Cheekbones

I enjoy the peace that comes with forgetfulness, as with forgetting that I am most likely incapable of a purposeful life. Sometimes I question the importance of my actions. Sometimes I look back in the quiet moments life presents me with and think about how I have affected those around me. I imagine that there are some people scattered here and there that would speak softly of my presence in their paths, while others might turn red in the face at the mention of my name. Life has been an odd assortment of settings, cold pavement beneath a street light, hiding behind a car while a bear sorts through my luggage. Cold mountains with rifle in hand and my own body weight in armor and gear strapped to my frame, in some strange land where people killed each other over hills. Cold water in my lungs and too many drinks resting in my stomach, a hand dipped down into the river to grab me by the collar. I think the cold stands out more than the warmth that I’ve received. The cold has never really presented a price for itself before or after feeling it come over me. Cuddles will kill you if you’re already bankrupt in spirit. Kisses will dry your lips out when that person leaves and you’re too sick to your stomach to take care of your body. A hand on the nape of your neck can be poisonous if you place too much value on it or trust that it won’t move in time to someone else. Sometimes I look back on the things I’ve done out of heartbreak. I think of the substances that I welcomed in like a stray when it was raining cats and dogs. I think of my footprint on nature, how many drinks have I drank in my attempts to forget the way somebody felt. I remember the cold and the warmth but the warmth always feels like playing Russian roulette. Always waiting for the day that comes carrying the cartridge, anticipating the bang and the splatter of my soul against the nearest wall. Sometimes I think that you can grow warmth like people say. I go out and plant seeds and watch the dogs and cats fall from the sky. I fertilize with healthy communication, always fervent in my effort to express myself so that people have an understanding. I don’t think they wish to comprehend though. I think they like to come and take the flowers that bloom and the thyme that creeps and season all the things they stuff their faces with. I think people see me and the actions that I take as something other than what I’m wishing to convey, I think the sarcasm I use to keep people at arms length is taken for truth too often. My body is a vessel I have placed inside so many seas without a care for what the weather looked like. I think that my perpetual thirst for safety scares away the people that I love the most. They fill their own cups up and when I’ve finished mine I beg with hazel eyes for the one across from me. I drink these people down just like the other drinks I favor. I don’t give people ample opportunity to refresh or recuperate before deciding that they don’t possess the ability to love me properly. Sometimes I wonder if this empty stomach sees the damage that it does. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever stop to think. I think that I lack purpose. I think that perhaps soaking people up has only decorated me in ten too many colors and to others I must look like danger. I must be peculiar in the different colors I’ve become, like poison frogs that paint a picture of calamity. Yet there is never short supply for thirsty creatures like myself. I could drink for years, two at a time from people just as I did from bars and clubs and corner stores and never come up empty handed. I’ve loved a handful of them though, atleast I think I have. It’s hard to tell when I don’t really fathom what loving someone might look like. The version of love that I was taught is not something that I’d subject other people to. I’ve lusted over plenty though, I see the shapes and smell the scents and feel the flesh and on the inside there are sparks and little fires that crawl up to my ribs. But even that warmth comes with its cost and when you try to dance with everybody in a room, they start to speak to one another over time. Then the windows open and the cold comes in and suddenly the vibrant colors don’t mean shit and I am seen for what they think I am. It doesn’t matter when I try to tell them that I’m looking for a certain thing and if I don’t check with people I may never find it. I check their pockets and their purses and the closets that they hide behind their hearts. I check the cupboards underneath the sink and in the mirror with the medication. Sometimes I get a glimpse of what I look like to the outside world, ink and scars and garments, mud for eyes and cheekbones like my ancestors. The ones that saw the frogs and told each other of the death that comes when you’re not careful. I enjoy the peace that comes with either being loved or being left alone. I imagine that if I were to exist in two times at once, both the present and the past that I’d be driven mad. If my feet were back in the mountains, covered in a man’s blood and here, soaking in the sun, I’d find it hard to walk. I think my purpose is to make decisions and to learn how to make better ones or different ones or maybe just the same ones. Life seems to be about balance, the cold and the warmth and being alright with how you’re always somewhere in the middle. Most days I’m okay with that, when I can remember such simple things.

Thief

It is a strange thing to feel the absence of regret in situations where it would fit perfectly. My friends think that I am attached to attention, that I have not moved out of vanity. I think the world of people when I love them. I see the things that make up who they are for what they are, the reasons that I adored them in the first place. Sometimes people have those eyes that look like stained glass in an afternoons last light. Sometimes people have a voice that feels like cooled down coffee just before bed. Sometimes people have aspects of themselves that they don’t necessarily admire. I think these are my favorite parts. They cover these things up like they’re not good enough for the world we live in, they think to themselves that everything must be in order for them to be accepted, to be successful, to be pretty. I like these people most and I think it’s often seen as madness, like I’m wrong for being partial to the bits of humanity that need a little help. Sometimes I stay up past my bedtime, which is earlier and earlier as I grow older. I spend this time remembering the moments that I’ve stumbled across in sheer luck. Moments like an exchange of rings or when I’ve been a thief and taken something after hardly asking for permission. Moments like placing my hand in an ant hill because I’m too focused on the removal of clothing. Moments like painting rocks and leaving them for someone else or forgetting them all together. I give my things away when I wish to be remembered and I take things when I don’t care to let go. My heart is too broken to work properly, like the hearts inside my friends. Their hearts behave correctly. Their hearts know how to patch the holes and stop the bleeding while my legs get heavier from the leaking that happens internally. My steps become labored and then I tend to rest for periods of time. I listen to music and pet dogs and force myself to do the things I like doing. I smoke too much and the headaches hurt but I still need the music playing loudly. I think I like people too much for my own good. I think I tell myself they’ve got good reasons for the things they do or don’t do, while picking apart every action that I ever took. I wonder if I loved gently enough. I wonder if I went out of my way enough when really love is never out of my way, it’s who I am. I wonder if the people around me understand that I’m a bunch of pieces held together with the glue you’d find in a classroom. I wonder if the people that say they love me know how easily the parts can come undone and how difficult it is to hold them back in place. I imagine that I look like everything is copacetic. Strong and powerful and poetic, taking charge of life one day at a time. I’m really just the deer in the headlights of depression, continuously crawling out of a grave that reshapes and resizes itself perpetually. If I keep moving there’s the illusion of progress. If I continue to persist and persevere then perhaps there may be a rope or root to reach for in the end. I don’t believe in those things though. I believe in loving people without caution but from different distances so that they don’t find themselves decorating the same grave as I do. I believe in love with sword and shield thrown to the side but I’ve been known to pickup one or even both at a time, in fear of finding out that they can see the pieces held together. I think that if people got close enough they could see I’m soft and gentle and kind and considerate and that I guard these things about me with my life. It’s easier to give than to have someone take them without asking. I am afraid that one crafty hand will distract while the other slips itself around whichever piece it aims to take and I won’t recognize the play. I’ll lose another part after having come so far and only having a handful of them left. It is strange to feel the absence of regret when such a thing could save me all the trouble in the world. But then again I wouldn’t be much of anything if I wasn’t made of what I’m made of. I think that I enjoy being at the mercy of the universe. Being soft and incapable of becoming jaded for long. I think that I enjoy being a target for the people that need things from me because I’m useful in those moments. I imagine there will come a time when giving these last pieces will be a delight, that I will hand them over without being argumentative. I imagine there will come a time when they’re all that I have left to give and even then it will still be in my nature to serve.

Kaleidoscope

I have a tendency to covertly steal her scent in as many places on my body as possible. When she’s distracted by the words that spill out of someone else’s mouth I rub my thumb and pointer finger together with her clothing in between. When she believes us to be so deep in conversation that I am rendered incapable of multitasking, I tangle her hair with the hair on my cheeks and my chin. I soak her smells up like a sponge and hold them for a day or so. Underneath my fingernails, tucked between the grooves beneath my nose, in the first few layers of flesh that decorate these arms and legs of mine. I am both of us for just a bit. I am myself as well as the one that I love each time I close my eyes. I am in two spots at once, inside the shade and in the sun. I am overwhelmed and understood. I am two separate sets of eyes and see the world as such, kaleidoscope sidewalk steps and pink sunsets. I have a tendency to surrender to the green that you would find in her eyes. The flotsam and the jetsam, the abandoned and the careless set of hands. I set her down sometimes, as if I will not pick her up the next time that I need her. I have a tendency to think things through too often when the outcome in my head is incorrect. I tell myself that I’m not capable. That I am sinning in the face of my Creator when I lay her down between the blades of grass and ants and moss. I don’t think I really mind though. I’m learning to be patient with the gifts that Mother Nature gives. I’m learning to be sacred in the placement of my lips. I have a tendency to think that only bad will come. I tell myself that I don’t need the good because I’m bad. I don’t really think I am though. I’m learning that the best way to become the person you should be is just by being who you are. I have a tendency to surrender to the outlooks that she shares whenever I can stuff my nose into her neck. I wiggle like a worm between the mulch before the rain has gone too deep. I count the freckles on her neck like sheep and heavy are the lids that sit atop my eyes. I am both too much and not enough. I am both monsoon and desert brush lit up, ablaze and unafraid. I don’t think I know that I am dreaming when I’m in her presence. I think it feels like being wide awake for once. Perhaps she notices the times I think I’m being stealthy but doesn’t wish to ruin it for me. Perhaps I am too busy in these quiet actions to take heed of what she’s taking at the same moments in time. Perhaps she lies awake at night with nose pressed to the places where I linger like a stain. Perhaps she’s both of us at different times than I. Perhaps our lives are mirrored in our images.

Weapons

Sometimes I find myself incapable of disconnection with others, in ways that feel like I have little say regarding the matter. As if my bones were cast in the same molds, by the same hands, under the same sun. As if the pigmentation placed outside of both my pupils was picked in honor of her favorite time of day. I could not tell you what that timeframe is if I were to sit and rattle off the things I know concerning her. I would only be capable of painting out the room in which I laid when at first she mentioned being partial to the color. Glass that called to me and heights that sang, my ever turning fan blades encased inside their plastic tomb. A fake flower that she plucked from up on some old building’s second story where we had sat to eat fried pickles and cast our gaze down on the public. I think that was the first thing that I had to rid myself of when I ran off in my unending anxious way. I have this thing about me that whispers in my ear and tells me that the things that people say once they’ve come close cannot be trusted, I think my Mother almost murdering me plays a part in it. I think that when there’s space enough for weapons to be drawn, I don’t have the means to make up stories in my head about the people in my life. It’s when the crevices between my ribs are placed on full display that tension twists and turns below the surface of my skin. I wonder what the motivation lying just behind their words might be. I wonder what new wounds I may endure and how soon the bond will break after it’s made. Sometimes I’m back inside that room and looking out from many flights above the streetlights. Sometimes she’s barely gone and I’m about to be back in the bath. I think I need something from her that I have only ever had a taste of, at times I think it’s violence and at others it’s her fingers in a dance upon my neck. The hunger stems from something in my stomach that the doctors call a pit. At times it’s cold and vast while at others it’s not there. I’m always pacing back and forth while staying still, in my attempts to place a finger on what causes it to leave. Perhaps the way she looks at me, perhaps the freckles on her face and how they spell out constellations I have never come across. I’ve walked and walked with automatic weapon, with luggage and a bottle or a broken heart below the stars. Perhaps it’s when she says my name that things calm down and feel like pens and paper in my hands, in such a way that I may write my issues out. I think that when I write I’m pushing people further than they may have been if I had broken all my fingers in the door jams of this house. If I had chewed them off and bit my tongue until it bled and had no other way of making known my bastard heart. I think my mother split my head wide open out of jealousy. I think she burned my hand because she saw the light. I think she cut my face to make me uglier than her and at times I think it worked. Perhaps it’s how she listens and instead of judging she plants kisses where I need them, not just where I want them. Perhaps it’s in the length of her patience and the promises she doesn’t make. Perhaps it’s just because she’s damaged like I am, compressed and cut and bashed and broken, folded into shapes that feel like toys to me. I think that even after war and sex and bombs and death and jail, after drugs and blood and guts and smoke and ash that I am still a little boy. I think I pick her up when things feel safe, like I’m not in any danger of the blade or tile floor or curling iron. I think I put her down and run away when I can hear my mother from the grave. She says these things that I would never speak out loud yet loud is all they are when bouncing back and forth inside my brain. Perhaps it is the way she feels there on the tip of my pink tongue or how she tastes like rain and smells of cider. Perhaps it’s how the drowning seems to stop and when I feel her hand begin its search for mine that all the water leaves the room. I think I write to tell the world who I love. I think I love her just because.

Spoons

I imagine that I come off as possessive in the way that I speak, possessive of the people that I love, as if I have some sort of claim to their presence. My love is not as free as it might seem, as I pull it up from underneath those same people when I feel the time is right. I don’t think I do it out of malice or in such a way as to mistreat somebody that I care for. It’s more like when you look into a mirror and don’t recognize the person you’ve become. With love comes mistakes. Mistakes made both in and out of harbored disdain. Disdain that builds up after expectations fall upon ears incapable of understanding. I think herein lies my most distasteful fault, I am possessive over that which I require when it comes to having my own cup filled up by others. My heart is adamant about the ways in which it has deemed adoration to be suitable. A table is made for dining, the forks and spoons and plates and knives aligned meticulously. I point out individually, these separate objects and the principles behind them. A spoon is something easy on the eye, delicate yet strong and not particularly easy to bend. It’s elegant and reflective of the one that casts their gaze upon it. A plate is smooth and decorated, with images depicted. It holds space for safety, for concern and comfort. I feel that when I label things as I see fit that once must be enough, that these are sacred words that hold meaning to a man like me. There’s even pretty tablecloths and paintings on the walls, I try to maintain beauty in the things I put my time into. One might notice how the outside world finds itself deafened in the room. One might find the temperature set to where everyone is comfortable, the light just right and polished floors for making love upon. I am obsessed with what I think to be perfection but I think that what is perfect to me may sometimes be much too much to ask. Yet I am tangled up inside myself at such a thought, where fingernails claw and teeth tear at my entirety. I am at odds with what I want, as if the safety of always getting what you ask for is akin to gluttony or some other deadly sin. Sometimes I wonder if the tapestries and photographs are just meant as ways to hide the inner workings of a madman. Sometimes I wonder if the silverware is tarnished and the plates all chipped beyond a normal person’s recognition. Sometimes I wonder if the people that I love walk in and choke on stale air and trip up on the cracks within the floorboards. Perhaps their feet are cut and poked by nails that I missed when searching for a grip on sanity. I wish the things I needed didn’t taste so much like poison to the ones I love. I wish the things I needed weren’t in fact all that important but they are. I create a safe space for my love to flourish, like needing glass to make up all the walls inside a greenhouse. In my own mind it is wonderful to walk about and feel the fronds and leaves and fawn over each other when the sunlight steps inside. The books that I’ve picked out all tell the kind of stories that would sing someone to sleep. The mist is formed from breaths that lovers take. It gathers on the windowpanes and in the corners of the doorframe. Some little ecosystem where a kiss can feed a fern, where a sudden change in breathing patterns feeds the evening ever after. I think these things work well together. I’m not afraid to stay and wait. I think sometimes the people that come in think that the doors might lock behind them but such a tale is not true. Everyone is free to come and go, everyone is free to roam and turn up every stone within the garden of my love. There are thorns but if you’re careful they don’t bite.

Mothers

I know soft women and difficult women, I know women that are rigid and women that are much more fluid with their imitations of Grace. I’ve met women that showed me just how little I know about women. I’ve met ones that will scrape their teeth on you to ensure they’re not forgotten, ones that plot with fire and ink. Sometimes it seems like spells are cast or Hell is not as vast as one might think. Like cracks and crevices are opened up and from the Earth seeps femininity. Perhaps the stories that are told are far too bold to be the truth, perhaps the universe and the mothers that give birth are one inside the same. I know that when I set my eyes upon them I am flayed alive, my soul and body separated or atleast that’s how it feels. The nerves connected through my body all project an image of atonement, blazing light from heart and lungs, intestines spilling out. Upon the wall I’m nearest or the hardwood floor or taller grass from meadows one might see displayed a boy bending both his knees. A head bowed down with arms stretched out and seeking to be put to use. I’m naked in the sunlight in some lovers sleeping chamber, draped by wrist and ankle from two hooks placed in the ceiling. A cat or two or sometimes dogs look up at me and ponder my predicament. I lament decisions that were made when sweat pours down my temples to the floor below, only to be lapped up by the curious. These are all just pretty ways of saying that I’m captured completely when the flesh and bones and organs that make up a woman are arranged before me. I am cut open by their eyes and when their voices claw their way into canals, my ears ring in similar fashion to the sounds of war and death, of screams and bombs and metal hitting metal. I know women that will produce the clothing from their bodies in trade for mere scraps of affection and attention. Sometimes I feel quite inadequate and so I scramble in attempts to satisfy their needs. I trip over myself and while quite foolish I am foolproof in maneuvering once settled down in place. It helps when they take hold or when they’re quick to fold like paper planes, into the shapes I need them in. To be of service means to exhaust the body and the spirit of all energy, I think the fact that I propose so many questions may convey that I am caring in the acts. To be of service is to have a purpose in this world. To please those that bring about new life and stave off our extinction means the most to me. I think that when the world made me, I was plucked piece by piece from this drawer and that, meticulously misshapen and misplaced accordingly. I think that the very soul inside me must have rolled beneath a table or an armoire for a century or so. I think the way I give is of little consequence to the women that walk the earth these days. I am picked up and played with and placed back on the edge of the sofa, only to fall and lose my composure upon hitting head against laminate. I am given labels that don’t stick, perhaps from a forehead far too sweaty or a fault that I am unfamiliar with. My eyes are looked into until the light has left and what color might remain turns inward into grey. I’m told to stay but walked away from, as if I am a pet that must obey. The worst thing about a man like me is that I’m awfully awful when it comes to listening, as I love the sun too much and stray through open doors. I’d chew a leash up too if someone was so stupid to believe that such a thing might work. I think the thing I need is to be needed. I think the thing I want is to be wanted. I think the thing I keep asking for is to be kept. But kept as in beside someone and not in such a way that I am put out on display. I think that I’ll keep running if nobody cares to stop me.

Vinegar

The human experience, as a whole, has been as taxing as it has been worthwhile and yet what stands out often is the way it wears me down. I imagine that when the universe conceived its idea of me, there were spaces in its fingers where better qualities than I possess slipped through and spilled over someone else. I try my best to love others, I create space between my ribs with eager hands, digging into soul and spirit to pluck flowers that fit each one individually. There was a woman that I loved long ago that lied to her father about her intentions with me, even after I crashed her car a handful of hours away from her home. She loved being objectified and so I tried with all my might to see this person as a thing and to treat that thing as such. She wore marks from my hands as if they were decorations painted by God Himself. She looked at me as if I myself made the rivers run and the trees spring up and stretch out towards the sun. Her husband knew me only by the gas mask that I wore one time, when he had followed her from home to club and spotted us entangled in what I thought was adoration. She had hair that looked like it had stayed too late for Sunday school with concrete, chalk and children. Like apple cider vinegar had stained each strand. I remember the first time she spilled on me and how I thought the fluids that unfolded meant that I was something better than the rest, that I might be kept. I slept inside of her and woke with songbirds stuck between their notes, the lot of them in awe of how pale her complexion was when placed so close to mine. My flesh is red from rage and the necessity to cross the seas and conquer. My flesh is an heirloom passed down by men that separated people from their limbs and stole the wombs of those they came across. I saw the birds and thought about the things their ancestors have seen and if they wondered about womb and sword and why there was a hundred angels watching too. Making love is an act of mercy and of torture all at once. I think that I place burdens on the women that I love because I’m never full and never being full means taking way too much. I think that I let people see exactly who I am right from the start so they can place their clothing close by. My body opens up and while there’s flowers there is also genocide and that sort of sound that mountain lions make at night. Like children screaming when the sword is placed into a lung. The kind of sound that you might muffle out of fear and in that moment tell yourself is something else. I think that I contribute to the swan song in the way I say “good girl” or “such a pretty slut for me”. I think that I care more for what I want in those pure moments and the contrast on display is something of a symphony. Like the birds that can’t remember which sheet of music they were on, so while one is on this note, the others look perplexed yet carry on. It’s muddled and it’s ugly if you’re not the one that I’m paying mind to. My body sifts itself into the cracks and crevices and upon expanding I’m exposed to every weapon ever formed against me. You could bury a dagger to the hilt but all I’d entertain is how her eyes were widened and the scent of my favorite flower filled the room. I think I’m doomed to a sonnet of a death. I think I’ll die without my boots on in an array of legs and feathers falling from the ceiling fan. These things all come with their own costs and I am so grateful every time I’m asked to pay the piper. He comes with scythe and pockets full of wildflower seed. He sings the same songs as the birds and speaks of all the people that my people sailed over just to slay. I think the battered boy that I am underneath the stench of sweat and gunpowder is missing something paramount. Some part that when removed caused ripples in my path of water lilies and moccasins alike. I think that I was meant to find one pad to call my home and one serpent to destroy but in my missing part I’ve partaken in too many breaststrokes. I’ve almost drowned a time or two, in the distance between women or in the grasp of scaled body tangled up and wearing out what little muscle I might have. I saw the birds there too, tucked away but watching still and singing all the same, that old song with different notes that claws at me like memories. I think the little boy that I protect with lengthy legs and fast footed fleeing feels like there are no safe places to call home and that everything that sparkles in the sun is venomous. Yet he has to find out for himself if such is true. Perhaps I am still the man inside the mask, still drowning at that midway point between surface and the current. Perhaps I’m still intoxicated with my eyelids draped like curtains that I close when what I want lays available for feasting on. Perhaps the things that bother me are baked into my DNA and all the drugs I’ve taken covered up some morbid curiosity. I want the snakes to bite and I want the lily pads to sink because atleast I know that they weren’t meant for me. Some day I’ll come across a slender body on the surface and it will glide away into the glades, the birds will figure out their composition and the woman that I love will love me back.

Swordsmen

Thirty five years have passed since my flesh and bones were pulled out of my mother’s putrid womb, since I first graced this world with my state of disarray and penchant for bedlam. I imagine that the stains I’ve left on Earth resemble the ones my creators left on me, hues of blue and green like forests and the seas. I would go to such lengths to say that my allergy to bees and soft spot for birds highlights the ever fervent feeling of lust that turns in circles inside of me. My friends find me to be warmth and peace whenever I am quietly breaking pieces of myself to fit the grooves that they display. You can come to me and stretch your soul between your hands and show me all the bruises that you’ve grown accustomed to. You can paint by numbers all the iniquities that you have suffered through and I can name the colors one by one. The shades that feel like home regardless of what happened there, the tints and tones that split your bones when gripped and thrown by people that you loved. Sometimes I wonder why the humans in my life find comfort in the sadness in my eyes, they speak of it as if it leaks like varnish down my cheek. Sometimes I wonder if they are aware that these things have a cost or if they see the value before they’re off and back to whatever fills their days. Sometimes I wonder if they think of me when I’m not listening to how they hate their husbands or how little love they feel when lying there in bed at night. I wonder if they question what they lay before me, before they lay it down or slam it on the table. I am to examine what contorts their comfort. I am to express myself in line with how they feel. These are things I seldom wish to do, in fact it’s not too often that what comes from my mouth aligns with how I feel. But I am never one to take somebody’s traumas and weigh them with my own, I think my issue is that there is nobody that comes to me and begs to split the burden. My spirit is quite heavy, as it’s made of stone and blood and wood. I think my issue is that there’s no time left in the day for what I feel because I’ve felt the things that other people need to drop. I think my issue is that I’m afraid to feel the things I need to feel because the only end that ever comes is people walking out. I think that perhaps it’s much too much to ask of friends or family to do the things I do for them, I think their hands deserve to stay quite clean as if baptized each morning while I’m slaughtering the lamb. My church is burning in the foreground but I’m off in someone else’s home, condoning actions I would never see as suitable, sustainable or smart. I think I harbor anger and it gnaws away in the early hours of the morning. I think I dream of war and death and whores and sex because I’m little more than that. I think I bury myself when I sleep. I think I’m always one foot in the grave, atoned by what little I can do for others. The wheel spins behind my ribs and burns like that old curling iron that my mother placed upon my hand. The wheel tightens like the belt my father used to leave his mark upon my face. The wheel grinds down everything that comes into its space, like sand and glass and teeth these things are broken into pieces. I don’t think about this all that often. Sometimes the world gets to be just loud enough that I can hear the ringing in my ears from bombs and bullets singing. I think the wheel loves the sound and counts on it to be what does me in. The screams and cuts and clashing of ribs upon hardwood floors, the bolt cutters and centimeters keeping limbs attached, the death of men much better than myself and families that they left. The rope that hangs inside the closet from when I was nine, the fact that my own children might not know my name, the smell of fire in the night and all the things that it consumed. The drugs and guns and things that I don’t speak about, the way that when I wish to lay my head there is no safe place in which to do so, the look in people’s eyes when they have dumped their weight into my lap and turn to push or pull depending on the door. I think these things all make me who I am. I think that God makes swords and when he saw that I was dull, I think that I was cast into the flame. I think that God makes swordsmen and when he saw that I was small he placed within my path a thousand miles I would walk. I think that God knows good and bad but hasn’t yet decided which that he will make me. I think that he is waiting, to see what it will take to break me. If I haven’t broken yet, perhaps such things will never come to pass. Perhaps the pain was purposeful and what I choose to do with it decides my fate. Perhaps it is how it has always been, with madness as my method.

Arson

It is in the soft shade painted by branch and leaves alike that I find you lately. In the scents I find familiar, in the shape of someone’s mouth while walking downtown. It’s in the thoughts that progress and profess like prophets prone to peculiarity, starting simple and serene before ending abruptly with your body pointed one way and your eyes invading mine. I am at siege with the self, playing both the pikemen and the Protestant. I am both impaled and imposed upon to unbury the blade. I am unholy and yet I still yearn for the burning liquid that drips down from your lips to puddle on my thighs. My church is blackened by flame and arson is my first and only nature. My church is a temple that I took and tore apart, board by board and nail by nail, fingers ground down and splintered, bloodied and black with ash. My religion is the thought that I put in to wishing I was different, perhaps less difficult or at the very least a little gentle when dismantling. I think I’ve taken you apart a hundred times and only ever looked and complained about the pieces being strewn about. I find myself constantly bent down on hands and knees, ashamed and yet still craving deconstruction. I think that I see things that I could fix and then instead of doing that I misplace my mind halfway through the whole ordeal. My hands are more in tune with weapons than with tools. My hands were made for taking life. I think that when I see you I see things I want to redden, discoloration and fatigue, frailty and fruitless whimpers. My nature is to ruin what I come across, not always by intention or desire but I think sometimes with warmth. I think fire gives so foul a feeling to the people that weren’t burnt as children. I think the brightness dazzles and dismays. I think that when I see you, I see me. I think that when I see us I see the little boy and little girl that we hide from one another. When I look at you I find a mirror where I keep looking for a scale. I am so used to immolation that in aggravation I reduce the flame and let your love of rivers win. I swim inside the currents that will only ever wash me far away. I think that there’s a rope from some old swing that tangled up around an ankle somewhere along the way, I cannot tell you who has tied what knot or if it’s fate that found its fingers being used. I think that when I look into the mirror I am only ever finding faults within myself and without knowing there’s a mirror I retort with self defense. I burn the body I inhabit. I stoke the fire with the letters that I’ve written in your name. When I think of you I find it fashionably foolish, to think that perhaps there might be another way to go about this season of our lives. Instead of wildfire, wildflowers, instead of burned down deer and empty meadows there could be a place to lay out in the sun. With blankets and with fruit, but it is only ever birds that tend to sing too out of tune. It’s smoke and embers, screaming symphonies and sonnets spoken with the last few breaths available to sparrows and starlings. I don’t think I’ll ever change unless there’s room for me to burn until I notice I’m not doing anybody any good.

Botany

She tastes like sweat and dirt and grass whenever I have touched my lips to the soles of her feet. The insides of her socks, the Earth and whichever lesson in botany she’s given me that day. She smells like me in every place that I’ve already put my hands, from her calves to that spot below her belly button. The back of her neck where her hair has met my fingers or her throat where palm and swords have been. She looks like chocolate chips to Labrador retrievers, like a bottle to an addict on a friend’s clean kitchen counter. Like pills that smother you and steal the warmth from your body, slowly, over the course of an hour or so. She feels like someone holding your head underwater when you’re tired of waking up to the same old day for thirty years. She feels like when you want to jump from cliff to stones below and paint the prettiest picture possible, with deep reds and the blue hues from a silent sun bouncing blindly off the surface. She sounds like when you used to try and sneak silently through the house without waking up your father and his rage, she sounds like the belt coming out of each and every loop and the leather being gripped. She sounds like when you stifled your own screams in case that bought you grace. I taste the tears that come rolling down her cheeks and I taste the spots she tries so hard to deny me access to. I taste the obedience in her eyes and the subtle yet supple restraint on either set of lips. I smell the scent of blood and flower petals, both floating in the same water I might crash upon and break under the weight of. I smell the sighs that she lets out when arms come stretching down and seek to steal a strand of hair or two from me for spells. I look like rabid dogs that scratch at wooden doors and chew their way into your home when all the rabbits have been slaughtered. I look like bodies strewn about between the meadow like upsetting constellations, the kind that you would come across and think of witches and the Devil. I look a mess of a man and yet kept together by the lust that holds me up. I sound like shrieking sirens and the drink that beats down galleons, like the dull roar of something terrifying contemplating if the sails should come down or if the men should be throttled one by one. I sound like nurseries engulfed in firestorms and bleating sheep deboned by wolves. I think that what I am is drawn and quartered, hung from one wrist and one ankle and draped across the confines of her mind. I imagine that she is little more than what I find myself mistreated by but all I’ve ever really known. I think all women are the same to me. Some thing to aim to please and fold up into shapes that I find pretty.

Foxtails

I think that I enjoy the way that women taste more than the way they sound, unless I am allowed to hear the sounds they make while partaking in my favorite things. Feeling the fingernails of creators scrape at my skin or flow through strands of hair upon my head. The dew that sits upon lips to be sipped. The warmth of being headfirst between thighs once more, as if rebirth were so simple. I find the calm of it to be enveloping, indelibly identical to almost overdosing, laid out on the floor and staring up. Dazed and dozing and stained like glass by marks they make while scratching at the surface. I serve this simple purpose all too often, a servant fervent in his due diligence. Truth be told, I imagine the unfolding of petals and the bloom that happens in the corner of a room, too often. A space dimly lit by moon or even sun if only ever in eternal afternoon, doomed and blessed to repeat the same process. I think the time spent not in bed is time mismanaged. I think supple limbs not stretching this way or that are limbs to be removed, necks not bitten into next to be consumed. I think there is a gentleness that so often begets me and in its place, there, contorting with ghouls is who I really am. A thing that dines on flesh and time together, eating every minute up like starving dogs that trampled owner and offspring. It is first nature to divulge at the earliest convenience that I have no wits about me, that there is only passion and a sense of sin itself that claws its way up my throat and spills out from my tongue. My fingers crave the crevices and my eyes the sight of curves and fat and muscle underneath the skin. My lips saunter from freckle to mole to sun-kissed spot, from foot to forehead in compulsion, convulsing if not secretly controlled. I myself am something sinister and simple and crafted for service and pressure and plunging into depths. With hands that grip and grasp. With ears that hear the songs they sing. With eyes that soak up scenery and lips that plead with me to place them where they wish to be. A spirit like a hound let loose to sift its body through the weeds and foxtails, permanent in its search for prey. Perhaps I am no different from the beast except that my soul craves consent and repents when set in front of those that make life possible. Mayhap I am created in the image of reprieve. A thing meant to be used and then discarded when the day has been conceived.

Deciduous

Eleven weeks ago I made the conscious decision to alter my own reality. I woke up one day, exhausted and illiterate, stuck in a continuous cycle of abuse and violence. An abuse of the self and violence directed inward at a heart that still had value but an inability to properly convey the fact. My body felt heavy and sour and stoned, as if I had broken every bone with cinderblock in hand, unaware of the damage I was doing to myself. Well, aware and yet unconcerned. Hurt but happy in my euphoric daze. I’d bathe and drink and sleep and drink and claw my way into the next day, the next week, the next month, forever on the floor, forever bloodied. My fingertips and cuticles cut open by the long loops that weave together to create the carpet, my hair spread out across the bathroom, a skeleton of myself peering through hazy eyes at what I’d let become of me. My nose would bleed here and there, the crushed up medication and the dry desert both playing part but not equal part. I’d slip out of bed and drag my soul across the clothing scattered about to cook some half ass meal, only to drown it in beer and then more beer. These long limbs of mine would carry me back and forth and back and forth to buy more and more. I was not capable of creation nor satisfaction or serenity. I could only ever continue to think about what could have been or should have been and never what was, never about the present moment I would find myself in. My spirit was split and leaking through the spaces in my rib cage, I’d made quite the mess with moss and meadows and snakes and fireflies but it was quite a sight to see, I would imagine. I think that I am all the things I love the most and on some days that looks more like opioids and promiscuity, like droning on throughout an entire month on autopilot, polite yet unpolished and unfinished business laid about some messy woman’s dismal apartment. I was starved of everything I’ve ever actually felt fond of. The fire that coats the wooden wheel in my chest was almost out, my passion was compromised and I myself was two feet in the grave. Eleven weeks ago I had a thought come into view, one that felt like shame and tasted similarly but I chose to swallow even though the bitterness was almost much too much. Eleven weeks ago I picked the phone up and hid my face, even though the person on the other end couldn’t have possibly seen the way I looked in that scene, the composition was dreadful and yet the voice I heard had happy things to say. My story wasn’t over yet and I was welcomed back into the arms of people that have only ever had the best intentions for a boy like me. The beaten boy, the machinegun boy, the loss of brothers boy, the burden on society that felt like little more than some red stain splattered on a pretty painting. Eleven weeks ago I chose to sit through the shakes, to hold myself steady through hallucinations. Eleven weeks ago I picked the path that led me to the moments I now cherish even while within them, the path that had no promise or safety but had pine trees. I’ve always loved the way they looked, either deciduous or corniferous. From light blue to dark green, from pinecones to redwoods, with ivy and bark and bones beneath where roots stretch through the moisture. Always seeking, always growing, forever stuck in one long pirouette through time. If I am to be honest, I do miss the pieces of me that don’t fit the mold. The addict in me never stops to take a second to rest. I think he spins the wheel even if it burns the flesh. I think he is the same as me but different, as if there’s two of us and one of us. If I am to be honest, a drink always sounds lovely and a pill or five sounds like a sweet way to start the day. But now I have to be more than honest with myself if I am to see more than the next week or the next month or the next decade. I myself must be loving with myself, kind with myself, understanding and discerning with my heart and soul and spirit. I myself must be cautious with myself and promise to the self to thrive instead of dwell, for the mountains where my friends went out to die are not the same, I find. Nor am I the same boy. At some point, I have to put the automatic weapon down and pick up sheers to trim the trees, a water pail for the peonies, a set of gloves so that I don’t prick my thumb while roaming through the roses. Eleven weeks ago I started up a garden, one that I must tend to every day.

Turning

I feel the wheel turning inside me in the stretches of almost every moment. Its fiery composure combs over each individual emotion that comes into its gaze. All within its reach meets the wheel, it burns softness into steam and melts resolve into coal. The spokes are aflame eternally, each inch soaked in oil. By lantern light I’ve walked so many miles, through rain and snow and ash and war with bones aglow almost from radiation it would seem. I can feel the wheel turning now. It begs and pleads with me to stretch out in the last few minutes of the sun’s impetuous descent. I can hear it smolder just beneath the surface of a thin and brittle frame. Brittle in comparison to what the wheel wants for me. It wants to be mauled by many lovers if not gored to death at the hands of one it’s picked out in particular. I think it chokes on not getting what it wants, I think it spits out limbs that do not fit inside this vessel it’s been crammed into, contained in but the body of a man. I think this thing was meant for someone carved from marble by the men that came before me. I think this object set into perpetual motion moves too slowly for its own liking, its own comprehension. I think that it falls flat of expectations that it places on itself, it was born to bleed out any situation that it found. It is something warborne and gritty, stained over several centuries with sword and shield and halberds, of princes and poets and paupers. The wheel cannot be told no, or else I am contorted from the inside, organs ground down against the ribs that fit just barely. These intestines with their never ending loops are looped and tied around the outer edge and tighten, right up to where both fists are balled. I want the things it wants. I need the things it needs and what it wants and what it needs are things that men like me do not find easily. I uproot the trees I come across, I turn up stone and turnip both and claw through riverbeds in search of them. The siren is the thing it seems. The song with notes and tones that chill the bones and plead with me to sleep inside the drink. To walk with feet and tongue in cheek into the current til it coats my coat and pulls me out to where I cannot float nor swim. The wheel wants to be put out. It craves a quick extinguishing, in anguish it would seem is how it lives its days. I listen for the tune that tells a rotting body like my own which way to go but when I find the naked flesh there at the end, it’s Mother Moon that answers with her light draped softly on the wrong thing. I want what it wants. To lay beside a certain plucked and picked out tulip where the river meets the ferns and fronds. There where the logs are bent and broken, where the grass comes up to your knees and sap sticks to your skin. I need what the wheel needs. To traverse and to transcend, from single bodies that have met to singularity. The fallout being wheel meeting wheel, fire meeting fire, spokes breaking up against each other and a moment soaked in peace. I can feel the wheel turning, I can hear when it cries out, in its responses to the song it heard not many nights ago.