A declaration.
I feel most myself when I am a question mark,
A child, roughly 2-4 years in age,
Plaguing you with ‘why’s —
If slightly more advanced,
Wondering why blue has the shortest wave length,
And why chlorophyll is green.
I am at home in museums, with bare bones
And artifacts I don’t understand
From time periods I’ll only be able to visit in theory,
And staring at canvases painted a solitary color,
Or neon words glowing
On blank walls.
I feel most myself when I am a question mark,
When I am in my museum homes,
With you there to play in my rhetoric,
To hold my hand and give me
The only declarative sentence
I’ve ever wanted.
my heart is a mass i don’t know how to stop.
she sleeps in the belly of all of the calms before the storms which lay
mute in the epiphanies settled under my tongue.
my mouth tries to call itself the mother of entropy,
but in reality it comes down to my inability to bow in the face of pretenses.
censorship is not a language i am fluent in.
i have tried explaining this to authority, to all of the officers whom
walked in and out of my life as casually as the ghost of my father did.
i have tried explaining this to my lover, to the ghosts that rest in our bed, too,
but my mouth has a tendency to stop working just when i need it most.
that’s why i have faked this degree from m.i.t. in engineering, just to
unwind the hinges of my jaw and rework the inner mechanisms of
the means to voice whatever reality it is that exists in my head today.
it won’t be the same tomorrow.
lately everybody has been telling me that i have this air of indifference.
i try to tell them the significance of the fallacies in which they live in,
try to explain that it isn’t indifference i’m projecting,
it is that my heart is a mass i don’t know how to stop and
no one is interested in listening,
but i do not need inattentive ears and wary chests in order to
prove that my existence on this earth is valid.
i do not need to prove myself to a generation that is lost in a
conflict of what it means to convince ourselves that we are alive and worthy.
this is the last time i will say this: it is not indifference.
it is the understanding that my mind is light years ahead of
where it was yesterday and i do not want to waste another second
building you a rocketship when you haven’t the heart to
believe in the concept of stardust anyway.
she was broken for her age
barely 15
still knock-kneed and awkward in appearance
but far too grown on the inside
he took her youth
like a yet ripened peach
she wasn’t ready
but he was hungry
and ate through the bitterness anyway
she no longer smiled
or cared
her will was degraded and her heart
her heart
she had forgotten about her heart
Scraps of Spring
Scraps of spring sharpen
The appetite of my eyes.
Green dapples the hill
Above the highway entrance.
The grass behind blurred cars
A still yet shivering thing,
Powered by a slower engine.
Of sun-warmed pavement.
Seagulls bask along the roofs,
Waiting for the fast food joint
To empty its trash. The grease
And meat are welcome
In the chill wind.
Even a mild winter
Thins the white chests,
Folds the sharp wingsweep -
Yes. Eat well, o seagulls.
My eyes still hunger. I feed
Upon high clouds.
I have to learn to love this body.
My hands shake
most of the time
and when I’m nervous
I blush
and my voice trembles
like the strings on a guitar.
My mind is too full of words
that haven’t been invented yet
so I can’t even begin to explain
how I feel.
My eyes hurt;
they’ve seen too much.
My heart hurts;
it feels too much.
I have an ache
on certain parts of my body
where scars are growing
and taking permanent shape.
But I have to learn to love this body.
I have to learn
to let myself feel things
like missing you.
Darling,
life is hard.
It’s harder for people like
me and you
who know the tragedy of flight
is to rip yourself apart
to find that one ounce of freedom
only to realize
it wasn’t worth it.
Let’s not make it even harder
for each other.
If you want to go,
go.
You are not tied to anything
except your own beating heart.
Just know that mine
will miss you.
We were not put on this earth to be alone.
Even the wind
running freely
finds something to touch
every goddamn second
and I need to touch you
until I can’t feel anything but you
around me.
But if you want to go,
go.
You don’t need to love this body.
I do.
27.
“The sea is evaporating, but the rain won’t stop.”
I.
I give you my language,
my easy conversation,
a flash of my teeth,
my palms,
my heart.
II.
I give you my sweat,
my body,
my naked,
my vulnerable,
my lips,
my everything,
my small movements,
my ugly,
my everything,
my everything,
every part of me,
served
just for you.
III.
You take.
You devour.
You ravish.
You destroy,
leave me as
a pulp of all that I
was.
IV.
I begin again.
I wake up and do not think of you.
I swim and do not feel you,
love and do not hurt,
do not hear you on the cusp
of every shadow
in every room.
I empty myself of you
and forgive.
Mundane,,,
I want to watch you
Folding sheets fresh
From the dryer.
Or when you wash
That pan we made
French toast in.
Or catch you in those
Silent moments you
Sometimes have.
Wanting you, loving you,
In the important times,
Like when we kiss or
You hold my hand
In the busy streets,
That is so very easy
But I love you in
Gentle, quiet,
Nothingness…
Olive Oil
The toast would taste better with egg, but there aren’t any,
so I pour a thimble-sized serving of olive oil on, to make it moreflavorful. I like the taste of olive oil. It reminds me of the time
when I was eighteen and jumped clear over the hood of my carbecause I could. To be more specific, olive oil is the part where
I leave the ground and I’m in the air, halfway across. Right then,before landing on the other side. That’s the taste of olive oil.
It also tastes the way Madagascar sounds when you say itbackwards. If there were olive oil cologne, I would wear it and if
there were olive oil goldfish, I would have two in a bowl on thetable. For some reason, it is also a man swallowing lighter
fluid because the pain in his belly is bigger than the KalahariDesert. But maybe that’s only when you drink it straight; and
sometimes it tastes like Brigitte Bardot. To be more specific,in the scene where she is sunning naked in Capri, an impossibly
blue ocean wrestling with the sky in the distance.
— paul suntup
GTFO
Are you hurting
right now?
Are you skirting
the issue
because it’s too big
and overwhelms
your senses?
Are you tense
and irritable
and cannot form
meaningful relationships
because you don’t feel
good enough?
Like this poem
are you owing
answers to questions
asked of you
in hushed tones
all alone in your stucco
bedroom and the banging
on the door
is your heart
ripping up the floor
to find the body?
So morbid
and unhealthy,
so dark
and stealthy,
people don’t get close
they fear
excoriation,
a dose of your
subtle serpent tongue
that lured Adam
and Eve to fall,
damaged goods,
tainted and secretly
hated, the whispers
in the corridor,
the locker rooms,
the classroom floor
polished by tiny shoes.
The glue that binds
the fabric of society
together is unsticking
and no amount of licking
your finger
and pinching
will pull your seams
back together.
But the beauty is
and here’s the real kicker,
I’m a flicker in the night,
the light in the darkness,
the ghost in the house,
the shiver in your spine,
I’m a voice, I don’t exist,
call it conscience, call it
divine intervention
just don’t mention me
to your psychologist,
but I’ll guide you,
I’ll find you
and help you find
yourself.
Now get up
and smash every mirror,
I’ll deliver your self image,
I’m a giver,
you can be a taker
and it’s not fake,
demons are real
and I feel
whatever you do,
I hardly ever swear
but I care
and I won’t shout,
just once
NOW GET THE FUCK OUT.
