I. Witch House
I had to call you back –
the numbers were still new
and I wasn’t sure which
house was yours.
I was sitting right out
front in my mother’s car
but I didn’t know the witch
house was yours.
Lying on a hammock
in your back-yard
where the sun still knew
how to shine,
I was mislead by voo
doo, while your father
peeked through the blinds
like the lady counting twenty
eight days passed, and
I had to call you back –
it was April fool’s. My
sense of humor
commandeered, and
saw us apart twenty-eight
more, but I didn’t know the witch
house was yours.
So I followed you down
to the basement while
your father slept alone,
and in the blackened white
dark we gave names
to the love that we birthed,
breathing fire like a
dragon that was yours.
And mine.
The rhythm of that tree
was quick to not be caught,
ripping down the creek,
and whispered in the dark.
He stood on all the shadows,
made King to those below him,
and grew in all the others
that did not grow to know him.
He sat among the gods,
shooting up towards the heavens,
perched eternally in that place,
with a glowing smile on his old, wise face.
And while his reaching arms
kindled a loving fire within,
those very flames, fed with poison,
were the beginnings to our end.
III. Felix Culpa
What muddied lens covers my day-to-day, resulting in a transparent that is bleak and ugly? In my exhausted haze, with little concern for conscious, I chased poisons around my parents’ sterile suburban town, constantly reassuring myself that Thoreau was right –
That this time tomorrow I’ll be in Austin, sitting by a fire singing, “I ain’t got no name.” And I will.
Rimbaud fed the darkness that feeds everything else, and together we fought the seas on that dizzy boat. I had enough money, so I threw myself a birthday party, but I just wound up pissed off because everyone was fucking in the attic; I had no one to fuck myself. And it was my birthday.
I got a lobotomy and sniffled in the shower.
Two days later, in north Mississippi, a drunken catfish assaulted me. I walked down the main strip, past the video store and fast food restaurants, never knowing that life could be so coincidentally ironic; the fortune cookie I got from the Chinese restaurant that my white, racist grandmother works in read: “a pleasant surprise is in store for you.” I chuckled.
That weekend I found myself in the rural fields of lost America, walking lackadaisical down the fence painted silly with colors and shapes. It rained the first day but it was all right, because you ended up in the tent with me and ole’ Japhy.
The next morning the sun came up and you called me your “planaroo,” and I laughed. It may have been the music, everywhere. Or the way the light hit your freckled eyes that day – or maybe it was just the MDMA,
but I combed my hair and stood up straight.
When the words betray the truth, it’s like
opening your eyes for life at the very end – or
diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.
I lay at the bottom with shards of my back –
bone protruding through my mangled neck,
when the words betray the truth. It’s like
having every drop of your thick, warm blood
flow slowly to the drain at the center, after
diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.
Paralyzed, I try to call for help, but even if I could,
no one would come. Not “if” they had warned me, but
“when” the words betray the truth. It’s like
believing in the rejuvenation one receives floating
weightless underneath, only to realize that you’re
diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.
When you sit outside with me, crying on my shoulder,
you make a personal confession and invite me over. But
when the words betray the truth, it’s like
diving head-first into a swimming pool with no water.
On the far side, desperation
is the breeding ground
for inseparable identities.
With your minds' mirror lost,
being is a sociopath,
or a violent psychopath,
with all the little possibilities
to sacrifice as martyrs.
My freedom is their Jesus;
creative fidelity, his holy word.
I can kick the tireless oppression
of boredom’s despotism with a
bottle of beer, and the inverted
triangle superimposed over
my face, always.
Remember what it feels like
yourself; remember the feeling
gives way to the despair, and
emerges as liberty. But if I die,
let compassion bury me.
Nickels and dimes, and spare –
changin’ the poor. I have,
and I’m rich, but I wasn’t before.
My body, my bread
you ate off the floor,
now you rest in a hole
somewhere in Hooverville,
and even now, even still,
you cling to your pride and
damn compassion as “charity.”
But if you had the sight to see,
you would lose your fear of me,
and you could know your pride
for what it is; it’s the dark that
hides the day, or the strong
feasting on it’s prey. It’s the KKK.
**disclaimer: this is part of a more ambitious ten poem collection (I ran out of time, but everyone knows how that goes). Hopefully they will be finished soon.
