let’s write a poem:

T:

I pulled apart the curtains to pull apart myself

S:

I stayed behind the windows

I stumbled through the pages to stumble through myself

 

As I felt the pages unfold, and the flipped through the leafy gold

I wrote how I had become

I silenced the thoughts of the other ones

 

But they didn’t leave

They pitched tents just behind my temples

Intent to stay awake

Making shadow puppets on the canvas

 

From the flames of indian dancers

and real-life prancers

They celebrate what I watch

Because life cannot be taught.  

 

But I still scrawl notes and diagrams

Draw flow charts and histograms

In corduroys with coffee stains

As neighbor boys trudge through the rain

 

I’m a boy masquerading as a man

A mask parading all over town again

Only a crack between flesh and fake

My insides all slumber, cannot fall awake.

 

So I’ll invest in insulation

And expand interpretations.

 

If I was more or less

This or that

Then that would that be it?

Or would it still be like this?

 

But specificity was never my strong suit

and productivity is for the unmute.

So I’ll settle for not knowing more than nothing

And relax in the throwing of time into something

Click.

 

Clack.

Change the ribbon.

No ribbon.

Buy a ribbon.

Change the ribbon.

 

Pick.

Pack.

Empty your bag.

Fill up your bag.

Throw away your baggage.

 

Strap around the right shoulder.

Reach with the left.

Can’t grab what’s left.

Loosen the strap.

Reach with the left.

Sit back down, lean forward.

 

Consider for a second.

What to think first.

Is left the right choice?

Or in some way, the worst?

For I am a bag.

and a typewriter with no ribbon

A tree without leaves.

A thinker with no inhibition.

 

Fill me up,

I’ll latch on to you.

Change me,

I’ll mark myself.

I know you see what was,

Or what will be,

But not me

Now

 

My tinted glasses

Put shade in my eyes.

My shadowed soul

Seeps from my seams.

Because I blocked my windows

With curtains of iron.

So pull apart my curtains.

And pull apart my sins.

 

I come across a deer

Dead where the trees thin out

Into a grassy field.

Her eyes are open, empty, but

Beautiful in the way that the sea is

Vast and barren.

Something sparks flames

Beneath a foggy layer

Which rests on her eyes.

I poke her with a stick

I find beneath an evergreen.

And turn her on her side,

But she must be tied down

With fairy-made ropes of dewdrop grass.

I begin to cry for no reason at all

Except that I just want to point her towards the sunset,

And maybe

Sit with her a while.

When journeying somewhere

You’ve never been,

Keep a catalog of all of your sins.

And when meeting new people,

Remember not to tell them

Of what you thought about doing at midnight last month.

For shells take years to create and

Afternoons to break,

And then flesh gets sunburned

Rather quickly.

What I suggest is this:

Remember your innocence, and feign it all day. Once night falls and springs, convince them all that you are a king whose feet never touch the ground, whose doubt never makes a sound, and then retire to your chambers to wait for tomorrow.

Red splashes on a tranquil sea

With dangerous undercurrents

Beneath.

There are ducks on the surface

Diving for morsels,

Just something to eat.

One with his beak under the

Shimmer

With a grin, working lazily for his

Dinner.

---

I pray to God that he is a good

Swimmer.

We were all born in this lake,

Wandering out, crawling and

Covered in amniotic fluid

And gasping for air.

And then pulled up into parents’ arms.

They fling us back in order to

“Learn how to swim.”

And if we survive,

And drip back out,

We’re one year older.

Lather, rinse, repeat

And we’re teenagers slathered

In hormones and atomic acne

Bombs.

We have our first kiss on a boat

Or under the dock,

And later we ask why we wanted it,

As we step back on to dry land,

Smelling like alcohol and cigarettes

At 21

With an addiction to escaping.

But when we stop growing,

We watch the lake pull our friends and family

Back in.

Once their eyebrows are under,

We’re allowed to say goodbye.

And only when we dunk our heads deeper than ever before,

Are we allowed to say hello again.

Some advice for when you shatter your life to pieces:

 

1. Panic.
   1. Whatever happens, throw a fit that would make the Greek gods proud.
2. Beg for another chance.
   1. Even if you have to get down your knees and cry.
3. Return to your old habits.
   1. If they’ve worked this far, they’ll work again.
4. Make all the same mistakes as quickly as possible.
   1. Self-explanatory.

As I send myself off

From tombstone to tombstone,

I can only see your face

Somewhere in between.

Flowering like you forgot something,

Quickly and unashamed.

---

I’m sorry

I have no fix

For feelings that

Float on our minds

Like gasoline,

Ready to ignite at any

Sneeze of fire.

---

But honestly,

You probably sneeze beautifully.

I miss the sea

Already.

She was something I’d never seen

Nor heard or been

So in love with.

I thought that maybe, just maybe

She would run with me,

Keep me company,

But as everybody knows,

You can’t walk a straight line when someone pushes you wrong.

Her current pulled my ankles down and under

The sand and the Sea and thought of me

When I turned to leave,

Not knowing when we’ll meet

Another time.

I jumped overboard and into the universe today.

Something I said I’d never do;

Enter into the unknown

Instead of staying with what I knew.

And from the depths of outer space,

I found a barracuda,

Screaming my name

As he jumped between nebulous gas clouds.

I’ll never forgive what he said,

But I can’t seem to say what it was.

For he had a fishy way of pronouncing his

Vowels.

Don’t worry though,

I’ll figure it out.

Like ripples on the water,

I wavered when she waved.

Suddenly stars were much brighter,

And the moon flew higher

And passed the sun in distance and light,

Becoming the center of the solar system,

Which scientists now admit is a lunar system.

But everything is subject to change.