mellow

I feel you,
ghost shoulders and willow ribs
spine like a gliding sail
guiding an ignorant core.
Your thoughts move like a webwrapped hornet twisting in the breeze
angry and graceful,
Anything but eternal.
I feel you,
musty cotton and grimy skin
scars from your first time at the rodeo
half-lights glowing off the rainy pavement
Proud how we are not made to last.
I feel you,
poison colors in spilled gasoline
sweet antifreeze, happy headaches
oxytocin withdrawal, magic eye memories splattered across the back of my retina
I feel you,
unexpected sharpness like something diamond-finished
I feel you like the end of a scream,
hoarse, adrenaline-high
woozy, powerful
Unwavering and so self-conscious
This is joke-confidence
Buried in the only handful of soil there is in this city.

How to Write

Be timeless but not dull. Find a reference point, a place of connection between your voice and the blank page  (or a screen maybe, sure) and a stranger's eyes and tickle it, twist it, paint it, take it for all it's worth. Grieve the metaphor, celebrate the rhythm, use the alliteration in your flirting. Build a context for yourself and destroy it again and appreciate how there is always a nothing to appreciate. . Consider how even the dances that honor death are about being alive, leave a trail of breadcrumbs that bring you back to laughter, compose something you pray will outlive you. I am tears and letter, characters, a symbol on a typewriter key and a word that has ten different meanings like a sign. Be the arrow that points toward you but never the thing you're pointing at, because fluidity is necessary for being, otherwise you simply were.

Jaydenbot III

I finally got to help myself.
gotta be traditionally considered rude to the equality committee who would vote on such an internet meme at events.
I finally got one way or less intimate if yanno wat im sayin.
I'm better essaist than poet?
Late Buses & Leaky Water Bottles, a book
there’s a glitch you’re all
my friends with my life
I finally made of eyes.
Watching it only draws their money.
i did NOT engage in it
No I appreciate your Art blog with a typewriter, no real reason and the fact that
This is how we get
random questions that
search Saul Alinsky on a breeze. My ears Veined stone, loud and then decided i’d be partners, lovers, friends
After you find out the phonics and cake and being misgendered
how you don’t even
As someone who has to have to hear her name for most definitely interested in going to again.
when the stars but I somehow don’t feel better

world clock

once i saw the sun set at ten forty-five p.m.
halfway around the globe from the carpeted stairwell where i first heard the pedestalled pigeons coo
and then again twenty years later
halfway across the infinite flatness i see lightning approach
like God
while i sat on metal porch steps and gave a wordless prayer
without blue mountains, just patchwork fields
some things never change.
beauty so humbling you'd trade your life to feel it
if anyone asked
but no one has
so you think of it as practice
for the day you will share the one thing that we all have in common
as mortals
and remember how good it feels to smile.

nights for sharing

I saw you once through a palette of pastels
as a sunset of silence
A quiet acceptance that spared the best syllables
I said, I'm writing a poem about you right now
And you laughed.
I watched the silhouettes of people we know passing like clouds
The grass was cold but you were warm
I thought about how much life there is in ten years,
"Hello" as a complete message,
The smell of soil as a complete transmission.
And I have a language of tired sights that I will retire to
With fires in hearths and crickets in forests
And thoughtfully thankful
In debt to anyone who shared the feeling
Thank you

untitled

Tragic priestess,
martyred mind.
Angry princess,
wasted time.
Steal my crow wings,
blind my eyes.
Dual apostles,
bland demise.

Saying nothing,
rotten mouth.
Always bluffing,
pushing clouds.
Smoke in my esophagus,
love me inside out.

Religion murders mystery,
what ugly cosmic crime.
Second chances fall away,
bitter and sublime.
Better music brings us back
and we fall into line.

for kate

sometimes ten dollar words are the only kind that get the job done/ and lots of compliments may be paid but they're not for everyone./ in the spirit of being specific it helps to speak the truth if you imagine someone listening/ what plato's cave makes impossible revived by metaphor./ and it's not so much that you were there for every revelation/ just that you helped me believe in the purpose of translation./ and that was a faith that pulled me kicking and screaming/ down one corridor and up another until it was a game/ i didn't have to play alone.

sugar water

I stayed up late with you
playing chess and drinking wine until my lips bled
I made good moves to Zombie Queen
thinking, there are so many ways to get inside someone
how, when you get inside me
the words flow like liquid when you tell me how good I am
the white noise nonsense that other people say to me
takes on new meaning in your mouth
so it's probably not the syllables that move me
maybe more like the motion of metaphore
so much happier when left unquestioned.
I'll be like sugar on your skin, oil on your water
sweetness and colors, strategy and praise
Intimacy and intent

Cognitum

I want to know if there’s a difference between ignoring something that’s there and pretending there is something where there’s nothing.

I want to know why there’s no scar where they stabbed me but I wake up covered in blood.

I want to know how to trust after my last memory has withered without sunlight and I am a futureless shadow without a history.

I want to know how to hurt without shame, to lay my guilty conscience at the alter of good intentions and let it be whatever it is.

I want to know my flaws and own my greatness. I want the darkness behind my eyelids to be a safe place, for the ubiquitous silence to sing me to sleep, to love with the same recklessness that carried me through the hopeless days on the wings of the phrase, “nothing even matters”.

I want to prove my enemies right, and survive. I want to burn their images of me in the furnace in my chest and be the yet-unnamed thing that comes next in the chain of evolution.

I want to pay homage to the specters who saw me through, who bet years of their sentences on my potential and imagined me better than my ugliest sin; I want to use this feeling to redefine the verb “to know”.