My sheer house is miniscule,
But here and now a lyric
Could take sublime molecules,
Make time's victory pyrrhic.
I give you this offering:
How I lived, a wish afloat
On songs of hope, softening
The wrongs which our scopes promote.
My dream to be feminine,
To see myself seem pretty,
A princess with eminence;
Pinced instead: what a pity.
I grew into depression,
My true self refused, repressed.
Desire became obsession;
To my shame I was possessed.
My own eating disorder
Bound up a need for starving,
Alcohol, and discordant,
Maladaptive wrist carving.
Death was posing constantly,
Its threshold closing around
Each moment of wantingly
Reaching, alone and unfound.
But I'm alive, shockingly,
I survived at rock bottom.
He found me worth pocketing,
Crowned my cursed head with autumn.
Before I was untethered,
Poured my puzzled blood weeping;
When he brought us together,
He bent thoughts that lie creeping.
A half-dozen medicines,
A path that wasn't direct
At last mounted reticence,
Perhaps found something correct.
We shacked up through manifold
Setbacks, yet we grew happy
Trusting plucky animals,
Our muscovy ducks' flapping.
There's still the same confusion.
Will you blame that I re-slept
My years' yearning delusion?
I've merely learned to accept.
I've lost and gained employment,
I've tossed the rains from islands
To focus love's enjoyment;
A voice spoke above violence.
I'll never be omniscient;
So I must weather demons,
Though I fear I'm deficient.
I know my sincere reasons.
I'm not very capable
But caught a merry lifeline.
If even I'm shapeable,
Could seasons prime our lifetimes?
To mention that important
Question: what matters really?
Is self-knowledge supporting
My shelf of solid feeling?
Am I truly self-aware,
Can I duly note defects
In myself that interfere
With my health's tender reflex?
Have I built my quality
Which sadness wilted above;
Deeply lies my policy:
To keep those I call beloved.
Tag: perseverance
Peace
Peace is knowing unease Recedes; and woe, once the wave Which swallowed old continents, Shall fall for the bold and brave. Strength is trust in loving's Length, justice, and equipoise. Ridges rise as miracles Bridge islands and wrecks rejoice. Virtue waits in patience, Hurts abate and sorrows cease. Souls of mercy float, finding Mirth extolled by prophet peace.
Would you love me if I were a worm?
"Would you be able to love me still,"
I ask him, "if I were a worm?"
"What do you mean by that, of course I will,"
He says, " I think I'd like you more in turn."
"I'm glad your love for me's so firm,
"But that was not what I was hoping for."
"Then why did you lay it out in such terms?"
"I don't know, I thought the scope would be more
"Assuring me I'm nothing close to a poor,
"Squirming worm," is my confused reply.
"Then you shouldn't give me that open door.
"If you were a worm, it wouldn't change my side:
"Either way you cannot help me escape,
"But I love you in any form or shape."
Come and shake the dust out of your hair
Come and shake the dust out of your hair,
You wallower—even in my dreams—
Take a bit of golden glare
From mine and tie it to the sunbeams
Refracting in your eyepair's blue gleams.
Allow me to rest in your plaintive gaze
While outside the sudden sun shower streams.
Thunder doesn't disrupt the rays,
And sorrow needn't cloud our days.
Light can be produced by sharing a kiss;
Warmth can be fostered together in praise
Of each other's touch and soul-tenderness.
All raindrops splash the shield of our embrace,
My treasure plainly hidden in your face.
Something I’m trying to hold onto
Always insisting
on the most extreme
nothingness,
Bitter and afraid—
not of being ignored,
you've never been noticed—
But of having to wait
in the incalculable queue,
already dwindling and gray.
Unwilling to gamble
living in vain (until when?)
you want another nothing? Now?
Nothing is nothing,
yet here you are:
something I'm trying to hold onto.
Splashes of colored ink,
papier-mâché fantabula,
cryptic libido,
Note taken of the yellow-
striped grasshopper
who climbed over your shoe.
Afraid of inertia,
quiet home days
indistinguishable from graves.
But we have luck, not pine,
we have four walls and more;
we have time.
Though we're aging, yet to emerge,
bottle up each vintage of art
with experience and tenderness.
Each episode
when I call you or you call me
in excitement, look!
The cardinal in the backyard tree;
the woodpecker
rapping on the windowpane.
We are small,
but we have small things
that can sustain us.
Since we weren't born
into great things,
let us accumulate
These tiny, common
miracles anyone
can have, yet these are ours
And ours alone;
when you dream of blood,
wake up beside me.
Fragments 2
Wasn't great today
But what is there to do,
Lay down ready to die?
Leave it like days do too.
***
Playing up the sham,
You know it's such a shame;
They'll make your name shimmer,
But only when shown tame.
***
Living through changes
But we remain unchanged
In love, for the danger
Lies in growing estranged.
Reflections on how I got here
"Beware this reckoning,"
Glares a spectral pair of eyes.
Blood quickens in frozen veins,
Stricken as though paralyzed.
Leering back from inside
The mirror, a crack which grows
The distance facts drift at one's
Insistence; then slackens, slows.
And crawling over shards,
Wounds are all to show for wants
Slicing black weals of static
Lack of any real response.
The daunting pain of silence
Spawning deranged interviews—
A prison with no orders,
Visions thrown to trinkets' truths.
Worst is when it's within
The first sentence of doom speaks.
Overpowered by black bile,
Loathing and foul wrath it wreaks.
The dreadful sensation
In the head made manifest:
Seizing trips that mark the sick,
Squeezing grip of panic's press.
Heaviness dimly drapes
Every limb, as though submerged
In water's lips; every move
Murmurs, stripped like a soul scourged.
Beneath this awful weight,
Seething, clawing to maintain;
While fearful of this deep hole,
Here the soul can greatly gain.
It's a cage, and no skill
Engaged will, it confounded
Me; but blessed with room to pace,
They dressed patience around me.
Basically life support
Is the grace the dice produced
To hand me a family
Withstanding my sorrow's sluice.
To think they looked at hell
Without blinking, it took more;
More than courage, more than faith,
The surge of strength love looks for.
Looming death, fate diseased;
Assuming the weight of both,
How they faced it despite dread.
They allowed my glacial growth.
They paid for my prices
As I laid, a dying mind,
Withered body torched in hate—
Delivered by a fortune's find.
They believed in a time
When even I am able,
Condoning this path to shed
Loneliness's black label.
It was pure chance to meet
Him, to endure and advance
Past privation and piss-drunk
Starvation's soul sunken stance.
My family props the sky
Up while hammers drop on nails;
And my head has turned up for him,
Ready to earn grace's grails.
Am I a wretch reborn
By a lucky catch? Of course;
Without either my life's in
Doubt, but strife still stalks its source.
His presence builds me up
A pleasant hill to defend,
But misaligned spheres can soon
Find my spirit brought to bend.
We've grown this better sense,
Sown medicines, worked what found
Subsistence, a miracle
System sheer as sculpted sound.
Our one-room made of smoke,
Blunt and bespoke, fleeting home;
In a flash what saves me could
Crash like waves of frothing foam.
I cannot guard, protect,
By forethought or by power,
Against illness, accident,
Killing events' furled flower.
There's much I can't make kneel,
A touch could steal all I care
About. My dear, meekly tread
And scout ahead. Best beware!
A Strong Word
A strong word forgives.
Weak words are just for guise.
A strong bearing forgoes
Convolution for guides.
All we know’s falling
All we know's falling
Into troubled feeling,
Every minute filling
Conquest's dreams with kneeling.
When one feels alone,
Two depressions align:
One, the separate ailing;
Two, the need for a sign.
Belief is crucial
In the face of crushing
Monotony, cruising
Along with bleak rushing;
And if you believe
In the soul that belies
The sordid facts below,
You can let lives be lives.
Hypochondriac
I used to be a hypochondriac,
Terrified of every blemish or spot,
Until horror became insomniac
Episodes wherein mental illness fought
To drown me in its accreting onslaught.
Now you fret the appearance of a mark
On your hand, inconsolably distraught;
Compelled by anxiety to embark,
Downwardly spiralling into deep, dark
Ruminations on if it's cancerous,
Locked in deathful thoughts' inhibitive arc.
The dermatologist will answer this.
When they investigate all will be well,
We'll move on to the next paranoid hell.
A place for my poems 