Prose

I was going to start by writing about Chaucer,
but then realized I just wanted to use the name
Cafeterias are not about ego or myth
This was not an epic voyage
Luby’s was just for us, No Mother, No Mother Earth
She hated it and He loved it and so we’d
Go to LUBY’S! And I think the booths were maroon
Definitely they had those CHAIRS WITH WHEELS
on dark carpet, and our sweat from Texas would get cold
because of the a/c and the green jell-o we fought each other for
The food was all delicious and to expound upon this would
be a disgrace, a sweet cheapening trick to ruin a purity
Thick beige plastic and divisive migratory traditions
washed down by as much Sprite as possible
Pick your own poison! We were taught autonomy and
Eat all of it and Don’t play with it and Stop crying
Luby’s was the closest I have had to unsupervised gluttony
A hellpit and a sanctuary serving everything except regret

03 August, 2015

On a Log

They sit looking forward
on a log, side by side by side
feet dangling into river
They are effortlessly balanced
Water is cold
The forest breathes
They sit looking forward on a log
unable to get closer
unwilling to move apart

The river hums
Birds fidget
Days and nights take turns dancing
There is silent and bitter peace
They are resting with each other
by themselves
The log waits
Their feet dangle and they rest
side by side by side

02 August, 2015

feed insomniacs

Unfulfilled wishes
feed insomniacs
Piranhas, steel-faced and unkind
ruin perfectly good riverboat adventures
at night in the steamy sleepless dark
It is an unfulfilled wish
Remember?
Insomniac carnivores tear fragile wishes
that are shaped like cartoon yellow stars
Pillows falling from comets
in the steamy dark while they try to stay afloat
and not sink into nothing
It feels more than just wishful thinking
but when They bite in the dark,
those stars fall apart too fast to
Remember

Abyss

Enticed by great distances
and future myths memorized
alongside the beats of drum

Hearts beat
We were all once pilgrims
Violent migrants learning the world

Before color and time and sound
had to be accounted for
We set off, violating an abyss

Wood and stone set us across seas
Stars tied onto strings could tangle
We have always moved

We were once all stars
tied onto strings inside boats
sweating together at sea

Searching for unknown corners
that could rest weary beating hearts
Abyss demolished by discovery

Above the sea and under
we move to find our source
Learning the world as its stepped onto