I'm Not Mad That Much Anymore

I found myself in the same situations

railing against myself

trying to see if I actually judged 

where the anxiety pushed in

creating non-nowness

& I think she would take credit

for a sentence like that

but I refuse,

knowing it was Alan Watts,

Alan Christ-ing me from disckishness

& how do we go back to the unmoved-mover?

back to what started all this motion?

it’s turtles

all

the

fucking

way

down

& maybe one day we’ll scratch the belly of the 

infinite

only to find out how wrong we were

now I refuse to stay serious

& yes

maybe it’s a deflection

something to make them look me in the eye

while I tell them lies

lies so sweet & believable

even to me

especially to me

but

joy!

you forgot about ever-approaching joy

showing up in the cars with women

how it’s silly

& no small grace

to fuck beautiful women in the backseat

& how it’s even sillier

that it hasn’t happened before now

What’s this to you?

What’s this to me?

Whatever

& I love you all 

so very tenderly 

& sometimes I hate that

hate myself for this

& it’s joy again

joy all over our lips

& brows

your’s mine

mine your’s

break my heart open

& I’ll break you with all the animal & love I have

trusting in these natures

these things

alone

& I bend the words

because I like the way it feels

I like the way they come out

I love that it’s me they come from

I met a beautiful woman on the street

the other day

much older than me

not too old for me

she talked about concentrating the bullshit on Van Ness

because

‘fuck it, it’s so ugly anyway’

she was irritated with the wait for the 

bus

everyone on queue to be so many places

These things don't bother me

I’ve probably seen great Loves go off on crowded buses

while I waited for one with more room

& that’s ok

at least I know me

& maybe one day

far off really

I will be irritated by the bus schedule

the ebb & flow

remains natural

to me

Did you forget that this is always the way?

or

did you become indignant with this truth?

maybe

because it wasn’t yours?

you couldn’t hold it precious

& profane in your heart

alone

allowing no one this place

forever a mystery? 

better that 

than be known

for what you are

something that aches

& hurts

& haunts it’s own past

Anger is the poor man’s Truth

& now I’m hearing Blackbird

at the Plough and Stars & I’m moved

& I have no clue why

Why Blackbird?

other than the bar 

or was it the coffee shop at your college

See?

I’m already forgetting

you were right

you said this would happen

That’s to say

“I’m not mad

that much

anymore.”

& all the songs make me want to cry

& we’re done.

all the songs make me cry

a moved-mover 

inconsolable about nothing

An Eleven Year Old Boy's Guide To Death

Your dad will die today. You’re eleven and school was out. It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The middle brother will get to say ‘I love you’ before he’s dead. He was the one who needed that the most. You and your oldest brother will learn that you know how to perform CPR. You will also learn CPR can’t undo death. There are things you will see that make you realize sometimes a body can’t be fixed, that a body is done after a certain point.

It’s not going to make sense. He was getting better. It seemed like he was getting better.

It will never make sense.

Your friends will have no clue what to say to you.

No one will. 

Someone will ask you why you’re back in school already. What they are really asking is, “What are you doing back in life?” You’ll have no clue, you don’t know.

You’ll learn the best you can offer is a hug and a, “Let me know if there is anything I can do…”

You will become callous. Then open. And you will flow back and forth between these two states and everywhere between.

You will always be in flux. Everything is always in flux.

You will lose it crying in church, while you still go to church, at 13. You thought you were OK. You lose it when the preacher asks for us to call out the name of someone who could use prayer. Diana’s dad is having problems with his heart, just like dad’s. You will ugly cry your way down the stairs from the choir balcony, where the handful of teenagers worship, and out the door. You will become Godless. It will be one of the last times, save for funerals, you enter a church.

Liminal spaces won’t bother you. Funeral home, hospital, church….

You will one day, far away from this world, from this time, make a girl cry when she says you need to get a new wallet. She starts to softly sob when you say, ‘It was my Dad’s…he’s dead.’ You will feel terrible.

Humor disarms and, more importantly, deflects.

You will be confused. You’ll remember the state of flux, that this 16-year-old girl was in a state of openness. You hope she doesn’t let the world beat her down to rough-hewn edges and selfishness.

You will develop a complete disdain for patriarchy. You will still, to this very day, not know if this is strength or weakness. 

When you find yourself facing down other men it will be a nihilistic spit in the face of masculinity as proof of masculinity. It will be a feedback loop that accomplishes nothing at best, and regressive at worst.

You will fight through a phase fueled by alcohol and rage, pointed at men and at the way things were and will be. No one will take you up on your desire to be destroyed.

You will finally realize that you won’t take yourself up on that desire, that you won’t do what no one else could do.

Humor disarms and, more importantly, deflects.

This phase will pass and you’ll learn that you don’t care. That you don’t need or want to be a part of those things, the world of pissing contests and not enough.

You will find it hard to respect a man that can’t be soft, that can’t say I don’t know.

Love, it's all about love.

You will write this with people who love you in the room next to you, in the state adjacent, on the other coast, on the other side of the world.

You will write all of this and cry.

You will feel better.

 You will be better.

Fuck Prefection

Fuck even coming close to perfection. Prefection (I screwed that spelling up. I got excited. I’m not going to correct it.) is something that your ego builds up. The funny thing about it? Your ego has nothing to do with you. It’s about how you are perceived. In a vacuum, there is no perfection, no need for an ego. In a vacuum, I would be able to create and be, without the pressure of the idea of people seeing my thoughts and judging the particulars. These particulars have nothing to do with the heart of the matter. Fuck my perfection. I choose creation outside of a vacuum.

I have spent much of my life in a stop and start manner. I get inspired. I start. I stop. Not good enough. Not close enough to the mark. This is to say I’ve bullshit myself into believing I was not good enough. It’s about the doubts that wouldn’t exist if there was no personal relativism. Fuck good enough. 

Why start when it is absolutely impossible to achieve perfection? Because. That’s the best reason I can come up with. In the face of the fact that all your atoms will disperse and Death-eaters, like each and every one of us are, will take away everything we know and continue on without you, make something and share it.

The only end I know of is Death. Until then, go, create, love, be confused, thrash against the Unknown and leave something. Anything. Leave Love for the living. Don’t bless the brow of a guess at something eternal, something deemed perfect, with Love. Bless us Death-eaters with Love. We need it. It’s all we have. Other than Death.