Posts for June 4, 2024 (page 10)

The voices in my head started blowing whistles instead
Of the usual sighs and spit-takes,
Less Greek chorus than late night karaoke,
Power ballad hooks replaced with sloppy sobs in falsetto
That turn them into mantra.  

Why shouldn’t June zephyrs announce their arrival
In the dirty freight train dialects of tornadoes?
Who’s to say squirrel chittering shouldn’t be
Pugilistic, fed through megaphones
In echo chambers that undress timbres
Like a late-season hurricane.  

Actually, I once believed everyone’s personal soundtracks
Consisted of emergency broadcast system tests
Followed by parrots impersonating Gilbert Gottfried.  

You go ahead and relish the ice cream truck’s
Revisions to the great American songbook,
Tap your toes to Friday night polka in the park;
I’ll stand here, wherever, watching lightning bugs
Rewire the evening while humming
To the sound of my own brain.

I
dream of exploring pristine castles
beyond Gaian atmosphere
from the safety of my
silver fifth avenue
under duress
of the clan’s
maw.

I
awaken in existential rumination
as Daoism writhes and whisks
me from the safety of my
black silken sheets—
Did I taste reality
or early onset
dementia?

A crimson stain on cobblestones 

A whisper in the night

A life extinguished 

Stolen by hates cruel and binding light

A trans soul lost

A future cut so short

Violences echo,

A painful, chilling report.

I often walk in fear, 

With every step I take,

A target painted on my back,

A life forever at stake.

Words like weapons,

Hurled with vicious glee,

Dehumanizing language,

Stripping dignity.

The bathroom stall, 

A battleground disguised

A haven sought by all of us,

Where privacy is prized. 

But hate intrudes,

Ignorance as its guide,

Claiming safety,

While pushing all of us outside.

In alley shadows,

A brutal, hidden crime,

Love’s tender bud,

Choked by violence’s grime.

Media whispers,

Sensationalized and stark,

Ignoring stories,

Leaving a gaping mark.

But through the tears,

A fierce defiance burns,

A tapestry of resilience,

Where hope brightly churns.

Community gathers,

A shield against the storm,

Love’s vibrant colors,

A resistance taking form.

We raise our voices,

A chorus loud and strong,

“Trans lives are precious”,

And we rightfully belong.

Demand for justice,

For equality to reign,

Shatter the silence,

Break the chains of pain. 

Let love be our weapon,

Let empathy ignite,

Erase the darkness,

With compassion’s guiding light.

For every life lost,

A thousand more will rise,

With strength unshaken, defiant,

Reaching for the skies.

Sun. Moon. Shimmering.
Bridge opening days’ rhythm.
Water flows through all.

Landmines

Growing up, when talking to my father, at the corner of every sentence it felt like there could be a landmine.

The trouble is, these landmines were so well hidden.

I might be walking around the house on a fine, sunny day when I’d utter something and observe my father’s cheek flushed with red, and I’d know that I did it.

I said it.

He was about to detonate.

His heavy hand would swing across my face.

I knew it.

I activated something unknown, hidden deep within him.

I stepped on that damn landmine again.

I survived it, though. 

And through trial and error, I have learned which pathways were safer to walk.

Even though I am here now, without visible scars or missing body parts,

Still, pieces of me are forever lost.

No one survives a landmine entirely in one piece, just as no one survives war without a scar.

It was pure,

Alongside the tobacco field where a

Antique tractor worked the soil.

Through plowing, setting, spraying, and cutting

But the vibrate sides

Where the nitrogen runoff would make

The clover and weeds explode

Between the rare 4 leaf

And white blossoms

The red would bloom.

A communion with gods I didn’t know

My brothers and I would pull

These blooms and suckle

At the sweetness

That was not corporate America

That was not the erasure of families and communities

That was not the commodification

Of a traditional way of life.

But of an experince,

of a hundreds of years old memory made again,

one that where I hope the ghosts of my forefathers

Looked upon us with begrudging

But silent approval

The autobot asks for my
date of birth. I don’t
have the heart to ask
its. Autobots don’t get my
jokes anyway. That’s how I
know they’ll soon replace my
boss and the church elders.
AI has no heart yet
it essays to write my
students’ papers for them.
Students, my prompt asks
you to fall so
hard for an actress
that you write parts you
can disappear into with her,
to build umbrellas out of
words, to walk under them
in real storms,
looking for a real
lost dog, to forge
from words alone a stick
to throw which will make
the dog come running, 
and failing, to make another
and another until you’ve formed
a forest out of words
and can hear the dog howling
in it. This of course
will make the actress break
character as she sees 
the script for what it is:
a stick she’s been chasing,
sees you as just another
bad actor, and realizing this,
she tumbles in the mud.
The dog leaps into her arms.
Cut. That’s a wrap.
During her Oscar speech, she
pets the dog as your
name and dates flash onscreen.
You never found the words
that would lead you 
out of the woods.
My date of birth? 
The question is:
when will you learn
how to die?

Six years of filling the lungs with smoke. 
Now that my ID finally scans 
I’m trying to quit.

A sixty-six year old gas station attendant
wanted me to know he’s bisexual
asked if I ever dated a guy.
one more reason not to
buy smokes at two am.

After work how can you not want a cigarette.
Eight hours of having customers look at your chest
and if you’re wearing a skirt
your crotch to see
what’s there. 

no one tells you they’re addictive

Limb

It took about 25 days,

No about about it, it was 

exactly 25 days, for the 

courage to swell 

large enough in the heart for 

the brain to 

temporarily black out so that 

the fingers could type a message of

simple greeting and 

clever connection.

Hey there 

(this is higher than it looked from the windowsill)

No

Hey th—- 

(will it hold my weight?)

Ugh

He——— 

(would I need x-rays if I fell from here?)

Sigh

Words

my lifelong faithful armor now

prick my fingers when I 

try to put them on and 

now there’s blood on the 

keyboard I should really

clean that up and wash my 

hands of this until 

tomorrow you know 

what never mind. 

“Hope is the small hole cut into the honest machinery.”
        —Hanif Abdurraqib

I have friends who are dying &
there is deeply troubled violence

happening in the middle of the planet.
The sky seems to be heating

in unnatural patterns & I’m not
certain I’ll get to love a child of my own.

But every morning I try this life again,
pressing quietly against walls

that taste of fear while moving plainly
in impossible-to-chart directions.