Wordle #180
I am brought together
by saliva and cacoethes.
The veins under my skin
branch out delicately
in every direction until infinity.
We used to be infinity
now the quantity of us
at time exceeds the quality
of our memories.
The quantity of us
has given rise to monuments.
If I were to continue pouring
my heart into you
like honey over a wound
you would drown in me.
I have given.
You have given
and still by your measure
we are not even.
We are only leaves
whispering hoarsely
in a glass room without any doors.
Your shadow presses
in from all sides
and it’s not the darkness
I fear but the weight
of you pressing
the dregs from lungs.
My God how I’ve loved you,
a lifetime at least,
but you stir and prod
until I have nothing
to offer but platitudes.
I cannot match your stoicism,
your need for specificity
and each day I wear myself
down at your behest
like a river caviling
the rocks along
its embankment.
Distance
If my words were transparent
would you look through them
and find my heart beating
behind them like a moth?
I have no feathers with which to gesture
only fingers singed with an excess
of atmosphere and expectancy.
If I knew how to cross from one
constellation to the next
would I find between us
a habitable moon
or would I find only the detritus
of my own intractable percussion?
I gather my hands, my lawless grin,
my extraneous attempts at conversation
and slide back into the ether.
When I dream you are always near.
Dear Self
I know I am stating the obvious here but you are impatient and in your impatience clumsy. You live life in two modes like the shadows at your heels will overtake you if you stop to catch your breath/as if you were already suffocating inside those shadows. There is a middle ground. Make friends with your shadows. As far as shadows go, they are alright. Now that you are no longer locked in survival mode you want to make up for lost time, to live your life according to your own principles, to pursue your dreams organically and with abandon. I get that. I respect that. A few things to keep in mind on your quest for a more fulfilling/well-rounded life. There is one relationship which is by its very nature is eternal and that’s the relationship you have with yourself. You have to nurture that relationship because all other relationships are built upon that foundation. Getting to know yourself is a lifelong process. So at the risk of sounding insane listen to the voices inside your head. Change is inevitable. The pauses count. The pauses we take give us time to recover, build, and grow. They are critical to the journey. A pause can bring with it much needed perspective and inspiration. Pace yourself. At the end of the day success is a fleeting thing. Our life isn’t composed of millions of big moments crammed together but of millions of seemingly inconsequential moments with intermittent flashes of genius. Enjoy those seemingly inconsequential moments. Do something with your life that makes the drudgery of day to day existence mean something because much of life is just putting one foot in front of another over and over again whatever the weather. By weather I don’t just mean what is going on outside either. Our emotions too are like weather. They come and go. Every state of our being is vital to the miracle that is our lives. Be happy. Be sad. Be angry. Be ecstatic. Be anything at all. Feel even if it hurts sometimes and it’s going to hurt sometimes.
Wordle #179
I find you again and again
filling up my dreams
the way that dandelions fill
the turns in a thersitical strip of concrete.
Pressed against me
in our own transient Eden,
naked on a molecular level
I find you flailing in and out
of being like moonlight on choppy water.
If I offered my heart
would you trade it for another?
Would you purchase it whole
or amend each part individually?
My love is not a rope meant to bind
but a muse meant to inspire.
I have a lot left to learn,
teach me and I will listen.
I am not half-hearted
still I have yet to nullify the distance
between fantasy and reality.
When I talk to you I get the impression
that you don’t remember
the taste of my mouth
or my skin turning to silk
beneath your fingers.
Then again I forget
much of what I dream as well.
Tongue-Tied
Sometimes it’s harder
to say hello
than I love you.
My tongue is a root
without water.
My mouth is full
of splinters and dirt.
We sit across
from each other
not speaking
and I wish
you’d say something
So that I’d know
it was okay
to talk to you.
Maybe you really
are a star
and if it is so
then maybe you
don’t even exist
in the same
place and time as I do.
Though it is more likely
that I am the one burning.
If only I weren’t so shy,
so overrun with butterflies,
so fucking me all the time.
Then I might surprise you.
Then I might not second guess.
Then I might find
a hundred ways to confess.
I might really be the wind,
turbulent and gentle
dreamy and existential,
everything and yet somehow
nothing at all.
Delivered
I want to press
my naked heart
against your bare chest.
To let my weight
dampen and anchor
every subsequent breath.
To breathe with you.
To breathe through you
mouth to mouth
until I am convinced
that the message
has been sent.
mindlovemisery 