I.
God definitely smokes weed in Heaven.
“With how stressed he is? He probably lights up.”
He adds Bob Marley to this dubious cloud –
I mean crowd – for good measure.
II.
A real question of a questionable nature:
“Why do we give back to the homeless if they don’t got nothin’ to lose?”
III.
It’s funny that the only girl in class
actually tries to learn something.
“It’s Summer School; you’re not here to learn – you’re here to work.”
if you knew how many times
your name has been written with this pen
would you still offer adventures
slacked across green fields
nauseated on rum lemonade
hiding from the narcs—
i mean gnats—watching
our nefarious acts
hold my hand while this sun goes down
i swear i’ll cross the line
once my confidence kicks in
Not a thing grows
That cannot also topple down
Upon itself and flex enough to almost die
Not a thing grows
That cannot also reverse-appear
In the beginning, invisible to everybody
Not a thing grows
That stands so tall without ears
Shut off, itself inside itself inside itself
Three times, not a thing grows
That backwards, goes.
All my memories are wrapped up inside a shell of empty misery.
I can hear you in my mind, and you sound so alive.
I’ve got your things, they’re kept clean.
I write you letters, and poems on the old typewriter you’ve left behind. Half the things I say, have no meaning, they’re just said to pass the time.
I pretend to know what’s going on inside my head.
But all it is pretending to not notice when I feel so empty.
I almost collapse onto the floor.
And you see me from your corner of wherever you are.
I wonder what you see.
A question is misery.
A thing left unsaid is so haunting.
I bury the words with you.
I bury these words for you.
Today’s moments only last for as long you can see it in your eyes. Everyone says we’re together, but we’re so far apart.
Everybody plays their part.
Tonight I will still keep moving on.
Tomorrow will always seem too long.
But the next day will seem so short.
Just like yesterday in my memories.
We’ve all lost our minds.
Pretending we’re divine.
Nothing’s past the shadows, and nothing exists past the light.
Nothing passes through the light.
I see you in the grey of my time.
You look so fine.
I’ll write you a song.
And sing it over your grave.
You won’t hear a note, but I know you’re seeing me perform. Contradictions make me feel alright.
I believe I don’t know, but I know I can’t believe.
In something older than my soul.
Something unseen.
I’ll bury these words for you.
I’ll bury these words for me.
So I can have some rest.
My mother says that it’s like an old sore song.
My song is as familiar to her as an old ringtone
she keeps forgetting to change.
She recognizes my immediacy to sit up straight
and ring that bell right when anyone ever asks:
“So, why did you go to school to be an English teacher if you’re just going to work in food service for the rest of your life?”
I always stare at my mother while I recite this script.
Like I memorized it in Sunday school and I’m excited for her to hear it.
But excuses are just leeway for gluttony.
The masochist in me needs to watch her face change.
Stay right there and look at what you did to your mother by sitting still
for years instead of growing up.
Don’t lose sight of her face when she is forced again
to accept your fathers irrationality in the voice of her only daughter.
She let his hateful grow inside her,
strong and out and finally forgot it.
And here you are with a mouth of excuses and his face.
Your reluctance towards living isn’t fair to her,
or the twenty three hours, or the C-section scar.
You are the only reason she can’t keep a belly ring in
so do something about the sacrifice.
His schizoid mean-mayhem echoes to her when I mention my pipedreams.
She remembers the plotline to my DNA
like a new alarm clock she called broke
instead of reading how to silence the ring.
That facial twitch was a memory of a stranger she recognizes all over me when she hears me lie about trying.
It’s the slight tilt of the body
when I say I don’t like high school.
Tongue clicks against teeth in a purse mouth
when I say I’ll figure it out.
She lights another cigarette
when I mention graduate school and my youth.
In the signed exhale, I wait at her tongue tip.
“What’s the point of another one,” she says
“When you haven’t even tried to use the first.
I fold my paper feelings up like soiled origami tissue
and stuff them into the ashtray that has become my mouth.
Burn up any thought that could have grown into a hazard.
I’ve got all my excuses and pipedreams lined up like
a folded hand of cards she dealt in my favor.
Everyone has bored, sad eyes at the fact that you still don’t
understand the rules of growing up.
The depression calls it ruining it, says she’s right,
that this body is just your fathers.
A statue of anxiety that’s been sleeping for six whole years,
While she has waited patiently for you to step finally off
from her aching backbone.
How dare you even think about the word tired
in a house full of women who still have Pikeville soil under their nailbeds.
Not from some man’s idea of struggled bootstraps,
some simple upper-body lift from entry level to professional
where words like trusted, worthy, and merit based raise live.
But from a gravel grave crawling up.
There’s no bootstraps and pulling when you’re barefoot and gnawing
at your own umbilical cord to afford to feed your hungry siblings.
Your only-child style vocabulary smells spoiled
when you try to define your version of a neglectful mother.
What would you know about struggle in the south?
The silver spoon she gave you is obstructing your rationale.
I’m beginning to see pain as a spectrum.
Some scars are so deep they become riverbed pits of muck retreat
that you keep hidden from yourself for safety.
Real pain looks like not talking about pain.
Not developing its frame in the black light of language.
Real anguish does not need to be repeated or found
It is compound and saying out loud wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.
Denial is easier than forgiveness.
What is the point of pen on paper?
Poetry is just a sorry self-admission of weakness begging to be witnessed.
Do you remember your mother’s childhood? Because she doesn’t.
All she remembers is the repetitive sound of her own feet meeting the ground
There’s no sick leave childhood for your mother to take.
Since the death of her daddy she’d been paying everyone’s way.
Making all ends meet on a babysitter wage.
Watching her line cook mother get her hopes up on fate,
and luck, and men,
and moving them in,
and closing her eyes reluctant and relying
on a child to change her own old, sore song of
“I wills” and “just wait.”
Under setting sun, Saint G teases me
with the very desire I’ve sought to ignore
as if to remind me that one can’t forget
what they have to try not to think about,
and it forces me to question:
is it wrong to pray to saints, asking
for blessings on another to be withheld,
to demand my chance to bask
in the spotlight of ethereal attention?
Well I’ve found strength in gardens,
in skylines, and in stars.
Through all my travels
I still haven’t found my home
instead of yet another road.
And in the new places these roads lead,
the same rewards rerewarded
tend to shine less and less.
Impossible desire reawoken, the rest of my night
will be spent trying to put it to rest
so when I finally lay my head on my pillow
the only prayer that will pass my lips
will be quite simple.
I’m tired.
methadone clinic between two train tracks
keeping hands in pockets to hide their shaking
dope sick and sobbing at the 7/11 for a taquito
this is not a poem about income inequality
two dead kids at the university
spray-paint memorial in the campus quad
head down so eye contact doesn’t invite conversation
this is not a poem about value
a Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Championship hat
methadone pill bottle and hometown pride
any sort of pride can remain after a hundred years of failure
this is not a poem about geography and its prerequisites
a kayak paddle propped against the memorial
a lifetime of cancer and the urge to escape it
we are fearing for a better life in the context of past experience
this is not a poem about hopelessness
6.
i don’t know how to tell you to feel
compelled loving me; to copy & paste.
to save a positive jpeg of us to your pinterest.
to paint a quaint spouse black;
seeing gardenias not gun powder in orbit
crowning the heads of her brown babies.
ruminate, with romance, on the elegance
of her earlobes, her stretch marks, her keloids;
every poem her constant companion, her carriage
across every threshold. our mouths her entryway
to privilege and a life of promise. our songs to her
at play in beds of rosebuds and pomegranates…
her kitchen’s common kink
cast in diamonds and pearls
on the highest of billboards.
7.
Akhenaton knew the power of a single narrative.
sought to monopolize light and power…
before a lit mob made it monotonous
and made Merlin, a wizard grand, into a dragon.
his chokehold on camelot turned melanin into gold
(his philosopher’s stone just a regular ol’ nigger-toe).
8.
Whitewash Jones precursed invisibility
his harmonica a shadow of self; his immortality
a magic act… Nkrumah In The Dust…
in this corner, the challengerrr, Luuucas Beauuuchamp.
in the corner to my right, Bigger Thomas, our chammpeeen!
twin bevels from a plymouth rock, or so said a signifyin’ chimp
(Planet of the Apophonies)
“but i am not a simian,” said the semiotician;
monkey seize what monkey’s due, i guess.
On Weird Science Night at my son’s elementary school
we see live crawdads pulled from a tank in the gym
as water drips from their shining claws.
We learn they can regrow their limbs
and that when they grow they shed their exoskeleton
leaving them soft and vulnerable.
In a dark classroom we see transparent fish
with glowing T-cells.
We learn they’re given leukemia
and then drugs to try to cure it.
The scientists can tell if it’s working
or not by looking at the T-cells.
We see a human brain in someone’s hands.
One specimen has been sliced down the middle
and I have to look closely to see the amygdala,
the part of my brain that doesn’t work correctly
and gives me anxiety.
I wonder how many schools are given this opportunity.
In the email from our school district’s Safety Advisory Council
I learn that 20 to 25 percent of children have an anxiety disorder.
I wonder if my son will develop it too
or if he will learn to read T-cells.
I wonder if the council can prevent another Marshall County.
I feel as soft and vulnerable as the crawdad without his exoskeleton.
