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.

Enjoys pressing the undersides of mugs and glasses on fabric to leave behind wet rings of condensation on clothing.

Words dribbled onto canvas.
Fears and childish thoughts rippled outward from churning inner space while the world is quiet.
Never quite sure where the line is.
Knowing the line is just a construct.
Categories, buckets, simplicities for the sake of making life easier.

Wanting to navigate those more complex waters, seeing wonder and satisfaction.
Thrilled with the universe.
Nervous about drowning.
A dull hum slowly resonating.
Like the noise of the grain of timbers softened and finished for tabletops and chairs and counters.

Flipping the sweatshirt on and off again.
Twirling the smooth fabric inside out and outside in and the moment of warmth.
Against the moment of those sleeves just that inch too far.
Those sleeves, to toy with them, tug at them, pull them back.
Or use them to cover the fist, wrapped and tucked away. Safe.

It's a moment.
Dribbled out across the pavement like coffee dripping from a cracked travel mug.
No longer useful, after only a year.
Not even a mocha now. Coffee with some half and half and sugar.
Stopped getting whip cream every time on mochas.

That was forever ago, and that was never planned.
Pressing some more condensation into pant legs, the darkening temporary moisture.
Gone back into the air, or whatever it does so rapidly.
Pushing the sleeve back, settled hands in the old familiar manner.

S'all good
The fools the rhythms
   the steps mistaken
Faltered right now
Foundation shaken
I guess it was always too fundamental
About the truths
   Crushed + shattered
Under others
Plagued + uttered
Breath frosty
Always costs me
Stooped + questioned
These things you told me
I got roiled
Thrown + tripping
Still I'm stepping
When I'm told

But 3 landings runways cold
Next steps
Next steps
I think that's good
Done for now, not for good
Next steps next steps
Jittered sips
Coffee's cold, footing slips

Next steps,
Next steps
I think I can
I'm ready now
Let's play this plan

What I want
What I hope
What do I these?
The tender touch
The sweet green leaf holding the dew aloft
The fresh chill that makes these coarse sheets
so warm
A brush with daybreak.
The eternal sunrise
Which will end far from now
But for now it tends to us impassively
The fiery hearth of a star.
Against the cold and the dark
Wandering in the black winds
Of this galaxy
While I take comfort,
One I wish for all,
Of coarse sheets heated by warm being.

shakes a little.

fingers twitching

concentration completely lost

sometimes there are subtleties. but other times there are not.

it's not okay

finding out what's okay.

knowing what's okay

feeling what the fuck is the awkward

sometimes I want to know what it's like to be female.

and then I get to watch the beats and rhythms of the ceaseless male come-on.

it's okay, you know, to dig someone.

and to say it.

but then the tools carve too deep.

and you gotta learn this one isn't yours.

there are others.

fuck, there are so many others.

and so why push so hard when you fucked up this time.

maybe the next point is yours. but geez I've still got the tension from these muscles and bones crawling up my back.

Interior

Know it well

There are doors within.

Into all the other halls.

And they can bring you outside.

If you open them.

You might be inside.

I'm inside too.

I'd rather the air circulate.

I need the warmth sometimes.

But mostly I want the cool breeze.

It moves my heart.

In the black of memory.

Takes me back,
Knowing things are lost in the axis.

Bit by bit.

Pushed forward.

Against our will.

Don't we wish we had found those mountains.

That we saw them rise and fall in our eyes.

Got lost in the crumbling rocks.

Even this song keeps and keeps and keeps beating

When there was no beat I felt it still.

I clawed at that perception.

We haven't but seen the ephemeral.

We are tricked and tortured,

It's a moment right here.

I saw the moment.

I was lost in the moment.

That moment freezes and the rocks try to crumble.

The beat in this song keeps beating, but the rocks can't crumble.

His face, lost in time.

When the days lengthen and go on and on and on and on

Feel his gaze crumbled.

This moment is long frozen and past and beaten onward.

The jittered halted space in his gaze.

It's got a meaning when the mountains won't crumble,

And the pen slows its caress of the page.

I think I could see a time beyond these mountains.

And I can't tell if it meant more or less than this faltered awareness.

Please hold me close,

And let the time flow without us,

I want these currents to keep us here forever,

In the eddies where we'll never change.

He got locked into systems.

Even though he could see they weren't  impervious.

His rhythms seemed static,

The pleasant boundaries pulsing in place.

It was those times when people asked him to move beyond the walls.

He hadn't made the walls, but they still felt sacrosanct.

He felt anxious when he approached them.

Weird walls.

Walls that meant nothing except his confused sense of duty to an abstraction that he couldn't wrap his mind around.

There were limits to his thinking.

As he fought off the tortured stories of mistrust he sensed all around,

He fought the walls themselves.

He struggled to answer the unspoken questions.

Why couldn't he break them?

When would he be as tall as the walls themselves?

He had no answers. 

He only saw the systems locked in place.

His foolish feet planted.

A beat statically repeating.

In A Garage

The tools that I use draw me down

Into their hold, the music doesn't fit them

I don't know quite what I'm looking for.

I'm not sure that I should bother at all.

I can't find the soul in the chords.

I can't feel the lunge of the heart.

Only failed improvisations lost in

The weird twinge of keys.

Changes of time and octave and instrument don't work.

I'm not entirely surprised.

I can sing, but there's only the surprise of shouting.

A heartfelt note that can't linger past the moment.

Wherefore am I looking for the soul?

I don't see but the failed singular mechanism.

Unraveled

Which reveals that there is no soul.

I can't say we didn't try.

But I can say I didn't succeed.

I'm foolish for coming here,

But I'll probably try again sometime.

Where do my eyes drift to when I don't know the words?

The concern falls from the ceiling,

crashing to ground.

My breathing stays steady,

I'm not sure how.

Words and meanings mix in the mind,

Filtered through muck.

Stricken with a weird feeling I can't tell,

Is it all just dumb luck?

I should feel anger and fear and frustration.

There's this deep seated numbness instead.

Go through motions when I'm supposed to react.

Crashed.

Faltered.

Trapped and afraid for the wrong reasons.

I don't know the beats.

I don't know when to change the time.

I only know I'm off somewhere.

There's that feeling that should stick,

But it doesn't.

I know what should happen and shouldn't.

This shouldn't happen.

They shouldn't happen.

But they do.

And I know that, too.

I'm not as surprised as I should be.

The rhythms are there, the drums bear out their beats.

I'm scared to admit that the cynic in me expects this.

And when it hits, I'm sorry.

I don't know what to say or where to go.

I feel like at these points all I can give is my silence.

And wish there had only been silence, and no fury.

Chilled Night

I step out of the dark quiet cold and into the warm din of the coffeeshop. The late night comes alive as the happy chatter of people fills my ears, removing the blanket of a steady chilled breeze.  I'm part of this now, I'm feeling it, enjoying the love and life.  Perhaps I'm just a solitary soul in this din, but it's okay.  Take me in, let the tapping of these keyboard keys add to the distractions from the descent into stillness.

Suddenly I see, just beyond the glass windows, the form of a homeless youth I've served breakfast to. He isn't looking up at us inside, he's quickly moving in the night I know to be cold but no longer feel.

He was only there briefly, he only stopped a brief moment a few feet away from my privileged position, to inspect something on the bench outside. But he's moved on, probably seeking warmth at the shelter.  It's another community, one totally unstable, only suited to saving people stuck at the bottom, but hopefully he'll find a bed. I'm left here wondering.

How quickly this warmth and safety was brought into perspective for me. How quickly I am aware.  I still appreciate this din, I'm still thankful and in love with the life around me.  But perspective, right?

A bed of granite

When you saw the sun set and space come into view,
Did you feel like falling off the side of Earth?
When the Milky Way remained ever new,
Did it really seem to be a birth?
While clinging to the planet with all strength,
I saw the stars all pulling me away.
The light that stretched across my vision's length,
Was burning just as brightly in the day.
And so I stumbled down the mountainside,
Swallowed in the cracks of worth and time,
And wracked with doubt yet somehow full of pride,
I lost myself amidst my selfish crime.

They say, those poets and those knowing men,
That I may lose horizons that I know,
But tomorrow morning I shall once again,
Commit the deeds that stop the nectar's flow.

Frustrated depths drop into blue dark.

Columns of space and mass tower up into the future knowing.

Anyway I saw the flecks of moments and moments all around me.

I swam around but try as I might I could not drop lower into the blue dark.

These particles seemed everything and the clouds of towers were all that seemed.

But never letting go as they twisted and pulled me through the blue dark.

I struggled and thrashed and tried to unwind these arms.

No relative safety remained.

In the moment I watched each fleck sparkle and shine from the glimmers of light above.

The moment was yet another moment.

And that was the time that the sparkles coalesced into these towers around me.

I let go of the nothing holding me.

I swear I let go.

The blue dark held its warm embrace close.

I knew so much more but it didn't matter.

These blue dark depths remained.

You could say that I knew what I was for.

You should feel the weight that kept me in place.

Floating only here, the flecks of being never resting, only scattering fluidly from my twisting arms.

My arms, these hands, my hopes my dreams.

Twisting columns falling and rising away into the blue dark.

It's late and the nerves rattle

It's late and the knowledge is everywhere

It's falling fast into territories as ephemeral as ice.

Wide gaps are calling.

Wild thoughts ravage mental landscapes.

Plentiful meadows and scoured beaches left dry without even bones.

Pleasant hills.

Twisted ravines.

Sweet sweet oblivion.

Falling into late.

Fighting far and knowing fate.

Settling down, but still awake.

Waiting now for something.

From this knowing.

I know where it's going.

Because I let it.

Shipped and sailed and gone to shore.

Far away forevermore.