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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Hiatus p II

Some nights
I write poetry

Some nights
poetry writes me

A feeling 
an idea unbirthed
a haunting melody
from a song I made into a home
or radio waves
accidentally picked up 
without reception
a stranger at my door

Scents carried by a passing breeze
my mothers' smile in a picture frame
a forgotten promise 
an undying wish
a blank piece of paper

A memory
of the moon
waning, glistening
like an apology
wet 
ready to be kissed
beneath a canopy of pine needles
as bodies of shadow merge with luminescence



Friday, December 13, 2013

when people die
we don't cry for the dead
we cry for the living
we cry because we feel separated
we cry because we miss them
we cry because of the gulf we perceive between the living and deceased
we cry because death reminds us of all the ways we are not alive

if the living weep 
then perhaps the dead rejoice
if the living mourn 
then perhaps the deceased are dancing
somewhere where there is no room for distance or separation

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Nyctophilia

I am the fear of unrealized potential
I am the quiet despair of a refusal to confess affliction

I am the one hiding from myself
I am the broken connection between mind and soul
The silent desperation of dormant aptitude

I am a prison of dead appetites
I am a jail guard of the unknown
I am the lack of hunger and thirst
I am a lock
I am withdrawal
I am an embryonic promise of infertility

I am Judas
I am Cain
I kill that within me which has not yet been born
I am the aborted fetus of untapped capacities
Within a jar of alcohol left to collect dust on a shelf

I am the bystanding victim of terrorism
I am a terrorist to my own soul
I am the mouth of the castaway
Who has forgotten the taste of home

I am an abandoned warehouse
A derelict street in a ghost town
I am the premature manifestation of planned obsolescence
I am the paralysis of choice
I am the shortness of breath
The venom of fear
Running feet, darting eyes
I am unbounded restlessness

I am running away from me
I am running from afternoon to dawn
I am running hard
My lungs are pulling deep on every toke
Panting for breath
But I can't be sober
I can't rest from this quiet flood
So I run to deny the torrent inside my chest
And I run and I run and I run
I run until I become a shadow of myself
If I could, I would run until I become a shadow of my shadow
I run because a shadow can't exist in the light
I run to unsee that which I have seen
But I can't
So I run and I pant and I cough and I wheeze
And I cough and I cough
And I roll up another one
Because my appetite for running knows no bounds
And before the smoke has settled
I am off to the next stop
I can't stop being in transit
I'm already late
I'm always late
Because I am running
I'm running away from me
And I'm late

Notebook

What happened to you?
You used to give me your undivided attention
What happened to us?
We used to be the best of friends
Remember how many nights we spent awake together?
You used to fill my empty pages with everything you had

You didn't have to vow
No other tongue had ever tasted the salt of those tears
You kept hidden from the world
You didn't have to to swear
No other soul had ever heard such hushed tones from your lips
I knew it from the way your breath quivered
When longing and sorrow molded your entire body into a flute
And you translated the winds of separation
Into a song of blood and fire

Remember how we'd maintain those sacred flames
With tear stained page after tear stained page?
We burnt down the temple and built a cage from its ashes
But we were free in our fortress of solitude

There were silences between us that came alive by night
And words which never saw the light of day
But they were ours because they didn't owe a damn thing to anyone

I remember every word you etched on my body
Every space you left unwritten
Each line you crossed out
Each corner you folded
Every exclamation and question mark
Every curse and prayer

Because god damn it
I am the conscience of that first notebook
You picked up and wrote it
Not for the sake of the score or the stage
But for the sake of yourself

Tell me, what freedom were you seeking?
Tell me, what did love ask of you
When you first mixed your tears
With the ink of your pen?

What sacred flame compelled you to write
When there was no mic, no audience
And no judge besides the truth in your own heart?

Remember that
Give it your undivided attention again
Because if you're still preoccupied
With what others might think about your words
How in the hell are you going to tell the world
That which you were born to say?