In my nightmare it's the same boy,
hanging from the institutional ceiling tiles
He wears my current colleague's face and body,
my old coworker's clothes,
and my highschool friend's voice
All so young,
boyish boys believing they're ready to be men,
hating themselves completely when they are not,
and utterly afraid of my eyes.
I had never related to a sentiment more,
but you can't tell them that,
while they're hanging from the tiles.
Midnight star, I always think of you
Moon before the sun, catch the glimmer
The halo of mussed hair before the window
In the dim, each strand glitters like spider's silk
Let evening light touch your skin, cold like stone
Reflect scattered glow into hungry pinprick pupils
Put a shiver of braille stars into my skin
and read me in the dark.
There is an online radio
all digital, an interface from Enschede
so different, the waterfall display
from the radio dials in his office
From the other side of the world
I hear many voices through the noise
I hear music and the ticking of radar.
I switch to AM and hear thunder
from a station in Tennesse
For a moment I am able to imagine
sitting on the concrete floor
listening to static, punctuated with crackling
"Listen, that's thunder," he had said
I tune the station
and imagine what it would be like
to hear the echo of his voice whole,
through the static
Just one more time.
You design a future where I am present
and I find that I have never felt
so fascinated with a person so forthright
You talk of feeling like fact,
instead of a proof of concept.
I am shocked and somewhat aphrehensive,
But also terribly amused
Worst is knowing that
you may operate without intention
To say something is to be laid bare
To admit to the mouth of desire.
Do you live there? Between its teeth? Under its tongue?
Do you understand the meaning behind the words?
Do you realize the amount of times you have said,
"I love you"
"You're important to me"
"I feel safe with you"
Without saying the words?
Suffering doesn't make you better,
it just makes you hurt
and the grief never goes away,
never shrinks, even as you grow
Bullets into trees and people,
burrowed beneath the barrier.
The cut that always bleeds,
The slug in your skin,
The bullet in the bark
We both grow the same way,
Eating our wounds.
and at our center sits
something that killed
I am learning how to sit in someone's skin
It's like a lesson in empathy
for those who don't know how to know
I can't imagine feeling like that
but for a moment it was close to clear
transparent as a window
I almost can't believe that for everyone else
seeing like this is something they just know
I tried to find evidence
of someone that didn't live
A man that had nothing but existence
who didn't quite understand how to give
I tried to look for anything left
and there stood proof of stars and radio signals
of hands once skilled and deft
writing circuit diagrams like sigals
Of the man that had to me taught
of plants, planets, and atmoshperes
But every book and record of his had been left to rot
and there was nothing left when he looked at me but fear.
Grief can be defined as
the feeling you have
for something which does not
or cannot exist
Something that was
Something that isn't
Something that never.
Grief is synonymous with abscence
Of what?: you decide
Or that something within you
may decide for you
Grief is simple,
but how can I explain?
That in the background,
a man has been dying
for as long as I have been living
How do you explain you've been consumed
After there's nothing left?
Someone might reach into the cage,
Someone brave, missing fingers
Dip their hand into the rage;
From their thumb pull the stingers.
A face that doesn't scowl
Still it snarls,
Still it bites,
Still its lips, it pulls back tight
Wir feiern Feuer für das Licht,
Wenn die Dunklenheit reißt
Aber die Zunge nicht spricht,
Wenn die Sonne brennt und beißt
The cherry of your cigarette;
a red beacon in the dark
The true cause of your regret
on your skull will go its mark
In the cold and snow ring a shot;
a short shout of static
Something stills, gotten got,
from head pain most traumatic
I'm taking a peek into the past again,
I find no messages from the future
I have to wonder how long anything lasts
infatuation, joy and reverence
How it becomes forgotten
in tomes of mere reference
You with invisible wings,
buzzing against the sky
Little highway bug,
with no carapace, no shell
With you I must be careful,
lest I send you straight to hell
The only touch I could tolerate
met my fingertips through the body of a guitar
Singing, reverberating with a voice
I didn't need to listen to, to hear
Almost painless-
with amusement I note:
the strings bite
I lay my head on the ground
on green grass.
It giggles to me,
"The red dirt eats blood,
turns bones to silt,
and sand to mud."
I put my finger to a blade
I say, "It eats you too?"
It confirms, "Yes eventually,
and then you."
I am missing people I never met.
I am missing people I did meet.
I never give anything away,
but everyone leaves me with so much.
If they take nothing,
does any piece of me stay?
Sometimes I wonder if I
ever really cross paths with anyone at all
You ask me if I feel guilty,
but I'm not sure I know how
Not when Isolation built be and ruined me
both in one blow
Hell, I couldn't wrap my head around it,
the magnitude of your regard.
It's something I couldn't imagine,
something I don't know how to know
I didn't know I could maim so badly,
and I didn't want to.
But how could I have avoided it?
I didn't know other people loved that much
I wonder if I could drive while I'm asleep.
Hands stock-still on the steering wheel,
Road lines flashing in my eyelids skin-deep.
If I were to veer, would I even feel?
When I crash, would I even know to leap?
In the city I saw a man in coveralls,
Wearing devil horns, within the walls.
I wondered what he had hoped,
What he had saw with angel-eyes.
Before the days had eloped-
Was there a want to his cries?
A piece of the past
that never got to ask,
Was it worth it?
Did you see the stars?
Did it matter one bit,
That we wanted to fly to mars?
Did my children sing?
Did they ever buy a ring?
I went too early, too soon,
To see the machines I made.
I never got to see them reach the moon,
Never got to see the things I’d been forbade.
The man said he wanted to know,
Was it all just for show?
Did it matter?
Did things change?
Or did the world shatter,
Like a bottle in a firing range?
I felt my heart pounding.
I tried to decide if such a feeling was
closer to love of fear,
or it they were of the same root
Fear, desire, suffering,
survival.
Everything required to go on,
neatly wrapped into one.
I suppose everyone else would like to call it hope
Is that why it makes your heart hurt?
it's a cold place
far from where we've been from
it's an old place
new to us, the lonesome one
stretching for miles to the ends of all,
stretching for whiles to the cities, so small
The dry sea, deep blue, but shallow
it's only roamers, hope it never to be so fallow
from one land come another sort of folk
who hope to reap the sand, to take it's yolk
they sowed their own seas, they made their bed
they siphened it, turning the green one red
so they sit at the edge of all
with their squealing sin and metal skin
they talk so sweet with quite a drawl
with nothing but bitter, sick intention