If we were created in God’s image then when God was a child he smushed fire ants with his fingertips and avoided tough questions. There are ways around being the go-to person even for ourselves even when the answer is clear like the holy water Gentiles drank before they realized Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.
I thought those were chime shells in your pocket so I chucked a quarter at it hoping to hear some part of you respond on a high note. You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars and abandoned me for not making sense. Evidently, I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.
For example, I know mercy when I have enough money to change the jukebox at a gay bar (somebody’s gotta change that shit). You understand the power of God’s mercy whenever someone shoves a stick of morphine straight up into your heart. It felt amazing the days you were happy to see me
so I smashed a beehive against the ocean to try and make our splash last longer. Remember all the honey had me lookin’ like a jellyfish ape but you walked off the water in a porcupine of light strands of gold drizzling out to the tips of your wasps. This is an apology letter to the both of us for how long it took me to let things go.
It was not my intention to make such a production of the emptiness between us playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive. It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there and that you meant it but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open
so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat hoping they’d get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots that I wouldn’t have to hear you leaving so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying all my eggs were in a basket of red flags all my eyes to a bucket of blindfolds in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze ya know I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off trying to drive all your nickels to the well when you were happy to let them wishes drop
but I still show up for gentleman practice in the company of lead dancers hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes. Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman or is it a cattle call in a school of fish? Still dance with me less like a waltz for panic more for the way we’d hoped to swing the night we took off everything and we were swingin’ for the fences
don’t hold it against my love you know I wanna breath deeper than this you know I didn’t mean to look so serious didn’t mean to act like a filthy floor didn’t mean to turn us both into a cutting board but there were knives s-stuck in the words where I came from too much time in the back of my words. I pulled knives from my back and my words. I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away
and I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady yeah you know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell you know I know I mighta gone and lost my breath but I wanna show ya how I found my breath to death it was buried under all the wind instruments hidden in your castanets goddamn if ya ever wanna know how it felt when ya left yeah if you ever wanna come inside
just knock on the spot
where I finally pressed STOP
playing musical chairs with exit signs.
I’m gonna cause you a miracle when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.
Forgiveness is for anybody who needs a safe passage through my mind.
If I was really created in God’s image then when God was a boy he wanted to grow up to be a man a good man and when God was a man a good man He started telling the truth in order to get honest responses. He’d say, “I know. I really shoulda wore my cross again but I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.
Related Recs
It’s one hell of a drug.
I do love you. Denying myself that privilege has been nothing if not unjustifiably cruel.
Years and some change, a lackluster saturday night grazing on the sofa. Bowie came on, and I remembered our Beth’s excursion. Valentine’s Day. Who needs sleep? Not we! So we journeyed long and far in the name of burnt coffee, smoking cigarettes all the while. The sun was rising when I heard sound and vision next to you for the first time.
And man. That was just one song’s worth of heaven, one of many. I just love you for being around at all. I love you for who you were, and even for whoever you are now. You saved my life . I can’t forget it, not for a second. Even if it seems safer to hate you. It’s not true. Casting a distorted and downright ugly light on my most sacred memories . Clogging the arteries of my heart. Makin the blood keeping that fucker going all polluted. All cause you’re not here anymore. So what. I had you then and that’s enough. In fact it was a fucking miracle to have known you at all. I won’t desecrate it . I can’t afford to.
I love you forever and ever and ever and ever and past that and after that keep going even more and no you can’t measure it, it just goes on and on like that fucking coworker who’s pearly whites are ridden with halitosis. Yeah baby. And even more than that. Thanks for everything . Hope you’re doing swell. Hope you never see this.
I feel free. High on fumes. Today I have transcended a sliver of pain. Like Q Lazarus famously said
I’m flyin flyin flyin over youuuuuuuuu
Ooooooooooooooo
Ooooooooooooo
Oooooooooooooooooo!!!!!
Apr 20, 2025
🍔
A long collection of poems to deal with the betrayal of trust from a supposed friend.
A gift to myself,
No rejoice,
No choice,
Decisions that have consequences,
Oh how I have come to know,
Oh how he did show,
I don't see him,
He left me high,
He left me dry,
Out of my life,
Hours of driving from me,
Hours of memories I don't want to see,
Fighting myself every moment,
Was I not good enough,
Was our familiarity too rough,
Expecting him to talk,
Yet he went away,
Yet here I stay,
Alone in my monolith,
Away from prying eyes,
A mask I wear to disguise,
Oh promises he made,
Ones he never kept,
Ones only true when I slept,
Silly dreams of mine,
Convincing me everything's ok,
Convincing nobody that he would stay,
A friendship or more,
I know not,
I feel distraught,
Feelings caught like snow,
Was it a psych,
Was my brain on strike,
Didn't see it coming,
How could I,
How I so wanted to say goodbye,
He is gone now,
Off with new people,
Off causing me internal upheaval,
Why was he capricious,
So quick to give friendship up,
So paradoxically enthused to converse and interrupt,
Sudden life changes upheaving,
Destroying my trust,
Destroying my friendship; scattered to dust,
Daily conversations no more,
Gone off with a new crowd,
Gone while I wondered aloud,
Wondering thoughts,
Wandering thoughts,
Too many thoughts,
Dangerous thoughts.
Yet I persist,
Despite it all,
To spite him if at all,
Yet messages I send,
Read by all my friends,
He reads them occasionally,
Knowing he is missing out,
My friends assist,
Helping each other no matter how small,
Noting the rise of our friend group and then its fall,
A path to healing around the bend,
Ignoring his pestering amends,
Knowing we could only see each other occasionally,
To combat our trust in his promises with our doubts,
He is gone now,
Do I even want to see him again,
Why didn't he trust me,
Not a word till the last minute,
Would he have even said anything,
Clearly not knowing what he was doing,
Leaving with scattered messy reasons,
Not one kept vow,
Not one mention of when,
Not one question answered clearly,
Yet despite not one visit,
There has been no emotion burying,
No emotional turmoil brewing,
I wish him the best among those legions,
If he was honest with himself,
It wouldn't have been pain of a million pinches,
Times reflecting when I could've helped on a whim,
Reflections that now cause me internal strife,
Making myself as my own opponent,
No longer having a buddy on my life's walk,
Not having someone I could hang with,
All about a boogeyman of a grade,
Now I must learn to be fine,
To prepare for what else is in store,
Recovering from the pain of his blow,
Marching along the path life keeps drumming,
And learning how to just say 'ciao,'
Growing more to spitefully not be suspicious,
To learn to care despite him leaving,
Hoping his decision was right; to join the corps,
Zane how I will miss you,
I certainly wish you the best too,
After it was clear you didn't trust me,
Thinking it over I now see,
I did everything I could,
Offering help like any friend should,
I trusted when you said you were good,
Blind sighted when I misunderstood,
I now can only protect myself feeling unsecured,
Taking two steps back from where I matured,
I can't let you back without healing what incurred,
Questioning the faith of words so absurd,
I believed promises so spurred,
Planning and promising when nothings insured,
I was hurt by the emptiness of your word,
When all that you said turned into lies and it finally occurred,
I trusted the words of just yet another impulsive nerd.
Jan 30, 2025
📖
like two white people kissing in the
rain & it is always
white people kissing in the rain on television & it is a question
of hair, I imagine. the things too
precious to be given over
to the illusion of vulnerability. I have
paid my tithes in this church,
though. drawing my desires long
through a city of millions with wet
sneakers & dying flowers exploding
from tissue paper & I have emerged
from this shrinking heaven half-drowned & with a heart molding
at the edges & speaking of the heart, I love most what it is until it decides
it isn’t. first a weapon & then not. first
a mirror, wherein you see yourself
briefly
whole & next to someone else who is briefly whole & then not. I am
talking about the end
of love—how the door closes one
night & never re-opens. The coffee
mug left
with a lover’s unshakable stains in the bottom & the single fork from the
infant night
in the first shared apartment & all of
the relics we have to craft the leash
used to keep
our misery close. what I meant to say about kissing in the rain is that it
seems
to be about a mercy that I cannot
touch, for what the water has been
known to undo &
what of myself I might see in the
wake of its undoing. Mercy, like the
boy pulling back
a fist as the small stray dog below him trembles with its eyes shut. Mercy,
that boy then walking
into the arms of his mother, who
once dragged him from a home
ransacked by a man’s
violence. Mercy, the city unfolding
its wide & generous palms over your
skin the way a city
does when it opens itself up & waits
for darkness to pour into its open
mouth & you, too, wait
for the night to spill itself into your echoing terraces of grief & call you outside & tell you
that it is almost your season, darling.
it is almost the season of your favorite
flower & the
burial ground giving way to its tiny
& exploding lips & how they exist for
you & no one else
Mar 27, 2024
