Hunger In The Skin And Soul

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 is a life of certain uncertainty and frustrating simplicity

- J.M. Bodenschatz 

Sometimes

Sometimes I get desperate, 

Sometimes the world screams too loudly and not loudly enough, too loudly for the music to drown out, but not loudly enough to drown out the chaos in my head. 

Sometimes it feels like the black cauldron is swirling in my brain, in that interminible space between the right and left ears there exists a tempest, a whirlwind that only I can hear and I have no miranda to request that her father stops his dreadful awefilled arts. 

Sometimes I play music on my phone, no headphones, the volume turned all the way up and I just lay in the dark waiting for the music to seep into my brain listening to the souls of those who feel like I do the pain of the world. 

Sometimes I hold my phone speaker up to my neck like a knife, not to harm but in a effort to heal, in the way that a surgeons scalpel opens to heal or a syringe enters to heal I try to force the vibrations of the music into my blood. 

Sometimes It’s not enough 

But sometimes ... It is

Oblivion

there is no such thing as oblivion. We are enduring we have souls that live on after our corporeal bodies run out of reasons to endure. We are eternal. We were created, yes created; to live on forever in some form whether life or death we do endure souls are forever things not just here and now things. Oblivion is a myth. Oblivion is impossible unless you don’t exist. Because, as Newton said, every ACTION has an equal and opposite reaction; living is an action, an action that creates another action that creates another action that creates many more actions that never end unless an outside force acts upon it and an action as powerful as beginning eternity would need an action as powerful as a beginning to bring oblivion about. And besides that, we are remembered.

We are remembered by people and then when those people die we are remembered by the people who were told about us and even if we become a legend where events are altered and names are changed and no one can recall who exactly who I was the places I was will remember me. My footsteps will haunt the places I’ve walked. The mountains will remember when my eyes looked upon them. The trees will whisper to each other and say “I remember the girl who stroked our branches and caressed our leaves.” The rocks will say “I remember the girl who cried out to the creator alongside us.” The wind has memorized the shape of my face, the sky holds the color of my eyes, and the stars know the whims and whispers of my heart; the earth will remember me. The earth will remember you. Hallways know every foot that has touched them. Walls can recollect every mark made on them by hands big and small. Cars know who has been pushed up against them and kissed like their life depended on it. Bleachers know who has sat upon them and who has stood in front of them but rarely sat because they were too excited about the event happening. Every single thing you touch with your fingers you leave a piece of yourself behind when you pick your finger up.

Life is like that as well. You leave cells everywhere, you leave pieces of yourself everywhere for others to unknowingly pick up and carry with them until their days run out then someone else will pick up their cells and your cells together. You see? We have all connected through so many bonds that it is impossible to break them.  The way we talk, eat cereal, walk, read, write, type, poop, sleep, shower, love, feel. All of these things each and every person does in a perfectly unique way so if nothing else you will be remembered by the universe for being the only person to do things exactly the way you do them so that no one else will do ANYTHING exactly like you. Ever. End of story.

Golden Boy and the Black Sheep: Part 1 The Golden Boy

He’s an angel, always has been

The youngest son, the golden boy, the favored child

Shining and resplendent with bright hair long and fair cascading in curls, far more perfect than mine ever were, down his back across wide shoulders to a tapered waist to put models to shame

“Hes too pretty for his own good” “That boy has more charisma in his little finger than anyone else I have ever met” “see how tall and pretty that guy is?” Whispers follow him, praise even in the dark

In my dreams he has wings white and whole, huge things pristine and glistening except for the golden metallic liquid that the tips are dipped in. Blood thick I alone know that its the souls he's been given and the mark of all the hearts he’s unwittingly broken.

In reality he has long thin fingers, piano fingers that are perfect and kept soft and agile for music and grace, in my head those fingers are stained black from manipulating the ink black minds of poets and kings, inspiring them to beauty and malice and greed.

He doesnt have a halo but he might as well, all the compliments heaped upon his lofty brow make him hold his head even higher from the ground

some days I feel like I should hate him, my perfect, favored, oh so loved bouncing baby brother

but how could I hate he who I helped raise? he who I helped create and grow? he whos potential I saw first and gave him love and space and the words so that he could grow

people tell me I should hate him because everyone else loves him so much

but I can’t because he was the first person I loved too

"Sit down" she said

"Stop fidgeting" he reminded

"I swear if you don't stop MOVING" they threatened

until one day one didn't

The teacher didn't say "Sit down" or "Stop moving" she said "here, when you get bored or finish an assignment I want you to describe to me what you are going to do on the playground"

This simple kindness to a small hyperactive child turned into teams of paper preoccupation detailing the grand adventures of various heroes, heroines, dragons and ponies as they battled vicious creatures discovered new locales and made friends along the way fostering forever in me a childlike wonder for the magic of the written word.

The Not Yet Now

The future past flashes forward in my head, I see blue eyes and long shaggy hair in my periphery with a warm hand on my waist the strength of the hand matching the strength of the musk on the hoodie that protects my wet swimsuit skin from the evening chill. 

We’ve spent all day together and a warm feeling enters my heart and my vision blurs as I come back to reality after seeing one of my fondest memories before it happens. The trees in the rove I lay in whisper “Lover you’ve returned to us” the river refers to me as daughter, the waterfall beckons “Child, come kiss your grandfather” while the wild mountain bid me fall into its warm motherly embrace. 

I am the child of the wilds raised as a meek human and thought to be of angelic broods

The Soulless

Those who do not see and care even less. 

The soulless aren’t those without an eternal soul but those whose souls are born asleep. 

They annoy me 

I am awake, ALIVE 

I was born that way, I don’t know why 

I’ve been awake since I opened my eyes 

I pity those who never awaken but I weep for those who awaken later in life because then they realize what they have missed. 

You don’t have to be awake to be saved but sometimes that change in your heart can awaken you 

That should shock to your soul acts as a defibrillator 

or you have a choice 

and the Psychosis will Worsen 

You don’t see the decay at first

Not at first glance nor the second, no you pass your lives through with silly little tasks

every morning you walk to work, sunshine bright enough to disguise that which you don’t see, certain patches of day seem dull as you walk by the pastry shop, colors bleeding, no longer true to form where they meet

the talons of light grasp signs and bruise the colors darker than you remember

you keep walking

you look down

you do not see

at night you laugh with your family, smile fondly as a book or chuckle at the news. Curled before the blaze you can block the chill of the void leaking in through your window pane.

The almost too close burn in your shins drowns out the whispering, the bright dancing cheerful orange distracts you, pulling your attention, away from the silvered, hungry smile with spindly teeth grinning just past your periphery where it waits for you to notice

you keep watching

you look down

you do not see

at midday! You lunch with your love, discussing mundanity and boredom to fend off themselves sipping sweet wine with a bite and licking drops of fat off your fingers as they’ve dropped from your meal

The savory oil coats your tongue and for a moment your thoughts are not your own, a flash of True Hunger grips you, an impulse to consume, devour, tear and rend to satiate your hunger with the cat you’ve caresses in a moment of love you want to grip and bite in a frenzy of feeding

but you blink

you look down

you do not see

you blink again

You do see, but now? They See Too

Airports

There’s something romantic about airports

I don't mean romantic in the way of falling in love but in the way of how its an in between hub

airports are a stop from dream to reality

from sadness to joy

from missing to hugging

from chance to certainty

And as I sit in this airport, the day after the longest night I can’t help but wish I could sit in this moment forever 

This moment of chance, this moment of opportunity

I COULD get on the flight that I booked ahead of time and go to my planned destination

I COULD continue on with my life completely unchanged waltzing from plan to plan as some fall apart and some fall into place

Or I could not

I could follow my feet where they want to go

Pick a random gate, buy a ticket at the desk and board a plane to destinations unknown

See what I can make of life in this new place

If I wanted, the option is there for me to start completely over in a new place with a new name and a new purpose

Who would I be if I chose that? Would I still be me? Would a new name and a new place and a new job change me so completely that even those closest to this current version of the person I am wouldn’t recognize me?

Or would I surface the same? Would I have the same insecurities and personality? Would my music taste change or my the way I liked to dress? Or would I be even more me? Like a less watered down version of the me that I am currently?