The Climb
t’s always gonna
be like this
with the weight
of my own failures
weighing at
that panicked spot
at the bottom
of your stomach
some of us
are going to die
with worry
Tip-toe
Like a ballerina
Over glitter covered razor blades
That lie on the end of your tongue
Underneath the backside
Of your beautiful metaphors
Cause that’s where
The hurting meets the breakthrough
Rising up to greet you
In the middle of the day
When your arms are empty
And all that’s left are bloody sheets
With tear stained, three-day old t-shirts
The sun shines through the shades
But… even though
You see the light
You can’t make it through the fog.
So you just lay back down
Hoping you survive
For your loved ones
Until tomorrow.
Tomorrow comes
But with a weight
You didn’t need
To be carrying
You forget sometimes
You aren’t bearing it alone
Not anymore.
He’s the only person
Who can drive you
Absolutely, insanely mad
Yet you still, long to come home.
Even if
There are pieces
Of you both
Forever missing
A love filled shack
Is better any day
Than an empty mansion.
He is home.
I clicked my tongue at the thought of you,
I couldn’t quite place the emotion
that had begun to build,
or how I never seemed to know
when it forecasted rain.
I concluded in the end,
I didn’t know a lot of things,
but within the spindles of webs
I’ve created, and lines I’ve had to draw,
just to look at you, to be with you, feel you
I knew you. I could see you within
the crude shape of my mind,
and realized late, in a sort of cruel way,
I was enamored with you,
or a bygone thought of existence
that passed for you.
A human shape
but not yet existing model of my mind
and perception.
A race of conclusions but
dreaded assumptions
without stable answers.
I want to know you — be you?
Find you
within the same existence,
over and over.
I want to forget you,
but only to remember you all over again
— maybe a bit sweeter.
A bit kinder. A bit closer.
Rewrite my hypothesis
and then conclusion,
until there nothing more to say,
nothing more to gather or study.
Race against my inner monologue.
Think too hard, too long,
never catch a breath within the heat
of a moment.
In the end all that can be drafted
all that can be found,
was that no,
I truly knew nothing at all.
I stood upon a gentle hill,
covered in field grasses,
crown vetch and Queen Ann’s Lace.
From my point of view
I could see for miles in all directions,
more hills and trees, roads and barns.
Red winged blackbirds sang and
flew about, lighting on strange
pipes protruding from the surface.
No houses are nearby, no cattle or
sheep or goats. No horses will
ever graze these pastures, these
slowly moving, incredible piles
of human created garbage left to
gradually decay over hundreds,
thousands of years, making this
man-made acropolis unusable for
the foreseeable future.
Out of sight, out of our minds…
KW 6/12/23
Maybe I still miss you
Because our time together wasn’t finished
Our story ended too early,
Maybe missing you
Keeps the idea of us alive,
And maybe the day I stop missing you
Is the day the universe gave up on us too,
And you’ll be just another cliffhanger
Learning the word “gate panic”
from a two-people story
about video games and how they are made
from water, and from intimacy,
from paint spilled out against strange pages
of a too-quiet play
is catching my heart in my throat.
I am always much younger when the
stories of the games begin, and I start
off running first.
I win. I feel the panic sooner–
of the two-person whistling
lonliness worlds,
as they intertwine and unravel
and intertwine again.
I think the inventors cannot catch up
to me, and I cannot catch up at all.
Sometimes I talk like a pirate.
You might think that’s weird, but I can justify it.
With a parrot on my shoulder, singing sea rhymes,
I sail in my boat, because boredom’s a crime,
And when I talk like that, I can right it.
(view the booklet/zine I made for this poem)
my mom says my friends will
some day be angry at me
for now, I watch their
anger from the sidelines
but that will change,
she tells me
I want to be happy.
I want everyone to be happy.
anger is sad;
I live in avoidance (of it)
it’s nobody’s fault,
but I dread the day
we are truly angry
at each other.
