Birthday wish I waltzed in a haze through a birthday today more in reflection than celebration since life’s nearing inflection, adding force in some direction, not yet clear to see whereupon the next year will fall. And fall is apt in its leaves that melt colors like exotic orange flavors, red for passion (oh, I certainly hope passion) and light pink for the flickering affection I think we all generally think of when a friend or maybe not pulls out their spell book and spellbound in expectation wishes us a magical year.
Yet time steamrolls forward
Yet time steamrolls forward Yet time steamrolls forward and really doesn’t care in the slightest how I like that. It seems futile to pass by every “now” agonizing for a future in which I could just as well pass by agonizing for another future because time steamrolls forward and really doesn’t care in the slightest how I like that. It seems the only point in time at which I have certain control and no uncertainty over my emotion is the present. Oh, what a gift, ha ha, is that the joke? Yet though time steamrolls forward and really doesn’t care in the slightest how I like that, I think I’m averse to the present like the demons from my past. I think, indeed, that’s the joke.
A sapiens with loose skin
A sapiens with loose skin I read a history of the world and I’m obliged to report that it’s loosened my skin from underlying muscle and bone. I used to revel in the stretch, love the predictable deformation each time I’d incidentally waltz through a moment and joy would bend my joints with purpose. This history incised somewhere, snuck in and slid right underneath and cut all the fibrous, connective cords. A bridge with its supports blown. Calm: seated, star-spangled skin flaps and sways me sideways just like my thoughts. Routine: walking, reverberations thrum and remind me. Energy: in a sprint, I risk deforming my character, and I can’t be returned. This is what it feels like to be corporeal but find no meaning. My sense of strict adhesion to principles, predictabilities, assumptions is no more. I think we tend to think that the knowledge we seek will bring pearl skin, gleaming and desirable and certainly beautiful. Maybe there’s some Truth to the idea that with sagging-skin age comes “wisdom.”
Collection; unrequited
In autoimmune denial I think my immune cells are silently marching into a dark crystal ball they want to tell my future and to do that they have to attack the truth
Haikus from dark days A cyanide bite Now red tears pour from my side I swallow the pill Drunken wandering Left, left right, thoughts stagger home Eyes erupt tonight I’m medium rare Blood not boiling, but I’m cooked Matter of time, now
A game of chance The dice roll Imagination slithers to Snake eyes The probability is small But big enough to let hope hold on With one white-knuckled finger It aches in every way But it’s better Than the frostbitten ice below Frozen flakes of the cold future Crystalized into something so sharp It deflates a wildly thumping red heart To even think about Its tapered pointlessness
A damned river Even when you drop to your knees and beg, voice flaking with dry words and sentences like sharp gravel pulverized by the punches you’ve rolled with, the lacrimal pedestrian pays you no attention hands you nothing to drink. Gray, canyon-cracked, dehydrated nothing can grow until you water your world.
Where is my mind? Did my burning legs carry it far when it felt so lost I had to run? I’ve been searching Shining spotlights into the dark days I hung up paper signs on every corner “Lost Mind” they read I might be wrong Did I lose my mind? Or does it not want to be found?
A letter to the wind Fold the paper wings over, gingerly But remember, even soft things can cut Kiss the seams with care, and linger Be clever with how you fortify the front Throw the paper plane, respectfully Smile slowly as you turn your nose up And don’t let thoughts of the wind… Linger
To whom it may concern 1. To whom it may concern: I love you, and I’ve wanted to tell you for some time, now. The thought of you is something I hold confidently, comfortingly in the palm of my hand. I cradle it, I move it around so I sense its particular weight. Your presence has a way of resting against the inside of my back, like you’re hugging my spine. It’s comfortable; I grow when I am support. These days, it’s so reflexive to see you and think, “Oh, if you only knew…” It’s natural to feel that if you felt this loved, you’d start loving me, too. It’s a fantasy, like the ghost image sensed between sparse and scratched pencil lines. Nothing inside me seems to care what the artist intends: even against my will, I see what I will. Love, Avery 2. To whom it may concern: Since last we spoke, I’ve dated and become intimate with the meaning of “unrequited”— I showed her my hand, then as dealer she dealt her cards. Now I feel flushed down the plumbing, lost in leaking pipes that taunt me, those cardiac canals will haunt me. But I’m not blinded, sadly. My eyes still fill in the ghost against the pencil lines, still tell the artist’s intent to fuck off. That’s the sad part: I addressed this to whom it may concern. But now I’ve found out the only one concerned is myself. Love, Avery 3. To whom it may concern: The metaphor of a healing wound feels apt to describe the way a scar has slowly formed. There’s no distracting sting when silly air floats by boldly and whispers to my red flesh— instead now, I just reflexively look down, and with my eyes I bow low to the off-color shape that outlines my mistakes. Sometimes when I’m stretched a certain way I feel not a pain sensation but more the somber memory of an infection that left a scar. Know thine enemy; I’m trying… You’re a foe that won with your carefree and clueless sword and like cinderella with a shoe, my scar always will fit your blade. Avery
Compostable hope
Compostable hope You’ll sometimes see a treehouse dangling in the air, But dangling feels, deeply as a swing at its inverted apex, like the wrong word. Although the tightly packed, insightfully architected Wooden planks with no cracks for water and no room to fall – Slabs with such beautiful gradient shimmer that your breath runs away And your eyes jog along their ringed, concentrically grained roads – Craftsmanship worthy of megamansions poured into the construction Of a temple to childhood, innocence, frolicking frivolity – A skylight seamlessly blended with shingles, serendipitously Forming a hole for twinkling starlight to tickle the floor – Although the tightly packed, insightfully architected Wooden planks with no cracks for lacrimal tears and no room to fall Project out over the world below and cast shadows and capture light, And compose a view torn with love and care from a fantasy. You know the trunk is firm, and planted, in both biological And metaphysical senses of the word. Truly rooted. –––––– – – – - - - As it turns out, when the universe was nascent and had cosmic-scale axons Still seeking their myelin caress, It received universe-class training as a little-universally-big league pitcher. The pitch of choice, as it were, was a curveball. Straight-up 12-6. It’s hypnotic, watching the universe step onto the mound; Dig its cleat into the well-trodden cleft between rubber and dirt; Load up energy and tension in itself and its observers, the potential building. Eyes flutter shut for a brief moment, an exhale imperceptible except by intuition. The glove covers cosmic hand and fingers, obscuring a configuration you need Baseball Sign Language to read. “It’s a fastball,” whispers intuition. You’ve seen this pitcher before. You’ve faced him. You’ve spent so many hours of your waking life with eyes glued to reels, Spinning spinning spinning, you know what comes next. Always. Our biggest, unpalatably friendly giant curls up his left leg, Briefly joins the flamingo species, striking the most remarkable balance. Leg extends, gives surrounding bouncing O2 a razor-thin paper-cut. The ball faces second base, and you’re squared up. Fast-twitch fibers at the ready. And you start spinning. No, sorry, that’s the ball. The ball spins! Now your head spins. Our universally revered little-universally-big league pitcher threw us a curveball. Your eyes pop. Straight. Out. Because that tree trunk suddenly has an irreparable gash in its side. The 12-6 sliced clean through. Your roots, your core, the pillars of your existence are shaken Because your treehouse wobbles. It oscillates. No one has ever encouraged you before to think about the utter terror Encoded right into a sine wave. Nothing can reveal the elasticity of twine soul like a sine wave can, When it decides to pluck your heart out with a twang, And starts slinging it back and forth as it’s functionally meant to do. Soul, like a soapy bubble, follows and threatens so probabilistically to burst. Back, forth, back, forth, back back back forth forth forth back forth back DON’T DON’T DON’T FALL. Please, please don’t fall. With heart gone, blood a truant, there’s only one fluid left to lose. Tears. Please, please, please you beg. You’d speak the words if you could, But there’s a waterfall flowing frontally down. Irises color the down-destined river, their spectral rainbows Reflecting along undulating elongating swirls. Please, you cry. Please, don’t fall. This treehouse of magnificence – This castle of creation and palace of mundane paradise. This house of the humans who give everyday existence its sense of home – This Napoleonic defense, this mammoth moat, this untragic tower, This seed germinated by sedition against our little-universally-big leaguer – Against his Sadistic, Satanic, Slimy Stochasticity. Yes, a truly UnRandom House – Please, you cry. Please, don’t plunge. This treehouse into which you’ve packed your most precious belonging: Hope. And it will fall. - - - – – – –––––– While detestable in certain high-schoolian contexts (Not so unlike our now-infamous pitcher), It’s tough to deny that biological systems possess A certain conservational magic to them. Net nil. This is true for biological systems of any scale. Physical systems, actually, too. Even pitchers, no matter which twisted way they choose to throw the ball, Are bound by forces more terrifying than their fluttering butterfly parents To conserve their energy. Let’s don our hardhats And climb the abstraction ladder we can’t help but lean against. By some conservation law they teach you also in a high-schoolian context, Momentum gets conserved. And so the ball flies. Of import to this discussion is that this phenomena occurs Irrespective of the pitch and behavioral manipulation. So here’s the derivation to fill your cheat-sheet, Something you should know so well as to locate topographically in cerebral folds: When curveball strikes, And tear falls in a constructively destructive and beautiful waltz with your treehouse, And wood and water hit ground, Here’s the thing: Something will grow.