Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any sad boi vibes that arise while reading my poetry
Come watch my mind’s old movies.
Each scene is clear as day.
Is the film reel heavy with hoping?
Is the projector dusty and dazed?
Could you please hit re-record.
Replace and wipe it clean.
Each memory sticks on my skin
& leaves a sickly sheen.
My hair changes with the seasons,
It was short to match my temper.
Montage of collarbone length;
Reverse mortgage to unremember.
Would you delete me if you could?
Do you recall the time I stole?
Are we bound to meet again,
Like Clementine and Joel?
Where am I from?
Beaches turned to boardwalks. Bricks in my gut.
Staring at my parents behind 8-month-old eyelashes, from a high chair at their favorite Italian restaurant.
We parked right outside.
Where am I from?
Not the metered spots that are never open, nor the 16th hotel, not the city you see in your magazine article. Not “The Best Winter Vacation Destination of 2024.”
This is not a destination, it’s my beginning.
Not a city, a town.
Not a place you bring the kids that they’ll vaguely remember in 10 years, the thought of gray clouds pummeling out their beach days.
One side of the sky a pastel horizon that I strum guitar under, the other side an unsettling darkness growing closer.
They don’t know that the clouds don’t listen to anybody.
Not even to me.
I was born in the rain — I carry its salt and stratospheric particles, made of witch hazel to soothe my cheeks, and the humidity of all my Florida summers.
The droplets find their home in the crease between my nose and my lips.
When they get too heavy, they reach my mouth.
I am made of them. They taste like me.
And so I will love.
I will love the sound of strings that need to be replaced.
And I will love the work that keeps me up past my bedtime.
I will love the young man who stirs my matcha latte
And my seat warmer when it drops a degree below 70.
I will love the graphs that I follow with tired eyes.
And the 30 minute drive to the beach.
I will love the mother and daughter across from me
While I wait for my phone to be fixed.
I will love it when I hear them talking to the man across from them.
I will love their shared tongue,
Their common ground,
Their faces when I say “salamat.”
The way I can see their teeth when they smile.
The way they wonder how I know.
The way I feel like I’ve known them for years.
I will love the way it makes my eyes blur.
I will try to remember that I know it all because of love.
I will love so that I cannot hate.
Even when I feel like there is none left.
Even when I want to take my last breath.
I will love.
I don’t care who you were.
Who are you today?
How did it reshape you
Old versions undrape you
Heel-dug Ego forced to give way?
Past evils among us
Are they here in the room?
Just like your past lives
You allow what survives
Old bodies asleep in their tomb.
I’d forgive all of yours
Up from flowered grave
While my old iterations
With their nasty temptations
Beg me to be saved.
My standard stays doubled
To unyielding degree.
Despite mutual destruction
I deny my own damn fluxion.
You’re acquitted, but go easy on me.
I looked forward to Tuesdays
And you probably did, too.
The garbage man waves
As he soaked up my praise
Each Tuesday the world anew.
To have a young mind
No hint of foreshadow
Oh, to be comfort-blind
See alien humankind
And make sense as you go.
Or I guess, how we went
Before familiar ongoing
Hundreds from a cent,
For wasting, I repent
The time I spent unknowing.
I just got back from buying food
Market more super each time.
My foreign feet surely intrude
With awe each aisle was imbued
Same body, but no paradigm.
I’ll wake up tomorrow without plan
Reclaiming my childhood eyes.
Savor the wave from the garbage man
Stripped of the jade from old lifespan
And simply be under blue skies.
One time I burned rose incense
In the midst of chaotic hope
That the smoke would find its way to my heart.
Today I burn some incense
Not rose—I know better.
Hope’s been replaced
By something I can’t name.
Nameless smells good,
But I’d still prefer blameless.
I fall asleep on my back
Perfumed listless and aimless.
I bought my mom some incense
Not rose—I know better.
She told me once she forgot to blow out the flame
And it burned down to its base.
Without scent
Without patience.
It’s silly, the mistakes that teach us peace.
My mind can lead the smoke now
And in it I look for signs.
If I focus hard enough
I can keep the smoke in line.
Control’s an airy concept
Elusive and divine.
Tonight I’ll burn rose incense.
Heart surgery supine.
Keen Aries is the god of war
So don’t you act surprised.
My april sun builds soft rapport
Before I act uncivilized.
Being a traitor feels so damn good.
Remember all is fair.
Weapons made of aching wood,
Women scorned, music rare.
I’m Gemini in my preying calm
Feather brown eyes of purity.
Got that June sign from hazel Mom
Playing with your worst insecurity.
Speaking of hazel, I just discovered
The green before Florida dawn.
Aquarius observant gently uncovered
Night’s conclusion so foregone.
The best part is my craving stays,
I loved it even more than I expected.
And I still would have despite your gaze
Your pain along with it erected.
This springtime war is not about you
It’s about my evolving potential.
I will lie, because to myself I stay true.
My fire sign’s essential.
Well, I guess that’s it.
Trader Joe’s let me down.
No more sumos, soft and full.
This lonely time around.
Just like people, habits change.
My orange ritual forced to shift.
I’ll try to be happy with minneolas
Joy unbearingly makeshift.
I’ll still lock eyes with the sun while I peel.
Smaller fruit from a different tree.
Produce imitates its grand yellow shape
Just like my days always imitate me.
I smile as I reach the very last piece.
Find the strength for goodbyes that I lack.
Until next year, my favorite season.
The snack that smiles back.
I wish it was like railroad tracks, so straight.
Etched into Earth, blueprint instead of fate.
Like the algebra I took in sixth grade.
Linear dance, predictable in wade.
Chronology works for those who know how
To love beyond thee, Shakespearean vow.
Careful my lover, tread still and be kind.
I still don’t break even, change left behind.
Every time I think I know what comes next.
Two weeks of slow burn, unbalanced paychecks.
Maybe calendar years are not for me.
Punished with black hole hours, awry, beastly.
Swirling in the undertow, dragged through hell and back
Flailing limbs catch old scents, smooth cologne and lilac.
Broke my own rules far too much to handle.
To your unswerving mind, I don’t raise a candle.
My box has almighty lightning
Never seen a storm so frightening
I don’t think the eye is near.
Monsoon fills my nostrils with dread
Even the horse buries its head
But the box is still transparent this year.
So you can probably see right through it
Closed eyes, criss-cross, candle-lit
To me meditating behind its veneer.
Electric moisture destroying wallpaper.
What’s it like up there above the vapor?
Is the ladder top calm and clear?
What’s the meaning in my hurricanes?
Of all the things my box contains,
I can’t believe the horse is still here.
God is a woman.
Fingernails painted red
Blood for life
And blood for death.
The touch of Creation.
10 foot oak arms grand
Sickly soft
And sappy sweet.
In a dream I made it to heaven.
She wrapped them around me
And with all her conviction,
All of her full-bodied, descending, omni-loving
Supernatural peace
She sighed
“I forgive you.”
My Florida friend showed me a Florida song
But Tennessee whiskey still soothes the back of my throat.
I thought of sending it to ears that I know would relish in light vocals,
The ones that sound like soda pop
Sundresses swaying on Appalachian hilltops
But maybe I should start keeping some things to my little peninsula.
The first thing that’s belonged to me in a long time.
I wish the west coast didn’t call so loudly.
And when I scream “I hear you” to the Pacific highway map,
It whispers back “I know”
But continues its siren cry anyway.
When my favorite band sets up shop in San Francisco
And my eyes drip sweet Grecian sea,
And I can’t tell whether Atlantic time is hours ahead or too far behind
I wonder if anything is timeless.
Maybe just not for me.
I know why convertible sales go up in the summer
And why Lexapro scripts do not.
I know why I forget nudging zinc on my nose
Just to be reminded by a later sunspot.
I know why last weekend felt like a second
And why two years was its own fable.
The ending cliché, just like this metaphor,
Did I look forward or was I unable?
I know why I never saw this coming,
Ego hiding plain future from fair thought.
The bad doesn’t last, and the good never stays
But they both leave around what they brought.
Snow in my car, I left the roof open.
And not even aloe will soothe my burn.
I still don’t believe them when they say it gets better
But maybe I’ll just never learn.
I wish I could play the piano
Lento to teach me the pace of solitude.
To find the gray nuance you stole
On a string of
Black and white keys
black and blue fists.
I wish I could play the fiddle
Because nothing makes me shatter
Like folk sweet as summer peaches
Biting right into tender skin
Endless fruit, the pit somewhere far away.
We knew the band.
I wish I could play the bass,
Stand-up legs on buckling knees
Because bassists know a secret that we don’t.
Need to learn more instruments
Because acoustic tangles my hair.
My own lonely symphony,
The reverb is grim to me,
A slowly moving prayer.
She takes her chalk
And her pink corduroy pants
Down to the dock.
Legs dangle above,
Barnacles below,
And the wood gifts crevices
Made for skin to fill.
She fits in perfectly.
And she will use the daylight,
Its transience a problem for tonight,
To hum and watch the wind play with the water,
And draw people that look like trees,
And wonder if the crab she sees today
Is the same crab she saw yesterday,
Or if this is just the other crab’s wife.
Sometimes I forget my age by accident
And sometimes I forget it on purpose.
Either way, I get to be with the little one
and tell her that it is the same crab as yesterday
and the day before.
And so are we.
I eat my orange alone
And sometimes I eat the rind
Because if I can make the bitter sweet,
Months of tears can be redefined.
Each carpel peels off slowly
Teaching me to listen, to stop and hear.
Who knew citrus had so many lessons?
Only March and it’s been a long year.
I can smell it on my fingertips
Infatuated with the taste.
Juice grazes each thought of my wandering mind
Unbothered, unsettled, unchaste.
When will I ever learn?
Maybe once orange season ends too soon.
Just when I got used to golden fruit
On each lonely afternoon.
If I had grown up with brothers
What would they have thought of me?
Nothing but an X
A soft gaze, light hands
In their world of mastery and charge.
Would they have seen my skill?
Or noticed my nuanced understanding
My faceted wit
My linear mind or my desire for more?
Would they have been threatened?
By the commitment,
The burning incessant route I take,
Gnawing my way up
Because I see what I can be.
My deep knowing that it’s on the same plane.
So close they can’t stand in my way.
If I had grown up with brothers
Would my dad have loved them more?
Would my spirit have been muddled
By less fatherly love?
Not that there was much
But still enough.
Would his teaching hands
Be replaced by teaching gloves
Catching their baseballs
70 miles per hour.
Like my heart.
No, my head.
Would I have had to beg to be seen?
Not begging now,
But I’m moving at the speed of a light with too many corners to illuminate.
Too much momentum to stop and wonder
If I had grown up with brothers
Would they love me more than my sisters do?
Would I value their bond over my work?
Would I feel protected,
A desire that I loathe calling mine?
Would they have made me feel strong behind their armor
Or too weak to defend my home of skin and bones?
So many what-if’s.
Femininity amplified by the thought of men;
God, I can’t escape it.
Masculinity complacent, just beneath the surface
When I need it now the most.
I think I would have liked brothers.
Every color I write in has a shade of despair,
Sadness I don’t even know exists until I make it into words.
Turquoise, azure, navy, or midnight blue all look the same.
The sentences themselves create new flavors of sorrow.
My words lay down fresh paths for me to crawl along
Soil beneath my nails.
It feels so thick, dense with a
truth that follows me despite my attempts to leave it behind.
My words are made of lines and curves.
So sterile and uniform
That what they imply could only be so
Raw, visceral, unkempt, stabbing.
My words love irony.
And I love my words.
Addicted to the pain that they make me feel,
Help me feel.
The way they reopen tender pink scars,
micro-wounds I don’t notice
Until my entire body bleeds.
And then I use those drops to finish my paragraph.
Blood to paper, skin to soil, eyes to salt.
A city so warm but it leaves me so cold.
A city of forks and knives behold.
A disposable I developed three months too late,
Pictures dusting so neatly while I silently wait.
How vain of me to think that your words were meant for me.
How vain of me to steal them, the first two lines a plea.
Desperation’s not the title, or at least not the one I claim.
Been through all five stages, I suppose I’ve made it to shame.
Built a domain all to myself, twelve whole dollars a year.
It’s full of my heart’s fabric, corralled by my career.
Strawberries on my birthday, chlorine in our pores.
Twenty-three’s cedar so much sweeter than twenty-four’s.
My eyes would look the same again, chocolate, knowing, clear.
Playlists laced with melodies that I can’t stand to hear.
Longer for-loops, same strumming pattern, at least I am creating.
I’ll drink bitter coffee and relish in my books, but just know that I’m waiting.
I feel through these words when I cannot feel the rest.
The way that hell looks like my street leaves me so impressed.
I can’t believe I used to overlook dead trees, dead Dads, dead stars.
I could see them in the astral realm on my sleepy way to Mars.
I remember floating through punctuated black, the violet light unrefined.
Dissolving my fears, lifting my soul, intuition so entwined.
I traced Orion’s belt with my eyelashes and cradled his buckle in my lips.
Until it wrapped around the slim of my neck, dragging me toward eclipse.
Have they found life there yet, on its softly dusted red barren face?
I’m on my way so I’ll let you know but I think it might be wrong time, right space.
My arteries are dry from wandering in this universe of my own unraveled head.
If they’re any forewarning of what’s to come, I have a feeling Mars will be dead.
Don’t shoot the messenger, I still want to live, if only for the hope of a sprout.
I see light in the distance, it could be the end, or it could be my only way out.
Scapula, because it was the first bone I learned.
Lunate, because it reminds me of the moon.
Sternum, because it’s close to my heart.
No, I’m choosing to remember wrong.
Scapula, because that was what broke.
Along with two ribs.
Lunate, because your hand couldn’t soften your fall.
The hand of a surgeon.
Sternum, because it was close to your heart.
Bones are all that’s left.
My vertebrae remember your hands
Checking for scoliosis
But the spines of your favorite books remain unbent.
Sandpaper stiff.
And you never told me about your working days
But I heard the stories, still.
What happened?
Swallow.
Hard pill.
Coughing it up as I read my speech
Coffin at foot.
Oh, these are my favorite bones.
They said twenty-two was too young
To say goodbye to a father
Even though I mourned my youth
The first time you forgot my age.
At least I have my favorite bones…
Not your hands, your dementia, nor you.
But I know I’ll love them always,
Through crepitus and blue.