i like it when i can hear my dad singing, i like it when i feel the cold sheets rustle. i like knowing that you know what i hate most and how i wish i knew what to do. i like having you talk on the phone to me while i fall asleep and i like knowing that its okay if i dont want to to talk back because its too much energy and words fall heavy out from my lips like cinder blocks. i like knowing how many cups of water i’ve drank and i like knowing useless knowledge.
i like knowing where i am, “you are here,” but i like it more when my lips are the ones saying it.
in the end its all a matter of who is willing to survive, and who is going to end up in the dumpster. in the end its all about the who is what and what was left behind. in the end its about the years and not the days.
its easy, elementary.
so stop asking me what time it is and i’ll stop listening to old records.
you would figure that we’d have this figured out by now.
visitation
we meet. you are fleeting thoughts in my mind. you fade into the blurriness of that day and i forget the way your voice sounds. we meet again, you are reinforced in my memory and i take notice of your white teeth and your smile. i remember your name, the color of jacket that you wore. we say goodbye. you are a 5:1 ratio on my mind, in my dreams, in my speaking tounge. you stay with me. you are an installment in my life, you are the anchor to my rocking ship and you are lips that say my name every chance you get. you weary. you are the hook that holds my jacket, the lips that stay quiet because it is night time and everyone is sleeping. you are the closed eyes and the fluttering behind eye lids.
things are quiet, we are quiet.
the night goes on.
the sun comes up and you are smiling. the sun comes up and i am trying.
eyelashes
its things like watching my fathers eyes move behind his eyelids and thinking of how one day i will be as old as he, and he will look back and wonder where the years went.
its things like watching great beasts of men become frail horses that wander aimlessly through the field.
its things its things its things.
its never the impulse or the thought anymore.
lips
your body moves like the way my mouth pronounces your name. you’re running over syllables and consonants, you’re tripping over vowels.
im repeating every word you’ve ever said. not everything can be understood the first time around.
passing the ruins of every person that your eyes have ever met. the quiet is heavy with melancholy.
you, all of you- with your coarse, unraveling hands that shake with anticipation, you bind my loose ends tight. you, with your long and wrinkled fingers that worked long in the sun, you stitched my wound tight with that black thread you spun the morning before. you, who hung my frayed and moth eaten body and hung it on the thin wire in your dusty backyard, left me to be blessed by the sun and kissed by the sky.
what is left, left of me.
it’s horrid to wake up feeling so desolate, God willing, give me something. Give me a feeling, give me some rage, give me some sun, give me red’s so bright I cant see straight and give me lips that dont know when to stay shut. I want too much and think too little, I run blindly into the lights and dont think twice about thanking the people behind me.
im so tired of waking up and hating. im so tired of the mundane. God willing, help me to finally not argue with the person in the mirror.
these days im giving up fighting walls with my fists and starting beating concrete with my feet. God, it feels good to be alive.
direction
i woke up and felt that first breath of conciousness leave my lips. sitting up, i bent down and screwed my feet on. put the peices back together and go on another day. the soles of my feet are worn and dirty, but you know that the first thing that my hand makes contact with is a pen. walk up to that worn wall with shaking hands and slow eyes, spider webs in the corners and now a barely legible “thank you.” to match.
my knees do not woble, things are looking up.
