In Entirety, In Opposition of Eternime
Inspired by César Vallejo
I will die in a place where I can focus. It will be like the old days; before crying kids were scarier than kids with internet addictions.
I am too bad to die young, so I will die old. I will have broken some bones by then. Been under the knife. Cried about love.
I can focus there, still and lonely knowing that my fragmented moments are behind and on accident —I will focus.
I know another eulogy is in order; here’s yours.
I love my water, always finding
the hole in the bottom of the boat.
Did you find the hole yet?
Are you filling? Are you emptying?
My mother used to say she’d get pregnant
each time she watched Titanic.
My siblings and I can sink any ship.
People like us exist
so people like you can die.
I didn’t want you to be like my family,
only calling on holidays.
I used my own material to build you; you were
such a great idea. I was, after all, my own
muse filling a blank page that so closely
resembled you. You weren’t
very sweet to me;
maybe just a body to step over
during the greatest apocalypse
I’ve ever been.
Territory
I walk and look,
I sniff, scratch,
Taste with my tongue,
Throw ten fits, take them
All back and
Now, I am home.
My hat is hung,
My hands are full,
My bone is there,
In the dirt
For me to dig up
And then be done with.
Now, I am home.
Now, I am home.
Grid
Inspired by André Breton
I let my dream out with the windows
Letting in what little of the day I require
I wouldn’t put a dog out in weather like that
I wouldn’t put a pen in his paw and tell him
To write, to heel at my ankle
Where he licks himself raw
I wouldn’t run because
I’d know he’s faster
I wouldn’t bring him
Around the children
I wouldn’t watch him fight
And think it’s play
I wouldn’t give him
Any bones to brood over
Any books to chew
Any bitches to play with
I wouldn’t wake him up
If whimpering, he dreamt
River Rat
Go ahead, exercise your little power over me. In a few seconds, send me to fuck land where I sit crisscross and try to figure shit out. For weeks, months —think I can go a year?
I’ll objectively make my therapist hate you, because I’m only becoming more manipulative the more I play your stupid-bitch game. I get better. I train. I look in the mirror and I flex.
The city didn’t ruin me, the people inside of it did. They break my heart when I wave hi and they just stare at the center divider. It makes me want to pull over. To pose like Rome in my ruins. To write poems making a mess of my life, just wringing out like I’m a dirty rag. To charge people to walk through me, to walk on me, to throw parties at my grave sight. Graveyard parties fucking rock.
Anyways, I feel it. That power of yours is like peppermint gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Anchoring me to the city, to the sewer where your funhouse mirror eyes leave tears all over the place.
I’m a fucking river rat. I get caught in the riptide. Now that I’m sopping wet, I feel less afraid of tsunamis. And somehow, I convinced myself that all this is fun. I just like to be looked at, so I come back to where you’ve kept me, looking at me like I’m the road and you’re driving, talking to someone in the passenger seat.
You do know that if a guy in his social class were to just look at a girl in her social class they would throw him overboard and laugh at him while he died, right?
I love your poetry