we live in a boneyard — no, a battlefront — no, a Children's Crusade. — no, no, no. there are no words for something that was once alive. and isn't that a weak word, too, alive. it just survives, no spark of living.
you should have left a dent in history — the world should have trembled before your name. yours. you should have been a god, a woman, anything but a martyr. no world could keep you; no grave can hold you.
if you were alive, you would be like the rest of the living — which is to say so much death, so much knowing, so much life knowing death. and spring would not come early and flowers would not bloom before your feet.
tautology, i know.
i'm sorry, leelah.
#poetry

I am a Jumbled confused pile of Bricks stones stretching Upward onward to The smokestack to the skyline. I am less than the sum of my parts.
Old Testament, New Testament, anyone could Attest to what is Left of this when the Rest of this that is Less than this falls away.
And I can’t believe That I don’t believe That it was ill-conceived to grieve That I’d leave when I go and go when I leave.
When I breathe, I Fill my lungs with tar and Wish upon a star for Bethlehem to come and cloak and re-enfold my form Within that hollow whole, that hearth of hearts Where all true things must hold. Fist of iron, silver, gold.
I am an inhuman in a human place; my Reflection is no human face; I press my Flesh through thresholds, neglect to brace Against the bold and bitter air, and oh, how Wonderfully it stings!, I want to scream, to Blare through barest bone itself my genuflection To this fatal star, this natal space, and to Wear a rubber mask of Bill Shatner's face; I Am beauty, I am grace, hold Your crown up high, I rain Over all I see, hold Your crown up high.
High; I; eye; aye; by any term, the incorruptible.
#poetry

I don’t remember what it was exactly, but in any case, I tripped and fell. Up,     Up,         Up into the sky.
Past mountains, past rivers. Snowy peaks and apricate banks, Clouds in their diaphanous ranks. Past bats.
Airplanes; pale imitators, really. Too large, too loud, and fettered with logistics Of all sorts; yoked and condemned To straight-line paths by straight-line men with straight- Line minds. That's the bare and bluntest bit of it for You. Theirs is a world in working order: efficient, Effective, exploitable. Theirs are estimable T(hree-) L(etter) T(itle)s; theirs are lives of Handshakes and boardrooms and sign- On-this-line-pleases. And theirs, bought and sold, are these parodic steel volantēs.
Modern marvels, to be sure. But the bat breathes breadth.
And breadth there is in this world, this One, brutish and free; jarfuls Of the stuff. Look around: you Know the spot. And the desert
Will swallow your cries, And the ocean your tears, And the sky, The sky in that moment seemed big enough to hold anything anyone could ever feel, And the sky, That was for everyone.
And these things pass, and the airplane passed.
The grass felt short and stubby beneath my fingertips. Manicured to perfection. It had been me who last cut it.
The grass beneath my fingers attached to my hands going up to my arms into my body somewhere out in the rest, all of it small, all of it small.
I don’t remember what it was exactly, But in any case, I tripped and fell. Up,     Up,        Up into the sky.
Someone called my name. Again. I didn’t care.
Someday the world would start in on me again. It always did, each day being twenty-four long hours; an hour being sixty minutes; one sweep of a lonely planet round a lonelier star being three-hundred sixty-five-plus-one-quarter-of-a-day, more or less.
But the sky, that was for everyone.
And tonight it was for me and the bats.
#poetry

I don’t want to be whole; I hate the whole of the hole I’m living in. Words terrify me. They pass me by in droves and I can't recall them, and they never stay mine once I breathe them out, across the barricade of my lips.
I wasn’t built to walk this world. That much is clear. Perhaps to walk some other: what source could there be but the alien for this noise noise noise noise noise? — it will swallow me whole one day and I won’t leave anything but a note. “Dear Earthlings,” it could start. Noise noise noise noise, TV static; it must annul itself, in the end. It moves me to mortido as often as great monuments. mortido (mɔɹˈtiː.dəʊ) n. (psychol.) The energy of the death instinct. Nothing beside remains. Giveth, taketh away, naked I came and naked shall I return. Etcetera. Suchlike. All that jazz.
Noise noise noise; one night it whispered in my ear as I stood in a park holding a folding chair, legs shaking. I heard. Its voice was heavenly, maybe Jovian. And here in the dim crater of the park, I felt death's pulse and grew sure of its approach, for me or someone else. It was all around me always, maybe. Like the fish who doesn't know it lives in water. David Foster Wallace said that. He also threw a coffee table at Mary Karr. He killed himself almost 15 years ago now, which is more than I can say. Good riddance. Humanity has far too many geniuses as it stands.
What was I talking about again?
Oh, yes. He left a note, too; for his wife only. I couldn't have read it anyway; I wasn't yet four months old. And who would I myself write to, even? I am like one Monsieur Wheelock, in Such a Pretty Little Picture, who dreams of disappearing. “The ‘Oh, hell’ rather troubled him. Mr. Wheelock felt that he would like to retain that; it completed the gesture so beautifully. But he didn't quite know to whom he should say it.” Dottie Parker wrote that. She was done in by a heart attack; a noble, honest, peaceable way to go. Oh, I am to my neck in death! These ghosts speak to me like a regular Ebenezer.
I am not sure whether to fear it or to yearn for it or what. On the one, dying is not so different from living; short and painless, if you’re lucky. But death itself is forever. Then again, nothing is forever, as the good Siddhartha taught, so death may be nothing after all. Well said, Siddy boy: congratulations and felicitations to you. Dukkha, dukkha, ducdame, that's what I think of you, you ignoble youth.
Anyone can live forever. It isn't so hard. Noise noise.
#poetry

If the medium is the message, I wish I could learn not to speak at all.
Imagine that: free from our cages of text and marble and acrylic, Back home in God's estate, sunny old Eden. Here we know only the language of hearts, Spoken as skin against skin and written in deep breaths and pumping blood. Something kicking. Something real.
But now it isn't, because now it is word again, Unreadable to me, because I wrote it, And the thought behind it is long faded, Leaving only a hackneyed husk. Just words. Dammit.
#poetry

I was born in the body I was born I was I
I was formed in the soul I was formed I was I
I am never loved enough I am loved I am I
I am real when I control I am real I am I
I will die in the body I will die I will I
#poetry

I want to know somebody But I can’t know everybody
I would love anybody But I don’t love anybody I never learned how
But maybe that’s a lie Maybe I have to know myself Or I need to love myself or something But the world hasn’t convinced me of anything yet
And we all die way too young To be stuck here for so long I wouldn’t change anything if I had the chance though Because I think I deserved this somehow
#poetry

Comprehend this... whether you believe it or not: The first thing you will learn after your last breath is that You are still alive.
#poetry

I've been thinking about the time in 3rd or 4th or maybe 5th grade around the election it was that they led all us into the Computer Lab which was what they called the room with all the big old dusty Windows desktops And they told us that we could click on 1 of the 2 pictures of stuffy-looking people in expensive-looking clothes and that our choice could change the world we were convinced and well clearly that was a lie And they taught us that a man once rode through the streets with a lamp and yelled that the Redcoats Were Coming and that this was what we needed to be proud of we checked off a box to tell them we understood well not understood but believed them And that a glass of lemonade would be worth more to someone dying in the desert it seems funny that we’re busy jacking up the price instead of helping them it’s so cruel figuring exactly how much more for much less but “so it goes” — Vonnegut And that ‘test’ they give everyone that isn’t really a test they tell you to read all the directions carefully and the last direction is to do nothing at all I was very bad then I might be worse now I thought I was more important than everyone I annoyed the teachers I wish I hadn’t And I don’t understand anything better now everything I learn just makes me more confused and scared who can I trust nobody now nobody before either we’re all scared I guess we fake it till we die but God I hate people who hurt people sometimes I want to scream Once you told me the plastic skeleton in your basement was real. I believed you
#poetry

mesperyiantikythereallignmenticidealismaticarus
#poetry