Golden Boy And The Black Sheep: Part 1 The Golden Boy

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

"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 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

"I think I have cancer, no really I think I have cancer" she said as she shook his shoulders trying to get his attention

"babe last week you had the avian flu and the week before that you had ringworm and the week before that you thought you had meningitis"

"seriously though look I have a growth on my neck just below my ear" she pulled his hand around to feel what she was talking about, he felt the spot and yes there was something there

"okay, I'll call the doctor tomorrow and we will get it looked at" they went to bed peacefully and awoke with all the trappings of the next day forgetting about the previous nights conversation, she mentioned it a few more times and each time he promised he'd go with her to her doctors appointments, or remind her to call the doctor so they could go get it looked at

-but they never did, just like he didn't believe her when she was convinced her cough meant avian flu and her spot on her arm meant ringworm and her headache meant meningitis but this time... they should've

Nightmares Part 4

I was alone once more the journal was left on the table that had mysteriously appeared beside the bed the day the walls changed colors. I was afraid. I felt the compulsion to write, but when I picked up the pen I wrote obsessively, like I was attempting to make the words stay by willpower alone. The only way I could stop writing was if forced, otherwise, I would forgo food, drink, sleep and other necessities in favor of writing. They left me, the doctors left me to write for the eternity, never stopping me, I wasted away. The words taking all that I was or could have been. I died a husk, totally drained and floating in oblivion.

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?

More poetry for you

A short one this time

I'm a Summers child

I sup on rays of dust suspended in oxygen and filtered through sunlight

My bones are simply vehicles for the green scent of life growing against all odds on a cliff face

The cold pulls the will to live out of me, away from me, like a sieve my pores turn to the gaping maw of winter as all the me-ness of me seeps out and freezes with the tulips buried under snow

Tired

Is anyone else exhausted by all the violence?

The needless and senseless bloodspatter patterns that decorate my television walls and the wallpaper of my brain.

From the procedural made commonplace turning horrific crime to daytime entertainment for the lonely and alone at 2pm on a weekday contrasted and compared with the graphics and lies projected on channels with three letters and a failed promise to tell the truth.

A battle rages in my living room, the combatants painfully familiar to each other yet only one is aware of the war going on. The other believes it merely youthful idealism soon to be squelched by the tint of age and cynicism. 

The man medicating with food and numbing the pain of a capitalistic hedonism born lack of hope with the gunshots and head wounds of his favorite "more stuff blows up" drug. And me, the far from peaceful activist cooking and tuning out his chosen coping mechanism with my own, music played louder and louder, that preaches a similar method with drastically different goals. 

One child resigned to nothing, so preemptively tired of the fight that he wishes not to engage in the warfare at all. Running, constantly distancing himself from the truth that another whom he loves totally disregards the pains and existence of others whom he lives in concert with. Those the child sings and dances with, those he performs alongside creating spectacles of beauty and emotion to make the world feel again. 

The other dedicated to the fight long before she even knew there was a war. Desperately trying to explain why and how to care for other people to the ones who first taught her the very empathy she attempts to raise in their hearts. Running towards the fight at home and the fight on the front lines. 

I am tired of sighting, tired of fighting, tired of seeing the tension so broadcast and obvious and yet having the same conversations over and over and over fruitlessly watching those on the other side slowly slide into the muck and drivel they are fed from the very hand that bites them. 

I wish they would choose love, 

or at least

choose me

Nobody told me about the day after trauma

That id go over to my grandmother's house and work in the garden

That id eat donuts and pull weeds and talk to cousins and friends and almost forget

Forget the violence id seen

And then something, a word, a picture, a thought slams me back into that moment

Transports me back to being scared and helpless and vulnerable and alone

And all of a sudden it passes and in expected to keep laughing and I do but only on the outside