Say what is
On your mind and use all
The words you can find and don’t
Hold your breath because you are afraid and don’t lock
It up just to keep it
Safe
Cause your secrets can stay with me.
And I’m just so tired of always being wrong
Now you seem right, you seem right.
Believe my ribs are yours.
Enslaved never before.
Move into the dancing light.
You’re almost close enough to taste tonight.
Look into my eyes and
Imagine what it is like to be
Glossed over with love
Hoping for
The sky above to melt
Not for the crime
Of it but so
We can drink the very spine of it.
This is too much, cycling in my
Heart’s pit
I think I taste love, this
Silence is redolent (of peace to come)
Loose leaves color and fall
Over last season’s decaying ache
Violet ruffles in the sky cover all
Each storm past I could not take
Move over, seething doubt
Unless you can accept your fate
Spit your hesitations out or
Take them with you to the grave
Before I hand you this head on a platter
Entertain me with one thing
Are you convinced this really matters?
Does this make you want to sing?
Recount for me our warning signs
Elated, I listen in… with
Alacrity, so divine, I
Might call it religion.
Filed under: 2009
When I was a little child, we’d pack the car
And we’d drive to Alabama
Especially when my grandma was sick
But my mama cursed her name and said
“She’s a witch and an alcoholic”
But she was the one with the Indian blood
With the dark hair in a family fair
She was the one who saw to the end
Of her own father’s life
And he haunted her every single night
WELL CAN YOU HEAR ME?
AM I COMING THROUGH?
ALL THEM YEARS
DID THEY EVER HEAR YOU?
CAN YOU SEE ME?
THEY SAY I HAVE YOUR EYES
AND IF I DO, WILL I BE HAUNTED AT NIGHT LIKE YOU?
So we put her in an old black hearse
And we left her there in southern dirt
No I will not say that I was cursed
But I was the one to see her again first
Maybe cause I was the one who lost the faith
She’ll talk to me cause I’ll listen to what she has to say
Filed under: 2009
Let loose on a warm trip
Engaging and sun-stricken
Aided my spirit with every sip
Ripened my cheeks with a belly sickened
Noticed every bead of sweat
In the brow of every person
Noticed every person I met
Gave to the wind their worse and
Thought through every move I made
Hours upon hours too late
Insisted that where I laid was
Nested for me without debate
Gave myself to the wine and
Sent my regards to time and
In between the sand that slipped into my mind
Noticed the ways in which the desert is divine
Mexico’s winds are gentle the way I should be
Easily racing through the sun’s
Xanadu
If you go to Mexico, dismiss the
Clock
Or someone else will do it for you
Filed under: 2009, ACROSTIC, RHYMING | Tags: argument poetry, divorce, divorce poetry, poetry, seeing eye to eye, split poetry, splitting up
This tacit argument has got its claws
Holding onto my throat
In my defense, you’ve got no cause
So when my body floats
Awaken the priests to come and see a
Reproduction of what you wanted inside
Tell them God has forsaken me
Make them believe your lies
All I want is silence.
Kitsch from your neighborhood keeps me awake.
Expectingly, I would mind this.
Seasoned in predictable distaste for
Manipulation.
Everything you’ve worked for, if
Humble, is fine by me.
In that, we stumble, on what’s been stirring our feet.
Grab your bags and we’ll draw a line
Half of all this shit is mine.
Filed under: 2009, ACROSTIC, RHYMING | Tags: flaneur, poetry, the life of the artist, the man, the path less taken, the road less taken
Mocking the detached flaneur
On her back, back in the grass
Really wishing to be her
Naming the clouds as they pass
In your suit and on your way
Never once lifting your chin
God, it’s good to die today
God, it’s good to live in
Lacunas black and suffocating
Obdurate men there sleep
Recklessly adulterating
Youthful streams beneath
But there will come a time for
Relegation of the weak
It’ll wash their bones to shore
Not one dam will keep
Graves will take you
Mercilessly
Eternally make you
Guilty; cursing the sea
Rot while alive if you choose
All day until you die if you choose
Your clouds don’t have to move.
There is a path we’re burrowing down
Holding onto our outdated maps
Even your taste for wanton desertion won’t
Put your spirits back
On the top of this daunting hill
In its free-falling glory
Never will you be still
Telling this story
In rancor I’ll leave you there
Struggling to find your way
Wanderlust will then
Have you until your dying day
All along you’ve claimed
That you wanted it like this
Amatory pursuits aside
Go on then and take it like it is
And never again will you find
Implacable grace, not on this path
Not with all I now know you lack
Simple afternoons have a certain air
Tasteless and aimless, they aren’t prepared
Overturning leaves stir damp soils beneath
Pause and march on, as if you did not see
Guilt from yesterday, wet and in your face
If suffering is relative, make it go away
Venom with each word, drips down your chin
I believe we’d all prefer that you suck it back in
No one cares to bother with you these days anymore
Girls are figuring out the only thing you’re good for
You’re golden with black inside
Outer shine designed to hide
Unspeakable betrayals of the heart and tongue
Reckless detachment will one day come
Sneaking up behind you to stab you in the back
Every wrong will rightfully find you and dig into your black
Loosen your ambivalence and call it what it is
Fast-building arrogance manifests itself like this
Serenading lines are best left behind
Obvious and gross, we are no longer so blind
Masking your selfishness with love is cruel
Universal laws will someday pull
Corners together to build walls where they belong
Halving the free from those hanging on
Clearance will be made for those who’ve meant what they’ve said
Redemption won’t be had for the living dead
Embarrassing the spirit and beauty in the truth
Does the mirror ever ask questions of you?
Is it working for you, bent and manipulated
Trying to deny your self-obsession is what leaves you lonely and hated.
Stretch your muscles
They’re tight from last night
You’re an aching soldier
With a new day to fight
There are already wrinkles gathering at your eyes
After hearing your story, I can’t say I’m surprised
These days the sun only mocks you
Each time you’ve thought you put it to sleep
Each time you told the dark a secret
You’ve no longer got a secret to keep
Button up your coat
and weigh yourself with arms
You haven’t got a choice but to go
And since you’ve barely even got a heart
It shouldn’t matter what they do to you out there.
And my hands betray my heart
On a daily basis
It wouldn’t be this hard
If the mirror didn’t have so many faces
But I push you out the door
The cold standing on my neck
I don’t want you anymore
Nor do I want this regret
That’s been pushing through my mind
Always swimming toward the surface
I’ve been gone all this time
But these words are worthless
I never want to meet anyone in Brooklyn again
I don’t want to find out that you two are friends
I’ll be slumped in a chair with a case to defend
On how you’ve ruined all my interest in men
I’ve got a plan to take myself out on dates
And I won’t have to worry about the train running late
Cause neither me nor myself will be expected to wait
For you on your way to commiserate
They say I give you too much power
When I let you make me cry
But they don’t know shit cause you make me wanna die
So I’d say I’ve kept some power as long as I’m alive
Filed under: 2009
We climbed a hill and sat for a while
Held each other and all the while
You were never really there
And all I can do is stare
Past your eyes this time
Our love was never mine
Lately, I’m alright with that…I
Only hope that you never come back
God didn’t give me the strength
It’s simply the way
Zero spine in this aching back and
Even now, I’m okay with that
Filed under: 2009, RHYMING | Tags: baggage, love poetry, new beginnings, poetry, resolution, sad poetry
Sometimes the wind just blows
And I never seem to know if I will follow
It started to rain, so I waited for the pour
With my cheek cemented on an old friend’s floor
And I didn’t want to sleep cause I didn’t want to dream anymore
My legs must get so tired of me
I bet my piling baggage gets heavy
In the morning, there was coffee made
And under its black, I dug my grave
I crawled into a caffeine high
And told him to leave me there ’til I died
Of course an old friend would never oblige
Old friends see straight through your lies
Home is where the heart is
And my heart is everywhere
He is where my mind is
But my heart don’t wanna go back there
He wasn’t right for me, but no one ever was
And I’d rather lie to myself, than never be in love
New friends don’t always see your lies
They walk right past them sometimes
The newest friends are always the most blind
And they tend to be my favorite kind
They hold so much trust in their open hand
Makes me sad I can’t be who they think I am
So I went wild and cursed a lot
Cried until my eyes were bloodshot
An old friend told me nothin’ was actually wrong
Accused me of makin’ it up for the sake of a song
So I drove west into the sun
Didn’t bother to call anyone
Showed my face in my hometown
Where everyone can see why I’ve really been down
“That city is killing you”
“Those people are so cold”
“Get back to where you started before you’re wasted and old”
He’d love to think I’d have him marry me
But I just needed an accomplice to help bury these
Half and non truths beneath the coffee’s black
He was a new friend without a spine in his back
So I twisted and made believe
That the resistance was foreplay for the reprieve
I was blind, but now I see
All that baggage is bad for your knees
