How many brushstrokes would it take to capture you?
Can you escape the static
The static landscape that distorts you?
Your voice?
Your needs?
Must we invent a new art of synthesis
In order to quantify your pain?
Her strange face
Painted in his familiar way
Stoically she begs for us to see her
See every argument
See every fight
See every struggle that she’s ever had.
His violin the gateway
The gateway to her music
Her stars the road
The road to his secrets
But the path is deafening.
She turns away
Her back exposed
Her skin forsaking the usual flesh tones
Yet her energy radiates with color.
Thoughts drip from her presence
My ears hearing what can’t be heard
Her words forbidden to be spoken
But everyone who walks by can feel her
Can be intimate with her
Can touch her in places that darkness attempts to hide
We are all victims
Victims of her violence
That violence the aggressiveness of her colors
But through that violence,
We catch a glimpse of ourselves.
Your simplicity too complicated
Too complicated for us to ignore
For your twisted truths war with our stereotypes
Our paradigms disintegrate
Disintegrate with every glance
Our aroused minds penetrate
Penetrate with every dance
The Wild Beasts pant
Pant to drink from your spontaneity
Yet who understands?
How many have drank from your fountain?
Because of you
I’m imbued with serenity.
I begin to rip apart the perspectives
Tear away the curtain of accepted style
I want to know what lurks underneath
What in me dies to live?
What area of my existence hides itself for me?
Am I a deliberate incompletion?
Whatever shall be
Shall be in me
And it shall be born from the solitude
The silence
The absence
Because of you
I shall climb out of this maze
I shall hang on the walls of scientist minds
For the oppressive climate of war stirs me
Births me
And at times even curses me
Yet who can deny the ballet?
The ballet of oppression
They say every seven years
Your skins cells are renewed.
It’s been eleven,
And I still feel your touch
Embedded
Into my skin.
I was just a child then.
Because of you,
I will never feel whole again.
Holler talk refrains
Curve round my brain,
Fire up a itch for the shadow and glow
Of country folk broken and brought up by coal
And winding kudzu-covered roads.
Something primordial and writhing,
Once upon a time, on the ocean’s shore,
There was a beautiful shell that you couldn’t ignore.
It was the color of a distant horizon line,
When the sun sets beyond it and daylight is dying.
It’s been carried, once, by many things,
Within it were echoed the sounds of the seas.
And within it are whispers of things yet to pass,
It sees each blooming flower and each broken mast.
Yet these wisdoms go unknown.
The shell was cracked, these thing unshown.
Now no one knows what’s yet to be,
Just another shell within the sea.
Perhaps one day, though now impaired,
It is needed and repaired.
But now it drifts from shore to shore,
Leaving one to find one more.
Carried there along the tide,
The world’s secrets locked inside.
Who do you specialize in treating, and can you use my pronouns?
What modalities do you practice? Will I hate it?
Do you take my insurance?
When will I be better? I need a specific date. Really. I’m not kidding.
Where will I put these pocketfuls of trauma when we’ve exhausted them?
Do I recycle them?
No, not the trash; they were each such terrible, personal gifts.
Why must I learn to stay in my body? It’s dark in there, haunted, and full of bad presents.
What if this persistence is just the price of never being good enough to rest?
What if I never know if my love was big enough to deserve them?
How can I ever say for certain that I was enough to deserve anything at all?
Does your office make reminder calls? When do we begin?
I’ve never been,
but I need to go
to the city by the sea.
My toes long to be buried
in warm rocky sand.
My hair craves to be windswept
by a salty hand.
I’ve never been,
but somehow I need to be
in the city by the sea.
The skin on my cheeks
wishes to be burned away
to make room for sunkissed freckles.
My tongue aches to be sweetened
by the soft embrace
of café strawberry ice cream.
I’ve never been,
but still my heart cries out
for the city by the sea.
