Ugly Animals

Who are we then,
alone and monstrous
in broken fangs and
with cruel hearts

Ugly animals
inventing truth
If that could deter us
from devouring each other

We get cold
We cradle one another
We remember,
reciting sentences written for us

Weakened, bloodied monsters
fearful of solitude,
Holding one another
up to a dingy light

We want to know
what each other believe
Our truths cannot shock
even as we dismember

Mutation

through my vowels
You will always hear me
I repeat

Lyricism is fall-out,
now necessary
Nature has no foresight

There is no need to be gentle
We can’t
We have never

There will always be reaction
Everything is evolved always
until there is its memory

I use this mutation,
the one closest
to being sincere

Class Notes

Linguistic behavior
is not fossilized

Memories crack
and are laughed at

Traces leftover gossip past truths
without externalization

That impulse, unrestrainable,
to explain oneself

It is optimistic
to accept lack of permanence

The reasons for the first act
are past men’s secrets

Fossils can’t tell jokes
They have no metaphor

The lust for kinship
creates countless realities

Each instant is perceived
categorically

We are secret

We are secret
in your language
In ours

Six hundred year-old ghosts
covered in the blood of lying prophets,
unable to stop confessing

Why are you talking about that
Stonefaced and aloof
My skin always smirks

We celebrate sorrow justly,
mocking and teasing it
It is a rainbow

I will confess your sins for you
They are buried in the desert
They are secrets now

Gods of stone drinking blood
My heart
Our gift is the beauty of death

I am a corpse
in a linen dress
hugging you close at night

We are secrets
and we laugh at your tears
when we are dying

In the Morning At Night

In the morning
when it’s cool and still
I sometimes forget for a moment
I am stuck
I am surrounded by the inane
and broken doors
and familiar boredoms
I am disgusted with myself
Everyone else is disgusting
I forget for a moment
I want to wring out all my organs
Spill my memories into a pail,
Bury them under this city
Walk away from all of you
You all claim to love me
I am stuck
It might be all my fault
I thought too highly of myself
Progress isolated
is not a gain
I do not admire it
I do not admire isolation
At night I remember always
I am taunted by my own rage
It is lonely and paralyzing
Opportunity entices
but it is fleeting
It is taken away
I am left with more memories to wring
For all my movement
and patient readjusting,
I am stuck
Brief hope stings the most
In the morning
At night

The Original Heartbreak

How long did the original heartbreak last

Weaponless,
with no genetic memory to shield
against inexperience

Colossal, unfulfilled dreams
demand biological communication

It was Love, or Death, or Time

An unrequited gesture
Regret, perhaps
All heartbreak is the original

We learned to stagger words in space,
to force progress over defeat

Sorrow taught us syntax

Before it,
had anyone ever looked
at one another in the eye

For the first time, words
They were wretched and salty

We mutated, vulnerability the new code

Stone hearts created tools,
Lyric to describe the first lament
A new ability to share the internal

The original heartbreak gave voice
It was the end of silence

Once a Decade

I don’t need your blessing
to speak my sins

Multi-colored

I enjoy all of them

Once a decade
I dance with someone important to me

Some moments don’t cease

Even though I chose too early

I cry out loud
alluring self-preservations

Wasted dance is sin

I enjoy all of them

I try not to punish
based on how I feel

Atonement cannot infiltrate past tense

Moments too much to bless

Pulse

I demand you feel
the pulse of my blood

Envy is for those who are optimistic
I have no idea how deep your pain goes

Don’t expect me to be wicked

I have already cursed you forever
The moment is indelible

You are cursed and I feel you
feeling the pulse of my blood

It rests angrily between

Yes, that is fear in my voice

I am told my words are careless
Almost

I am seismic
and detached from you all

Yes, that is fear in my voice
I didn’t think you could hear it

I am glad they seem that way
It’s true

I don’t know the distance
between any two points in space

There is too much to control
I have fault lines

What I say is natural
Though in fact distance changes always

Seismic words attempt to predict
my magnitude

It is almost unnoticeable
They detach and resettle

They are almost careless
but you hear it in my voice

Refugee

Two thousand fall into the sea
This is not a romantic migration
This is fear, and last resorts

We bat our eyelids in confusion

You can see pictures of dead children
washed up on a foreign shore
scrolling on a waterproof phone

Our horrors turn into social trends

Words like geopolitical climate
are just as destructive as mortar shells
and ruthless faith shot out of machine guns

All gods have failed us always

Refugees do not have time for frivolous
existential debates on true love and art
over glamorous cocktails and sardonic laughs

They have dead children on foreign shores

Guilty words set to rhythm
are just as cheap
Empathy won't keep boats afloat

Even heartfelt guilt is a luxury

There is fury and misplaced judgment
There is fear and macabre endings
There is separation: us and them

Controlled divisions break eventually

G.L.K.

Thick black roped braids
singing operas to silk ribbons
I always glowed

Unsubtle, tacky pride
born in a town meant for mining
kept tears short and laughs long

You are a pilgrim, once free
now trapped, disgusted
There are still seeds in your pocket

Save that obsidian resolve,
You have always been adrift
Clumsy vowels cannot not carry you

Joviality, horror, magic
The demand for strength
has never ceased

We were happy then
despite bloody broken roots
restrung with plastic winter lights

Your sorrow smiled always
A gleaming skull laughing, skinned
plucking melody from memory

Thinking of you pierces my heart
I pinch myself not to weep
at your quiet decay

Your wrath is mine, I see it
Too many days have passed
I plait my own hair now

Your grief will burn bright
when your opera ends
You will be untethered

Insomnia

I’m going to die
from lack of sleep

Dreams hover just outside
not knowing if they should

They tell me things
I don’t wish to know

Without these frights
I am not real

I am destroyed by the grief
of being awake all the time

I want to have kind dreams
where there is no denoument

I want to sleep
waking up to someone’s kindness

I shift through time
between wrinkled sheets

I feel everything absolutely
at every moment

There is no pain
There is no relief