That's All

i chew my nails because i don't know what to do with my hands otherwise
i can't hit anything or make anything with them
and when i put them to paper nowadays i just feel all sore about a lot of things

Dress Rehearsal

These days when I sit down to write I don't know what the hell I'm trying to say. For the most part I bang away on the keyboard about one stupid thing or another, pounding every detail I can think of out onto the page just to get them written down in front of me for a second. If I'm lucky there's enough there for me to pretend I've got something to say, or if I'm really lucky I'll realize it's something I actually wanted to say in the first place. Unfortunately, that's not how I'm comfortable writing.

Kurt Vonnegut broke down writers into two types, swoopers and bashers. You've got the ones who draft out every single idea at once regardless of quality (the swoopers) and then the ones who smash their way through sentence by sentence, ensuring each is how it should be before moving on (the bashers). I identify as the latter, but lately I've been writing like the former. What that means, unfortunately is I'll spend a solid forty-five minutes at a time puking out every dumb little swooper line in my head with no idea where I'm going at any point in the process before something clicks in my brain and puts me back in the basher mind-set which immediately reacts with horror to the wall of ugly, aimless text in front of it and annihilates the entire thing.

A better man than me would just buckle down and go through the messy text, and damn if I'm not trying to be a better man, but mostly it just seems too impossible and pointless to do so. The main problem is that I know I don't have much to say about anything. I can wax poetic about my own life and the clumsy little vignettes contained therein, but when you break it on down I'm not spilling any blood here. I don't want to write where it hurts and I don't want it to hurt when I write, and I guess that's really the main problem here. I don't know what to tell you 'cause everything I'm feeling these days is too sharp still and I don't want anybody to get hurt and I don't want anybody to worry. So let's all just take a second until things seem a little less taut and maybe I can get some thinking done.

What withers the stone at the bottom of the vase.
Elated by the silent descent of rotten pedals sinking into water, I sense it like rain falling on the sea, swept into waves to join the army of currents that strike fists into silt. Currents that don't so much as pull. Currents that push and change tendencies. The stone gets broken at an unnoticed rate. The stone sinks, but only into the surface of the glass.
I'm afraid of the possibility of watching descent and not knowing it. I'm afraid of this glass' eventual break, and any other walls I can't find myself pushing against.

THE BEST

OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU, TRAVIS!

Devotion

taking in one breath too hard you fall forward, sputtering
embracing so thoroughly some cliché
a jest and trope so infinite as to be divine
breaking with every sweat an artifice built in cups of wine
and shaped by smoke held too long and pulled too deeply

in its breaking you catch yourself reflected and given time
enough to weigh and measure every organ
pressing filament and sinew as grave robbers might
intrepid and hushed in their exploration of the heart
seeking only to understand what they've come to betray

the same way every flake of gold spirals out from calamity
you feel certain that this terminating reflection has done nothing
but cease unbroken, welcoming good luck,
and that the autumn sun will eventually rise
on your grave unturned and a heart unbroken

Tied Down

Sometimes I get sentimental on the bike ride home. Passing underneath the dark boughs of the park makes me want to embrace their uncertainty and let my bike skip the pavement; topple me sideways and clumsy into the grass.

I imagine rubbing my face in it's cold sure palms, letting it poke between my eyelids or along my face; kissing my inner ear. I could just lay there a while and hope nobody found me, hope a snow plow could cover me, just for a while so it could be me and the tiny inexperienced fingers of the grass. All I ask is a season or two, until the frost thawed and poured from my caved chest like a tidal pool and the new flowers could spring up, coil and set me loose again.

Other times I find myself howling mad as I speed down towards the hill. Possessed I whisper to myself, "If not tonight, some other night to be certain." As though the speed or the flight sync the present me to the reflected me; the refracted me splayed up on some future wall where all the flowers have gone. I've always felt that some day I'd become quite insane, that eventually the bathwater would run two drops too low and consume me; tearing me from my body in a sucking gurgling whirlpool. "Keep fighting, but know that I'll win."

Is it truly so wicked to want to disappear, just for a while? To take a vacation from the self? On reflection it's not the uncertainty of twisted boughs I seek in those drunken maudlin minutes, but rather the certainty their shadows promise; their potential for oblivion. A sweet temporary rush of blood to and then away and a flash so hot and so bright that for seven seconds there'd be . However, wicked or not I'm still fighting-- or trying to fight and right now that seems a reasonable amount to do, just to hold the ebb high while when the moon's sliding lower. Hold the ebb high, just for a little while, if you can, I mean.

I Don't Get It

When trying to describe a scene I'm constantly losing the words for the simplest things; confusing crown molding for architectural trim, unsure whether a colander is a spoon or a strainer, mistaking auburn for red and red for blond. I've always assumed some large part of this to be the product of my upbringing. I honestly worry that I've been so privileged and spoiled that it never seemed pertinent for me to learn the names of things, their purpose or how they eventually fall into disrepair. My family were so doting that it was never really necessary for me to engage with life and learn the protocols for basic interaction with everyday objects.

My childhood left me unfamiliar with the way dust collects or how to handle a broom, the methods of replacing a screen in a window, what it meant to be on a lease, the sound of water boiling and how a french press is operated, how best to break an egg or steam vegetables, how to peel and chop garlic, and the other simple feats of maintenance that seem second nature to others. I find myself every day in situations that make me uncomfortable and confused that if articulated to my friends would instantly cause them to lose all respect for me as a human being.

My first time using a laundromat in the city I googled 'How to use a laundromat' five or six times, just to confirm for myself that I'd be physically prepared to wash my clothes when I got there.
I did not know how to make an omelet until the internet taught me how. I felt like an honest-to-god liar when I told my current employers I'd cleaned before in my day-to-day life.

I don't know what to tell you. This seemed like a compelling topic when I started it.

since last you asked

I learned
lights and city swell if you let them
look away long enough they'll bloom
and their buds flower
spewing cigarettes into the gutter
women under their arm laughing

ugly city flowers
sliding as close as they can to the sidewalk
wildflowers free in their cars
transplanted from some other sick city
with its own sick lights
in hibernation

look me in the eye and ask it again

don't worry, i'll tell you the truth this time
because poems don't come easy anymore
and for once i'm certain
this is not beauty.

The Decadent Graveyard

bolts fastened to brick walls loosely dangling and creaking underweight that needs grounding,
every step taken pulls down on dangling wooden boards, lumber spines that broke this countries back,

yet these are the smallest steps we take lifts from,
where support shapes from difficulties and craftsmanship,
gathered twine and fibrous systems
held together interwoven complexities, holding out and holding on,
braids in threads only learned in high quantities and capacities
in numbers and quality,
keep it together,
"keep it together"

I look at the ladder and see labor, I look at the ladder and see years
of sweat and of tweaking and of fine tuning,
I see process.

I see growth from someone who has claimed to stop since the age of 13,
I'm 5'8 and still require some lifting, baffled by how we get high and remain low,
or how we seek to be planted and only find it when others may think I'm digging myself the most shallow of graves.

But I wanted this one where the roses will never die,where there's always more to feed, where the names of the days repeat each week and we stay stagnant except for our altitude,
and I've waited far too long for this
in a bleak, expansive, sort of way.

To Mute Morning

hours and hours spent without words, every motion to maintain the illusion of rest and a halt to uneven rushes as though he were becoming a clock, becoming a statue, becoming the rook

hours and hours spent hating these flowers that curl up from the mouth; chrysanthemum forced through chapped lips, periwinkles crawling steadily into my nose tickling giggling and sloughing rock from the shoulder

i can't feel it when the water passes by when i'm scaled and divided and split through the center by a rich green moss or when it's pressed to my face to my chest undulating in its bristled heave
i kiss it

i press my stone face to the morning and dare myself to feel nothing when it turns orange purple blue against my cheeks and i dare myself not to think of when this morning will find itself balanced and come to an evening

i dare myself not to imagine this gargoyle split its human heart spilling forth and tumbling and in its crashing to the pavement introduce the morning to red