To the man who died on my front porch;
Be it through vanity or the simple desire to believe that something mattered,
I believe most want some art left of them.
Something to show their presence left foot steps or craters.
And so I will write one for you:
I hope you are missed, that you are mourned.
That someone cared for you more than the world that allowed this to happen, and that your passing ruined their day far more than it did ours.
I’m so sorry for getting caught in that world.
for not doing enough to hang a roof over your head that might have felt more permanent,
Or to keep you warmer than the snake bites to your veins.
If you were of faith;
I pray that you were right with it
That you were wrapped in contentment and the peace of where you were going eclipsed the cold you left behind. That paradise waited, and welcomed you home in a prodigal embrace.
I hope the relaxed look on your face was genuine;
Not a mask forced by the black tar poison as you leaned against our drywall.
That the amber glow of our porch light brought you the comfort of the sun.
We wish we were home,
that we might have heard you slump in time to make a call.
To do something, anything to create a view of you that’s more than a corpse at our door;
a story we’ll only ever see the end of.
I hope we can do better;
That those responsible will feel the sting of regret or revenge and at this point I don’t know which is the answer,
because we lost the chance to make it right when your justice fled your lungs.
Pushed on your breath as your chilled ghost hung alone yet visible on the air.
House of Cards
I sit untouchable in my fortress of matchsticks and playing cards, protected by the king of hearts hiding a joker between my teeth. State of the art crafting glue holding firm from the greatest of winds and inconveniences.
I invite you to come visit me, seeing that you need somewhere to tap the soot off the soles of your shoes.
You’ll stay for the romance novels and horror films but the poems will be too much; because you’ve always
been more interested in an entertaining story than a true one.
On your way out you’ll light me up and I’ll burn down with the house; from the top like every candle or cigarette that’s brought you comfort before, not yet knowing if I’m beyond wanting whole or just operating as I have been designed to.
I hope I’m not all that’s keeping you warm.
Maybe
It might be the crawling fate of a world lost, burning and freezing, starving and drowning.
The blood on the sidewalk and charade in our gilded halls.
The cruelty of our protectors or the greed of our debtors.
Or, maybe, it’s the winter.
A moment
You’ll make me forget it, for a moment
The shadow behind the door, the dark in the sky hiding between the stars and reaching in to snatch away what’s left of the warmth in your brow.
But I’ll dive into our false forever; in the gaps amidst your heartbeats spindling an eternity in your veins; I’ll pull the covers over my head and conceal the last sparks of our eyes from the hungry abyss above.
These sweet assurences may fall from my mouth but they’re so much sweeter from your tongue
so why don’t you lie to me
My love, there are only two ways this ends and I’m terrified of both
so lie to me
tell me all your new favorite ways, to lie to me
that no one could judge me,
that this pain is just the result of growing beyond it
and, a personal favorite, that it will all be okay
and for this moment I’ll believe you
Memories of Elysium
Bring me back, boatman
to the golden dream that I escaped;
place me back, back in the amber clear I watch slip between my fingers each morning, clenched fist pushing away the memories from where I was before.
The angels sang to me of salvation,
Gentle harp’s familiar gilded string toned as lyres; celebrating the carress I long fought against, before they claimed the gift of argus and mounted his eyes on their wings.
Bring me back, boatman
That I might visit those you’ve taken.
You’ve gobbled your share and left us to mourn. Betrayed our love for your duty and now they sing in the sweet memories of Elysium that I’m pining for.
Perhaps we can strike a deal,
Nectar or honey – I’ve heard you like coins?
But even more I’ve heard you’re as much at their mercy as us, clawing on Charon’s walls unable to accept the cruelty that no place is so far away as yesterday.
Bring me back, boatman
take me through the ghostly waters;
refresh my memory that I might understand, where I came from and what’s held in my hands. Was I a hero? tell me what did I lose when I climbed from the Styx?
Was this the baptist’s price?
The gate toll to enter the kingdom of clouds.
Washing away the unclean with the rest of me, the Jordan left behind something pure as rain that felt a lie all the same.
So bring me back, boatman.
From Eden to Heaven and the odyssey in between;
There is a hint of fiction that’s stranger than life,
And something in this paradise that’s not in mine.
Smoke
Sometimes I peel my skin to see which parts hurt. Pull up scabs and ruin their healing; because you always thought I’d look better in scars and now, I hate to admit, so do I.
You’d balm your skin while passing torch that burned you, left hand betraying the right; crackling of its molten anger only drowned out by the volume of the lessons between your words.
You taught me to measure my masculinity in empty liquor bottles and full perscriptions; your lesson that real men only dull their pain when they pretend it’s for fun.
That service was inseperable from suffering, that goodness exists only to spite the dents in the same vessel and that as such it must be dented.
You taught of obedience through fear, holding your doctrine to be as genuine as it is just; building paper walls for us to keep the world from the wood.
Your claim of course not to be mistaken, that you love me and that I am doomed. Yet fear was never a virtue, and your tradition cannot be my truth.
You taught that only love was set in stone; as if proof of rock’s mortality was not sewn across the beaches or blown in the wind.
Perhaps I kicked drugs to become addicted to tattoos when they let me feel pain, and build to something that might be permanent, or because they make my scars look like something I could love.
You think I hate you, I wish I did. Pictures are so much more complicated than paintings, and conversations so much harder than poems. Burning your flag kept it off my shoulders, yet the memory of its embers brings more remorse than thrill.
And as such, I think of you when I smell smoke in my clothes. Nose filled with the rustic guilt of what I’ve done to keep myself warm. The loud blank memories that could fall anywhere between bonfires and funeral pyres.
Never saw
An owl perches overhead
Judgement’s omen in a tree
Your throat tastes of dread
Nothing more to do but flee
Heart pounding in your ear
leaves and twigs crack undertoe
the pursuer can hear your fear
but you couldn’t hear his bow
That’s where yout struggle ends
Caught up in its whistle and draw
His arrow always finds it quarry
The last man you never saw
Try Again
I will try again
writing about you is taking an exam on my favorite subject in a language I don’t understand.
Present and real; palpable and radiant but amorphous and complicated such that I can only jot down enough to never be satisfied.
I will try again
I can’t find it on a page so I have to find it in my pen, but whenever I try I end up spilling the well over my desk. It reminds me that by the time I’m done carving bars and scratching them out the paper would be just as dark, anyway.
If I showed that to you – you’d still read it twice. You’d hang it on the fridge and know that every pointed groove is a monument to the idea that I tried and that’s the part you love. You’d hold the blob of ink to the light like you’re checking for counterfeits and see the words that you never needed the blob for anyway.
I will try again
You see a love of whimsy and intensity, a strong desire to believe in destiny. Someone who seeks nothing with their art but to find the spot in the aether where there is both tinder and match so I can finally light myself ablaze, admire the colors I might produce and at least be seen if never understood.
That is to say, I believe in me you’ve found the things you’ve always felt were too foolish to love about yourself. That sometimes I think we can’t define who we are to each other because giving it a name would force the idea that we should admire ourselves the same way, too, and contentness just looks too much like complacency to swallow with pomegranate seeds.
I will try again
I believe we’re not supposed to condense every beautiful thing into post-it notes. That if I were to place every letter of definition I could ever write about you in my scrapbook it could only be experienced as much as the scenic polaroids it borders, and that picking it up would only remind me to send you my newest favorite song for the third time this month.
I don’t believe that you’ll ever give up chasing the perfect painting of your pain and growth so you can display it on your guestroom wall for those you think might recognize it, or that anyone will cheer for each attempt as hard I will;
Or even that I could ever explain to you why it’s such important work.
But I will try again.
Pyromanic Depressive
The first day I found comfort should have been the earliest sign of my disease. When my throat could not tell apart the crisp winter air with the stale breath of a toxic mire merely because they both stand still. The way a lantern’s lonely flame tantalized me more than the structure that housed it. Perhaps it is so simple that I could never see the difference between movement and progress, or rest and stagnation.
It’s a predictable transition from ethanol to fire, from fire to smoke, from smoke to collecting ash of the remains of everything that mattered and pushing it in desperate to make a soot castle I might live in to see if I’ve built something suitable to burn down again.
At a time if felt the urge came from divine inspiration. As if I could pull some truth from the space between dancing lights that comforts me and tells me there is a purpose to my destruction seperate the horror that I suspect. As though I could find more comfort in the cruel release of energy displayed before me than in the home it had once been.
Yet the curse of fire was never a burden of destiny. Like Midas chose to gild all that he held I questioned to see what might be flammable. Instead of satiating a desire for wealth with things that shine I meet depression with pyromania only to feed the mouth I meant to be fighting.
Last year I knew the bravest thing about me was that I would stand in every fire I set, to walk or be pulled out would have meant failure to see through what I was there to destroy. Adding a second failure to the home that I fell short of making fire proof.
This month I gathered my tinder and gases, lighter and matches in an willow box. In rising waters I could see that there are more beautiful things than flms, fonder places than the sun, braver actions than self destruction. I threw the box down a waterfall and prayed I hadn’t forgotten any match sticks beneath my bed frame.
Smoking Habit
I’m thinking of tyring religion again
rolling up the holy papers to spark a light
A deep breath of salvation’s white smoke
lend me comfort until you scratch my lungs
They dressed me up in this smoking habit
Told me it would keep me warm in the courtyard
That a fiery mantle would light my path
Proving my cause to be something righteous
Melted off my shoulders, held by its own weight
Fallen victim to the curse of its heat
Even so the liquid remains fit in a syringe
Plunger down might give the same relief
Coloring our surroundings as if finger paint
Shifting demons to angels between heartbeats
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