A Speech Spoken Over The Body Of An Enemy

Musing on “Adult Life”

The Phrase “Well that sounds like Adult Life” accompanied by the indicative chuckle as if I am nothing but a lowly child instead of a full-fledged adult who pays their own bills and holds a degree in a field you can barely pronounce, much less understand. 

You have no interest in anything except your own personal gain and whatever you are interested in that moment, which has been the same topic since you were literally 14. 

I refuse to apologize for having ambition, 

I refuse to apologize for expecting others to do their damn jobs so that I could do mine 

I refuse to apologize for being me 

Control

My emotions are like currents under the waves, deep and powerful and yet on the surface I can seem completely calm. 

I am tired of having to seem calm 

I want to rage and gnash my teeth against the light, 

I want to scream and bellow my anger and sorrow to the winds 

I want to use this power I feel, this passion to wound and break and bend the world into my image, into what I see fit, into what would suit my whims 

But I don’t 

I muzzle my rage, I suppress my howls of pain and tether my biting indignation to other calmer outlets, like logic, like patience, like fore thought and premeditation 

I direct my anger inwards, I point my passion at myself and shape it into a desire to cut out injustice and create better lives and healthier places for those I love. I turn it into a drive to do better, to be better, to accomplish more. I seek to improve, to inspire, to incite others to also be better and do better and yet. . . 

I am still left angry, my self hatred battering the walls I so carefully construct to keep others from being harmed by my emotion. And when the walls crack I am reminded of why they are needed. 

I hurt other, I twist and my face contorts into venom and malice and reveals an inner core of ice caps broken over a volcano. The hot and cold fighting for control causing the winds to whip ever louder, ever stronger, ever wilder. And I wound. I take offense to words that should not hurt, I bite back viciously at perceived attacks and stab using words meant to wound in such a way that I can twist them later to soothe the pain I have so caused. 

and so I must maintain my control even as I weep from the pain of being caged

Most of the famous love poems begin at the writer,

“Shall I compare thee to a summers day?” “How do I love thee, let me count the ways” “When I love you, I become Liquid light”

and the focus is on how the love affects the author.

You are not loved like that

You are loved from afar by a host of witnesses, partial observers who sing your praises and laud your name. I am merely one of many who’s life’s been changed by your black girl magic.

You are the flower and the sun, an entire ecosystem of beauty, pain, feral aggression, and nurturing softness trapped within skin and summarized with stardust.

You are the rot that consumes, dark slick fertility doing away with that which is dead and dying, prying life away from the undeserving.

You are an all-powerful inevitability, like mycorrhiza, interconnected and an engine of reincarnation turning that which you kill with your terrible, exquisite existence into vibrant life.

You are the power of a fire set spinning into a void, so intense that it attracts life and inspires art and who’s mere proximity is the Prometheus of existence.

You are an illustration of regeneration in motion.

You are not just a pretty girl, or a smart woman or a good person.

You are a vision of the universe manifesting itself to experience life and doing it with such style and grace that it takes my breath away.

And so, I will not disgrace you with talk of the love of possession.

the love of self, reflected in the face of the other.

the love only begat by desire

or need

or lust.

Instead, I will pray to you in the way that the moon prays to the sun.

I will describe the love of a devotee as they turn their face to the façade of their goddess and stand in awe of her power, majesty, and the ineffable certainty that they are unworthy.

I will set a record in stone of the magnificence of you.

I will, if given permission, promise to learn you

I will cleave my soul to yours leaving behind a love that endures and will never end, merely change forms

I will inscribe my adoration on the monolith of you, perfect, deific, angelic, demonic, human,  you

I will learn your habits, like how you take your morning coffee

I will create tender, intimate moments where I simply watch and wonder at the gift of you in my life

I will love you, with every burning, bared, imperfect part of my broken, bruised, and barely beating heart

Ours

Ours is a life of certain uncertainty and frustrating simplicity

Sad in the Desert

Its harder being sad in the desert

The wind bites instead of hugs

The voices of people who shouldn’t have been there in the first place, dug their heels in and decided to die just to spite the people who told them to leave

My ancestors don’t whisper in the long pull of an American Spirit, not out here

My grandfathers voice doesn’t sit at the bottom of that bottle of Jack saying “girl if you don’t straighten up”

Its harder to be sad in the sands and scrub

Its barren and cold

You cant get away from your emotions by walking through the trees and just crying out to the leaves, telling the wind to take your sorrow

Theres just sand, sand and dry

I guess that’s one thing about being sad in the desert,

The tears evaporate right off your face like the desert is taking everything from you, even the salt and water from your tears, even the salt in your blood you give to the desert it takes and takes

Doesn’t think about what to leave so you can keep on surviving so it can take again tomorrow

Its harder to be sad in the desert

The Red Backpack

Time slipped away

        We knew, had known, will know

She had years, then months then days, then none.

She went first

Skipped into death like she had been waiting for it all her life and I suppose in some ways she had,

I couldn’t handle it

I sold the business, the house, the car, I lived out of my backpack                       She loved books so I hitchhiked from library to library always picking up ones we loved. Then we’d sit down at one of the tables, two old coots living out of a beat-up red backpack and read and talk about everything

We got some odd glances often funny stares. I didn’t care I had my beloved back then I’d come back to myself and realize that I was once again just a lonely old man talking to an empty chair

Then I’d pick up that old red backpack once more and search for her in the next dusty corner of the next dusty library in the next dusty town

The Red Backpack

What do you do when it hurts this much?

I don’t even know where the pain comes from. It’s a combination of loneliness and longing I think. But why? I thought I was perfectly happy, I have nothing to be this upset over! 

I am blessed, so why do I feel cursed?

Why do I feel like every person on the planet is mocking me? Why do I feel so alone? What’s wrong with me? am I really lying to myself that badly? will I end up like the man at the library talking to someone no longer there I imagine his story 

A Warning to my Future

Look at my Pinterest boards, no seriously do, 

you will find a person covered in tattoos

 upon further exploration, you'll find a transcendent nation 

of a person, or a place or a word 

you'll find quotes and myths, logic and a missing piece 

travel and a mission a need to leave and a desire to stay, 

Knowing that to complete your purpose you have to go and do and see and become before you can make life all that you wanted 

you must leave 

you’ll see recipes and plans, and gardens and the sands of time slipping around the squared edges of the screen 

you’ll see clothing I’ll never wear and ideas I’ll try to write for then lose the inspiration that comes in the night for me and only me 

Reviewing the organization (or lack thereof) you’ll realize truly that I pin what I love 

so one day, my darling I hope I’ll pin you too

we invented and perfected the idiosyncrasies of the odd art, we are odd and we are not 

but are the vibrant dread, a constant antithesis of all we should be, we are alive truly yet floaters in a world we did not design and we deign to love 

the universe of our creation we are forced out of by the necessities of those who have and always will persecute that which they know not of and all are naught to understand 

Where I'm From

I am from packed out bleachers and cheering teammates, momma's delicate hands covered in popcorn butter as she cheers me on from the concession stand but before the spikes and serves ....

I am from a quiet gym occupied solely with paternal affection, a father teaching his most precious treasure the game he loved all through life, small hands being held by callused ones showing how to dribble and shoot when attentive intention turns to giggles and those calluses seek to tickle forsaking the familiarity of the sport

I am from weary shoulders a woman running for her life from a madman, taking her gypsy brood from the bloodbath that her home became, her clutching hands desperately grasping those of her daughter and sons an sons running as far and as fast as she can away from all she knows

all she knew

to a new life,

to save her life

and mine