Tea for Three

5:41pm

We sit and have a drink. 

But she's there;

She's always there.

I try to ignore her and conversate as people do.

But she's looking, only at me.

I itch in my own skin, and tug at my neck

Wishing she were never born,

Wondering why she cares so much,

But here she is. 

I can't focus the lens

So I glare over with sharp eyes,

But her stare fills me with discomfort instead.

I'm never going to be without her.

She means well,

But regardless I picture drowning her in a shallow pond.

I picture choking her until her last breath pops out of her throat

Like the last bit of toothpaste in a tube.

But we are connected like skin and muscle.

We are connected like life and breath.

I will never escape her. 

I have been here before, 

And she has dragged me home kicking and screaming.

But as long as I keep coming here to have a drink,

She will always be here too.

It will always be tea for three.

5:57pm

I'm Scared of Crows

I'm scared of crows,

And one approaches me, watching.

I drop my head like a sack at sudden impact.

I succumb to a fate I don't have awareness of yet, with the ease of existing, with the ease of breathing.

It pierces through me yet I cannot see.

I rest my hands at my belly, like a hungry child begging.

Something rustles through the fibers of my muscles as it inches further and further in

And sounds like a low hum that I usually hear faintly in my dreams.

The hum comes from a siren on the 7th hour.

This must be a violent dream.

I wait for death or escape, but nothing comes.

I resign like a brick in a wall as I wait to feel the warmth of blood oozing from this wound and yet the blood never comes.

I must be in a violent dream.

I want to pull and tug,

But what am I fighting?

Am I dying; or am I actually living?

I have struggled here before, and in dark places I roamed.

But where am I now?

The crow just observes; does nothing, says nothing as it usually does. 

But it puts on a show and spreads its wings when the world is watching.

And when the world goes home, I don't know where it goes.

But I guess it goes in dreams, as I do.

I call it closer to me, as the warmth starts to burn.

And so it perches on my shoulder

With its crimson beak while the warmth oozes out of me.

What Was

 [inspired by: "Amelia by Cocteau Twins]

[Draft from 2021, never published until now]

What was is completely gone.

What happened will never biodegrade

like rubber gloves in the gutter

until we are all gone.

It's easier to forgive the things I was robbed of

so that I can keep looking

and sheltering my back from the wind.

Time converted into light

and in a flicker its absence stung

like a thinly quick papercut.

I bled just a little.

Days and nights kneaded into themselves

with stress of my "diseases."

The diseases of my brothers,

my kin, my false child

choked me into calamity 

and flung me to the edge of sight. 

So I wandered in the silent space

looking down at the noise.

Living just to breathe and pay my dues

seems like cheating life itself.

Where did the memorable go?

Where did fantasy and the unforgettable 

go to hibernate?

The old threads are hung up and retired,

but will it be a joke to take them off

of the hanger tomorrow?

Will you laugh?

Maybe I will, too.

If and only if, will I bury

it then.

Sinkhole

 Sometimes it creeps up and seeps into consciousness.

Like remembering a childhood friend.

But it doesn't fade like my favorite pair of black jeans,

nor does it bring the same joyful nostalgia.

It lingers like the sting when burning your finger,

watching the bubble form.

So, you sit on the unbroken sinkhole,

soaking little pools of rainwater

just waiting for the floor to crack.

The rain keeps falling and you keep absorbing.

And the hairline fractures begin.

You drop,

And in an instant like a cruel joke,

It starts to creep up and seep into consciousness again.

Strong

Recorded audio on March 19,2015

Strong human beings
have resilience.
I want to be that human.

The Answer [incomplete]

This is another drafted piece I had saved from sept 15 2013. It's clearly unfinished and I feel it an injustice to finish it now as I do not have the same sentiment as I did 4 years ago. It feels wrong. Not sure who those two women were, but I'll leave that up to your imagination.:

I walked 9 to 11 days through sand dunes and sand storms
to find the answer to save the world.
I came across two women (at different times)
who tried to guide.
Without rest, the skin on my feet started to peel like pages from a book.
And with soft fleshy soles, I made the best use of my knees
to pull my carcass closer to this answer.

The first woman I encountered

Cobalt Blue

It's been a while since I have been on this blog. I have come back to read some of my own stuff . However, I was inspired by literary colleague to revisit it and upon logging in I realized I had a drafted poem here saved, unpublished from March 18, 2013. Sort of like a "never previously released track" from an artist. I also created a new profile under this blog to reflect a different version of myself posting and be able to differentiate from who I was.

The night sky is as deep and profound a shade of cobalt blue
as my evening dress.
I waltzed around the circus floor among creatures and thieves
while the magician's sprung from their secret hiding places,
a pattern of unscented flowers for the wicked maidens.

The dolls and the ringleaders sipped poison from their chalice's.
One by one their faces melted and they all  revealed the same thing underneath;
Rotted skin and acidic sweat.

My escort let the hand well-slip
until his face, and the thing underneath, crumbled off.
I scurried him to secluded safety under the judging sky
and begged for aid and begged for answers.
The pieces of his false human face crumbled onto my dress.
The blue was no longer luscious and beautiful, but contaminated and noxious.

And as I begged the sky to save him,
I felt blue paint, wet against my cheek.
The sky was melting.
There was darkness underneath;
sky that was as black as the depths of evil and conscious-less time.

As it rained blue paint on me,
he powdered into an ashy mountain of cloth and bone.
I tried to shape the flakes back together again
until the wind swept away every trace of anything.

The concept of "complicated grief"

According Rob Stein of the Washington Post, “One of the hallmarks of complicated grief is a persistent sense of longing for the lost one and a tendency to conjure up reveries of that person.”

Non-Profit Love [draft]

Celebrating my 100th post! Let me shoot out something from the heart....

Non-Profit Love

They don’t ask for much, when they ask for love.

It’s just one obvious thing, really.

Their romance is a cocktail of flirtation, passion, desire, and eternal willingness to make it survive.

Survival is key.

A person in non-profit love will do and give everything in their power (and even those not in their power) to believe the love promised, is received.

They wait by the mailbox for their promised package to arrive;

They are willing to drive to the post office if the carrier didn’t find them home;

They are even willing to fly to the place of origin and avoid the sender spending on postage.

A person requesting a non-profit love doesn’t ask for much

And is willing to do the work of both people as long as they’re promised what they so desperately want.

This person stares at unreasableness and impossibility dead in the eyes, but still manages to rescue hope and possibility;

They see a crashing plane and still desire to buy a ticket.

These are the most selfless (masochist) people just behind traveling nuns and members of the Peace Corps.

I’ll give my blood, my marrow, or my entire heart, if it’s asked of me.

They are like soldiers in a way,

But instead of a country,

Their loyalty is to a human being that you will never see;

Their devotion is to a human being that will give no profit of love.

These are the bravest and most selfless people alive

Because they willingly go into a burning building they know they won’t escape from.

They don’t ask for much, when they ask for love.

It’s just one obvious thing, really.

But sadly, they never receive it.

Destitute of Vision (draft)

"Hey, do you see that?"
"What, where?"
"Over there!"
"WHERE?!"
"There!"
"......I dont see it."
"Oh my god."

This is the type of moment that historically happens maybe once or so in your life.
You usually remember big moments like these
for the rest of your life.
They mark you like the bulgy scars of a massive cut to the epidermis.
This is a time when you look and you look and you just don't see.
You're unseeing; you're sightless; you're visionless.

They tell you the devil is among the crowd, and you don't see him.
You expect red, flames, hooves and a whole lot of evil painted on his ruby face.
But you see a random group,
not much different from what every random group looks like.

And then something happens--
maybe brought on from exhaustion by staring so long.
Confusion melts off of your expression like a wax face staring a hot sun.
And suddenly-- you realize that the devil looks just like you and me;
And you see him.
Maybe you will yourself so much to see it that you eventually do;
just like when they say that if you're depressed and smile hard enough
you start to believe that you're happy.
So you see him, and he's hideous.
It makes you wish you never saw him and would have done anything to pretended
to tell your friend you saw it, even though you didn't.
And the devil is neither red nor on fire.
He is wearing regular clothes,
like the ones on your back and mine.
How could one of our own be responsible for so many terrible things?
It almost seems inhuman.

(written 9/19/12 from 9:00pm-9:52pm)