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Their eyes will always look past us

more introspective than could ever be real

we are not real. not fully.

Their cognitions turn us over into folly

.

Yes, they welcome and love us.

but our desire seems not genuine

perhaps crafted. selfish.

I’ll never be the real Mona Lisa,

but a mockery with fine intentions.

.

Our bodies serve a purpose, to remind.

A lifetime of mild frustration

dreams lost in the past that you can still gently feel

their smooth silky tendrils trace their veins

.

An institution with no explicit future.

immortality and everlasting mocked

It has a real expiration date

death is payment for our debt.

.

But in your arms is infinitude of space and love.

In your smile the respite for my aging bones

it is more than okay.

Personal Projects

Everyone has a hobby. Or, at the least, we all make things. Most of us have the tendency to archive and store the things we’ve created.

When is it okay to edit our originals? Is there something unique about the way I wrote this poem two years ago, that if I edit it now will make it change? My new maturity likely cannot completely empathize with the way I thought four years ago. There’s something to be said about the speaker in a poem, and many times that speaker was not constructed. It was me. So, maybe it wasn’t a literary construction. I am a construction.

But yet my poems are speaking to truths that I feel transcend my own individual experience. Perhaps past work is best used as inspiration for today. How long after genesis do we have before something is unalterable?

We Thin Gin

One of my favorite types of poetry is the haiku. It’s short, sweet, and captures a portrait with emotion in only 17 syllables. It’s an accomplishment of form, language, and curtness.

I do not have a haiku for you today. But, it’s similar. You’ll probably recognize it if you took 12th grade english/AP English/you’re a dork like me. It’s a fairly well known poem.

We Real Cool is written by Gwendolyn Evans and has been distributed in song and English anthologies. It sounds good, it feels good, and it feels wrong. Because they’re going to die. Soon.

The poem alludes to black men and masculinity, and it was the titular reference of a book by bell hooks. The secret about this poem is that most analyses of this poem completely ignore race. So while I have almost zero credentials to be capable of making that kind of analysis, I still want to share this with you. Everytime I read it the images explode in my head. I shiver a little. I wonder.

But most of all, I appreciate the capturing of many ideas, people, and emotions in such a short form.

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

displacement of kinetic bodies

this temple is my home.
these legs mine, honed
by miles ran past rivers and lakes.
i feel at peace with nature
my own and the universe. 

this hair is my signature.
it bleaches in the summer
shave my face only twice a week
comfortable in my status
i let it show, i let it grow

this height is my privelege
i stand upon the shoulders
of an ungrateful spine, pathetic
i am to not stand straight.
a man, but crooked

these teeth are my weakness
decay like the dying breath of autumn
reveal my softness to the outside
acidity. i talk with these teeth.
but i can't sing.

my body is my temple, heathenistic
and young, but i mistreat it.
Yet it holds up my status
and permits me passion.
it wrangles with desire
it struggles to divorce LIES

i tell myself to find truth in my nature
but everyone tells me that's murder

O Captain! My Captain!

A classic poem for today. Maybe we’ll do dandelions next week…

O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman

1
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up-for you the flag is flung-for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

3
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

emoz

there is a bird upon the tree
the notes she sang she sang to me
the melody of our true love
what can she know, she's just a dove

but in her song i find respite
from cold ache of their cold bite
their odd ways and harmonies
are to me absolute cacophony

We searched for love and found it
Now leave us alone, dammit!

Story: This is remarkably old.

Double-decker: Oversized Guilt

Enjoy.

-from TYWKIWDBI

Internal Exile by Richard Cecil

Although most people I know were condemned
years ago by Judge Necessity
to life in condos near a freeway exit
convenient to their twice-a-day commutes
through traffic jams to jobs that they dislike,
they didn’t bury their heads in their hands
and cry “Oh, no!” when sentence was pronounced:
Forty years accounting in Duluth!
or Tenure at Southwest Missouri State!
Instead, they mumbled, not bad. It could be worse,
when the bailiff, Fate, led them away
to Personnel to fill out payroll forms
and have their smiling ID photos snapped.
And that’s what they still mumble every morning
just before their snooze alarms go off
when Fluffy nuzzles them out of their dreams
of making out with movie stars on beaches.
They rise at five a.m. and feed their cats
and drive to work and work and drive back home
and feed their cats and eat and fall asleep
while watching Evening News’s fresh disasters—
blown-up bodies littering a desert
fought over for the last three thousand years,
and smashed-to-pieces million-dollar houses
built on islands swept by hurricanes.
It’s soothing to watch news about the places
where people literally will die to live
when you live someplace with no attractions—
mountains, coastline, history—like here,
where none aspire to live, though many do.
“A great place to work, with no distractions”
is how my interviewer first described it
nineteen years ago, when he hired me.
And, though he moved the day that he retired
to his dream house in the uplands with a vista,
he wasn’t lying—working’s better here
and easier than trying to have fun.
Is that the way it is where you’re stuck, too?

 

 

 

Sailing

If you woke up in the morning awful early
and the water drove in persistent waves
and the wind flew through the cracks
. .it smells like home, at home
. .of the water
Then you go sailing

The problem,
. .I mean, the great part
about this boat, is its small character
paired with an overarching white sail
. .the sail is solitary
. .kind of grandeur, more than it should be
. .but kind in its plainness
when the wind catches the sail
the boat will go where it wants
the rudder and the mast will creak
..you throw your weight against it, actually
..your passion, your determination

But the problem with fighting the boat
is when you fight too hard
..overcorrection, dammit
you lose the wind. you sit solitary
..alone on the water
..its more lonely there
the brutal winds whip your hair against your face
but your boat just slowly tugs sideways

“you overcorrected
..you pushed too hard
..you’re trying too much”
yes, thank you friend

The beauty of this boat
is found in the days of marriage
..you and the boat
..aligned, syncopated
You can shoot through the water
Ride it like you know it
..like the last mile home
You can connect with your natural roots

“This is how it’s supposed to be
..the way it should be”
yes, thank you friend

invisible hole

the lake fell back a few feet, but
it was always there. grey-green.

your sand castle isn’t very tall
you don’t understand why the moat won’t stay
the lake, it was always there

plastic freezer pop wrapper flag
twig bridge over the soaked moat
cedar branch fence, it smelled
leftover crayfish claw post
you don’t understand why the moat won’t stay

smell of cut grass and burgers
the boat knocks 4 times against the dock
the lake is calm, it’s always there
but you smashed your castle to oblivion

don’t worry. the lake is always there