It’s in a stars-filled night that we cannot see. These strange mysterious forces.
I don’t believe in any astrology. I don’t believe my birthday dooms me, or brings me joy. Or wishes me naught but a microcosmic dance through the particles and strings pulling me quickly along.
Along an avenue, a narrow street, an asphalt heat in the misty city’s glow.
But gravity.
Of distant stars and nebulae. The mass of all the sky.
Pulling us up into space. Those distant lights.
Lightening our steps as they draw us to their blanketing wonder.
That I feel.

Destruction is swift, it certainly can be.
This tearing and awful grinding as the parts that had long been piling atop one another are no longer in place.
Were they ever in place exactly as we wanted, or just how they inevitably ended up?
This part here was imperfect, and yet it was meant to be here.
What has happened was meant to be; a strange thought.
And so things come down eventually, to build into something else.
My skin and bones to be returned to some earth to some time to some expansion of the universe.
The tearing down is painful.
We can tear things down quickly, but the pain will be no less.

Build again?
One hopes, if we were happy with it.
Maybe something a bit different.
Realign and compress, to better balance our structure.
Still we are the same builders.
And building is hopefully what we are trying to do.
I hope it is what I am doing.

There were others before you

The reasons are not simple.
The feelings are.

It's not that we think this is some right solution.
It's that you didn't think the others were.
You weren't listening.

I can see myself in you.
Let there be no dishonesty between us
Is what I long for

It is exhausting isn't it
To care and only be these two hands and single mouth
If I had twenty mouths and the right amount of lungs and vocal cords,
Then I would have more than you,
And my voice would be louder.

More cacophonous.

I band with my brothers and you yours.
But I can see myself in you.
Let there be no dishonesty between us
Bring me your hands and not your gun

Your gun, your mask.
They keep you safe, and not me.
Do you wear them to be safe from me?
From my brother?

Will you not work with us?
Will you not put aside your gun to work with us?

I care not how coarse you speak, how deep your frustration, if you're willing to know my frustration too.
I can see myself in you.
Let there be no dishonesty between us
I am scared for the future.

There is enough.
But it can be squandered.
We have wasted plenty.

I want to protect what's left.
But a gun and a mask will not protect it.

Save

Here in the northeast
I ascribe different origins
To the feelings and emotions I have.

Were it
Could I
Would we?

Leave me under the pleasing
Crook of the stairs
That lead to your room

And tender moods settle
With gentle mind
And a simple dinner made well.

Back nestled together
On cushions next to
Lamps and cradling emptied mugs.

Gingerly listening to friends
Turning in and closing
Bedroom doors for the night.

8/21/16

The first thirty minutes of April 21st, 2016

Weird how it passes,

The nights and the mornings,

Ripple beneath my conscience.

I assume I want it to last,

But aren't I hoping it brings

Something that hasn't come yet?

I continue to look and examine,

My hands, still here resting,

They're a little shakier these days.

But I remember judging

And knowing even in my teens,

That I could never be a surgeon.

Luckily I instead work in cafes,

Late in the night drinking

Coffee and smiling at the staff.

I had to do these things when I got here.

Most of them got done.

Just a few important points left,

The respect I have for those.

In every little nook.

The noise filling the silence.

That's all it does I guess.

Noise, thunder, tracks of small absences in the mud.

Then the noise ends,

And here we are again.

Sandra Bland

I still feel queasy.

My first thoughts, though, whenever I write these troubles down, go elsewhere.

How many cops I know.

Friends, family.

Good people. I think of them.

I'm still queasy. I almost feel like I want to throw up.

They have children, most of them raise them right.

They are respectful and, though some of them I know can be brusque, I like them.

I'm still looking at pictures, hashtags, major sites, the alt websites, too.

There's a picture where she looks haggard, in that orange jumpsuit.
She's missing the smile from every other picture of her online.
She looks hollow.
Where did she go?

There's this thing where you're all lumped together.

You're identified one way, and there are bad seeds.
Not even bad seeds.
Seeds choked in poor soil.

That have grown up into twisted adults, contorting and biasing the rest of our realities.

I have this feeling, about halfway down my chest.

I'm queasy.

I'm really upset about this.

She's a normal lookin woman in most of what I see online.

She's clearly someone who speaks her mind.

I know a lot of women who speak their mind.

I don't know that many black women.

I'm still queasy.

There's no denial that it was just a failure to signal a turn?

They don't deny that it was more than that?

That she's expected to get out of her car for that?

Daylight.

It's daylight.

That a cigarette matters.

Are you serious?

You don't have to immediately do anything they say, right?

Anything? They aren't human?

It's just this deep feeling, it sits under everything else I think about for the last hour.

What's a bad seed. Is it twisted poisoned soil?

I want to be the one who talks back.

But apparently.

I'm queasy.