Author: Roger Mugs

you started out a hardened shell in exactly the shape you should have. but you’ll be even better as time goes one and you get soft and perhaps curvy around the edges. i’ll still think your sexy in your 80’s

poetry

these cobble stones
underneath all their glory
began as mere bricks
flat and unloved
by tires and horseshoes

slowly over time
they were worn down
into something beautiful
despite gaps and bumps
weeds throughout

they began as mere bricks
flat and unloved

ah… kids. yes they’re more responsibility than you would have imagined. yes sometimes you’ll wish you could just get away. no you will never ever regret them (unless you’re from some strange parallel universe where good is just inherently bad)

poetry

i chose you

i knew
the sacrifice
i would not settle
you did not disappoint

sometimes i forget
the choice
but i never
(even for a moment)
wish i’d chosen
otherwise

i wouldn’t give you up
for the world.

i say ‘airplane’
and you plant your chest
on my feet
flying and smiling
and giggling whispering
“again”

and i know it was all more than
worth it.

j walton i hope you understand that this for reasons of necessity. that catharsis requires i expunge this without any happy ending. reminding me that you were a truth that actually happened. yea we’ve since made good but the wounds will probably never heal. its not a lack of forgiveness i hope i can communicate that. rather just a necessary step of healing.

poetry

love shattered
(always hurts worse the first time)
followed by friendship
you pried from my fingers
and i’m thinking

this happens to chicks
but we’re dudes dude
and you pry and pry

“i don’t like you, nobody likes you”
chicks say that
but we’re dudes dude

but brilliance calls
(right on cue as murphy would have it)
i moved to the country side
of hongkong

saw slaves. met gangs
killers, dealers, and smugglers
the worst of the bad missing
limbs life and hips

achen
born into a family of millionaires
you squandered every penny
on heroin and more
losing family, heart, and then
your mind

akau
leaving wife you finally broke down
‘i’ll see you in four years when
if i’m healthy enough some day to
truly love you’
though we could not share words
we shared tears

i shook hands and shared bathrooms
with killer after killer
and silence endured
i could say hello.

till i broke
really simply wordlessly
tearfully broke
longing for a hug from anyone
from a murderer? not so lucky

that end of wits where there is only
*shudder* for strength alludes you

and

as if noticing for the first time
the fallibility of man
i cried out “he should have been
there for me” but he wasn’t

and that was my friend

since then i’ve never been attached
at the hip.

in teaching me what love is not
you taught me how to love

it’s time for vivid recollections in all their abusive glory

poetry

the most vivid recollection
was in line for the drinking fountain
(we lived in a desert after all)
i was all of 14

you punched because i was white
pounded my back and just like
every day it was a fight to keep
from falling to tears at the constant
abuse
over my skin color
over my smile

and i learned
“revenge is the Lord’s”
and i prayed
“Lord I accept because your
wrath is bigger than my fist”

oppression on ever corner
next to every locker
every shoulder bump and push
i’m american and clearly i do not
belong. meaning this is your
leg room not mine

over my skin color
over my smile

and i prayed
“revenge Lord
revenge”

because i knew first your
arms as they held me at nights
and i fought over whether you
were truly worth it, or even truly were.

because i knew your arms of love
long before i knew your grace

i prayed
“revenge Lord
take your fiery eternal
damning revenge”

forgetting the grace that saved me
was no more deserved than theirs.

because i knew first your arms
before i understood that i first knew
your grace

tall as a kite i just might…

poetry

never lost this twinge of mine
preceding an evening i know’ll
include cloves or a hookah
stale couches and a twoehyim
call to some delivery joint for
what inevitably isn’t muchies
but something like it
not quite high

we called it being ‘tall’

never lost that feeling i got
before i joined my friends for
a walk across the top of the
world owning every minute
spraying candles with squirt
guns and making stale couches

i love you despite your horrifying recent past

poetry

its time to clean out our trash
baggage we love for
others carry the weight

its time for renewal of some
spiritually refined sort
water to wash and renew

these pews are getting dusty
(a generous description of the
one remaining in the pulpit)

destroyed by fire. tried by starvation
parents eating their own children
hoping hunched backs of malnourishment
somehow beat death

its time to clean out our trash
wearing your old shoes isn’t bringing
back the glory days you never had

you never had