10/22/2016 2 Comments new poemLet’s get out of here and hang our worries on the clothes hangers that are breaking under our burdens. Let’s put our fears on a boat and wave them goodbye saying “they grow up so fast.” Let’s quest for a world where we don’t have to fight for our lives, where we won’t look at our hands and see blood. Let’s climb back into our mothers and breathe in our nonexistence. Let’s hide from each other, in each other. We should find ourselves, but not too quickly okay? See, answers are simple and usually written in the ways our freckles gather together, but I want to search. I want to revel in revelation. So, ask me a question and click ballpoint pens into my bloodstream. Drain me of the time my mother dropped me when I was young. Hang me from the ceiling and insult my God. Stick a needle into my arm and pump air through me until I say something honest for once. Bring honor back to my family. Interrogate and electrocute me and fight fear with fire until you are kneeling in a red puddle of wonder, your hands up high, sewn to an invisible man’s sweaty palms. Look, you are saved. Let’s be honest. Blood is beautiful and pain is pretty. This world is a lonely mother sending love letters to herself and we are the only ones who love her enough to end it. You sit with her on this cold tile floor and it feels like the time your girlfriend launched a rock into your throat. She thought she was saving you. She drowned you in the bathtub while the candles were dancing and God was watching and he was trying to lead you to the fire extinguisher he packed in your bag. As you lay there, water bubbling in your lungs and gurgling out your throat and lies resurfacing and truth pouring from every crevice, you were marinating in it. As you lay there dying, you thought how beautiful it looks when we are saved. Now, listen to that song you play when your heart is shattering. When you are sad, do you ever feel like you need to hug the notes? Swallow the chords until they feel whole again? You are a savior so you wonder if depression is a fallen angel or a perfect A student that let loose one night. You wonder if punishers need saviors or if punishers are saviors or if saviors are supposed to punish themselves. You are back in that bathtub. The water is filling the room and you reach out towards the slippery knobs. You are looking for a pen. You are looking for answers. You want her to know what it feels like to be saved. Let’s try to write a poem about what it means to be honest. Let’s discover a word that will shake someone out of themselves, let’s tell the truth: you want to save them all. Let’s be honest: you can’t. The earthquakes under your skin are distracting, you can’t focus, you can’t find that damn word. You find yourself kneeling in a red puddle of wonder, your hands sewn around an invisible man’s throat. You are saved, but you don’t like it. It’s too easy and too hard at the same time. All you feel are the words that won’t come and the love that is tickling your nose but running away. You are a worry hanging on a hook, a world isolated in fear of contamination, bloody hands that don’t know what to say sorry for. You are a question, an answer, and a poem with too many words.
But, slow your breath so you’re harmonizing with that song you play when your heart is shattering. Ask it how you are supposed to make yourself small enough to understand. See, you think maybe there is no truth, no quest, maybe there is nothing to search for. Your mother has disappeared and when the police interrogate you, you can’t remember what color the walls of her insides were. Look, there is no bathtub. There is no fire. There is just your knees wet in a red puddle of wonder and your hands sewn to themselves. There is no invisible man. You think maybe you want to find yourself, but not too quickly. So you ask God to lock you in a musicbox your grandfather gave you. You ask him to throw you in the water and look away. You don’t want to be saved. You want to search.
2 Comments
Gina
10/28/2016 06:03:41 am
Great article!
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Tyler W.
7/1/2017 07:16:25 pm
Epic, in all senses of the word, your articulation of concepts has become phenomenal... I know this is from a little while back but this piece was fantastic
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