part one
i have found terribler things
in words - they’ve forced me to realize
blood pools in my heart
& stagnates
|
measure me to the dead
the similarities are uncanny
you won’t recognize
the life from the embalming fluid
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give me more than rejections
thank you but no thanks
|
i am neither an accomplishment
nor a recognition -
in the order of beginning
i wait
but in determination
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lost in the atmosphere
wanting the flames
to undress my body & ashes
cover my mother’s face.
i want her to remember
a beautiful son
|
imagine being sacrificed
but instead of red,
smoke pours out
smelling of incense
& how gorgeous
the cloud would form
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we comprehend the smallness.
the ivory cut from the horn
fitting in the palm
yet how long did it take the carcass
to convert to the same size?
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when i killed my only deer,
i cried. it wasn’t that she was dead
but alive, observing her blood.
she pled from her eyes.
my father told me to shoot her again,
not evil, but love. the second bullet
would be peace -
where the first forgot its duty.
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i curve lines to the east
hoping
they become less human
& build a church from poems
so god will understand
how religion can congregate
into a manuscript & be written
by men who have no factions
to worship him
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i regain consciousness
from this delusion
to confess an atonement
reality is suspicion.
& yes, if you believe
god formed man from dirt
& eve from our rib
then eat the apple i give
let’s bind ourselves
in such sin as two men
two lovers destined together
in this unholy regime
come unwrapped
& exposed
praying in a religious tongue
that you will take me
into the peril of the unknown.
your hands bound
the misinterpretations -
let me be as i was born.
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part two
the homophobic transform me subpar,
a lowering class. the indecent -
my overexposed begins to corrupt
the innocent eyes of our youth.
my sexuality has developed, somehow,
these foul-mouth-tongues licking sperm
off the belly of men consecrated
to develop them into beings
that make their ideology
into a wholesome form.
you give blame since they walk
in the footsteps of a devil
created by imagination.
|
i am enclosed with barbwire.
they want to love me with prods:
jesus & god.
they have named me homosexual -
enunciating ways to cleanse me.
i fancy how many more women
they’ve tasted than i have men.
i marvel at their hands & how many stones
they’ll be able to throw before the first one
hits me with ease.
let’s mix mud & blood & meat.
it will be gorgeous with those smiles they’ll add.
|
my anger should not be planted as flowers.
they would kill your garden. they would learn
how their roots worked. they would follow
you & stay just close enough. they would represent
every statement i found false. they would know
how to reach your ears & wallpaper petals
onto your lobes. they would try to teach you love.
|
your fear becomes holy. your marriage frail,
so you decide mine will ruin yours.
your sentences begin to infuse scripture.
you begin to plagiarize things you believe
because you cannot conjure words that are real.
you want god to love you because no one else can.
your sin turns into a plague
& the only way you feel repentance
is to condemn.
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amen. let me turn your heads:
jesus never married, had disciples: men.
judas turned against him. jealousy
comes from the bed. if i can’t have you
no one can. love & war have no rules
& neither are to be played.
|
your mouth is my grandmother’s.
now she speaks with her dead voice
from your vocal cords.
the sharp vowels try to pin my conscious—
strong consonants devalue my power
the words themselves leak resin.
wife & children escape her teeth
trying to catch me. she cannot understand
i don’t want either,
that i am not gay because i choose to be
but simply: i am.
her pyramid scheme of love is ancient.
she drives to me with prayer.
i turn her away with heat.
|
i taste the cock like a branded whiskey.
i close my lips around the neck
until it’s lax
& exhausted & can’t raise its head.
the liquid is a poison that vacates oxygen
& that is when i release it
back into captivity.
it hits the air like a drowning animal
barely escaping its predator.
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part three
i felt her ribs, loose & tarnished,
like jewelry that never fit
they moved under her muscles,
rivetting across broken seams
each bone diagonal with a finger:
i want to play her music
her seventeen-year-old violin
but the strings are corroded
& i’m afraid i’ll be mis-carried
|
if my father had not sewn his palms
to my mother’s womb
i would have never known his existence
his voice like vinyl, thick & scratched,
barely audible through the skin -
if he had known my ears worked
maybe his voice would have been louder
& he wouldn’t have been afraid to say
i love you.
|
my birth caused hemorrhaging.
i broke my mother open, excavating
through placenta & breath.
my first scream became default.
i knew the hospital walls -
for three days i studied them
waiting to find my mother’s face.
that day i killed parts of her
she would never replace
but her smile didn’t condemn me;
her voice lulled awakening.
|
i want to eat her voice.
the way the words sound soft,
easy to swallow -
thick in my throat & fulfilling.
to feel it drum on my stomach -
from each vowel & each consonant.
the rolling r’s & the s’s hiss.
|
i became the identity of my father.
the nude body stands damp.
the shower is nemesis
revealing in full disclosure
what the human form hides
under rags.
he wipes the mirror with his calloused hand,
cleans the relief steam gives
with the eyes of a wolf.
the false prophet becomes inescapable
from his time.
his round face, thinning hair, lagging smile
mimicking the reflection
i held - this man,
an intrusive stranger with my eyes
i wish i’d never have to acknowledge.
an infant, turned boy,
then man.
|
i am damaged, less like my father
& more like mother. no,
i have collected brokenness
from both.
father’s is hard to find.
he hides it inside his chest
but if you’re patient you’ll see
the indifference, the indignity.
mother’s sits on her whole self.
it is vulnerable & loud:
thunder & bombs & the crying child
left until touch becomes a stranger & hurts.
i am the hybrid of many generations.
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part four
middle school was a zoo of monkeys
& hyenas. i was bred from a class
of herbivores: i had a taste
for books & learning.
i hadn't been discovered yet
to be added to the endangered species list.
dark corners
& small back tables
were my nesting ground.
i found devotion
in the margins of my notebooks.
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i grew from malnutrition
& devoid -
learned like a spider
to spin my web of poetry
weak & somber:
in the beginning i captured nothing
though i thought every pen stroke
a masterpiece.
i learned each poem
like it was family:
a new sibling.
i acquired so many
studied their hands & faces
because i knew eventually
they would all die.
& sadly, everyone did.
consumed in fire their bodies
bursting into stars.
i only wished
that the next
wouldn't wander
that far from my heart.
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high school became a hunting ground.
poachers with their high-powered rifles.
they never killed but maimed:
the enjoyment was tracking their prey.
|
three students threatened
to tie me to the bumper
with rope, tight enough
to cut into my skin,
& drag me
until i was roadkill.
i could only imagine
how long it would have taken;
my blood slick like oil.
the pavement would have held an honor.
it was dark in the classroom.
their threat was covered
by the sound of a man talking
on a tv screen.
no one tried to intervene
to save the gay kid.
i quit school as a junior.
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epilogue
you can never write a poem once.
each word constantly evaluated
at a hundred different angles:
transformed, transplanted, reduced,
remolded, reshaped, rearranged,
reorganized, replaced.
an auditorium of dead poets
always writing, always modifying,
concealed inside your head.
twenty, thirty, forty versions
of every line, simultaneously,
& then i’m writing
to edit, to rewrite.
