People say they don’t like how I can hear their hearts cracking. —Hellcat
SPIRAL
FOR WHAT WE BECOME
SISYPHUS
So the goodness inside you said
“I shall manifest godhood,
Not to ascend into divinity,
But to display an unbroken,
Equalizing reality.”
So the man you were said
“I shall be the man I create myself to be
And there will be no end to him
Even in death
Unless I am no longer as I am.”
So the first son said
“Be endless in me.”
ASURA
So the atrocity inside you said
_THE FUNCTION IS NOT COMPLETE_
CANNOT BE COMPLETE_
WILL NEVER BE COMPLETE_
SO WHO HAS NEVER BLED MUST WEEP
UNTIL THEIR SCLERAS BURN RED_
AND WHO HAS SHED SWEAT MUST BE
ALLOWED TO DIE QUIETLY_
_BUT THE SACRIFICE IS ALWAYS VIOLENT_
So the man you were becoming said
/// the creation i want is not endless
and i have seen it throttled with hands
i shouldn’t recognize ///
So the first daughter said
“You are absolved in me.”
FREE ME FROM HELL
I must rest, the man said.
It is not your sabbath, the children said.
And yet there is no good godhood, the man responded
in his head.
SYMPHONY
“Sin is the oracle of the wicked
in the depths of his heart;
there is no fear of God
before his eyes.”
—Psalm 36:1
Simplicity. Define it.
Lack of complication? No.
Lack of bad data? No.
Existence is junk numbers.
Simplicity is
An eye
wrapped around a needle
seeing its blood for the first time.
Because when people bleed
they become predictable.
Reset.
Because when people bleed
they become data.
Reset.
Because when people bleed
the bad numbers drip into the blood
and what’s left for cleanup is
maybe a malediction
but curses can be swallowed whole.
Simplicity is
I won’t tell you how
You break down
Because every syllable spoken
Is a lost eternity. I won’t tell you
How you break.
Simplicity is
the chance to think on
something like godhood
and how it doesn’t apply to
the spoken word.
Simplicity is
“… all he says is deceitful and wise,
and he has turned his back on
Simplicity.”
—No one
SORCERER
GLORIFY THIS FALSE IDOL
If you use a pretty pink marker
to highlight the word reality
and press it to your tongue right after
do you taste what it means to be a maker?
What do they call
having an even pinker tongue?
Something made unnatural, maybe.
[And you might be able to redact
your names
from the minds of would-be worshippers]
[And you might be able to redact
your mind
from the eyes of perception inside]
If you peel off all the skin
and unwind every muscle
and shed every ounce of flesh
will you still be called by
a word that you can recognize?
RECOGNIZE THIS FALSE IDOL
or just pretend to
RETRIEVER
You were never told to understand
that you were born to wait.
Wait for the right moment to breathe.
Wait for the right moment to see
when the day will raze you.
Wait for the right moment to
turn your cheek
because when you are struck
you must wait to be struck once more.
You were never told to understand
that you were born to be replaced.
You were never told to understand
that the key to sacrifice
was to make sure blood always runs wet
lest someone have the chance to clean the altar—
then they’d have to start again.
No, the altar you were offered upon
was intended to keep its stains.
You were never told to understand
that worlds existed beyond your fathoming:
that people existed to break people
who weren’t you.
HAIL THE DEATH OF THIS OLD LIFE
FOR IT IS TIRED BEYOND ITS YEARS
Yet people break so easily
when their heads no longer know
how to connect to their bodies.
HAIL THE DEATH OF THIS OLD LIFE
FOR IT HAS YEARS ENOUGH TO DIE NOW
You have much to fathom now,
like the fact that you were born.
And that may be harder to reckon with
than things more horrible.
HAIL THE DEATH OF THIS OLD LIFE
AND THE BIRTH OF SOMETHING
THAT MIGHT LIVE ON TOMORROW
STALKER
OR
PROCLAMATIONAnd In A Whisper Of A Dream
—A Whisper Of Reality—
RA Said Unto Thee
To Speak
Speak something
and it will become the past.
Speak something
and you will breathe out a memory.
Not something that matters,
but a thing you can hold between your lips.
you were making a world once
when you were too young
to be responsible for the meaning.
you were making a world once
when you could remember what it was
to be beholden to your own head.
RA SAID UNTO THEE
SPEAK
BEFORE YOU FORGET
you were breaking your world once
when you were too old
to be trusting enough to let it live.
you were breaking a world once
when you had forgotten what it was
to be quiet in mortality.
Do Not Speak
Lest The Words Turn Into Omens.
Do Not Speak
Lest The Words Fail To Turn Into Omens.
Do Not Speak.
RA Will Never Be Anything Unto You.
maybe
you were meant to
devour that which
shouldn’t exist
and incorporate it
into your corpse
Corpse: The thing you shall one day be reduced to
You: A singular experience trying to expand
Devour: What you do to every event you indulge in
don’t stop
LA MANCHA
AND LET ME
REST WITHOUT PRIDEThis story could have been true, because I once was a redeemer. / Not of people. / I didn’t know how to take a black heart and spit red blood into its arteries. / Not of people. / I didn’t know to take my red heart and wring out the black death that always tickled my veins. / I was born to be a mummified man—someone who bleeds bandages and can’t unwind them all the way. / I was born to be a redeemer. / I don’t know if I was born to live successfully. / This story could have been true, because I was once a redeemer. / Not of people, but of lives. / I bled and there was meaning in the weight of so much blood inside me if people lived. / They say people die everyday. / They don’t talk about how they live every second. /
This story could be true, because I am unending decay. / My left hand is a lover with a gun that’s been beaten into being a good shot. / My right hand is a lover in ways that might have less meaning. / I tried to love myself and found a poor suitor inside. / I tried to suffocate the shadow that holds onto my ego on my behalf. / I can’t. / I haven’t died yet. / I need to know why. / I need to see without the curse of my own eyes. / I need to know that I loved someone without pulling the trigger. / I need someone to understand the story that hasn’t been written.
This story could be true, because I am a man.