Harmonics

I always used to say,
“Someday,
I’ll look back at all this and laugh.”
“Someday,
I’ll wonder why I even cared.”

I don’t know if it’s Someday yet,
but I can already see
that those notions of eventual triumph
were more naive than the petty emotions
they were meant to overcome.

As I’ve drawn closer to the turgid purgatory of middle age
I’ve become increasingly certain,
that whichever maladies or malaises
are crawling around in my skull,
they’re following me into the grave.

Sometimes a silent surrender
is an invisible victory.

Sometimes balance
is the best umbrella.

The Pharaohs' Tomb

I know without any doubt,
that my childhood self would love
the person we’ve become–
of course he would,
my house is a
monument to his memory,
right down to the Star Wars bed-sheets.

Unfortunately the one of us
that’s actually alive
needs somewhat more than
a boxed copy of Battletoads to make him happy.

Sometimes being surrounded by
these cluttered walls feels like living
in the tomb of a postmodern child-king:
A Tut for the new millennium,
surrounded by hoarded treasures,
and enough entertainment to weather
the eternal afterlife of adulthood.

Roman Rooms

My survival is built
on an elaborate system of workarounds,
dams and bridges
criss-crossing my brain
like a second set of veins,
or a neural treasure map
with x’s marking the spots,
most marked by exes.

Still I find myself wandering,
in moments of fragility,
the twisting backroads
of memory.

Maladie

Too often, we lock ourselves up, forgetting
that heartbreak is a fever you can’t sweat out.
Resting a while might make you feel better,
but eventually you’re going to have to get up,
and walk it off.

The Tenebrist

My life has been a study in contrast,
in small things casting long shadows,
and convulsions of light scraped away
from a canvas of matted black.

I’m made of flesh stolen from the poor,
a heart broken by its first beating,
a brain forever bored and boring.

I’m stitched together with grit and gristle,
snips and snails, dead-ends and dark alleys.

The world is, by most accounts, a beautiful place,
but my eyes have not yet adjusted to the light.

Sol Invictus

It’ll always be tacky—
the first subject of the rookie artist—
but there’s primal beauty,
(and beautiful primality)
in the rising of the sun,
that no amount of clumsy analogizing,
or heavy-handed brushwork
could ever wholly dispel.

Covenance

What is a promise
but an attempt to pre-write history?

We all know these words are lies,
and yet we say them with conviction,
because we mean them,
as sincerely as we can mean anything.

A promise is a still-life portrait,
of a moment in time, where
our desires were powerful enough
to unmake the rules.

Birthstones

Each of us was passed through
the guts of our mother,
like a swallowed stone.

Even after they shat our slimy bodies
into the arms of a stranger,
they still had to carry us home.

They carried us out of the emptiness,
and through the years of swirling dark,
until we were old enough to hate them for it.
——————
I’m sorry, mom.
I’m sorry I saw you
as a sad little girl
who swallowed a magic pebble
so she would never be lonely again;

because maybe that was true,
when our story began,
but you became so much more,
a woman, a mother,
an Orphic heroine.

And yet, you never stopped being sad,
or even lonely.
and despite our combined efforts,
I’m just like you,
minus me.

Parasitic Twins

I read once that if you want to expel a tapeworm,
you can starve yourself for a few days, then hold your face
over a pot of simmering buttermilk.

Sometimes I sit and stare at this blinking cursor,
because I feel like there must be something inside of me,
feeding. I want to feel it slither.

Up, and out.

I want to be unimpressed at the sight of it,
writhing, dying under the electric light.

I want to be overwhelmed by the ordinariness,
of the things that I consume and that consume me.

I want to be well.

Exody

I am standing on the doorstep
looking back into my darkened home,
one hand resting stubbornly on the handle,
just watching, breathing, blinking—waiting.

I look as though I’m checking
to see if I’ve forgotten anything,
but really I’m just afraid—afraid
of letting go and of taking those first steps.

I have always been so afraid.

Lunacy

My battle with depression has been like
the moon’s battle with the sea;
long, slow tugs of war,
perceptible only to the unobservant.
—————
The ocean is breathing,
in gasps and sighs, and awkward waves,
unable to stop from chasing
the ever-falling pearl.

Odysseys

I always feel loneliest when I wake up—
when I reach into the matted darkness,
and feel only the cold side of the bed.

Weren’t you here just a moment ago?
I must have been dreaming of you again,
though for now my memory is merciful.

I remember passing time in a borrowed bed.
I would have stayed in that room forever,
tracing fingerprint tessellations in your skin.

Unfortunately things didn’t work out that way,
but you’re still out there, somewhere,
and it’s not too late for you

to find your way home.

Digital Analogy

It's been years since I heard your voice, your true voice,
resonating through your delicate bones,
and breaking apart in the unworthy air.

Instead, through some miracle of the modern age,
I am given electronic reinterpretations
and dot-matrix portraits, in the style of Life.

It's not that I'm ungrateful for our conveniences--
I love the glow of your digital ghost--
but I do miss that third dimension,

(and those other three senses).

Ginnungagap

I’m too tired to focus.
I lie paralyzed, staring into the near-total darkness.
My wandering thoughts pause on my open eyes,
and the black holes yawning in their centers,
stretching to swallow every stray photon,
and force it to mean something.

Tonight, the winds blow black.

Tectonics

I have always been sentimental to the brink of cowardice-
can’t move on, can’t let go, can’t turn away-
too afraid of losing what I have
to find anything new.

Obviously the world doesn't work that way-
people change, people leave, people die-
and I have lucid moments when I know
this is the only way it could ever work.

I feel myself carried away by great gusts of time,
always with the feeling that I wasn't quite ready,
that if I could have just found surer footing,
I might have kept it together.

Disillusionment

One of the problems posed
by the introspective
descent-into-the-maelström
(of which I am very much in the middle)
is that the illusory walls
we wrap ourselves in
begin to flicker.
How can we stay focused
with the depthless void
yawning at our feet?

What do we do
when we find we can do anything?
When impossibility is the only impossibility,
and the only time wasted
is the time spent worrying
about time being wasted.