Another crossposting

Para ti

never forget this is for me.
a small token of pieces puzzled together
like it is my life currency. But it takes me so long to cobble
that I begin to wonder el porque
Like el porque of fighting solipsism
el porque of plant watering
el porque of putting phones away to listen to your mother for all the stories you missed from your father so you can wander into the spaces of his memories.

Doc1

Like a bag of heavy wet sand in the middle of my chest
or soaked cotton balls in too tight a space.

I wanna scream
tightly

hear me

This is how I hurt
gather it, and jab it inward

my heart is piecing and falling
and i want to swallow all my pieces,
want them in my fingers
mold them in a facsimile  of something that is together so I can swallow it whole

At eleven

I still miss my dad. On nights like tonight I see him doing what he would have done if he was still alive.

Crossposting

So much of communication rests not on the eyes but on the muscles of the face. When my father was embalmed, the morticians thought it was a good idea to push his cheeks up into a smile. His mouth was closed the day he died. I held his hand that day. Rubbed my thumb in small circles on the back of his hand, even after he stopped breathing. His eyes were closed, his mouth slack. Someone removed a rubber piece that was around his arm. It left a dent that my mother and aunt tried to rub out. But when blood stops, muscles don’t move. And the deepest folds of his skin could not be smoothed out. I don’t know if I would have screamed had I been able to. I want to scream now. Or dissolve into water, like lluvia striking as it falls. On the day of his funeral I stood over his casket and realized how much of my father’s smile was not in his cheeks but in the wrinkles of his laughing eyes.

- from Muscles, a draft for now.
[Edited 7.25.16]

Kindness

When I leaned against those red lockers and she said it was okay to cry.

A story completed in 2013

            These streets smell like exhaust pipes. Familiar. Habitual. But always a wisp away from being gone. I wish I had held you closer. My fingers encircling your waist. Do you remember running through the long November nights for those scalding mugs of coffee, knowing your tongue would be burned from the bitter root taste of the cheap coffee beans? The way you looked when you talked about feeding rice to pigeons and how sad you were remembering when the neighbor told you the pigeons you had fed were going to explode from all the rice you’d thrown out the window. You were only four years old when she crushed your dreams. But that was okay because the following day you pooped in her shoes.
                You came up to me, tears in your eyes, asking if I could help with the planning. I would have done anything for you. Even then. So we went to your kitchen and drew up our plans with your pack of crayons. I was the blue crayon. You were the red crayon. Our paths wound from your house, through your backyard, and into your neighbor’s. She kept her shoes on the back porch and you colored them in brown on your map. You took my hand the next day. You led me out of your house and we followed your plan. I followed my blue path and you followed your red. I raced down the steps of your back porch and ran to open your back gate. You waited until I gave you the go-ahead sign and then raced into the alley. I opened the neighbor’s back gate and watched you follow your red path towards the shoes, brown on the map, and brown once you were through with them. I was a gentleman. I didn’t look when you turned them brown. You came racing towards me. Your shoes made heavy thuds on the concrete and the force of your speed caused wind to push against my face as you ran past me. I locked the gate and turned towards you. This was where the red and blue path ended. You hadn’t drawn us back into your house but you invited me back for snacks, a reward for a job well done.
                I don’t know what you did with that map. Did you throw it out? I would have kept it. Just like the letters that you wrote to me when I went away to college. The oil from my fingers is starting to rub the graphite letters off the pages. My head wraps around your words. I think of them as puzzles, hoping to find something, anything new, perhaps about where you are now. I spend my nights alone at home so I have plenty of time to think about the words. I’ll pull the curtains aside and if the shadows of the trees are long, if the light that falls from the lampposts is dull enough, if the streets outside are dark enough, then I can imagine that the light from the cars outside is your red path in the night.

                

An entry from 12/27/2013

Knowing that he watches the Time Line Music From the 70s Collection commercial is the most heart breaking thing in the world.

Drafting

Can I write on you without losing my words?
Like the wash of morning fog that dissipates in the sun
I try to hold my self in.
Always losing.
Loosely. Tiredly.
Small flutterings of me released.

And I don't know how to finish this damn poem.

Crossreference

 4:46

Untitled

Slide between my fingers because I have no strength to grip.
Like a silent heaving, the words lie unvoiced at my throat, unformed in my skull.
Pulling at memories like resin from concrete;
 recuerdos in bits like strings on a loom that I cannot work.
I sleep over paper tonight.

Lines that are too long

There is a beach
And I am not here.

The sand parts for the sinking of my feet.
With small strokes my toes dip and are gone.


My back is held by the softly ridging bark of a palm tree. And here I am. Pleasantly alone.

And I wish I was not here, not watching the glow of a screen, not waiting for the capping off of words in the image of a dot.

Scale it back

I speak in cliches.
Voice in attempts to reach.
But we always circle.
And she sits outside.

One hand rises

like the flow of warm breath
that understands a shiver
and settles over your stomach.

The question of endurance: for how long?

A something.

How do you pick one? A singular moment in which an awareness rises out of you or melts into you? Which moment do you pick? A moment in which you saw that the world was a little more dirty, a little less pleasant, a little bit unfriendly? Or do you pick a time and a place in which you saw that the world was just that much more precious, that much more worth it because of you, and them, and these flaws?

The slickness of memory washes away details of incidental occurrences until your life is one moment happening after another, with brief connections in between. I want to throw lines of safety between my memories so that I am able to walk back and maybe even walk forward; the evolution of me. That which floats over my head, where ever it is that I am going. I want to find it. There is an exploration within the self that brings awareness if you only step back and look at the connections of your memories. I want to reach up. Always. Pull myself up, grasp between my being and softly tumble between the stages of my self. And maybe then I will know who I am.

Exercise

Catharsis is just a term with a consensual meaning.
'Consensual' is not static.
And a punch to his face is not a static motion..
It is a motion that is followed by a shove, a kick to the solar plexus, and a crunch of fractured, bony somethings.

See, it wasn't him that I was angry at. I could barely make out his face as I thrashed him. It was purely emotion in a concrete form and he happened to encompass the receiving platform for that release. As I reached out, again, and again, I considered the words in which to accurately voice the reasoning behind my actions. And as the futility of understanding dawned on me, I stopped.

"What- the fuck- is wrongwithyou- asshole," he gasped as he held on to his stomach. I kicked him in the balls. Once.

"You wouldn't get it." Three more quick kicks and then I stood up and straightened my clothes.

Or the back of your head

A purple ball bounces. Down. Up. Down.
Falls into outstretched hands.
The push of wind that flows
around the ball: a vibrating motion.
The ball lands softly.
      I want to throw it at your face.

Looping back

Everyone wants context.
This is a bit of it.
On here you may find bits of things that I've written and/or am currently working on. Occasionally I'll slip in a picture or two because sometimes words are inadequate.

Oh yeah. I'm also bad at updating on a regular basis. This bloggy may end up being neglected from moment to moment but I promise to keep it alive.

Framework

      There are six templates for faces in the world.
Yours is not one of them.

      Faces dissipate with slowing waste.
      Wonder if my mind is drowned in your
      reflection.
      Fifty years will pass before we're familiar again.