being white is to wish
to never have been born at all
it is necessary
to apologize
to defer all understanding
of real suffering
being white is to be wrong
and to grovel in apology
to be born a foreigner
bereft of origin
on stolen land
with borrowed time
inheriting bloody tools
meant for laziness
being white is to be guilty
by association
of placing guilt
by assocation
on those guilty
of associating
with your father’s
brown brother
neither of whom
anyone has ever
met.
i am now exactly how
i was in 2005
gripping a metal bar
my face flushed
with fear as i rush
toward the horizon
of sandusky
atop other metal bars
that drop you
and pick you up
before you fall
but the difference is
we ride the back
of a falling dinosaur
crying “there must
be more”
all billions of us at once
locked in by nihilistic
tribalistic
denial
you tell me symmetry is
overrated
as i even my bill out
tipping the waiter
finally finding out
face flushed and
terrified
that my death
is the unremarkable
kind
at 12 am you notice the sound
of your own heart beating
teeth rotting out of your head
you decide not to sleep tonight
and get high instead
you’re in love with a dead horse
these glasses cost you a million dollars
what do you do with your own time
but say what’s all been said?
are you your own fucking body?
is your body fucking you?
are you going to waste our fucking time here?
do you know what means what to you?
you make me feel like the bad guy
like i’m not good enough
you want me to lick your shoes
it’s fucked up that you keep asking
you pretend that it’s not fucked up
that you keep asking
everyone knows it’s fucked up,
but you keep asking
like i’m not good enough
you make me feel like i’m the bad guy
like i’ve still got something to prove
like being a failure isn’t bad enough
you make me feel like the bad guy
and like i’m not up to your standards
but you couldn’t care less about me
and it’s fucked up that you keep asking
for me to lick your shoes
i know that i’m not good enough
to be a friendly fucking robot
and i wish i didn’t care
i wish i didn’t feel like the bad guy
and my life wasn’t all fucked up
i am building a home at the
base of the mountain
because i couldn’t make my way up
please don’t visit me there.
As much as I love each waking day
there’s a laying night to match
often empty and these days
clouded with not a star to see
would that I could trade in
all these laying nights for
all the waking nights that
had come before instead
I think we’d both be happier
or I think we’d both be
a little less sad,
at least
But your smile and laugh
were as sweet as my memory
had ever over-exaggerated
You were the bullet-point
at the beginning of the word
‘beauty’
You shined bright enough
for me to shade my eyes
but not so bright to blind me
And You were ready to say
what you had to say
when I did just the same
And I’m not sure
that I’ll ever be ready for you
you rush forward
in simple straight lines
bayonets readied to
receive the deathly gasps
of your fellow country-men
of your enemy
and after
you close your eyes
and bury it sharply
into their chest
you look back
desperately for some type of
approval and see nothing
but a general
atop a horse
yawning
I can’t stop thinking about your eyes
I only want to stare at them forever
or at least until I am trapped inside of them
then I will rest easily and eternally
I will know what the word ‘peace’ really means
but I am toiling now for certain
I am only pausing some of the time
and in each of these fleeting stolen moments
I can’t stop thinking about your eyes
To stand on the cusp of a waking dream
is a dream all itself
and yet I stand coughing up
a bittersweet backwash
as I lay here, thinking about love
and I am tempered fully
because the adage is true;
you can’t have everything
and Pat Carroll was right, too
about everything, just like I feared
he may be
wichita is a pretty crack whore
who was cool in high school, once
but now an addict
selling her self and begging
as i sit with her on a street corner
before the winter when kansas
has warm fall breezes that travel
far across the empty plains
we talk sarcastically about
old inside jokes shared between
normal high school friends
but i won’t leave here without her crying
and begging me for change
and if i refuse
offering to sell me ass
it’s the oil running through
her veins that makes her cheap
and desperate
There is a monster inside of you
and inside of me, too
and it is the same monster
because this monster is omnipresent
like a God, or like an Elder God
with wrapping tentacles
with venomous teeth
and it does not feed so much as consume
and it poisons us with dark dreams
with horrible sadnesses and imagined perils
it’s toxin will teach us to fear everything we’ve ever loved
there is no medicine to bring us back to health
and even reason and good faith can do little to assuage its infection
This monster will go eventually
but only after feasting to it’s content
after we are left white and meek and beaten
We will lay in our own sick
and wretch over our hopes and dreams
but if we remain resolute
and only let our disease get the best of us sometimes
we will be able to stand eventually
and the tightness will leave our chest
the aches will leave our beleaguered muscles
and we will walk again nearly as assured as before
Then we will be as we have always been
but for the monster that we know to be lurking
everywhere and anywhere at once
I jumped at a shadow
And woke myself
My muscles tense as mid-crunch,
Sweat soaking brow as well
Soon I calmed and settled
In the dark of my bedroom
When the lights are out
There are no shadows, I noted
Or everything is shadows.
Perhaps it is the same.
The Sun is warm
as it reveals the world
to those who would discover it
It casts shadows, too;
it creates mirages
when it burns too bright
It blisters skin,
it boils out moistures,
it saps all fight from a man
And I am thankful for its light
And I am fearful of its shadows
And I wonder, is this what dying feels like?
Would that I could find an answer
But only the dead have it
And the dead I know don’t say a word
Now I travel South
Towards a break in the clouds,
Sun, with any luck
And I need you to remember
that even after the coldest,
darkest, rainiest days,
sometimes the clouds break
just enough for the stars
to shine through,
and sometimes the night
warms up enough for you
to take your coat off,
after all
Every now and then it hits me
like a kick in the teeth
The stinging will pass, sure enough
but the ache and soreness eeks on
for hours afterward
then I’ll go a week, let’s say,
and everything will be just as good
as it could be, considering
but then the truth, like a startled mule
will stop suddenly in front of me
and out its hind leg will spring
Luckily my lip never seems to split
nor does anything seem to pop loose
But my jaw has been consistently stiffer,
these days,
and my gums are stinging real bad now,
that’s for sure
My fingers struggle to process input
from eyes that struggle to remember
how to interpret dots and marks
in such a way as to associate them
with a letter, and in some cases
a modifier that when read together
make up the pieces of what would
in the modern parlance be called
a ‘universal language’
it sounds awful as I stumble over
notes that don’t go together the way
that I think they should, but really
these intervals are new to me, or
at least they are as an exercise
in movement, but I have been assured
that even as the tones clash and
cluster, and even though my muscles
feel as dumb as they have ever felt,
I will be better off when these
sounds are under my fingers
I am not sure that I believe them
but I will stay in this woodshed
just the same
Missing you
was infinitely easier
when it was only
temporary
so I perch on hands and knees
blowing dust from stone slabs
painstakingly interpreting
the newly uncovered hieroglyphs
hoping they are not just
striated sidewalk cracks
you’ve got the heart
of a bird
that can’t fly
but you want
to be
the mighty bear
you gather your strength
in numbers
sharing your warmth
and empathy
he’s got the heart
and the skin
for the blistering cold
and all alone
though he longs
to share
he sings his sad songs
into the wind
longing for warmth
and empathy
when the world is a giant iceburg
you see what you think you need
floating among
the shards of ice in this vast ocean
the missing puzzle pieces to
a heart that doesn’t bleed
you swim for it
and you find it
but they don’t fit
some foreign things
are foreign
for a reason
some opposites
repel
too hard to touch
you find it’s the things
that make you different
that keep you apart
no matter how you dream
the sieve and the sand 
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