Just for a moment - 10/02/2015

All that's left are the memories.

It's been two years. Two years since I left myself in Michigan. Two years since I broke my best friend's heart and left my entire world for almost a decade.

A little less than two years since he chose his girlfriend over our friendship. A little less than two years of bitterness. A little less than two years of crippling guilt and sadness.

Don't get me wrong, I've experienced lots of life in those two years. I've fallen in love and cared deeply for a woman I never see anymore. I've had my heart buoyed and then crushed by another. I've made friends. I've endeared myself to others with my outlandish personality and don't-give-a-shit attitude. I live in a lovely apartment in a lovely part of town. I get sunshine year-round. I make decent money. I never lack for things to do. I.... yeah.... I live.  I live, right? I am living, correct? Is that what this is? Sometimes I can't tell.

I wake up in my bed in Michigan. I wake up with him sleeping fitfully, doing that weird twitch thing he does in his sleep that drives me nuts. I wake up and it's cold outside. The leaves are turning colours and I'm worried about all the bills we gotta pay.

I wake up. It's hot. My shitty dumpster-salvaged fan blows away the memories of a life I once led. Sometimes I don't even know what's real? 10 years.... just gone. The past comes in flashes. Vivid and solid like lead bolts in my gut. Sometimes it's so visceral that my breath catches and the tears fall before I know they're coming. 10 years....

Do you know what it's like to wonder if a full third of your life ever actually happened? Do you know what it's like to sever your heart from your body so that you can't hear it weep within your chest? Do you know what it's like to hurt the one person you care the most in the world for in order to save yourself? Do you know what it's like to know you've done the right thing but wonder at the cost of it? You probably do. I don't have the monopoly on pain...

Sometimes all I can hear is the dull click of my heart trying to fit its pieces back together again. But they are barnacled and barbed, so long out of my chest they have been.

I don't know what I am anymore. I'm a caricature of something that used to be a real person. Sometimes the mask hangs awkwardly, revealing a grotesque juxtaposition of soulful and soulless.

I just can't stop thinking about how he's gone. I just can't get over the fact that he isn't in my life anymore. I just keep hoping that some day he'll say hello while I suppress the nausea of the certainty that he won't.

I'm not supposed to miss him. He betrayed me afterall.
I'm not supposed to hate myself for leaving him. At the end, our marriage was making me physically ill.
I'm not supposed to look back. I have so much in front of me, you might think me ungrateful.
I'm not supposed to feel.... but I've never been better at anything in the world than feeling.

I want to turn it off, but I can't. I want it to stop, but it won't. It churns around within me, tapping on the back of my teeth begging to be let out. I coil it tightly and I swallow it down and I whisper menacingly until it settles and it lets me be.

I know there is a way out of it. I know I just have to be patient. But some days, I am tired. I am just so tired of fighting. I just want it to stop. I just need the world to stop moving... just for a moment. Let me catch my breath. Let me get up off of this floor. Let me rise again. Let me feel again. Let me love again... even if it's just for a moment.

Neither Lover Nor Foe 6/9/2015

Neither lover nor foe
Neither lover nor loved
Dancing between the restless waves of your heart
Mired in the ceaseless tumult of my convictions
I twist to gaze thirstily at you once more
I soak in the promise in your amber eyes
Lap up the speckles of yew on your thighs
Taste the blueberries on your arms
Is my thirst slaked by the hush of the night
Filled only with the catch of your breath
Am I sated by the crush of your mouth
The moans that escape you in the chill may air
I want you with a fullness beyond touch
I crave you with a sorrow beyond lust
And yet I remain...
Decorum-bound in the sanctity of the three
The holy father whispers to me the words of the son
"You are sin and filth you remain"
The holy ghost spits at me
In fear I tremble
I speak my confessions to the beads I still count in my head
Hail Mary, where is your grace?
Is the lord with me too?
Blessed are you
But I the sinner sit cold within thy womb
Holy mother, will you pray for me now
Or at the hour of my death?

Weights 6/8/2015

This is a new one born from an exercise I did at a queer sort poetry night in London. The activity was to receive five random words in an envelope and write a poem on the theme of "what queer freedom means to me." The first poem I wrote was submitted to the host on the spot. I don't remember what I wrote, but I didn't care much for it. I decided I'd try my hands at a new poem with the same words on my own time. The words were: mass, kin, road, nails, heat. Here's what I came up with:


Her mass of hair rests softly against my neck
I watch the steady rise and fall of her chest
   kin to mine
Her fears are plain in the curl of her lashes
My fears are plain in the shame of my longing
We lie still
   embraced in our grotesque desire
Her mouth parts like a break in the summer rain
   the heat of her body whispering her want
   the relentless drumming of an anxious heart
Her nails trace along my skin...
  "what if they find out?" they ask in the dimness of dawn
  "can you love me?" my eyes ask in response
"I should hit the road" I choke out in a faltering whisper
   artfully untangling our limbs
   dressing with practiced efficiency
I creep out into the approaching morning leaving self and truth
   cooling quickly in her now empty embrace
I face the wind with a courage I lack to face myself
"I don't want to hurt my family" the refrain plays
"Besides, who would want a daughter that's gay?"

Graceful Hands - 09/30/2013

Graceful hands for graceful tasks
Striking success from the unwilling flesh
Ringing forth destiny
Willing, willing it to the fore
Twisting it out
Complacently
Yet agonizing and sweet
Graceful hands
Gracefully turning
Gracefully closing
Around your graceful neck

Untitled - around September 2013

she looked out the window at the world
slanted and cock-eyed careening away at alarming speed
the greens and browns of surburbia
speckled with the blues of swimming pools
brimming with chlorine and lazy summer affluence

Her eyes traveled out and out
to the far reaches of the distant horizon
she was mesmerised by the sky:
a strong, flat and steady blue,
white clouds bobbing cheerfully in languid clumps

then she realized that it wasn't the sky at all
it was a vast lake stretching miles into the ether
those clouds were far above
yet appeared to sit within it
lake and sky were one indistinguishable mass
water wed to air

you and i, she thought
we are lake and sky
fathoms apart
seamlessly bound to form the heavens
blue and white and shining in the sun
sparkling and waiting for the storm to come

Untitled - December 2009

Could I ever really be the same?
Could the sun ever dazzle me so brightly?
Could the air ever fill me so completely?
Could the grass ever tickle my feet so perfectly?

My emotions are multiplied tenfold
Every sensation is orgasmic
The joy in every breath is boundless
I am at the threshold of complete satisfaction

Your spit was like liquid poetry in my mouth
I could feel your fingerprints on my skin
Your breath was a wholesome vapour in my blood
I could feel your body crushing me like the deepest waters

I peeked into your eyes and stole your soul
Your glances feed into me a feverish desire
I pulled out your hair to possess you
A single strand to tie up my passion
I scratch open your skin to show my longing
Those wounds feed my intoxication

You touch me with your thoughts
You caress me with your voice
You tear me with your want
You break me with your lips
You kill me with your simple existence

Yet my only hope is to make you smile
My my only hope is that you might,
even in a fleeting moment of indifference, think about me

I remain - December 2002

It comes like a silent summer's breeze
Stiring emotions of gaiety within
Rousing hope and joy in what may yet be

Slowly it curls into an autumn wind
Rustling the leaves of desire in one's heart
It dries out the wood of those summer hopes
Setting them ablaze in a raging inferno of love...
Or maybe lust

Higher and higher do these flames rise
Consuming whatever leash we thought to keep on our feelings
The conflagration spreads, scorching to cinders
Everything we thought to keep within

And then the wind turns cold and numbing
Upon it fly the tendrils of winter
Seeking out the beating heart,
The only goal: to silence it
Carrying the ashes of the fires
The snow turns dark
It comes.
Devouring light, love and hope
Killing the peace within
The heart struggles frantically in the darkness
Only to collapse upon itself
And I remain.
A shell, gutted by that love I sought
Bleeding darkness from my eyes, so tired of crying
And yet I remain

Harvest a future

Going back to where you came from is supposed to bring with it a sense of movement, a sense of traveling forward in time, a sense that you did the right thing by putting one foot in front of the other. That was what I hoped for with my trip to Grand Rapids. I hoped that the chapter I had closed would write an ending for itself.

In a sense, it did. I traded the albatross around my neck for an iron weight within my heart. I guess I got the closure I was seeking. I got the affirmation that I had left something that could give me no more... affirmation that my happiness lay elsewhere. I confirmed that the life I was seeking wasn't a life that I could carve out from the cobblestone streets of a worn out Michigan town.

But I walked away heavier. I walked away burdened by the fear that the new path I'm on isn't any better than the old one. I didn't wonder whether I had made a mistake by leaving Grand Rapids. I wondered whether I was just living a different mistake. The thought that you never really know what you're doing until you die is a concern that's traveled with me since that trip. Total. Mindfuck.

One of my goals while there was to collect the rest of my belongings - the final vestiges of a life recalled in muddled memories of soaring happiness and extreme depths of sorrow. I sat and I pored through a box of my "art." I used to write, you know? But that was a long time ago when I was a different person... when I had passions and actually gave a shit about something. More than anything, that trip made me realize that I'm pretty dead inside.

I move forward through this world, indelibly touching those I come across, yet never touching myself. Never feeling more than a light flutter within. It's strange to look back at that sad, angry poet. I'm almost envious. The crushing misery was something. I don't know what this is. It's a semblance of a life. I go through the steps necessary to be self-contained, self-sufficient... but I'm merely a caricature of who I used to be. I'm merely a sketch of a rich and brilliant tapestry.

I don't really know how a person gets this way. I don't really understand the depths of self-loathing that are needed to erode a vibrant being within. Yet somehow, that's me. That's what I've become. I can't stare too long at it because the realization of how fucked up I am that happens over and over again is so painful that I only recede further within myself.

What I do know is that I need to change something. I need to feel again. I mean truly feel - so deeply connecting to something that it electrifies every molecule within your body, you tingle with the force of that passion, that knowing - I know that that's something I need. I can't tell you how to get it... I can't tell me how to get it.

So here's my project... here's my proposal: I use the past to harvest a future. I'd like to put all that art - those passionate memoirs of the person I used to be - out there for the world to see. In so doing, I have some vague hope that it'll spark something within and I'll regain a bit of who I was, who I am... who I should be. I mean, I don't know.... but here goes nothing.