I need this.
Wherever you go, I’ll hold you in my heart
through your journeys in life
To find yourself
To figure out what you’re made of
I’ll be holding your hand
Through the unbearable moments
When you just might fall apart,
I’ll be the force that keeps you together
Every time you reach a fork in the road
And indecision grips you
I’ll be the wind, blowing you towards the right path
Any time you’re scared, and fear becomes you
I’ll be your courage, lighting your way
And when you find yourself falling in love again
And thoughts of me all seem to have faded,
Promise me you’ll never forget
Wherever I go, I’ll always hold you in my heart
Poetry might be a mysticism
but every time I approach it
it flirts away awkwardly
like a bird that can’t fly
and I’m afraid to pounce it
for fear it would confetti
itself like a fucking dodo.
Why am I even talking about poetry
in a poem? My head is empty,
so empty, and really I’m trying
to be cool like an asymmetrical
shirt tuck. But I worry because
asymmetrical wings lead to crooked
flight, and asymmetrical oars lead
to floating in circles, sort of
how your asymmetrical lace
makes me want to drink
my nerves away like they’re sea
sickness, and asymmetrical drinking
has me spinning around
your straight face, just like
an asymmetrical face is risking
ugly, and asymmetrical teeth
are a choking hazard, which is caused
by asymmetrical genes and that could
be a death sentence, but
an asymmetrical noose ain’t
gonna kill me as good
as we did the dodo.
I am comforted only
by my own filtered selfies
and the feel of my soft body
under cool cotton sheets.
I take praise from kind strangers
and taunts from old friends
and desperate groans from
dirty men and delicate teenage boys
and I swallow it whole,
only to choke it back up again
when I find I don’t like the aftertaste.
I am not alone, nor lonely, but I am tired
of people and their love and their sympathy,
and the next person to ask me how I am
with a smirk and a peek at my chest
will not get an answer.
Sonnets
Speak to me in sonnets
Perfectly crafted for Shakespearean times
Where dresses cling tightly to skin
Carved with silver lace that invites your touch
And aches to be ripped from the seams with your intent.
Bathe me in the flawless tilt and turn
Of unending words that crawl between the strands of my hair
That is plaited with the possibility found
In a glass of wine and a hand to hold.
Write them with the gravity of liquid ink
That flows from the tip of a feather
Seeping secrets of flight and freedom into our souls.
Breathe forevers onto my skin, that dance with your exhale
and disappear with an inhale, only to return again.
Speak to me in sonnets
And let me be your poem.
This is not a heart.
Clench
Is one of the worst words I have ever heard.
Listen to it –
Clench.
And then there’s pang.
Pang sounds like a trampoline to me.
They do not describe what my heart does when you say those things or
When you look over at me and I can see your eyes dancing or
When you’re the first thing I see when I get off the bus or
When your arms tighten around me in your sleep or
When I look at you and my heart pumps poetry along my veins
Because
It’s drunker and softer than a clench
Sweeter and sharper than any pang
It bites your lips even as you’re smiling
It steals all the air from your lungs and wraps it around your heart
And sends it, tingling, out to your stomach and fingertips and
I always have to run my hand through my hair and bring myself back into my head
But I never want to
You completely undo me
Release me, explode me out of myself and into the sky and
Nothing could call me back, not for that perfect heart-clench moment
That is nothing like a clench, nor a pang,
and nothing like a heart.
I know futility is the size
of the bird in my heart
whose wings always celebrate
the arrival of a now
My weakness is that gravity
accumulates in seeds
blowing about the street
until they pile to a paralysis
There is no flutter
a noun can’t mend
into a pile of paralysis
I hear the wide world
spins itself into a pile of paralysis
I also hear you get caught
up in chants til you’re tossing
their corpses, dumb founded
I wonder if each month
approaches like wound clock
Or is that a womb?
Boy, that was sure surreal,
passing around envelopes
full of inconsequential stonings
of love through the sky —
I’ve stepped in it thick —
I think I lost
my breath a few times
and tried to mask it
with whiskey and now
I hiccup up and down
the whole city thinking
but what I really
want to say is
sueño contigo
Only seeing stars
I’m fading
Disintegrating
Jigsaw separating
And perhaps my particles
Accelerating outward like the
Expanding universally stretching
Until I
burst
snap
and fly off
Into all corners a bunch of balloons
With the air let out: Pathetic.
I’m dissolving into the black soda
Of space
Not suitable for stars
For I’d poison light
Perhaps as space waste
I would clutter afloat
Accumulating collateral
Damage as I bump and stumble
Upon the remnants
The debris
Of every (other) body hanging
Feet swaying
Like baby mobiles
From a ceiling of heavens
Above a crib of earth
Where people look up
And only see stars.
the bad artists try so hard
a soul and silence
are the same thing
says the girl
who smokes in her sleep
she writes endless words
but can’t quite make poetry
//
the musician lived on a busy sidewalk
playing the harp with his teeth
his gums bled but he didn’t mind
anyhow
he had no money to eat
//
the painter smokes and drinks
not water but beer
slaps on colors and
complains to me
he hasn’t shit solid in years…
(what a joke)
//
i know a dancer who
has no grace
her toenails fall one and two
blood smears the floor like a portrait
in her empty space
//
but you are every kind of artist
no need to try
you could twist galaxies
in a pathetic knot
with just a sigh
//
your fear,
the songs you hear,
the way your lips hum
while you dream,
and when you cry,
how you scream,
the glow of golden
at your feet
as they crack
the sidewalk
and street..
delicate rain
is what you are,
a cup of coffee,
a lit cigar,
the swooping stomach
of life discovered,
the breath in lungs
of love uncovered.
//
the only good artist
you won’t ever leave
high priestess
i could flounder all night
trying to describe what she looks like
still none of it would ever matter
you’d forget it all before
you got close enough to remember
the smell of her
presence
{over
powers}
paints a thousand
words and pictures
annihilated
in her
aura
she blows pretty
colored smoke
out a soft hot mouth
slides her eyes
wide
smiles
and whispers
everyone is always doing something
illegal
the trick is
to keep looking away accurately
head turning
with perfect timing
i only want you
to tie me up in your rosary
it seems a decent bikini
halter top of shiny
wooden beads
across a chest blessed
entanglement
of androgeny
yin~yang
make a beggar of me
give me reason
to scream
religion fucked up
my sexuality
{which was once sacred}
it used poor old pornography
to do it
hard
and so
some sex
will forever
remain a weeping
one mood
an occasional afternoon
or an evening between
all of the rest of her
gloriousness
she’s a shifty divinity
my sex
I Wake With Moments Stretching Their Arms As Wide As They Can
and the sphinx of night cleaving
the vectors of entropy to slip between
the doors. Their dregs tell me
that tomorrow will be misty
and morose and unbent in
a youness, that the spiders
of winter bring a terrible love
and leave sheet music for
juvenile songs of meanness.
How to wake up and pay rent
when I hear guns always
at a distance and spend
time always looking for new
ways to pass the abducted
real estate of a sheet?
-C.S. Henderson
Poetry does not kill,
It is a soul slowly screaming.
Words scratching away
At the inside of your skull,
Sharp pains
Like beady lifeless eyes;
Puncturing you into a hiss of submission.
The poison is taunting, behind
A familiar reflection—
(The enemy is inside)
Scrawling out shadows
Of a wilted realm
Something else dwells within.
If you don’t get it out,
It will slowly eat you alive.
Each day is spent dismantling
Countless thoughts-
Beauty can be a mystery,
When you exist in ruins.
tec q
damp feathers on the head of a pin,
mushrooms on the linoleum
of no recognition, hallucinogens,
a doorway catalyst, like Huxley’s
spoiled time signature
as my girl, expressly vapid and raw
from sickness, the same sickness,
as before
prepossessed by the wondering horns
of cars and trucks bent under planes
and feet gone skidding in, venomous
palatable sickness and vacuity
as she plays with her pussy
in the garage where her boy
eats fruits and lactates from his mouth,
ugly milk like semen from his belt,
all is in her cup of morning coffee
