Outrun the Gun

I saw a body die tonight,
The first I’d ever seen;
And though it writhed like I thought it would,
Twisting under neon lights
Making blood lines on its skin,
Weep, though I knew I should,
I simply could not do.

There is something thrilling in the ecstasy
Of a body’s final drawn out breaths -
Screams almost and
Pounding beats
Still rhythmic, though frantic,
And harmonies,
Slowly sawing through heart strings,
Vibrating at the touch of dextrous fingers.

And though a hundred pairs of eyes regard,
Like students with mouths agape
At a cataclysmic corpse spread bare
Under the hot lights of the surgical stage,
They can do nothing to stop the grinding metal of death,
And cannot outrun the gun of destiny -
Already bought and already loaded
Already shot and already exploded.

Bass drum bullet holes
Tearing through t-shirts soaked in sweat
And raining on fingers outstretched
In awe or in admiration
Of that which stood dying there,
Swaying to the death music
Of a final dissonant symphony,
Extinguishing with a chord
So sweet you could almost taste it -
Saline like sweat on shiny skin,
Bejeweling the body before laying it
In its lonely and lightless grave.

Though long since waned and
Long since exhausted,
There is something exquisitely lovely
In the pale shiver of a dying body,
Drained and destructed
When it breathes its final quaking breath,
Falling like vapor diamonds on open lips,
Gasping a guttural hymn,
And singing, quite softly,
“Hallelujah.”

Death sounds like silence,
And then Death sounds like static,
Filling the space once occupied by Life,
With a quiet reminder to we the remaining,
That we must go on living,
And somewhere, in the white space
From a speaker in our heaving chests,
A drumbeat, or a heartbeat,
And the crowd let out its breath.

Finding What Came Before

You must have come before me, dear
I’ve found your skin on the chair
Draping there, dripping flesh tones
Giving body to the skeleton rocker
Swaying in the silent parlor
Moved by your sudden absence
Creaking are its pale and lonesome
Wooden bones.

You must have come before me, love
I’ve found your hair all in the tub
Squirming there, running down rivers
Like snakes in muddy spring
Nameless effusions of wordless sin
Hissing beneath the shower
Where you remember shedding your
Scalèd skin.

You must have come before me, boy
I’ve found your heart in the garbage
Rotting there, or ripening perhaps
Remembering fermentation: grapes
Yesterday, wine, tomorrow, blood
Blame it on the vineyards,
Grape vines climbing, choking your
Deadened veins.

1 + 1 = 3

She was destined to write, for when asked the sum of one and one, she always responded three, and everyone knows that authors simply cannot calculate. She did not understand the concept of singularity, and for her, the opposite of a number was never its negative. She built her house to be asymmetrical, as she did not believe that one side could be perfectly replicated. She taught her daughter that one could divide by zero, and take the square root of a negative number, and multiply a number by one to get a result twice as large. And for her, a square peg could fit into a circular hole.

Dimensions did not matter, she said, for if one pushed hard enough, that square peg would slide right into the round hole, no matter how dry. When a family of three was presented with one conflict, expecting only three responses was ridiculous. A mirror image, no matter how perfect the reflection appeared, would still always be backwards, and therefore symmetry did not exist. Even imaginary numbers deserved to be square rooted, and the opposite of positive eight should not be predestined to a negative existence. And, she said, when one whole man and one whole woman are placed into a neutral solution for long enough, there is no way in hell that the sum of their addition will be two.

But, she mused, it is the logical who build cities and the illogical who piss in their streets, and the mathematicians who never fail to prove the equation leading to the conclusion of sanity, and the authors who fill said equation with adjectives, leading to nothing but a declaration of irreconcilable insanity. And, of course, it is the sane - the level headed, the sword bearing, the strong breasted - who write history, and the rest - the open minded, the lovers of the verb and the anecdote - who write fiction. And no matter how close fiction is to the truth, it is still, by definition, false. Oh, how she loathed the constraints of genre!

For it was not the writer of fiction who plunged herself into the strong chested historian, it was the other way around. Her subtleness was wrapped around his hard facts. And fact, according to the historian, was engorged with blood, and wars, and explosions. Fact would thrust between the pages of a novel until its sharp point was pressed against the novel’s spine. Fact could shred, fact could tear, fact could rip the soft flesh of fiction. The world would erect statues of fact, its outstretched arms groping the sky, while fiction crumpled. The writer of fiction was powerless when the writer of history opposed her. She would be subject to him, pressed into the sheets of paper, flattened there, defiled there. He was the conqueror, she was the conquered. He wrote history. She was destined to disbelieve the existence of chronology, and to write poetry.

"How can you disbelieve in the existence of chronology?" asked the historian of the author, when they were both young, and inexperienced. She was five, he was thirteen. They were playing at marbles, his large shooter driving into her own. They would spread when it hit them. He would always win when they played at marbles, for he was stronger than her, or at least that’s what he said. And though she protested and said that strength had nothing to do with winning at marbles, he would come up with some other excuse. He was older, he was a boy, she had eaten the last biscuit the morning before. Whether it was his strength, or his age, or his gender, or his feeling of entitlement, he would always win, and he would always deserve it. She stopped asking why. He was smarter than her, he said. It was only the stupid who didn’t believe in history, and who didn’t believe in chronology. She did not understand how a two-dimensional line with dates could possibly represent one's own perception of time, but she was too young to know the words to protest. He would laugh, and take his shooter and bang it against the soft glass of her own small marbles.

...She was five, and he was thirteen, and though their ages added up to the age of consent in most countries, she couldn’t remember saying yes to anything he said. It was winter, she remembered, but it was a winter like all others, and therefore could be placed in countless places on his chronology. Come make a fire with me, he asked of her, and she went. They went to the woods to make the fire, and melt away the snow around the circle with the hot red flame. Come closer, he told her, beckoning her nearer to the fire. Let it into your skin. But soon the fire grew cold, the red hot flame was replaced by an ashy ring, and she started to shiver. When they finally shoveled soiled snow on the fire to put it out, and walked back to the house, she asked why she was being trailed by a red path in the snow. He told her that it was the heat dripping off of her flesh. She thought this sounded quite poetic, and she did not ask any questions. She woke the next morning to snow between her sheets, and fire between her legs...

The writer of fiction did not believe in chronology because though the historian’s time line swore that the little girl grew up, and became a soft woman, and became a blushing bride, and became, as we so call her, a writer of fiction, this writer of fiction, this bride, this woman, remained a little girl. Each morning she would wake to snow between her sheets and fire between her legs. And each morning, as her pen hobbled across the white page, she again dragged the bloody memory of her lost innocence across the snow of her childhood, no longer white. Memory had condemned her to wallow in shallow metaphors, barely disguising that which she would never forget. She limped in circles on her page.

Historians do not deal well with circles, for circles do not fit well onto two-dimensional chronologies. How to plot her mornings, when each morning she took her tea with milk and sugar, and each morning she walked through her gardens, and each morning she wrote a line or three of poetry? How to plot her mornings when sometimes the only difference between them was the adjective she used to describe the sky, or the freshness of the air, or the clatter of the birds? No, history does not do well with adjectives. History does not care about the difference between azur and aqua, nor the difference between brisk and crisp, nor the difference between cacophonous and choral. According to history, the writer of fiction woke, ate, and wrote. According to history, the writer of fiction barely lived at all.

History tells us that the writer of fiction killed herself, and if one consults chronology, one can understand why. How could one lead an existence of nothing but waking, eating, and writing? But in fact, or in fiction, rather, it was the historian that killed the writer. The writer of fiction knew far too well that one plus one would never equal two, and she told this to her daughter, the product of said mathematical impossibility. For even a relationship with zero love, zero emotion, zero passion, could still divide two legs. Yes, a square peg would fit in a round hole.

In Learning How To Die.

Must literature necessitate a character
Asked the author of her muse,
For if she never loved another man
in her remaining languid days
She would not much complain.
She had spent her years fingering sheets
Spreading them smooth beneath her hands
Then drawing her pen across them
Remembering in so many words
the way a woman shudders
When she is made to feel.
And tremble she did - tremble at the sight
of purple mountains
Rising above her like the strong chest of a man
Or tremble she did at the sight of yellow tendrils
Stretching across the pale flesh of the dawn.
But when in the barren desert of life she stood
It was not man who caught her falling sweat,
But the open amorous lips of a red tulip
at her ankle
Sprouting form the life that spilled from her pen.
For where there is blood, there is clearly life
And she bled black like St. George’s monster
Leaving little rivers of ink behind her open veins.
And though she flirted with cancer in search of a feeling
Or danced with death in want of a verb
Or seduced the delicate sympathies of suicide
If only to produce a metaphor
even more real than its inspiration
At least in learning how to die -
or so she told Peter and his golden gates -
She had learned how to live.

A Photographer and His Model.

Blink.

He stared through his single wide eye at what he perceived to be reality. And if that which he perceived to be true truly was, in fact, the truth, why, the truth was beautiful, and full of splendid curves and colors in which one could drown. Through his eye, truth was in form, and in proportion, and in composition. His eye blinked, and truth was captured. He would take it with him wherever he wandered, the 3.5 x 4.25 rectangle of reality in his pocket, collecting lint as pockets do. And when the world seemed too harsh and reality had lost its luster, he could pull out the truth that he had two-dimensionally imprisoned, and remember that all was not, in fact, lost. For as long as he could touch the truth, and see the truth, then he could simultaneously hide from it.

She contemplated death by starvation. She wondered what it would feel like. Perhaps like nothing at all. Perhaps like a scorching blade of grass under the hot August sun. Perhaps like a leaf at the end of autumn. Perhaps like an icicle as winter melts away. Perhaps like a flower when the May showers stop falling from the sky. Regardless, it would feel like the end. Although the end, she thought, is more like the beginning. For the summer burns into fall, and the trees incinerate under the equinox moon. And autumn withers into winter, and winter melts into spring, and spring explodes into bloom, and suddenly the summer has arrived again. Perhaps death by starvation wouldn’t feel so badly, for if blades of grass sprout from her bones too visible, or if leaves blanket her translucent skin, or if icicles drip from her ears like silver rings, or if flowers are nourished from her stagnant blood, then she has created beauty, and that is all she cared to do.

He saw the world in angles, in parallel lines, and in proportions. It was all science, and it was all math, and if he perfected his knowledge, then he could reproduce the world on sheets of paper, plastering man-made walls with replicated beauty. If he could perfect the parallel line, he thought, then he would be happy. For if he could perfect the parallel line, then he would be perfecting the already perfect, and in that, he would be God, or more. God created the universe, and the world, and the man about whom we speak, but it would be said man who took this universe, and this world, and warped it. His eye would not sleep until the man behind it could take parallel lines, and bend them, yet still never allow them to touch.

She contemplated death by suffocation, and wondered what it would feel like, or how one one would go about doing it. Ropes were too callous, they left marks on the neck, and the neck was too gentle for one to leave rope marks. She did not have the will power to hold her breath, nor to hold a cord, nor to leave that car door closed as death itself leaked through the cracks into the windows and into her collapsing lungs. And if one does not have will power, why, there is nothing more loathsome than a failure. And what of water? Water could be cold, and water could be hot, and water could be salty, or fresh, or dirty, or infested with tiny little microbes that would eat her body from the inside. Perhaps the lines on her neck would twist into calligraphy, and tell the story of her last moments, and the blue that would tinge her cheeks would compliment her eyes, and when the sunlight flashed through the thin layer of water covering her still lips, why, she would truly be beautiful. And if she had created beauty, then there was nothing left for her to do.

He began with buildings, because they are square enough, or rectangular, at that. Or so he thought, and so he hoped. But he realized that no matter how hard he tried, he could not capture their design with his eye. For one line would be too big, too slanted, too full, too curving, while the other was too thin, to straight, too meager, too crooked. Or, just as his eye opened a little wider to accommodate said lines, a man’s head would peak out of the building’s window, or a sparrow would fly across the facade, or the sky would be at a contrary angle. So he went farther away, he fled across fields turning only once in a while to see if perhaps the distance that he had travelled would finally allow his eye to see parallel lines in the buildings that crept farther and farther away on the horizon. It seems as though he turned in vain.

She contemplated death by chemical. Would they put the name of the chemical on her tombstone as cause of death? If so, she would love to pick something with an exotic name, like saxitoxin, but she worried over where to find poisonous shellfish. She could gnaw on cigarettes, and ingest acetone, and arsenic, and nicotine, and hydrogen cyanide, but she doubted that yellow teeth would be attractive upon her death. There was the flaking paint in her grandmother’s home, or furniture polish, or laundry detergent, or gasoline. But as she thought of these things, she couldn’t help but feel like an inanimate object, one that had never seen life, or love. Her back that she had trained to be so straight would be nothing but a rotting wall. Her arms hat she had learned to poise so beautifully would be nothing but the curved knob that decorates ancient chairs. The clothing that hung so loosely on her slender body would be nothing but overly starched sacks of fabric. And the heart that every once in a while she let love would turn into a machine, like the motor of an automobile, turning, always, but feeling nothing. She did not take well to this thought, but yet death by chemical intrigued her. If she consumed bleach, would she finally be white as the Scandinavians, who were all the rage this season? Perhaps then, in the whiteness radiating from her stomach, she would be beautiful.

He felt like Christopher Columbus, searching for the flat end of the earth that he so believed truly did exist. But unlike Columbus, who feared for his ships and his crew, he and his eye longed to find it, to see the water of the earth falling off the sides and to see the continents slowly slipping downstream towards that definitive end. And at this mystical place, he swore he would find parallel lines. For until he found the edge of the world he would be plagued by God’s cruel joke in making the earth a sphere. But one day he would stop walking in circles and reach the fatal end of his journey, plunging down off the edge of the world, surrounded by buildings and animals and humans and mountains. He wasn’t sure what he would find at the bottom of that chasm into which he and the continents would fall once they finally floated their way to the sharp, straight edge of the earth. Perhaps there would be monsters, as Columbus always swore there would be, and they would gobble him up. But he wouldn’t mind being eaten alive by a million open mouths, for in arriving there, in being gnawed by their sharp teeth and deformed by their acidic saliva (or so he imagined it would be), he would finally have testament that he had become more than God. For Godhad created the universe, and a world, and each was a sphere, or so the astronomers thought. But in arriving at the stark and end of this sphere, the man, equally created by God, would have surpassed the whole of God’s creation. Or so he mused.

She contemplated death by metal. There we various types of metal, of course. There was cheap metal that she could find buried in the ground, or depicting a coca cola sign, but that would leave rusty viruses in her coagulating blood. There was shiny metal, but that would lose its sheen when it touched human flesh. There was blunt metal, but it would be a shame to lose its perfectly rounded tip forever within the burning acid of her stomach, or within the bundles of nerves in her brain, or within the tiny respiratory chambers of her lungs. No, what she preferred of all metals was thin metal. Simple. For with thin metal she could write novels in red ink, or draw pictures on her thigh, or simply draw rivers of blood on her wrists. Yes, that’s what she preferred. Because in those rivers of sanguine she could swim, and she could drown. And later, when they would search for her beneath the rivers that had covered her arms, and then her chest, and then her neck, and then her lips, they would know in fact that she had lived, and that she had loved. And there is nothing more beautiful than the life of one who has loved.

He did not find the end of his own world, where the oceans and the islands and the continents all rushed over a giant cliff that signified Columbus’ greatest fear. Instead, he found the end of someone else’s world, and for the first time, his eye realized that what it perceived as reality was only one of many realities. He and his eye found parallel lines, one day. He had been walking, looking at buildings, zooming his eye in, zooming it out, crouching down, standing up. But eventually his eye grew weary, and the cement was ready to swallow him and cast him down into the depths of God’s cruel sphere. But at once his eye found, again, truth. And if that which his eye perceived to be true truly was, in fact, the truth, why, the truth was beautiful, and full of splendid curves and colors in which one could drown. His wife, lying quietly on their couch, had arms poised like those of ancient furniture, shiny and polished. Her neck was long but crooked, like that of a swan with its graceful head bent to look at its own reflection in the water below. The angle was unnatural, but he and his eye loved it, for never before had they seen such a color, or lack thereof, rather. She was as white as the year’s first snowfall, as a dove on its day of its inaugural flight, as the bravest daisy whose head announces the return of spring among the mud of melting winter. She was as white as a lemon scented load of freshly bleached laundry, but for two rivers of red that decorated her forearms like ribbons on Christmas packages. And in them, he finally found his parallel lines. The eye shuttered as it blinked, and the man did too. For in blinking, the eye had, as was its custom to do, captured the truth. And in imprisoning the truth, the eye had untied those bright red Christmas ribbons, exposing that which lay below. The prying eye searched beneath the river that covered her arms, and had dripped on her chest, and had crept up her neck, and had rouged her lips, and it discovered that though the sight was, by far, the most beautiful thing it had ever seen, the truth was not, as it had once thought, quite as impeccable. The truth was that though she had loved, all that had loved her in return was a single wide eye, and this simply did not suffice to live.

In the blink of the eye, he found that truth tasted like salt and like death, and quietly, he and his perception of reality died, both, alone. The eye sputtered and groaned, and the its mouth below spit out a small rectangle, 3.5 x 4.25. And thus she was immortalized.

Late.

Here begins the part of my life where I discover truly who I am, nineteen years late. Here arrives the moment where my life begins for the first time, nineteen years late. The memories to which I held so dear for nineteen years are packed away, organized in boxes, labeled in black ink that bleeds through the cardboard.

I’m sorry, dear friend, that you’ve become number B12 on Box 14, in the back left corner beneath my brother’s bed, but there’s simply nothing else that I can do. Perhaps I’ll take you out of your box one day, dear friend. Everything will be as I left it. I meticulously organized it as to best aid the memory, as to best preserve the moment, as to best precisely recall the dates and the times and the people. But I forget the way the air smelled, and the way the grass felt, and the number of steps it took me to walk to your door. Old friends, I apologize for encoding you, but I can’t remember the way it looks when you smile.

And new friends, all you who I have not yet known long enough to put in boxes, what has become of you all? How time flies for me while you are still living the same lives you had been living before, on the other side of the ocean, on the other side of the river? Who will you be when I return? Who will I be when I return?

I cannot think of that. Not right now. There is a voice that pounds in my ear. There is a drum there too, and the faint sounds of a piano in the background. Is that all that’s left of a stable life I used to know - the voice of this reasonable man, moaning a melody so melancholy through my stereo? He claims his sanity, if only to prove it to himself. And I too, I claim my sanity, and I claim my happiness. Do you believe it? I do.

I didn’t used to believe in it. I couldn’t. Not in that place. Not in the place where rivers burn under a polluted sky. Not in the place where I worked so hard to learn of the past, all while I destroyed myself in order to forget the present. Not in the place that banished me for what I thought, and what I think, and what I will always think.

Oh, I could get angry. I could blame you and your incompetence, Mr. President. I could shake my fists at those who made me that way. I could shout and yell at those who were never there for me, no matter how much they falsely claimed their unconditional love. Oh, I’ll show them. I’ll change the world from this side of the ocean. I’ll learn more than I ever did before. I’ll succeed, and spit in their faces.

Or, the voice and I could stay together, forever, alone, sane, happy, and alive. Do you believe that we could do it? I do. Perhaps you will never believe it. I don’t think pictures can encapsulate it. I don’t think words can express it. Maybe I should stop trying, stop trying to express a fact that is, in fact, inexpressible. Instead, I will write nonsense. I will write if only to ridicule myself. I will write what you will never understand. But where will I go in the midst of this chaos?

My words sound so sad, this I know. But can’t you see it? Can’t you see? Can’t you see that I’ve changed, that I’m alive now? Of course, you’ll say. Of course you’re happy. You smile. Of course you’re alive. You always have been. But you’re wrong! Smiles don’t prove emotion, and heartbeat doesn’t prove existence. How to prove it. How to prove it. How to prove it.

Will silence work? Or perhaps words? Lyrics? If I can compress my life to airport regulation checked baggage size, surely I can compress my emotion to the lyrics of a song. Surely. Or surely not.

I suppose I’ll have to suffice with the voice coming through my earphones. He can speak for me. He moans, but am I the only one to hear his heartbeat behind that awful sound? Perhaps he is not in pain. Perhaps he is not sad. Perhaps he is not dying. Perhaps it is just the opposite. He is alive, and he is happy, and no one hears it. And that, my friends, is even worse.

One can scream one’s pain, and the world will cry to the sounds of one’s bleeding. One can croon one’s lust, and the world will giggle under sheets to the sounds of one’s breeding. But happiness? How does one say that? I simply do not know the words.

For now, I will resort to silence. And perhaps one day, I will smile, and you will hear that music that I’ve never known how to make - music in a major key, music with a happy melody, music that doesn’t make you cry tears of sadness, but tears of joy. All those who I’ve buried in boxes beneath my brother’s bed will come out of their dusty memorial graves and look at the one whom they so often scorned, whom they so often ignored, whom they so often questioned, and they will know.

I am sane, I swear. And I am happy. It’s just nineteen years late.

Everything But the World

Yesterday, I was flesh, and I was blood,
And I was a heart beating
Beneath the fragile cage of bone
That somehow protects my heart
From everything but the world.

Today I am a number, you made me
The unfortunate upper half of a fraction
That no one wants to believe

Yesterday I was

Heads shaking, so sorry, so sure
That they will never be there
Among the dirty minority

I was flesh

Pressed against tiles that smell
Of piss and of smoke and stick to my skin
Turning purple beneath your grasp there is

I was blood

Bruising in patterns like paintings
That follow the lines of hands that wander
Like conquerors of a strange new land

You took my heart

That was ever theirs to explore

And it’s not beating.
And it’s not beating.

Tomorrow, I will be flesh, and I will be blood,
But there will be a stranger trapped inside
That fragile cage of bone
That somehow protects my heart
From everything but the world.

I Will Sell Myself To You

I have no purpose but to look lovely in the light. Tell me, do I do it well? Your eyes graze the colors on my skin, and your fingers touch my spine. Open me, won’t you? I’ll sell myself to you.

You don’t want to hear my sad stories. You don’t want any tears on those sheets so thin. So let me paint you pictures in your mind, and let me ravish you with my words. Devour me, won’t you? I’ll give myself to you.

You will choose me arbitrarily, like a can of soup from a shelf. You don’t want to know what my label says, you just want something to fill you up. Buy me, won’t you? I will satisfy you.

I want nothing more than to show you what I look like from within, but you will do what you want with me. You will turn me in your hand. Touch me, won’t you? I will move under you.

My life is not my own you know. I am what I sell, and what I sell is what I am. You will take me into your bed, and you will hide me under your sheets. Release me, won’t you? I’m dying under you.

Can’t you hear me screaming, or are you just too deaf? Instead you take me with your eyes, and I am burning under your searching gaze. Hear me, won’t you? I’m crying out to you.

I am without a voice, and for all my words I have become dumb. There is nothing left of my world, and there is nothing left of my mind. Drop me, won’t you? I can’t go on with you.

I’ll leave the world with a legacy, but I can’t say what that legacy will be. When you see my silent memory - pale pages with black lines of pain, remember me, won’t you? I did it all for you.

Am I an author, or am I a whore? My body is bigger than my mind. You’ll do what you want with me, and you’ll turn me in your hand. Open me, won’t you. I’ll sell myself to you.

The Brighter I Shine, The Darker My Shadows

They love my music. They love the way it makes them feel inside when they hear it, they love the way it makes them squirm inside when they remember the lyrics. They love how they hear my notes in the night, and how they feel my rhythms in their steps. They stand before me, adoring my music, reaching their hands to the sky. They finish my lyrics for me.

So this is what it’s like to be alive - to feel the lights on my skin. I shine, I do. I am illumination, I am sun. I am electric, and I am alive.

They love me, they do. They watch me when I dance, they watch me when I sing. They watch me when I light up the stage. They watch me in the streets, in the cafes, in the subway. They all know my name. They all love my name. They know where I go, they know what I do, they know what I say, and to whom I say it. They turn glossy pages to find my face. They see me in the sky, they see me on buildings, they see me in windows. They watch me through the unblinking eye of of a camera’s lens.

So this is what it’s like to be loved - to be seen, to be watched. And watch they do. They watch when I smile, and they smile too. They watch when I sing, and they sing too. I am theirs, and I am loved.

I hate my music. I hate how it is the same as all other music. I hate how my songs are the same as all other songs. I hate how my lyrics are not my own - they are what they make of them. I hate singing songs so blue that they will cry in spite of themselves. I hate lying to them, and I do it anyhow. I hate how they eat my words, and vomit my words, and wrangle my melodies, and sing them at me out of tune. I hate walking into the light that should so illuminate me, knowing that I only become darker and blacker, and that they only become deafer and dumber. I hate the heat in my eyes, and the sweat that drops between my teeth when I sing so passionately to those whose faces I will never see.

So this is what it’s like to be a radio. I am in tune. I am number twenty three of forty. I am number twelve of forty. I am number two of forty and I am number one of forty, and I am celebrated. I am number thirty three of forty, and I am criticized. I am voted for. I am an album on a list. I am a name on a page. I am a machine full of little gadgets that sound better than the voice from my throat. I am a robot with lungs. I am iron, I am steel. I am made of metal, and I am a radio.

I hate myself. I hate searching for myself in a mirror and finding nothing but blank eyes and dark circles. I am a hole covered up with the pink powder they paint me in. When I sweat away the paint, there is nothing left. I hate the smell hairspray and I hate the smell of success. I hate the taste of liquor. I hate the taste of smoke. I hate the taste of expensive food. I hate the taste of my teeth. I hate hearing my voice so loudly through speakers and monitors and microphones, but never hearing myself within my own head. I look for my head in dark corners, hiding under covers, behind armchairs. I have lost my head. I have lost my senses. My thoughts are not my own. My life is not my own. I hate waking up in a bed that is not my own, smelling of liquor and sweat and smoke and success. I hate knowing that success is nothing but liquor and sweat and smoke. I hate hearing my name. I hate being loved. What is love when they know nothing but my name, and the words they paid me to say?

So this is what it’s like to be dead - to have piles of earth creeping into my crevices and to have weeds growing out of my mouth. That dirt they put on top of me when I breathed my last free air feels heavy like a blanket on a bed after a night that I will never remember. I will never remember, not if I can help it. I will be remembered, but not if I can help it. I will never be remembered for what I am. I am a field of weeds. I am a pile of rotting flesh. I am too young to destroy myself, but I do it anyhow. I am loved. I hate. I am alive. I die.

The End of Your World Is Closer Than You Think

Dear Mr. President:

My boy killed a man the other day. Did you know that? Do you care? He wrote to me, my boy did. I had missed his handwriting – he hadn’t written in a long time. But as I read that little snapshot of information from his life, I could see him as a child, gripping his crayon so hard, forming his letters with such pride. He would hand me that paper with the alphabet scrawled so orderly across the top and a picture of the two of us, holding hands. We were nothing but two little sticks- he a blue line pressed into the paper, and I a purple one, with a little swatch of brown hair. My boy wrote to me to tell me that the man he killed had a son.

The paper was wrinkled, stained with dirt. I sat in my quiet kitchen, painted mint green, and could see him in my mind, head in hands, envelope folded in his pocket, sweating from heat, from anxiety, from pain. But once again, it’s nothing new. My boy’s a soldier, he chose it. He chose to be one of the nameless, resign his name and his family to a number he kept on a tag around his neck. He looked so proud when he bowed his head to the man in charge, receiving that thin strip of metal around his neck. The commander had a short crop of light brown hair, dark brown eyes who had been humiliated into showing no emotion, tan arms, and tough hands. He invoked a sense of security with his stature, the way he stood so strong in front of all those young boys, trembling in their seats with anxiousness. He raised his taunt hand to his forehead and faced the flag, but I couldn’t help but think of the guns he held with those fingers. The commander was the kind of man in who most would place their faith, but Mr. President, you’ve shown me how to mistrust.

In that mint green kitchen of mine, I spent hours with my son at the kitchen table he’d helped me scrub until it lost its sheen. I would sit with him as he opened the envelopes from the military men you put in charge, the ones to whom I was handing over my boy. “Choose life,” I told him countless times. But he would look at me with those sea foam green eyes of his and say, “Can’t I care just once to take a stand, to take a side?” You’ve never seen his beautiful eyes, have you?

He wrote to me more often when he first arrived over there in that strange land where the sand take the place of grass, and bullets take the place of rain. He would tell me of the other boys, the ones who shared his tent, the ones who lent him cigarettes when he would run out. Sometimes he would describe vaguely the scenery, the numbing grays and browns of the desert, of the buildings rising up from the sand, but never the people, never the living, breathing population. He was a slayer of a people he had never met. The letters got less frequent eventually, but once he wrote of a little boy who had been separated from his mother. The little boy was crying, distraught, frightened by the fighting. My boy became the enslaver of a people he was sent over to set free.

“There’s no reason for this,” he wrote, over and over on that single sheet of paper. “Where is the honor in the killing of an innocent son?” The commander, the one whose stance invoked trust, put a tough hand on my boy’s shoulders, told him to stand up, and informed him that days pass and life goes on. My son told his superior of the little boy’s terror, of the sound it makes when a newly orphaned child weeps. “A casualty of circumstance,” the commander responded.

Mr. President, you say they’re dangerous, you say they’re out to get us. But what if you’re wrong? And Mr. President, are we no better, when we ourselves disregard human value?

The ignorance of your citizens brings them to your feet. When the crowd roars at your arrival, you smile back amiably, I know you do. I can watch you on television from the chair in my mint green kitchen. You’ll wave, you’ll toss a few meaningless words to the masses, and you’ll go on your merry way to the house built for you by your forefathers. Stepping out of the shiny limousine purchased with the money of your citizens, you walk on the political ground paved by the constituents of your country. But who are they to choose? The yelling members of the throng as you emerge from the dark interior of your chauffeured vehicle stretch their arms toward you. You gain your power from numbers, but are they all not just cowards, staring through the crowd at the man they elected to make everything better in lieu of their own efforts?

I wonder what you think when you wake up in the morning. I wonder if you think of my boy, waging a war thousands of miles away, with a stretching, roaring ocean between him and you. Perhaps you think of the millions of people who sleep as well, the lives that are ultimately under your control. It makes you feel powerful, doesn’t it, knowing you have them all under your thumb, like you were playing a board game. But really, Mr. President, you’re walking through this world all alone. My words fall upon deaf ears. You haven’t learned, you never will.

A man killed my boy the other day. Did you know that, Mr. President? Do you care?

Who I Am Today

Who are we, but a police officer who wants nothing better than to act, and an bilingual author who always dreamed of painting? Here we lie, together, slipping in and out of sleep, and in and out of reality, dreaming of things that we may or may not ever do. I don’t want to let him down, you say. He’s done so much for me, sacrificed so much to get me to where I am today. But where I am today, you say, isn’t where I want to be tomorrow.

I walk by an elementary school at least two times daily. I know the faces of the mothers who wait there with their strollers, and of the fathers who lean on their dented cars, smoking a cigarette before their little children can see what causes the stench in the house. Of course they know, the little children do. But as long as mother is there waiting in her hat, or father in his boots, no one will question why mother and father no longer wait together.

It is spring here. The flowers paint their delicate cheeks, the sky is blue, the trees explode into the color we all love to love. The flowers bend their gentle necks in the rain, when the sky is grey, and the clouds explode into bloom. There is pollen in the streets, making rings around puddles. And when it rains, it streams into gutters like rivers of cloudy urine. Nature’s propagation is nothing but a stagnant pool of defecation, lining the streets in yellow.

You stood by my desk, the one that has no drawers, quiet. There are pictures on my wall there, and you looked at them. There I am, smiling, wearing bright red tights and grasping tightly a friend to whom I speak so rarely now. There is the man I used to love, and I pretend today that I do not love anymore. There is the blue sky, there is the blue shirt I forgot at home. There is my mother, there is my brother. All the lives that I once lived are arranged in a mosaic on my wall. All the voices I once would hear outside my door, or whispering in my ear, or mingling with mine in laughter and in song, are silent. The eyes, they all stare at me, smiling. I wish they would say something. They won’t.

Why is it, when I hug my pillow tight to smell his scent the morning after, that I think of you? Why is it that when I push back the hair from his face that I see the red gleam of the ruby you gave me so long ago? You placed it gently on my finger, said it would be forever. But there’s no such thing as forever. There’s no such thing as forever. There is only a stream of events that may or may not connect to each other. There is a sequence of days, of movements, of emotions, of lights. You stand, motionless, in a picture on my wall. I loved the color in the picture when I shot it, and I printed it, pasted it on my wall. I look up to see you every morning when I take my tea with milk and sugar. But you’re not here with me now, and there’s no such thing as forever.

I wandered through the biggest museum in the world, alone. The greatest painters in the world hang immortalized there, in empty halls. I duck into side streets to find bookstores where no one ever goes, hoping to find this book, with that signature. The greatest authors in the world are shelved there, immortalized by a name written in faded ink. Today we love them. Today we give their paintings special rooms. Today their work is protected by lasers and security cameras and plates of glass. Today their writing is reproduced in countless volumes and inappropriate quotations and imitations. If we admire the lighting in the scene, we can forget the darkness of the artist’s death. If we fall in love with a character, we can forget the sorrow of its creator.

I don’t think I am great enough yet for my work to merit the world’s collective overlooking of my depression. I don’t think I am well known enough for twisting white lines on my skin to be considered poetic. Until then, I’ll hide all that. Until then, I’ll pretend that you can make things new just by saying I love you. You adore me, but you’re just not content.

We were lying there, slipping in and out of sleep, in and out of reality, and you asked me what I wanted to do. I want to write, I said, so simply, trying to pull the words from the depths of my sleepy mind. I want to write, I said, and I am going to write. I can’t let myself down. I’ve done so much already, I’ve sacrificed so much to be where I am today. But still, where I am today, I say, is not where I want to be tomorrow.

On the train, the country side whirred by in a flash of green. The ground whirred by in a blur of grey. The sky whirred by in an smudge of blue. That is what life is, isn’t it? It’s a palette with only three colors, starting so vibrant, so promising. And we muddle them, we blend them, we mix them, we mingle them. So original, we are. So poignant, our creations are. One day they will hang in empty halls, protected by lasers and security cameras and panes of glass. But today, there are no lasers. No security cameras will alert the authorities if someone comes too near. No panes of glass encapsulate our fragile hearts. We mix and muddle our lives, we blend and mingle our days, hoping that the end result will be worthwhile. All that comes out is a palette no longer vibrant, no longer promising. Our lives disintegrate into the colors of the sea. Green and grey and blue stretch out endlessly.

We are statues on a lawn, still and stoic in our young love’s majesty, coldly sitting looking on. The walls are caving in. We bury ourselves beneath sheets of paper. We dance in strobe lights, seeing only glimpses of each other, rhythmically. Watching you dance is like watching a children’s paper flip book. The page turns, your arms are suddenly around my waste. We slip in and out of reality. I hide beneath the blanket when the sun comes shining through my curtains. I’m too afraid to learn what reality is. I’m too afraid to look behind me, seeing my steps filling with salt water. I’m too afraid to look ahead of me, to the endless sea swallowing my days. I’m too afraid to open my eyes.

If I open my eyes, I will see that mother and father no longer wait together. If I open my eyes, I will smell the defecation of a thousand breathing beings. If I open my eyes, I will remember that forever does not exist. Perhaps I will open my eyes one day. I will open my eyes when I am great enough, when I am famous enough.

Until then, I will paint my delicate cheeks, dress myself in blue, revel in the green that is my fleeting youth. And one day, I tell myself, I will explode into bloom.

Crisis.

Crisis isn’t supposed to sound like this
It should be noisy
With violins screeching on that tragic soundtrack
And tires skidding across wet pavement
There should be lights
Playing on puddles
Like children in the rain
And there should be constant phone calls
There should be that raspy voice
Coming across the line
Sounding as thought it were
A thousand miles away across the ocean
Or across the dessert
Where I wouldn’t be able to see the face
Behind the sob lurking in your throat
Saying
It was just an accident
I’ll never do it again
I’ll be let off alright
They can’t do anything to me
They will be gracious
They will be kind
And a string of other comforting words
That make my mother stop weeping
In her sweater
And make my father stop frowning
In his coat
Ready to brave to cold to rescue you
So we can all forget this
So we can forget this all
And we can rejoice
Loudly with laughter in our eyes.
No.
Crisis isn’t supposed to sound like this
It’s much too quiet here
I can’t think of way you look when you smile
And I can’t imagine your voice
Saying sister
I love you
I miss you
You’ve been so gracious
You’ve been so kind
So I’m left alone
In this big silent house
Learning in my loneliness
That silence is the sound of crisis.

I Went To a Funeral Today

I went to a funeral today
One of those quiet ones
With the pastor’s voice drawling
In strategically placed pauses to place
Emphasis
On a word or a phrase
And while the family came up to speak
The pastor sat
Behind the wall of flowers
Hands folded in his lap
And his head cocked to the side
In dutiful reverence to
The dead.

We sat in the front
But if I turned I would see
A see of grey hair
And faces deep with canyons
Tracing the places each had been
Each had seen with their heavy set eyes
And I couldn’t help but wonder
If they thought as they sat
There in that church that was cold
Of the frozen earth outside
And if they wondered
Their horrific thoughts enlivened
By the atmosphere of sadness
What that earth would feel like
Nestling in the crevices
Of their own ancient and sagging
Skin.

I shook the hand of an old man today
His grasp firm but trembling
And as he looked in my eyes
he squinted a little
So he could pretend for a moment
That he was young like me
But eighteen years past the day of his birth
So far from the cold clutch
Of the earth and its jaws
Opening up in an eternal embrace.

And thought the mouth is wide
It is silent
Where in in life
Each day is a new harmony
To the strain one had been singing
Death is the eternal rest
The melody
Abruptly
Ending
And as I stood next to the man
Who shook my hand
And we sang together
Making harmony as the living do
And we came to the closure of a hymn
That everyone knows
But I couldn’t help but think
Of what it means to say
Amen.

Metal Doesn't Feel

Cold
Metal doesn’t feel
That badly when
It brushes ever so
Gently against the
Vein that no one
Ever sees the inside
Of
But for the head of
That curious silver explorer
Making its trek across
Deserts of red so
Torrid and barren but
For the small gushing
River dividing life from
Death and the buzzards
That feed there on
The remains of
Memories forgotten and
Opportunities misplaced like
Shattered Christmas ornaments
That no longer gleam
So brightly as they
Once did and have forgotten
What a smile means when
It is found like
An orphaned child
Alone and attempting to remember
What it felt to
Be alive and not drowning
In that desert of
Red and suffocating
Heat.

Dance I Would. Dance I Won't.

My Umbrella Knows Not

This umbrella won’t keep me warm and dry today, but I’ll hold it anyhow. It gives me comfort, somehow, to have the cold metal under my fingers, fogging with my warm breath as I hold it near. My feet bravely embark upon the puddles shimmering in the street lights, and there they splash the water already troubled by drop after drop of rain. I love the way it looks when my shoe steps there. I love to count the rings that expand from the tiny impact. I love to see how the circles distort when I move. I would love to stay there, bathing in the warm glow of the street light, shivering in the cold blanket of the February rain, and dance. The rings make the best patterns when you dance, and dance I would, like a child in the rain, playing in puddles. Dance I would were it not for the voice of my mother in the back of my head, telling me I’ll catch pneumonia, or some other catastrophic disease with letters you don’t pronounce. Dance I would, were I not holding an umbrella, pretending it kept me warm and dry. Dance I would, were I not myself. Dance I would.

Dance I won’t. I’ll walk on instead, glancing between my black clad feet to see the circles that my shoes make when they move. I can see myself looking back, haloed by the umbrella above my head. It makes for a romantic silhouette, the umbrella does. In the blue night I am outlined by the gold of the street light; the umbrella a black shadow above me, my slender body curved beneath it. When I look at my shadow, I can pretend I am a lover, standing in the streets of a romantic city, like Paris, or New York, or London. He will come, I know it. He will come splashing through the streets that have turned into rivers in the time of his absence. His head will be turned down, his collar will be turned up. He will be looking at the circles his feet make in the puddles, but he won’t be counting the rings. He will be counting the steps he must yet take until he might see my slender golden silhouette, poised beneath the street lamp, waiting for him. There I would wait until the streets turn from rivers to lakes, and from lakes to seas, and from seas to oceans. And there we might drown, me and my umbrella. It doesn’t really keep me warm and dry anyway. But I won’t drown. He will come.

If he doesn’t come, I might cry. Although no one would know, because a shadow cannot cry. I would remain a stoic silhouette, never flinching, never budging. I might weep. But no one would ever know, because this umbrella does not keep my face dry. You would not be able to see the tears, because what difference is there between rain and tears, but for the salt that whets my lips? And no one but I will taste it, until he comes. And then he will drink in the ocean that pools on my tender lips, chapping in the cold, waiting for him to come. And wait I would. Wait I would were it not for the places I must go, and the places I came from. Wait I would, were it not for the people calling my name. Wait I would, were you a really coming. Wait I would.

Wait I will not. I will continue on, letting my feet make circles as I walk in a line. As I walk, the rain falls faster. My umbrella does an even worse job of keeping me dry, but I don’t mind, because I love the way it sounds above me. It sounds like feet stomping. It sounds like drummers pounding. It sounds like lungs breathing. It sounds like hearts beating. In all its sadness, it sounds like life, and I forget what that sounds like sometimes. Life sounds like rain beating on an umbrella. Life sounds like gentle footsteps, disturbing a wet leaf. Life sounds like branches bearing the weight of a thousand tears from the sky. That’s what life sounds like. But to live it, what does that feel like?

The rain does not give me answers, it only gives me chills and a quiet tune to which I could dance, but don’t. Rain does not tell me where to go, nor does it tell me where I’ve been, it simply asks me why I am here, right now, right now, right now. Right now the circle in the puddle grows. Right now my shoes leave their mark. Right now I breathe. Right now I live. Right now, I forget that that I said I would wait as a delicate silhouette in blue and gold under the street lamp that doesn’t cast out as much warmth as I would want it to. Right now I travel on to the beat of a tune to which my life is the only harmony.

I count the steps I have yet to take until I reach a place I do not yet know. When will I know? I ask the rain. But the rain does not give me answers, it just tells me to dance to the quiet tune in my ear. Dance I would. Dance I would, were I not.
Right now, he sits smoking a cigarette. He is not waiting for me. Had I waited for him, no steps would have been taken, no steps would have been counted. He does not have an umbrella. He sits, content, watching the way the smoke is punctuated by the rain. I watch the way my breath is punctuated by the sound of a heart beating. I do not think he hears it, but I do not know how.

I find I do not know much at all. The rain does not give me answers. It only gives me chills, and my umbrella does not keep me warm. Somehow there you sit, smoking in the rain, and I shiver more than you do. Who told me that an umbrella would keep me dry? Who told me that I could stop rain and sadness from pounding on my head? Who told me that I could control the trembling of my hands, and the shifting of my feet, and the beating of my heart?

Today I will risk death at the hands of a letter you do not pronounce. Is it not better to be killed by the silent ‘p’ than by silence itself? Were it not for the rain, where would be the music that sounds like feet stomping, and drummers pounding, and lungs breathing, and hearts beating? Were it not for the rain, how would I know what life sounds like? I forget what that sounds like sometimes. Today I will remember.

The rain will turn the streets to rivers, and the rivers to lakes, and the lakes to seas, and the seas to oceans. We might drown, but not me and my umbrella. We’ll let the umbrella take care of someone else for once.

Coming to Hell Through a Big Mouth

How can you view the world
When each pond’s
An open secret
An open mouth
Waiting to spout
Ways of dying
Coming to Hell
Through a big mouth.

And what should you do
When you can’t help but wonder
How lilies look from under
That desolate space
Hoping that transparency
Can somehow erase
The way it feels
When you hold the sky to your face.

Shackles old around your ankles
They get heavier tonight
And feel what it’s like
To be losing your faith
But don’t you tell me
There’s no escape
Don’t you go losing
Losing your faith

Don’t you go losing
Losing your faith.

Transparency can’t erase
The desolate space
Between the lilies and you
When you hold the sky to your face
And don’t you dare tell me
There’s no escape
Don’t you go losing
Losing your faith.

I Give Thanks.

I give thanks for closed doors
And whispered conversations
Over jellied cranberry sauce
It’s jiggling surface speaking
In tremors of words unspoken
As knives scratch china
Eyes cast down
At its embellished corners
The faded golden trail
That decorates overdone turkey
Far more intriguing
Far easier to deal with
Than the trails of frowns
Long ago screaming
Disappointment and frustration
Hate and heavy love
Without ever saying
A word.

I give thanks for closed doors
That I might not have to see you cry
Though your eyes give you away
And your slow deep sighs
Fogging the glass of wine
Poured from a bottle
Open for too long
Blood red but fermenting
Like vinegar
Burning our throats
Like the words we refuse to say
I forgive you
And mean it
Instead we stare in silence
Our lips parted about the cheap crystal
Hoping that perhaps the more we endure
Of wine that tastes
Of years passed long ago
The more we just might
Be able to
Not forgive
But forget.

Walk Away

With So Many People To Love, Why Do I Worry About One?


There’s nothing like coming to the painful realization that someone actually hurt you, someone you never thought you’d care for somehow made the small numb part of your heart feel again, made it hurt again, made it cry out again. And there’s nothing like the realization that they no longer care about you. Not an ounce, not a gram. Instead, all that’s left is the cold shell of a friendship that was never really there. Maybe that friendship would have lasted if you hadn’t kissed me that evening, that evening we sat on the roof and pretended like the night had no end. We ignored the time, ignored the blaring signs that one day we would fall from that paradise the roof was to us. Because that night there was a beautiful sunset, and watching allowed us to ignore everything else. We watched it in its entirety - it was one of those early fall sunsets, one streaked with blood red ribbons. It was chilly, and you held me in your arms.

Your arms have a smell, you know. I don’t know if you know that, but they really do. I feel like I’ve been impregnated by the scent because in the mornings I sometimes think I smell it, and my insides begin to kick. Perhaps once I would have loved to feel that emotion growing inside me, taunting me with the prospect of something I would unconditionally love. But our relationship has never been that tangible. Now when I smell that lovely scent that once I cherished, all I feel is nausea.

You told me there was nothing to fear, nothing to fear as we stepped over broken glass and slept on broken glass with alcohol coursing through our veins. It made us warm in that cold cold building that contained our love. It made us feel alive in the room with the broken tiles that echoed when we spoke. And when we laughed it was syncopated with reverberations.

Is that all I was to you? A reverberation? An echo of something you used to love? Did my voice remind you of something you loved in your youth? Is that all you wanted me for? Were we destined for failure? When you heard me sing, the way my hands felt on your back was all you saw. When you saw me slowly tear off my shirt, the way my breath felt in your ear was all you heard.

We did fail. We saw it coming, but it didn’t make it any less painful. When we sat there in a circle passing around escape in a blunt we looked at each other through cloudy eyes and decided that yes, we did hate each other. There’s that sickness again, there’s that pain. I had forgotten what it felt like.

I can’t say I loved you. But I can say that I hated you. I hated the way you looked past me. I hated the way you ignored how well our voices intertwined. I hated how you refused to be my friend when all I wanted was to hear your voice again, like I used to. Will I ever admit that I loved you, even a little? No. But I know that someday I’ll look back at the pictures of us smiling together in the sunshine, you wielding a sword, smashing a pineapple on a picnic table. And I laughed that day. I laughed so hard. And the sweet sticky juice dripped down my chin and I’m sure you tasted it when you kissed me.

Tell me, did love it? Did you love the way I tasted? Did you love the way I felt under you? I’m sure you did. But how much did it bother you that I wouldn’t let you go farther? When your tongue traced the indent beneath my ribs, and the channel that runs down the center of my stomach, how much did it hurt you that I made you stop? How much less did that make you want me? Or perhaps it made you want me all the more. I’ll never ask you. I’ll never know.

All I can know is the way you treated the other girls who yielded to you. And at least I can say that despite your loathing for me, I’ll never be like them.

LIke the two of us, you and all of them failed. You told me the stories, you told me the conversations you had with them. You took them to that place we all imagine, that magical place between heaven and hell, where the angels sing songs in your head, and the devil mocks your sin. I never let you take me there. I don’t regret it.

But we did plan a trip together. It wasn’t a trip to ecstasy, as much as you may have wanted it. It was a trip to the land of skyscrapers that look like crooked teeth against a grey black sky. It is the place where neon lights take the place of the sun, and where music leaking from underground allies is the soundtrack to the city. We were going to go there, together. We would make that music, we would instill ourselves into the city’s background noise. We would laugh, and we would kiss, and we would sing. And we would get a following.

People would come to see us in that ally where we started to play. People would come to see us in that cafe that let us play as its connoisseurs sipped lattes and mochas and other drinks that ruined the bitter taste of the coffee buried beneath the sugar. People would come to see us in that venue that took a chance on us. People would know our name. People would yell our name. Our name would mean something to those who loved our music. Our name would mean something to those who loved our lyrics. And the important thing was that it was our name. It was not my name. It was not your name. It was our name. Our name. Our name. And what has that become? Where has that gone? It’s passed to nothing in the midst of our downfall. It’s vanished into the space that keeps growing between us.

I tried once to close that gap. I had been made strong by the atmosphere, by the serum of confidence that flowed in my blood. It did not matter that later that night I would forget all about you. It did not matter that the next morning I would not want to rise from the ocean of my sheets. It did not matter that the next day you would reveal to me how uncomfortable I made you feel. At that hour, that minute, that second, all I wanted was to feel you again, feel the way you moved in my arms.

But you shifted so awkwardly, so uncomfortably. What exactly does that mean? I’ll probably never know. We don’t communicate well. We knew that from our very beginning. You told me to call you more often, I thought you should call me less often. You always wanted me to stay, I always told you I needed to go. You thought I thought things about you I never thought about you, and I would never even consider thinking about you. But you’ll never know that. Our thoughts never coincided.

Although we both know that you’ll be with someone else. I’ll be with someone else. And someday you’ll walk away from them too as you did to me. Will they write of you, as I am now? Will they think of you in the same way I do now? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps you find it easier to simply not think about me. You never think about the way my hair smells when you bury your nose in it. And you’ll never think about how my head lolled to the side in your father’s chair. You don’t want to think about it. Because there’s nothing like coming to the painful realization that you were actually hurt by someone.

I don’t think you ever intended to become attached to me. Our first night together, we laughed with Elizabeth C. Baker in her decorated ballroom. And although we sang and giggled and rolled with bare backs on broken glass, Miss Baker witnessed our first breakdown. And we realized that night that we would never last. Shouldn’t you have detached yourself from me then? Shouldn’t you have started running away? Shouldn’t you have started hating me then and there? We were a ticking bomb, just waiting to tear our relationship to shreds. It was just a matter of time. Is it just a matter of time again?

Perhaps, in time, you’ll be able to look again at me like you used to. Maybe my heart will jump again like it did when you looked into my eyes by the moonlight, nothing but thin wisps of fog between us. You told me then that I was beautiful, or my voice rather, although you would have liked to say that my face was too, and my lips, and my hands, and my hips. But you couldn’t. Then, there was another. Always another. I was just another another to you. I really think so. I’m another in your past. I’m another you kissed. I’m another you walked down the street with, hand in hand. I’m another you took care of to the best of your ability. I’m another you loved to talk with. And I’m no longer. And sometimes I think that’s alright to be just another. Hating is easier for a logical mind to handle.

But how much credibility do thoughts really have when your heart screams the opposite? The heart does not have vocal cords to allow it to communicate. The mind does. And so I say I hate you. I say you’re immature. Do I mean it? Doubtful. Because when I sit in your room in the chair we both used to fit so comfortably in something hurts inside me. It’s a muscle I didn’t know could be sore. It’s a part of my heart I didn’t know could feel. I don’t know where it comes from. It scares me a little. I want to go take that escape between my fingers, between my teeth. And then maybe I won’t remember. Maybe I can erase that feeling. I can cut that little part out of my heart. I can pretend it doesn’t exist.

But then I hear his voice. That strange, scratchy voice that we both loved. You were so excited to hear that I loved him too. You have the poster from his band’s tour on your wall. You want to get their lyrics written in ink on your virgin skin. I assured you it wouldn’t hurt. Not that much anyways. Oh, I lied.

And I’m sure you lied to me too when you said you wouldn’t hurt me either. And just like all those needles in your skin hurt so, so much, you hurt me so, so much. I don’t want to admit it. But I just did. And it hurts me even now to admit it. Perhaps what makes it bearable is the fact that I hurt you too. And we can be together in our respective pain.

How is that? How can we only be together in hatred? In pain? In hurt? In disrespect? We can’t. We can’t go on like that. We can’t be together. Or at least not now. Maybe one day we can. Not today. Not when the sun rises on barren trees. Not when our hearts are still barren for each other. Not when our music is still barren. No feeling there. No love. No connection. Just tension. You can feel it in the air. You can taste it.

It tastes like peanut curry. And bananas. No. We can’t be together. Because when I think of peanut curry, I think of you. And bananas make me think of you too. And blue moons shining so rarely in the night sky. And chinese food. Do you know you ruined chinese food for me? Black beans too. Tequila. Porcelain under my clammy grasp. Brass hooks in my fingers. Quilts tucked expertly in. All of it.

Your name is written in the stitches of the shirts you loved when I wore. Your fingers trace the rips in my jeans. I shudder. I smile. Oh, I hate the smile that creeps onto my face. I can’t have it there. I need to erase it. I need to forget it. I need to forget how it feels when you run your fingers through my hair.

No. I can’t have you. I don’t want to have you. I don’t want to miss you. And I don’t want to love you. I don’t want to think I ever could have loved you. This is my way of saying goodbye, because I can’t do it face to face.

When Words Say Nothing, And Silence Says Everything

When I see the rain, I think of you. I think of how you used to hate it, hate how it made dime sized splotches on the fedora you wore to work. The rain ate up the light, you said, you said it made everything so dismal and dull.

I always loved the rain, loved how it smelled against the hot pavement. The rain makes you appreciate the light, I said, I said the way it smells forces you to remember your other senses other than sight.

You took me to a waterfall one day, one day when we were still so giddy to see each other. You took me to the ledge, led me blindly. And I tripped on your shoes, or on my own shoes, or perhaps on nothing at all, because your hand still felt so lovely in mine.

Our hands fit smoothly together when it was my turn to lead you, lead you to a place neither of us should have been. Had we been caught, I would have laughed, laughed at how our silly romance could be so easily contained by rules and regulations and boundaries. But we weren't caught, weren't caught but still contained.

The road between your doorstep and mine wore down my tires, wore them down to treadless black circles spinning endlessly on the unchanging grey beneath them. And though I travelled that grey path time and time again, time and time again we found ourselves no farther than when we'd started.

We disagreed on the importance of silence, the importance of space between words, the importance of no words at all. You frustrate me with your silence, you said, you said it seemed as though I was holding something back from you.

I never meant to hurt you, though hurt you I still did. And although I was sorry, I'm sorry I never said. While you always claimed I should speak, speak to express my mind, mine was not one that could easily be spoken of.

I'm sorry means nothing, means nothing of consequence, and consequently I never said it. Sometimes I wonder if you'll ever know, know that in my silence I'm screaming apologies, apologizing for the way I treated you. You'll never admit that I did you wrong, wrong as I may have been all along.

There are so many things I should have told you, should have showed you. Should have is the key phrase, the phrase that deems what is generally acceptable in a situation like ours. But I don't regret it, don't regret my silence. I know my silence spoke more, more than any of the words I ever said.

In my silence you can watch my eyes, and in my eyes you can watch my soul. In my silence I cannot lie to you, lie to you and tell you that everything is fine, everything is alright. In my silence I can kiss you all the same, all the better. And in my silence you can still know that I care, care about you, and care about us.

But we disagreed on the importance of silence, silence and rain. While you saw a dreary day as the absence of light, light shone through the cement ceiling of clouds to my perception. And while you saw my silence as a lack of words, words could never have adequately described my feelings at the time.

Better to be silent than to be meaningless. Better to learn to love the rain than to live in a perfectly sunny, arid, and lifeless land.

These Kids Today.

These kids today,
with their raised fists, screaming to the idols of the stage that they will change the world -
change the world with the cars their parents bought them,
racing from this event to that event, calling to SAVE THE PLANET
before driving one hundred and twelve miles in a box on wheels
whose gas mileage is less than most of their ACT scores.
The ACT never asked them how to think,
never demanded that its takers comprehend the way life truly works.
But nevertheless, in number-induced elation, they could wave the papers that ensured their entrance to this program or that school in their friends’ faces.
Change the world indeed.

These kids today,
whose dreams are so lofty,
soaring beyond the opportunities their parents had.
So privileged they are –
to be able to jet around the earth on this humanitarian mission or that peace project.
“This’ll look great on our resumes,”
they say to each other,
eying out the competition to their prestigious placement in elitist communities;
or perhaps, scoping out the most favorable distraction to the horror they were sent over to help.
No one expects the good kids
to fight bitterly,
to lust passionately,
to trip heavily on the stuff they bargained from the dirty boy down the street,
to find Lucy in the sky in the dorm rooms on which their parents spent thousands a year to provide.

These kids today,
infected with hatred –
for their parents,
for the government,
for the kids who sits all alone at lunch time, only to consider suicide at the age of sixteen, because he can taste the hatred of his peers in the turkey and swiss on rye his mother packed him.
They pissed in his pudding yet again.
And simultaneously they’ll smile, they’ll wave,
they’ll accept that award with a grin on their face,
hiding the fact that the essay they wrote about their alcoholic uncle
was a complete and utter lie.
Uncle Brian lives in Savannah, Georgia and owns a health food store.
Uncle Brian pays for their education.
Uncle Brian doesn’t know that the lonely boy who sits alone at lunch
never came back to school.
No one knew his name.

These kids today,
with their wild hair and black clothes,
dreaming of becoming the rebel that everyone secretly loves,
dreaming of being different for once.
They’ll huddle together in their groups and dream together,
never realizing that in their rebellion they’ve become yet another number,
another statistic to be presented to their younger sister, younger brothers.
The dead and shriveled, tar filled lungs they all once shuddered at the sight of
have begun to grow in their own chests.
Suddenly they’re yet another nameless face in yet another trend –
and tragically, they don’t even realize it.

These kids today
swear to dethrone the president,
to stand up to social injustice,
to boycott the corrupt industries,
to start a revolution with their
voices,
words,
petitions,
marches.
But suddenly they’re distracted from their noble causes by the unmistakable scent
of the perfume of the girl who lives three doors down,
and the feel of her lips when they brush against the tender skin of the neck.
And the dying masses,
the screaming victims of genocide,
the weeping, abused women,
the hunger stricken countries,
the unjust war,
and the climate catastrophe –
all are millions of miles away from their suburban slice of heaven.

And the funny thing is –
or tragic, rather –
is that one day they won’t be kids anymore.
They’ll be sporting their shiny shoes on the gum stained sidewalks of Manhattan,
they’ll be talking on cell phones attached to their ears as they create a bit more wind
in the already breezy Chicago,
they’ll be holding umbrellas in Seattle to the rain whose acidity was the result
of the SUVs they drove to SAVE THE PLANET rallies.
And when they stand together to rock the vote,
as they always swore they would back in the day when they could
hide from social injustice under their parents’ roofs,
it will be these kids today
who will rule the world.

Jesse.

I’ll name him Jesse. Black pants. Black shoes. Black shirt with the name of a band no one but he knew. Black guitar case left open on the street next to his foot tap-tap-tapping to the beat of his own creation. An Alvarez – with five strings. The E-string dangling uselessly past the head like the metal-core bands of the grungy basement scene. It was raining – he didn’t mind.

He decided he wanted the fedora he was wearing when he was sixteen years old. He was in the process of robbing a guitar store called the Blue Eagle. His E-string had broken, and he needed another. The man behind the counter caught the not-so-sneaky thief. He stared at his black shoes shuffling beneath him over the blue tile as he was dragged by his ear to the back room. He felt like a little kid again – a feeling he loathed.

His mother used to pull him by the ear, wrench it like a limb out of its socket, treating the cartilage like a removable appendage. He used to yell, to scratch her away. Then he decided to pierce his ears, because he knew then his mother would never touch them. It worked.

The man in the back of the Blue Eagle wore black pants. Black shoes. Black shirt with the name of a band he had started, a band everyone had heard of. The man wore a fedora. With a feather. He let the boy go with a nod and a wave of his cigar. He was indifferent to the boy’s minor misdemeanor. A thin stream of smoke followed the path of the man’s dismissal. The boy left and never came back. But he went home and told his mother he wanted a fedora.

His mother used to wear hats. Big ones. Elaborate ones. Purple ones for Easter. She would sit in church each Sunday on the fourth pew on the left, behind the man with the golden spectacles. She always thought he was handsome. He’d comment on her hat, on her purse, on her gloves, and she’d smile adoringly before he turned back to the front. Meanwhile her son snuck to the bathroom where he smoked cigarettes and wondered what it would be like to play in a band everybody’s heard of.

And he would come back, smelling of burnt leaves, of cheap tobacco, of a carcinogen he was not yet of age to inhale. His mother knew. She had a nose, and it functioned. She touched his long hair gently, tucked it behind his ears. She frowned when she told him he looked just like his father. And then she would adjust her hat, and turn back in the direction of the man with the golden spectacles.

The man with the golden spectacles drove a black Lincoln and arrived for church eleven minutes early. The women with the big hats always greeted him, hugged him, kissed his cheeks like the French. The man with the golden spectacles didn’t remind the mother of her son’s father. This man would never leave – she’d never see the back of his black Lincoln drive away, so that the numbers and letters of his license plate would be forever imprinted on the inside of her eyelids.
She would shut her eyes for prayer in church, see that combination bathed in blood, and open her eyes to see its descendant staring not at her, but at her hat.

He swore he’d never buy a hat – but he really liked the fedora.

His mother always left church before the man with the golden spectacles so she would never have to see him go. As she walked out of church that morning, she kissed the man goodbye on both cheeks, as the French do, and turned to see instead her son drive off, wearing the fedora he found in his father’s closet.

He rarely ventured there, but when he did, he loved the way it smelled. It smelled like old smoke. While he despised the man whose scent was infused into the very threads of the carpet, he couldn’t help but think of the time his father gave him his old Alvarez for his 14th birthday. The old man had forgotten not only his son’s birthday, but how to play the out of tune thing. The boy was to ecstatic to care.

He stole the fedora from the top shelf, where his father had left it by accident in his hasty retreat from the house that now smelled of Summer Breeze Lysol. The hat added stark angles to the silhouette the mother saw as she watched her only son drive away.

He never formed a band that everybody’s heard of. Instead he sat on the floor of his unfurnished apartment, holding his Alvarez in his arms like the child he hoped he would never have. His long hair fell over his face since his mother no longer tucked it behind is ears with the gentlest touch she knew how to give. He would fall asleep each night cradling Judas, his guitar, in his arms. He named it thus for the betrayal of his father, and the betrayal of his own.

And so he sat each day, on the corner of the street where the Blue Eagle once stood. The man with the fedora had long since died, clutching his cigars, clutching his cane. Sometimes the boy wished he could thank the old man, the one who exemplified the single act of true forgiveness he had ever witnessed. The boy would never forgive his father, and the mother would never forgive the son. Instead she would sit in church in the fourth pew each Sunday, with the drawl of the pastor in the background, and watch the man with the golden spectacles. She bought herself a nice new yellow hat – she knew he loved that color.

The boy wore nothing but black. His mother had once hated it, but now it made it easier for her to forget him and the guitar he blasphemously named Judas. When she thought of him, his morose attire allowed her to finally diminish his memory into shades of grey. She could don a purple hat on Easter Sunday and not once think of her son, the reincarnation of the man she once loved, the boy who had shared her pew for 18 years of his miserable life.

On the corner in the town far away, he found that to live without the love of a mother is to live without guilt – or at least he liked to convince himself of that. He still dressed in black, and he couldn’t help but think of how his mother had hated it. When he put on his fedora it somehow still smelled of his father, although intermingled with his own sweat, his own smoke.

He wondered if his mother would recognize him now. He thought sometimes no – his hair had grown too shaggy, his face had grown too old. But then he’d catch his reflection in a puddle in the street after a sudden rainstorm, and he’d see his father. He would wince as he once did when his mother pulled his ear. He saw in himself the man his mother fell in love with, the man she once saw standing on a street corner in Johnny Cash’s characteristic all-black, drumming along to a tune of his own creation with his feet. When she leaned in close to tell him that his playing was inspirational, she could smell the smoke in his hat.

“Where’d you get it?” asked the boy’s mother to the boy’s father, long ago.

“It was my father’s,” he replied.

I saw him on the corner, in all black. He was playing for no one but himself, but I couldn’t help but notice. It was raining, but he didn’t seem to mind. But for the broken E-string he would be alright with his fedora and his guitar.

“What’s your name?” I asked the boy with whom I would one day fall in love.

“You can call me whatever you’d like” he replied.

I’ll name him Jesse.

The World Is Not Flat, Columbus.

I stood in the rain, letting it drip down my face, intertwine with the threads of my hair, soften the calloused leather of my hands. I stood in the shower, waiting for the water to get so hot that it would numb the tender skin of my arms. It's best to cry while in the shower, because it's easiest then to pretend that you're not. As I stood in the shower that day I felt what it's like to entirely drain one's tear ducts. But I'll never tell - you'll never know.

It was raining that candlelit evening two months and three days ago. You came and met me at my car with an umbrella - but who thinks about umbrellas when you're making the tiny hairs on my neck stand on end? We sat on your floor, our backs against your bed, and I told you that your picture frames were crooked. You asked me what life would be like if there were only straight lines.

Your room was decorated in shades of red. You apologized for the untidiness, for the small degree of chaos, for the black lint in the carpet. You picked nervously at it as you looked back at me, waiting for that word of encouragement, the smile that let you know you were forgiven for the laundry basket sitting in the center of your floor. I told you everything was alright, since your red sheets smelled of you when I buried my face in them.

The doctor's office was decorated in shades of white, screaming superficial sterility through the twice daily windex-ed window. The woman to whom I was supposed to release my life's information was overly tan and left faint yellow tobacco stains on my documents as she gave them back to me. I told her I liked her pink nails that could inflict significant damage to an unsuspecting patient. I thought her occupation choice was appropriate - when she simultaneously contracted both skin and lung cancer, she wouldn't have far to go. Her fellow cubicle-mates just may care enough not to chip her nails during treatment.

She gave me back the pieces of paper that would one day allow my medical insurance to scoff at me when I asked for assistance, and sent me on my way to the rectangular white box whose atmosphere was intended to comfort the hurting. I couldn't help but think of the red tape that framed the lily that I made you, and of the red blanked that ended up on your floor.

The bathroom in the doctor's office was equally white - perhaps even more so. As I lay face down on the bleached tile I realized quite tragically that the world could never consist solely of straight lines. Even now the floor was warping beneath me, taking the preconceived notion of 180 degrees and bending it beyond recognition. And as I stared into the swirling vortex of the toilet I felt my skin stretching and pulling across my stomach, such that it would never be flat again.

I left the bathroom newly decorated in shades of red. And I left the doctor's office that disguised murder with a white lab coat.

Two months and three days ago I lay awake listening ot the sound of your breathing. Tonight the drumbeat of your heart pounded in my veins. I woke up to kicking and screaming inside of me. As I lay there alone in sheets that didn't smell of you, I wondered what it was like to be that little one that swam in the world that was my belly. If it cried I'd never know - it would never tell me.

And dear Bobbie, nor could I ever tell you.

I stood in the rain, disregarding the umbrella, because who think of umbrellas when they're waiting in front of a death clinic for the one who can make the hair on the back of their neck stand on end?

And I stood in the shower, weeping, because where better else to cry?

And I buried my face in the red sheets that smelled of you, because with you, the world could never be straight again.

Art. Is. Resistance.

Art.

The expression of feeling through some sort of visual or audio medium. The bearing of one's soul through a paintbrush, through a guitar string, through the stretched tight head of a drum, through a shaft of No.2 lead. The creation of something that can shake the world, or be left under a bed, or be burned with the garbage on trash day. The capture of the world as we know it, or as we knew it, or as we wish we could know it. The manipulation of emotion through color, and sound, and light. The bible of the uneducated masses, the savior of the intellectual few. The energy of light captured by film, the sound of the unspeakable as portrayed on paper. The world through the eyes of a child, through the eyes of our subconscious. The greed of the senses for something tangible. The way to break a heart, or to heal the soul. The manifestation of our wildest dreams, of our sweatest muses, of our most terrifying nighmares. The slave of its creator, the mastor of its admirer.



Is.

Existence on Earth, existence in one's mind. Life being lived as it should, life being lived as it shouldn't, life - regardless of the way it's being spent or wasted.. Description of him, of her, of it. That which comes to pass. The reality of pain, the reality of love. The essence of being. Truth, whether or not we like it.



Resistance.

To stand up for what you believe, to stand up for what you don't believe, simply because everyone else is. To hold your ground, to break new ground. To have an opinion, to have someone else's opinion, to make up your own opinion. To win, to lose, but never to tie. To fight back, to start the fight. To be condemned for your nonconformity, to condemn other's for their conformity. To have a voice, to have a song, to have a scream. To not be afraid of what may happen to you, to be terrified of the world if things don't change. To have the ability to look into the future, to have the have the insight to look the past. To join a movement, to start a movement. To never back down, to always push forward. To be be steadfast, to be open to change. To riot, to yell, to burn. To refuse to be repressed, to break from oppression, to overthrow. To support the opposition, to be the opposition.



Art Is Resistance.


Find your voice. Raise your voice.