Transatlanticism

field

Darling, you challenge me to forget
Intrusive thoughts of slight are
All I've been trying to wring.
They're solid in this space, square,
So elegantly sharp on every side,
and they fit perfectly together,
Even if they are an infidelity
on this plane of states.
I recur through my questions on how
I could walk among these cracked old steps
After all these years, my direction is the same.
But I must remark on my masochism...
These reminiscences bring me to depth.
My illusions make me happy,
And happy is nothing without complaint.

more on artifacts

it's about something small
to hide away, keep from safe.
it will make a bastard sigh.
fill't with gold, i sit beside Them
my social slavers and
structure-less soliloquy
on how the artifacts could never last.
there's a taste of iron in my vine basin,
though under this mound of pitch and rust
i seem to have unearthed my polished sin

Quietus

For all the different days of the year, I had weeks for each stored in my memory. I relived every moment that ever meant a thing to me. I am reliving a moment right now. Tomorrow will feel like today. Tomorrow will feel like last week. All of my cigarettes are gone.

I could hear the synthetic chirping of some kind of machine next to me. First a chirp, then a screech. My eyes shot open. I couldn’t work out where the light was coming from, but it was too bright. I got angry. Who put me here? I began to panic. I needed a cigarette. All of my cigarettes were gone. I turned over in my bed. My cell was high in some compound, the walls reeked of torpidity. Someone died here. Many have died here. This place was mathematical.

I jolted my body off of the bed. I wasn’t restrained, but I was drugged. I felt something dislodge from my nose followed by the familiar scent of a bloody nose. I had an interesting childhood. I was tough. I will get the fuck out of here, I told myself.

A familiar voice interrupted my mental thrashing. I rose from the ground in the arms of an angel of some sort. Brightly colored blue attire, a wedding ring, a very familiar perfume. I could not make out her face. I couldn’t speak to her. My words were seeds for some other season.

As I began to calm, her voice began to stand out amongst the bustle of beeps and alarms and shrieking and sighs.

Mister Vanda, You’ve just woken from a coma. You need to relax and try to focus on what I’m saying.

The illusion was much more amusing. It took many minutes for me to become fully aware of my insignificance. I was paralyzed, unable to speak, and I couldn’t breathe. Perhaps the latter few of those problems were related. In the mess of these thoughts, I feel back into sleep.

I woke to cigarette smoke, the sun no longer an offender of my eyes, not a soul but the woman beside me. She was clearly different from the nurse, her silhouette was lithe and her hair was neat. It was too dark to speak confidently about what she looked like, but the second-hand smoke was beautiful. I could smell it through the tubes of plastic. I began to tilt my head and speak, but as soon as I stuttered out a greeting, another bath of blinding hospital fluorescence ripped through my will. I muscled through. I adjusted. It was my wife, definitely. The last memories I could speak for in my waking life were with her. Wanting to leave her. I can’t remember if I told her. It was an interesting conundrum… but I could not, with any measure of effort, remember much before or after those few days. They seemed only moments away, easily accessible, but lonely in my mind like a few books resting against each other on an otherwise empty bookshelf.

//To re-frame, re-cut, and re-post later. This is merely an outline.

it's okay

I never forget where my roots went
and came.
I fill myself with wistfulness because
I can't seem to escape my lonesome
fate.
It would seem my life is a series
of small flames...
I keep anchoring myself in anguish,
and it all traces back to a flower
i can't remember.
let alone retrace the meaningful arcs
of your face, or understand
the bastardized version
of yourself you became.
we all come from different seeds, it seems,
and mine and yours were meant to meet
but the world is unkind,
and not every future is fertile.
you and i were a bramble of
bad decisions...
but for all the thorns I struggled in,
I hope I never forget those days.

The Letters are Never Dead, But They Certainly Don't Stay

Painting it with dabs of dirty red
It seems our summer never ends
There's one heart beating
With an elevated feeling
And you're coming swinging
With fingers crossed
With singing composure
In your thorn enclosure
I couldn't keep you closer.

I have irrigated from your visions
your botanically forlorn little finger...
Couldn't cultivate a hole to band.
Exchanging moments of hermitage,
Your lovely hair, bourbon threads
Sharing shreds with your closest
Friends.
Your little links are murmuring,
whispering disbelief from the
soles of their connected feet
Children should not behave this way.

attempt: song

let me open up my throat
i got liquor in my bones
n im always feelin broke
cause i keep fallin into hoes

milk you for your worth
n put you on a shirt
im chillin on a bad trip
cause im sleepin in a bottle

fill it up with what you see
hurtin me, learnin me
i'm tired of lying down on this glass
while youre burnin me

fear enters the stage
like rapids on old boulders
there are children at play
making toys of what you made



...this poem isn't working.

i can't write on weekdays.

root you

when you pass
light flows out of you
drowning for moments here,
I see you everywhere
this garden of mine, my dying shrine
feeding my roses and hydrangeas
all black now, only my past is blue
when you pass
they’ll come after you

Courtesy

Crawling through thorns for roses,
from spring to fall.
You are full of words for beauty,
And though I know you have many share
I know you can never give them to me.
I am without complaint.
I am satisfied to have turned your eyes.
To pronounce your grace, of all my efforts
My only utterances were words.
I am satisfied.