Postdiluvian

When I tell people where I was born and raised,
They cast apologetic eyes,
lower their voice and ask
“Were you there when it happened?”

I was.
Just one more person in the city
who left in the dead of night
with a suitcase and a nervous heart,
but I don’t like to elaborate on that part,
because our legacy should not become
the thing that caused so much
distress and destruction.
It isn’t an unspoken tragedy–
We see the shadows of those scars daily,
raise our glasses to them
and speak of those that never returned wistfully,
but aren’t we more?
Aren’t we more than the failing levees,
bare-breasts for beads,
and floods that settle after they’ve raged?
Can you separate us from headlines of the crime rate
and news coverage of a hurricane?

We are a city of Mother Nature’s heat
and passion,
of wisteria and magnolia,
and night-blooming jasmine,
climbing and winding
its way up a gate,
clumping moss with the humidity of a swamp
and crumbling bricks,
tarnished golds,
splintered woods,
sweetness of liquor and the sweat from spices.
We are a flavor that lingers with you,
long after you have made your trek home.

We are a city of stories,
heavy mysteries
and dark tales lurking
behind the tour guides’ teeth,
vampires and voodoo written into our history.
Spaces allocated as
“For Rent–Haunted”,
a gris-gris bag buried in a pocket,
thick-blooded magic alive on the streets,
we are a city of ghosts
and of dreams.

We are a city of passionate creativity.
See it creeping on every street corner,
spilling out from balconies
and shotgun apartments,
galleries and bars and theaters,
we are a city of music
that is always playing somewhere,
a city of art displayed freely
and heart-wrenching poetry that can be found
without much effort.
We are a creature that rarely sleeps,
doors still open at 3 a.m.
while music and laughter
echo around the block,
second line parades
that celebrate miracles of life
and the tragedies of death.
We are a city that never stops
moving,
speaking,
growing, loving,
glowing.
Filled with a hope that clenches
around a heart and home,
more color than you knew could exist in the human race
Ambling along
Decatur, St. Claude,
The River and the 9th Ward,
we are beings that know how to move
to the city’s heartbeat.
All that makes us beautiful is entrenched
in the diverse and unique.
We are a city that can see the broken,
the bruised,
sew up our wounds,
and wear the scars with pride.
We know how to rebuild from our ruins,
when to cling and to cast aside.

We are not Katrina.
We are the prayers in St. Louis Cathedral,
the sprawling lives laid bare
around Jackson Square.
We are grown
from the ever-flowing Mississippi,
trading our tales on porches in humid nights,
shameless survivors
and vicious fighters,
defenders of our open hearts
and open eyes.
We are built on raw humanity,
Hard love and harder lessons,
Honest and open,
Often beautiful
And sometimes ugly.

We are unapologetically
alive.
Not measured by inches of rainfall,
and areas unrecovered,
We are borne from a creature
that will never cease to thrive.

Don’t Overthink It

Write.
Write when you’re drunk.
Write when you are hot
from whiskey
From fury
From love-making
Hands shaking
Ideas and thoughts bleeding out of your fingers
Write while your muse is taunting you
about scratching some words on the paper
Subdue her with sentences
Even if they don’t make sense
Lay her down until you have exhausted her
Write when you know what you want to say and
Write when you don’t
When all you have are fragments of thoughts
Words
Write angry
Write until you are red-faced, sweating,
Write when you are in your fucking feelings
Sharp awareness stinging
The corners of your brain
Write needy
Selfish
And pleading
When you are too far gone to let shame color your face
Write until the words make your bones ache
And then write more
just because you don’t want to wait

Edit.
Edit sober.
Edit cold
Light of day slipping
Through curtains and exhausted eyes
Hangover living in every bone.
Write with your coffee or tea or hair of the dog
By your side
Don’t ask yourself why you wrote
Just know
That when you opened your veins in that paper
There was a greater purpose behind it than
You were just fucking around
Know those words are you in truest form
Words about fear
Words about passion
Words about anger
and rage and pain
Remember that you have been swallowing it time and again
But you spat it back up like poison.
Remember that it took strength.
So edit alive
With clear eyes
Use your pen to thread through the rambling
words like thread on a loom,
let you and your voice exist in that room.

Drink it up, straight down,
Exist in your poems and stories and songs.
Do it and you’ll live,
long after you’re gone.

It’s Not Called “Avoiding”

I won’t write about you yet.
It isn’t because I have nothing to say.
I proclaimed pretty early that I’m not much for games
And you can’t imagine my fear and relief
When you returned the words back to me.
Relief because I am not good at games.
Fear because you always hope someone means what they say,
And there’s only so many times you can leave your heart on display.

I won’t write about you yet.
It isn’t your fault.
I’ve been around the block a few times
Swallowed enough lies to fuel an airplane
I don’t think I can put into adequate words
My shame
Every time I’ve fallen for someone’s trick.
It cuts me quick and
I never heal quite right.
I ball it up inside,
I’m used to suffocating on it
And not being told to breathe.
I’m so used to hiding it within,
I don’t know how to release.

I won’t write about you yet.
It isn’t because I can’t.
I have plenty to say about the curve of your neck.
I can rarely get through a day without thinking of the wickedness in your smile
Or the way you kiss me,
Like I’m treasured. Like I’m desired.
Like I’m ached for.
Like you don’t care if someone is looking.
I see the way you trail your eyes over me.
I like the way you look spread out beneath
And the way your hands feel on my wrists.
I have seen your looks of tenderness,
Of heat.
It throws me off, the way you look at me.

I won’t write about you yet.
To write someone into my life
Means knowing that they will always remain.
I’ve burned words written about old flames-
Words I wrote too quick,
After offering up too much faith
Only to see myself made a fool of after,
Only to trail fingers over penned declarations
That I find myself wishing I hadn’t wasted time on,
And the melancholy realization
That even when reduced to ash,
I can never take it back.

I won’t write about you yet.
I need to be sure you can handle my baggage better than the airport,
Set it down with calm hands,
Understand that the word “Fragile” printed on parts of my soul isn’t a challenge or a joke.
It takes me longer to trust that someone could decide not to go.
I won’t write about you yet, but when I do,
You’ll know.

A Translation

(Inspired by the song “Used” by Wyvern Lingo, and the problem with waiting too long)

 

At this point, I don’t see the point,
No words could pour from your lips that I’ll accept
As an explanation
To the devastation you enacted
Spending months wishing
I could have all my words to you redacted
Regretting letting you lay hands on me.
I could thank you for being
One more boy who taught me not to be so trusting,
But bad behavior doesn’t get a pass when you spend the time running.

I’ve let it go.
My stomach stopped dropping for you over a month ago
The liquid of sorrow
Turning to stone
My brain no longer going
“it was worth it, it was worth it” on loop
Because it wasn’t and you aren’t
And waking up with that thought
Was the best I’d felt in months.

Feeling free is a funny thing
Dousing the flame that raged for you
Took time and effort,
Losing weight under baggy shirts
One meal a day
Everything tasting like rage
It took mourning the loss,
Letting it melt into simmering hate,
It took ever-present regret,
Each pull from a cigarette,
Late night cups of coffee,
Avoiding songs,
Desperate distraction,
And realizing I was letting you hurt me again
By letting you exist within.

Thanks for the offer,
But why bother?
We both know how the scenario will play,
You’ll rationalize what you did
by blaming alcohol and drugs,
It’ll be a weak excuse for shoving your hips
Between another’s thighs.
You could be telling the truth,
but I’ll think it’s a lie.
You’ll go on about how bad you feel,
I won’t buy it,
You’ll have a reason for your actions
because of course you would,
You’ll talk about past trauma, the baggage you carry with you
wherever you travel,
How deeply
you’re still suffering from the past,
How deeply
you cared for me,
And I’ll laugh,
Because I know I won’t believe you
And I’ll know then
that I’ll just be some sob story you tell
to the next unfortunate soul whose legs
you are looking to part.
You’ll say you’re sorry for hurting me,
And I’ll think
you’re just saying what I want to hear.

I’ll take some blame,
You offered something you couldn’t possibly stick too,
But I gave you the benefit of the doubt.
Didn’t keep you at arms length for long enough to protect myself,
Let my hopeful heart take the reins,
That was my mistake.
This isn’t a new game and
I’m old enough to know better
than to cling to worthless things,
Leaps of faith leading to bruising falls,
And a statement of truth
that’s a lie to the letter,
A fool was I to think some two-month tryst would go into forever.

I’ll wonder why you’re bothering at all,
You made sure you did enough damage
to make sure nothing could be repaired,
You must have wanted me gone so bad,
So I’m granting your wish,
Think of it like a trick,
A vanishing cabinet,
I’ll appear further away than you could have imagined.
I’ll see you, but I won’t really.
I’ll look on you with
No mourning lost love,
No sweet memories to hold,
No pity for your issues,
Or sympathy for your troubles or mistakes,
No yearning for connection knowing I can’t trust it.
I’ve reduced you to a memory
of a whirlwind fling that, in time,
will eventually leave.
When I see you,
The feeling will be empty.

The problem is
You didn’t heed my warning,
and wasted my time,
waited too long to say something,
Left me with nothing to believe,
and this is exactly what nothing breeds.
Recovering was hard,
and that matters to me.

Why derail my progress by letting you leave me with more scars?
No.
I think you’ve done your part.
I’ll leave you to your “cold and fearsome wild”,
And I’ll give myself a better start.

Night Deals Made at Crossroads

I’ll tell you first,
this body is not ash.
Not a hollowed hole aching to be filled,
or a machine running on empty
This body is not made to feed the rock-bottom desperate,
The attention-starved,
Yearning for the validation that any pair of lips and thighs
Can provide.
It is worth more
and not made for one with such a weak spine.
I am built for those already full
who can still devour another course.
Bring me your appetite,
I’ll see that you won’t starve in me,
I like a hunger that’s unique.

I house both a temple and a graveyard
Combined
Lay down your offering
And let me see you flatline
Rebirth was never made to be easy,
And you won’t be lazy under this roof,
I practice what I preach.
I’ll make you work to fill the space inside me
The blood within,
The foundation of bones
The heart that lies therein
I can show you the power in choosing fight over flight
I can show you why growth is painful
and the road less travelled by.
I can feel your regret in the iron you wound around,
pressed to skin,
it’s a pain that I know well and respect
Did you forget the combination
to the lock you hung around your neck?

Sit back,
Let me break it with my teeth;
Don’t be scared baby,
I want to see what lies beneath

Sort through the suitcase packed tight with your issues
This is a judgement free zone,
I’ll take you bloody and broken
and too tired to roam,
This body is a home.
Lay your pain at my steps
Let me kiss the base of your neck
and admire the scars that never left,
Wounds leftover from the careless that came before,
I won’t watch you waste away on the other side of my door.
I know behind your ribs you have a soft core,
I’ll show you mine
if you’ll show me yours.

Fair Play

(Written for Esoterotica’s show on May 2nd, “Myths and Lore”)

 

I was mocking her when I asked it.
Who’s the fairest of them all?
You stroked my cheek and jokingly said it was me,
Showing a small smile with fondness underneath.
It was one more time I nearly begged you to leave.
I’ve watched her bend you
Break you
Throw orders to the ground and watched you scramble to pick them up before she got angry.
Her treatment of you was cruel and depraved.
I remember how badly I wanted to take you away.
It’s funny how I labored under the delusion that you wanted to be saved.

For years it was
Duck-and-cover, hide-and-seek
These were the games we played underneath
The cover of night, the curtain of a full court too busy to notice an absence
For us, time moved slow like molasses
Thick and sweet
Even with our rushed kisses, and couplings borne of need.
The shivering when I traced the scars of disobedience across your back with my tongue
The way you breathed about my beauty and my kindness against my neck
“Love” whispered against my ear,
I remember not noticing an emptiness there
Until I learned what it was to feel full.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion, drove me to ask
Who’s the fairest of them all?
When you hissed my name against my lips
Put your hips between my thighs
Always-rough movements like you wanted to ruin me for others
I would tell you how you already had
with my wrists pressed down flat
Hard enough to bruise my snow-white skin
“Do you like it when I hurt you like that?”
Yes.
Always yes.

The years seem slow
But by gods they pass quick,
And there are no secrets in a castle this big.
Except the one.
The one you kept from me.
I didn’t know that our game wasn’t the only one you were playing
until you decided it should end.
I didn’t know the strings weren’t held by my hands.

A walk through the forest left us tangled together behind bushes
You watched me lay satisfied,
Smiling
Before you stood up and mumbled about what a shame this was going to be.
I knew something wasn’t right.
I didn’t recognize the look in your eyes immediately
but I’ve seen it in hers.
I knew then you had murder in your sight.
I wasn’t even surprised with the glint of the dagger in the light.
Your words of loyalty bounced off the trees.
Of course you would choose her.
Of course I was too dumb to see.
Your loyalty never did lie with me.

They’ll say you were attacked by a beast.
Something large with claws that could shred,
something that could overtake a man of your size.
They’ll never believe you were brought down by something so petite.
Fools don’t know betrayed women are dangerous beings.
They’ll never believe you sunk to your knees and begged for your life.
They won’t dare follow the red trail I left.
They’ll assume I was carried off in the monsters jaws,
They’ll never know I am a monster who had her own.

Who’s the fairest of them all?
Me.
And I
am
free.
With your Hunstmans blood in my teeth
And your heart sitting in my stomach.
They’ll find your body broken open here,
Laid bare among the trees with my scribbled note beside you:
“My regards to the queen.”

Énouement

(Énouement: The bittersweetness of having arrived in the future and seeing how things turn out, but being unable to tell your past self)

 

You are small and blonde and sweet
Naive
It’s forgivable to be carefree
Children always are
until the first awakening and you haven’t had it yet.
You’ll know what it feels like when you do.
You’ll know what it feels like every time it happens, You’ll sometimes welcome it with joy and awe.
Sometimes, you’ll greet it with tears and alcohol.

You’ve experienced the fear that sinks through skin
But there are deeper fears that live within.
You don’t know the names of them yet,
Small pink lips can’t pronounce the words.
They’re long and the meanings are cruel and hard.
I don’t have it in me to tell you what they are.

You’ll lose your innocence early,
But I won’t say how, it’s going be be a funny story one day.
But it defines the act of losing your virginity at 16,
To the way you fall in love at 28,
And every moment in between.
You’ll realize if you want to have worthwhile relationships with people
You’re going to have to be willing to bleed a little
And I don’t mean bleed like a papercut on the thumb
I mean beyond where you thought you could bleed.
When you bleed for love
You’ll learn it may not be enough
Because sometimes it’s not about what exists in hearts.
The first time you learn this is when the clock really starts.

Lies don’t come easy from your mouth.
But after a few years of trial and error,
You’ll know what they taste like,
And sometimes you’ll fall for them anyway.
There will be a time when you associate feelings with shame.
You’ll never admit that you can play a game
You associate the act with devastation
That human emotion is not meant to be relied upon.
But it won’t stop you from doing it when you’ve run out of cards to play
You’re going to try to become the girl defined as a rule.
You’re not,
But you’ve never been the exception
and that says something to you too.

You’ll have an analytical brain, and a devoted heart
And one will constantly be at war with the other.
You’ll always try and fail to make yourself hard.
Hard to reach.
Hard to see.
Better off alone.
I hope someone stops you before you succeed.

You will always be more selfish than you’re willing to admit,
Not all people will like that you are independent.
It won’t matter much, until it does.
You’ll have to make a choice to stay or run.

You’ll bite back the pain until your tongue is numb,
You don’t trust people with your pain and weakness.
You don’t trust people at all.
You have sweetness and compassion,
Genuine devotion.
You have cunning, and ambition,
Cruelty deeply hidden.
You have a vengeful streak a mile wide,
And enough patience to use those traits
as a balm or a knife.
You’ll learn your honesty is no virtue,
but always a necessity.
You’ve a heart buried in chaos and a mind in reality.
You’ll love it and hate it simultaneously.

I have seen what happens next.
And you’ll do your best.

And I am sorry.

I am so sorry.

As Above, So Below

In a moment of weakness,
I knelt before my gods in pain
Begged for relief
Begged for an end to the confusion
Offered up the blood from my split lip
Crushed the long-dead rose given as a gift
Cried about how easily you walked away
So unscathed
While I suffered enough for two
With my delusion that you cared
Pushing my analytical mind deeper into disrepair
Frantic working through the maze of my imagination
Sunken to knees, struggle to breathe,
Telling my gods, above and below
I do not understand.
I did not know.

The thing I want most isn’t vengeance,
It’s equality.
Equal share of misery
Because no one likes to know
they became a footnote in a week.
I asked, and wonder if I received.

I hope you can feel my absence
I don’t know where the line between real and fake lay
But baby, I know habits
And I know they’re hard to break
I may not have been more than a basic comfort
But I was a part of your daily routine and you for me
And the thing I am missing most is words not driven by love but by insight
Our conversations happened day to night
The lack of them makes me feel
Parched when I am not thirsty
Starving when I am not hungry
And I want you to feel that same empty longing.
I want you to feel that you’ve lost a friend,
and I want that to sting
more than you could have imagined.

I hope you can feel them.
The places where I kissed
I hope those spots burn,
I hope they turn warm
and pink with the memory
And they itch
I hope you find your fingers tracing over your lips
Chest,
Torso
Back of the neck
I hope the ice you press to them melts down to water
running over fingers that you once touched me with.
I hope you have to catch your breath.

I hope you can feel the places where my nails bit
Into skin
I hope the phantom bruises appear on your flesh
The angry red slashes I left with lust
I hope they appear before your eyes like
dots do before vision when you
turn on the light in the pitch black of a room
I hope they hurt.
I hope you feel the ache
where my teeth have been on you,
sinking into your shoulder
and lip
and right below your pulse
I hope they are sore
For days afterwards .
I hope when you leave the house
you automatically try to cover up a spot
that only you can sense
I hope someone says “What’s that?”
And you flinch.
I hope those marks live even further within

I hope you can feel what it was to be inside of me
A warm body underneath you
So wet and willing
I hope the need lives in you
and is never satisfied by another persons thighs
I hope you take 5 minutes each night
to remember what I felt like
coming apart around you.
I hope you remember the way I clung to your back when you were on me
Thrusting
Barely concealing noise
I hope you can feel your lips burn when you say,
oh my God, oh my god,
the way you did when you finished
and the way I ran my fingers
down the back of your head,
I hope you remember the sigh of satisfaction
I hope you remember
that you told me you loved me during one of those moments
and I heard you
and I hope that eats away at your being
the way it eats away at mine.

I hope you can feel the tears
Sharp stinging eyes
I hope you can feel the rise
And fall of my chest
I hope you can feel my heart from under the floorboards
and my laugh like a ghost
I hope you can feel the soreness in ribs
I hope you can feel this
particular brand of emptiness.

And maybe,
One day,
I can feel forgiveness.

Lovefool

(written for Esoterotica’s final show of 2017 “Love Letters”)

 

 

 

“Never say ‘I love you’ often
If you say it too much, it loses weight,
Meaning.
The words ring hollow.
They become unoriginal,
Stale.
People think love gets boring,
no one really likes knowing,
So keep them guessing till it fails.”

 

That’s one of the first things I was told about saying “I love you”.
Said by a friend at school who was dropped by the boyfriend
a week after she dropped the L-word.
I never understood it.
It made is seem like the emotion
was meant to be a game:

“Who said it first?
Who said it last?
Who said it more today than the other,
Who said it best,
and with what?”

I decided then that
that
was purely asinine.
We’re only guaranteed so much time on this Earth
And no matter what you think
It’s not enough time,
and it never will be.

So I invite you to say it.

 

Say it when you wake up next to the person
who knows exactly how you take your coffee,
Knows you are useless before 11 in the morning.
Say it because they woke up at 9 but stayed in bed
because your skin is more comfortable than anything else around the house.
Say it when you know
they aren’t awake enough to fully articulate a sentence,
Recovering from a hangover,
Trying to rationalize existing on 3 hours of sleep.
Say it because you know,
somewhere,
they’ll hear it.

Say it when they are getting ready for work,
Pulling on clothes
Searching frantically for phone
and wallet and keys
Rushing around trying to get their lives together
in order to leave the house,
While you sit calmly and watch them roam around.
You are not in a rush.
You have time to say it before they leave for their day,
They can keep it tucked away,
sitting in their brain
It might come in handy when they realize
they accidentally put on two completely different socks
and feel silly.
They’ll realize that it was probably why you were laughing
and they’ll remember that through laughter you said
“I love you”

 

Say it when you’re on a break,
have 5 minutes of spare time,
Ran out to get lunch before going through
the next 5 hours of your day.
And you know they’ll check their phone eventually.

 

Say it on street corners, waiting for the light to change to cross,
5 or 6 people gathered around you
waiting for the same thing,
brains focused on the cars surging past
or the thing their friend said yesterday
or looking at Facebook.
Say it in front of them
because you are feeling brave.
Don’t get shy in public,
who has time for that kind of shame?

 

Say it in coffee shops and museums.
In the park,
In the middle of a five hour road-trip,
With music playing,
Say it in a dimly-lit bar,
Or at some terrible roadside attraction,
On top of a waterfall
and at the shore of a beach,
In their ear at the family gathering
they’ve been dreading for weeks.
Say it often
and make sure it sticks in their head
and never leaves.

Say it in the middle of sex
Two bodies entwined together,
hands clasped against shoulders
Say it through breathing,
Say it screaming,
Say it with a moan and a hiss,
say it during a kiss.
Say it when they dig their nails in
and you know you’ll have marks in the morning.
Say it when you can feel them cumming,
Say it because they are shaking beneath you,
Sweating against you,
Say it when you are collapsed on top of them,
Languid underneath them.
Say it to the beat of a pounding heart.
Say it because you watched them come apart,
Made them come undone
and you know for them,
that took love.

 

Say it at night.
Let it be the last thing
They hear while their minds are thinking about their today,
Their tomorrow,
The thing they have early in the morning on Wednesday
that they wish they’d rescheduled,
Thinking of the first horror movie that scared them,
The first time they felt humiliation,
The reasons they hate hospitals,
And love the cover of night.
Make sure
the last thing they know that evening
While they’re drifting
Is that they’re worthy of someone’s heart
and they’re worthy of being told so.

 

Say it loudly,
Quietly,
With a smile,
With a gesture,
With a sentence.
Say it when they need it.
Say it when they don’t.
Say it because you want to say it,
Because it’s been sitting on the tip of your tongue and
you can’t think of any reason not to right here,
right now.
Say it for all the reasons I mentioned.
Say it for all the reasons I didn’t.

 

And if you can think of a reason
To not say it,
Say “fuck it” 

And then say it anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Armor

My walls are not weak
Not easily breached
It takes more than a sweet word and a kiss
To bring them down
My defenses run too deep in the ground
and too high in the sky to be scaled by a lie
I made the wall impossible to climb
And I’ll make you work to find an opening
Test your interest
Because you claim easy games are never fun to win
If you’ll brag about liking a challenge
I’ll see that you find one
Before you ever reach within

My wall is built like a bomb shelter.
It is wrapped in steel and cement
Wrapped in barbed wire
Wrapped in thick vines made to trap and strangle
One layer of fire
And one layer of ice
And I have a taste for justice that lives deep in the tides
So if I find
that you wrapped yourself in some pretty disguise
To trick me into allowing you entrance
I’ll throw you a rope.
Show you the view.
Kiss you hard enough to make it count
and then push you off the edge before you can look around
Watch you land on your clever head
And go on my way.
I don’t pay much mind to the dead,
And with the dead I’ll see you stay.