Posts for June 8, 2020 (page 9)

For the prefix in my name for my letter to Rand Paul,
I can write-in any title of my choosing.

The impulse is I go by Queen.

(nah, fam) We surely have privilege

but we will not have our voice dismissed.

Lately, YouTube videos about early monasticism
and comic book movies.

We need a new Constitution.

It’s said that the original ascetics

i used to bite my fingernails when i was nervous. bite away the nerve endings of my nail beds. until they’d bleed. until i was ripping my nail from my finger. a small form of self harm that could go undetected

i was always told it takes 21 days to break a habit. i marked my calendar for the day i could paint my nails. they were heavy with polish and 21 days worth of feelings. looking at them i realized my fingers are crooked. i laugh well shit there goes my hand modeling career

when i had my first girlfriend i trimmed my nails consistently. because i wanted people to assume we were having sex. as if my hyper fixation on my own dead skin mattered to anyone. as if they’d even notice. as if we’re not all trapped in an endless cycle. focusing on the beauty of our own hands that we forget to look at anyone else’s

Life is what you make of it,
It’s as good or as bad as you want,
You have the power to change it,
It’s up to you whether or not you want to be happy,
Some may disagree,
Those are the ones who chose the wrong path,
Whose lives are filled with misery

The name was a wet, embarrassing  thud.

So I call out for that body smacking tile floor hard.

Name like grasping for an elusive shower curtain

that lingers behind the body like angel wings.

I call for a temple on porcelain bowl,

sick flash of white light head trauma impact

all slick from water slick from blood or shampoo

on a floor of stringy black hairs and tissue paper 

Name like the seizure that follows and the

empty static of the house it echos in.

Name that taste like choking on vomit and froth.

Name of convulsion and empty eyes.

I call that naked, limp body of a name.

I hear nothing. No reply in my empty house.

I forget the name as soon as it leaves my lips.

I forgot the name as I step into the shower.

every morning, my pen gathers
drops 
           to glisten  
                            the love of you.
the ears of the flowers hear me,
they joy at the sounds 
                                      falling 
                                                   to earth,
though i’m anywhere but there with you.

then, like no one living
you break me 
                            down 
gently with a look, or
in a trice, with severing sword 
bring me
                            down
to parky water pools
where the fishing is 
fabled, and easy.

and your poem buoys my shallow depths.

and i learn 
these futures we plan write themselves,
and i’ve a false face that only you know. 

red is the color in her hands before and after and always.

putting down her spear and painting her palms is patience,

henna in heeding her brother Baʿal thundered call.

she is cold and caring and can wait a night to stain her skin

and to braid her hair

while the storm strains the air and pleads she loose the rain of her sword.

and though gods and men are made as lambs in a lion’s mouth, she is made as fangs and molars

are in a lion’s mouth—

as they are made into her wreath and crown, the tooth of her spear and the point of her eye,

which sever and slaughter so she may lace unhanded fingers into her sash.

and if red is her color,

and if red is the color of love,

it is the color Death sees as she greets him, saying, ‘No more will you take my Brother.’