from the belly of a melodramatic lion

after the storm a lion whispered in my ear, “this is a song you can cry to”. never imagine a lion’s tears. strength like that is incapable of weakness. i didn’t listen to the song, but my heart shattered into three hundred seventeen pieces all at once. landed in the palm of your soft fingers, arms outstretched and tempting. crumbled in your balmy grip, my humid breath lapping like citrus stains.

open fingers, offering palms. fed me to the lion; i swam in his deafening roar. 

i didn’t even get the chance to listen to that song. (i still cried to it)

the simple beating of a heart often gets swallowed by troubling titans, conquering the no man’s land of every spirit left unguarded and vulnerable.

if only we could read hearts like we read palms. 

(i stripped myself naked, stood there with the human strength of a broken bird)

a romantic notion coined by patriotic sentiments (a day things changed)

The day you left, even the ground cried. Saw the mirages pooling on the ground before us, rubbed our eyes to extinguish the fabricated phenomenon; it would not be fair to allow these last few moments a hazy heritage, soak them in murky water of suppressed tears and set them out to bake in the sun. The heat rose off the pavement in stars and stripes, plastered itself on each one of our rosy cheeks, giving us a taste of something you’d tattooed on your heart long ago. 

Six months passes far too quickly to ever feel like half a year. It didn’t feel real until the buzz cut. I saw you in the line-up already, eyes cast down, eyelashes long enough to catch the dust long before your face touched the ground.  It is so damn hard to try to be strong. You have to be strong where you’re headed. It’s terrifying. And it’s the least we can do. 

We all fell victim to evolving circumstance, averting our gazes; too much eye contact can sometimes catch fire. Cars zoomed by, slicing the hush with their own frequency, nonchalant and naïve, adding more vibrations to our hearts like they didn’t know our worlds were crumbling already. 

Because isn’t it the terrible truth that lives could be falling apart in the house next door, down the hotel hall, from across the intersection, and we may never know. These strangers, driving past, not recognizing that each of our lives was shifting in that moment; our internal winters thawing and gracefully morphing into spring. Some people’s floorboards break too easily…we were all creaking like houses settling into our foundations. Hell, on the surface our faces forged smiles like fourth of july fireworks were erupting in our mouths and we just couldn‘t bear to keep them shut. Still giving each other shit as if no, we were not on the cusp of change. No, we will have this forever. Yes, life is predictable and fortunate and ironic in a funny sort of way (and you will be safe). 

Just couldn’t help but realize: the way humans mask emotion is truly incredible. I’m amazed we aren’t all making it to Hollywood; I’m surprised I’m not rich off the water pressure of my tear bank. But they don’t have interest rates for emotions - eventually they dry up and wilt like flowers in the sun and no one thinks twice about stepping on them because the crunching sound is awfully satisfying. 

The sun lurched in the sky, almost came unattached and struck the entire world with darkness. But it didn’t. A twitch and I could tell his lungs lurched in his throat, dropping everything on us like bombs. Felt like a blood orange sunrise and a mosquito bite heartache; didn’t say sorry because I knew that  wasn’t what he wanted. There are many in this life that ignore human affection in search of mere affection found in the form of warm carbonation and deep-seated burns. And how melancholy, how tragic, that we have only known figurative explosives with the exception of Independence skies - you will soon be chained to a ticking bomb and a serendipitous alarm clock buzzing and screaming, chanting wake up, wake up, wake up. And when you do, tears in your eyes ‘cause your pillow ran out of dry space and one day, land will disintegrate as oceans trample the shores because the world too can run out of places for refuge.

And now, our refuge is across the country seeking escape through forms of devotion. But to me you will always be bright-eyed and resonating - a black key and a stepping stone. Singing “Sweet Home Alabama” as you carved the street for one last time, all-american and bleached with last words. A quick “hey…be safe” because that sums it up wholly and completely - all we want is safety. We found it in each other last summer, gobbled up symmetry like we had never found anything that fit so damn well. A mutual loss for all of us, all feeling the staggering emptiness at the same time. Like the left part of our hearts had all abandoned this small town to taste a different ocean. But hey, I don’t blame them; I blame the Atlantic and its intrepid desire to embrace the Pacific. I blame war and its eternal notion of staying alive. I blame peace and its abstract alliance with God.  

burn the language of death into my breakfast items

When I went through my punk-rock phase I used to want to cut my hair short. Sculpt my own rebellion, taper my ingrown ears to better hear the contortion of the earth. Pulling stray hairs out of my eyes only to achieve the clarity of double contacts - needless to say, it didn’t work. 

I found clarity in lengthening inches; in the tales that split ends tell when suffocated by a pillow case and dancing eyelashes that grant wishes if you catch them mid-fall, as a gracious thank you for saving their lives because after death grammar gets tricky and turbulent. 

does the tense change after someone dies? do you know them in past tense, or present tense? Because you never stop knowing someone - they are always there; always alive, always thriving in the husky voice of bronze trucks and the bittersweet footwork of bronze medals. There is a sense of past in every obituary and in the tip of every church steeple; a sense of future in every hymn and the ache of forever laden in every pew. Could it be that the passed have no recognition of the past - no matter state or condition of life we are all barreling towards the sun as we speak, as I write, as you draw and kick-start-push off the ground (always pushing down in order to progress forward). The ground like the barrel of a pistol, the shot like a snapping toaster, coils bent out of shape so that each burn runs in the same direction. A monotonous toaster crying out I am art, I am art, I make art. I make therefore, I am. 

It is possible to make a flamethrower out of a water gun and it is possible to carve perfect dentures out of soap (do you kiss your mother with that mouth?) and it is possible to make car crashes out of sobriety and broken hearts. You total hearts like you total cars, you know - carelessly and victoriously with the smirk of scraped up sneakers suspended from a wire. I hope you trip over guts on the way out and clouds on the way up. Hold my hand on the tilt-a-whirl, ignore me on the dusty road, but kiss me hard on the Ferris wheel for centripetal force will draw us closer anyway. Bank your trust in a circle - any two points can be part of the same; tie your lips into a triangle because it takes three…everybody knows odd numbers are safer (zero is even, and very, very lonely).

 Promise to keep me company, listening to the trembling of your hips has never left me broken. 

These long locks are just beginning to drip. 

thieves stole hallelujah

never dedicate your favorite song to anyone. once you do, it’s gone. an immediate time capsule, ticking like a bomb, lingering on the verge of self-destruction and empty cigarette smoke. and every time that song comes on, no matter my state of mind, i swear my eyes glaze over and i’m back underground, accelerating quickly over speed bumps with no regard for that silly speedometer; it never knew anything anyway. i just never expected to peak in that parking lot, never expected to strangle such a climactic catastrophe with my bare hands. 

i know in a couple months i could be driving into the sunscape, tapping my idle foot to the happiest song on earth, but the instant this fucking song comes on shuffle, the sun will melt into grey lava, molten in my throat as i sing along because when i try to sing, i do not smell. and i do not want to smell this friction-infused song any more than i want to eat an earthquake. you had a split tongue; fault lines visibly spliced like all the blame in the world rested in your cavities and you tried to store it in me every time you breathed your life into me, but i wasn’t having it. wouldn’t take that glitch- as if you’d choked on the world and hadn’t yet figured out how to swallow it safely. you will not impart me with insignificance. i gave you my favorite song and you gave me two-faced temptation. i’d like to have a word with you. 

Unorganized angst and organized protest

There is something intimately claustrophobic about a traffic jam in a parking garage. Tangible and tangential, like the riff of a song you may never hear again because the radio is public and mysterious and terribly biased. But no matter…I want you to feel eighteen and invincible, like you could dip your unholy hands into the Nile river and come out a pharaoh, cross your legs like a girl, whisper “come here, you”, and receive my heavy lids like your water had been boiling for a while and you finally allowed your words to spill unto me.
I want you sleepy-eyed and ignited. So when that one perfect song comes on the radio (the one you yearned to hear but had no clue that you so desired), bask in it. Maybe it will bring back memories of a gold soaked midnight; maybe you’ll just be one in one-thousand listeners listening to this song but not actually hearing it.
For your own sake, I hope you hear it.
Tune your ears to the madness of the Earth. When the world whispers, bellow back.

today

today some kids had a jump-house in the parking lot of an apartment complex, soaring through the inflated masterpiece in the rain. and just like that, i felt full of youthful vigor and entirely too sad, as i began missing innocence through the mist on the highway, like water buffalo through the fragile water, like we’re heading for something upstream and necessary. 

hollow eyes built of corridors

I’m afraid of the purity of sleep. like this unconscious state allows us easy escape and steady breathing, as if the air turns stale in the absence of frantic eyes. We are so much more alive while asleep, so naively conscious of each fleeting figment to grace left, lurch right. So when you told me you loved watching me sleep, I felt as if you loved my very existence. Like my fluttering eyelids would prove some sort of worth that I’d forever been searching for in the contours of my mind. while Zs flood the air, while I silently question the meaning behind a soft brush of teeth, you gently gripped my hazy hesitance and stripped it from me, lathering it across yourself like it was the only color that didn’t remind you of second chances and you couldnt bear to wear anything else. The way one can grow used to the smell of cigarette when overwhelmed with a human smell enthralls me; caught myself bathing in the smell of lust and the sugar-coated taste of heavy breathing. If heavy breathing was a mountain, you’d be waiting at the top; but man, the view would be beautiful from way up there.

so please, don’t alter my breathing unless you plan on continuing. don’t kiss like we were awash in yellow until you’ve felt me in gold. don’t find your way into my dreams without a promise of reality (it really does take two). and for the record, I was never truly asleep (just laying on your thin ice begging to fall through).

disclaimer for those who are empty-handed and whole-hearted

when people tell me i always know what to say, or that i always know the right thing to do, i tell them: no, i don’t. but what i really want to say is: no, i promise you i do not. i am just as lost and alone and guess-worthy; just as unsure and speculating as an empty intersection and a yellow light. for goodness sake, i may as well be a yellow light, some taking their chances and tearing through (their taillights riding on the wet concrete like a fleeting comet), some coming to a full stop. 

you? you stopped a little late, dangling your feet over those fading lines, acting like it wouldn’t hurt me. 

see, there’s this thing about me: at some point everybody loses interest. appealing from afar like a thunderstorm without the lightning, like a scratched record, skipping and re-skipping the silence between the most beautiful notes in the entire song. like grasshopper pie on a cold day, because your whole body will shiver and not in a good way; like the fucking moon only dancing between full and new, never lingering on the steps in between. 

and it’s so difficult to pinpoint this moment, this shift, when everything changes. i say this often, but i wholly mean it: i guess i’m too much to handle, or too little to control. because i AM unruly and i DON’T want to be held down but i know my breathing always lurches at the chance to love freely - thrive as a circulation between intertwined fingers and stealthy lips. things that go boom in the night always lead to hearts that go thump in the morning. there’s something about midnight that attracts 4 AM - hiccuping down a metaphorical dusty road. it’s just hard to catch air when it is all around you, always so much simpler when you can filter through the dust and aim straight for the chest trembling beneath you. 

i think what i’m trying to say is i wish i were more contagious. some have contagious laughs, or smiles, or contagious yawns (yawning as i typed this). but my God, i want to have a contagious soul. 

and maybe i will one day. when i can look out my window, see an empty parking lot and a full sky, know that it must be more beautiful up there than it is down here, then maybe i will let you know just how my heart swells for you (because i can tell you right now that vacant is never as beautiful as swelling).

but i know we are all scratched like those records. i know we all want to drink our orange juice out of the carton and put our arms around someone we love. i know no one wants to be the first one to skydive into a  black hole or the last one to kiss a stranger. but nevertheless, i know that no one wants to continue to play those records with skips between the beautiful notes. i just wish that someone would listen to me with everything but their ears, and find beauty in that note that will never sound quite right.