He was a sculptor. His medium beyond the tangible, his end beyond aesthetics. He worked in secret corridors, barren recesses to which no organic being had ever known the possibility of trespass. Only he could recognize his tools and discern his work. Only he was privy to the true subtleties of his craft, cognizant of the fourth, fifth, sixth dimensions of his work. His greatest masterpiece? Himself.
you run, you run out of anger
from nowhere to nowhere
but you like it
you can’t tell whether you choke on the exertion or on the feelings
the feelings that make you wish you had a beautiful soul
but you don’t
so you run, you run so you can prove them wrong
so you can fix your wrongs
so that you can pound to dust what is wrong
you run so that they can see the downturned face and mournful eyes and the hollow gaze
but they don’t
screw them
a beautiful soul
a beautiful soul
a beautiful soul
you run and you choke and you cry
you cry because you run from nowhere to nowhere
and cannot escape yourself
One in a Million
to see that you are one in a million
a million of the same
what you thought was your own
it was theirs too
that dream you long cherished
has been cherished by them
longer, dearer, harder
what you thought birthed your uniqueness
made ten thousand and more unique
your talent was their talent
your hope was their hope
not the singular bloom in a field of greens
but a blade among many
to see that you are one in a million
a million of the same
then you realize just how small
you truly are
I Asked God for Wings Like Angels’
i asked God for wings like angels’
so I could touch the clouds
but the thickening mist
blinded these eyes of mine
and those dew-heavy wings
ceased their beat
lost in
my dreams
groping at an
insubstantial
reaching
soaring
spreading my wings but
why must it leave me
can’t touch these clouds
though try as you might
solid to vapor
you can see in your blindness
days past frozen in diamond snow
leaving me drowned
in vapid hopes
the sun was young when i first began
but i forgot my reality
my wayward heart had
turned my eyes astray
now falling with broken wings
drenched with heavy tears
Did you know that on your birthday
I was out, somewhere I don’t recall
It doesn’t matter.
But when I got home, late
I ran upstairs thinking of you
It kind of hurt
Signed on just to
wish you a happy birthday
It was all exclamation points and smileys
Your reply, and mine
Birthday wished, I went to bed
Content
Did you know that on my birthday
I stayed up
Waiting for your birthday wish
It came
Like I knew it would
But the strain was palpable
The words were so taut
That I thought they would break
Distant and polite
My reply, and yours
Wish received,
I went to bed
Cold
words, the unheard echo
what words
what words to express the unexpressed
numb
is it that my hands are frozen
or has the pen dried and lost
numb
Theirs (Part 1)
Experimenting with different styles.
I don’t make a habit of approaching strangers. But call it a motion against my will—maybe the result of a premonition. I was a case study for excess nervous energy: taking habitual glances at the Rolex on my left wrist, right hand anxiously adjusting the navy blue tie. My roommate had advised me on the dark navy, supposedly safest for a first interview with a large firm. The Starbucks queue remained frozen, as if some divine will had called for a moratorium on the daily doling out of much-needed caffeine. I observed my companions in line, wondering what their respective sins had been for warranting such a delay. My own was perhaps hubris. Fresh out of the Hell of law school, I, like any barely twenty-five year old who had been advantaged with a life of privilege, was drunk with fantasies of success and adhered with religious zeal to the belief that all was indeed for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
Taking a respite from their now-routine journey between the watch and my fellow sufferers of the interminable queue, my eyes strayed and chanced to rest upon him. If there had been an epitome of destitution, the face of poverty, then he was that individual. Such was his state that it had taken a moment to distinguish him from the piles of rubbish customary to the city, as he had made the effort to shield himself from the winter cold with a coat of rags and the occasional newspaper. Hit by a sudden wave of curiosity—it being my first foray into such a city and poverty of this degree had been but fiction to me not a day ago—I was met with an inclination to approach this creature. But before the idea had fully fermented in my mind, he approached me first.
It was his eyes. The will to acquaint necessitates no physical gesture; indeed, to the casual observer, there had been no change in his countenance, no perceivable alteration in that deathless gaze. Yet I, alone in bestowing—yes, bestowing, as if my attentions were a trophy to be coveted and a prize to be conferred in charity—upon this creature of the street a notice beyond the cursory glance, caught his eyes, those eyes which addressed me as clearly as a beckoning finger or a vocal summons; and so my feet brought themselves to him.
For Truth’s Amusement
Truth!—proclaims the fabricator, the falsifier, the deceiver.
Truth!—breathes the misguided, the idle, the romantic.
They paint a portrait of the unseen subject, but the canvas sings bare.
Their hands waver, having erred incautious,
yet still the friendless brush persists
in its condemned course;
its bristled tail leaves vestiges of false fact in false color
The dilettantes, they press on in Futility’s track;
gods they promote themselves in midst of risible pursuit.
But they hone their skill on a half-mooned expanse,
their Art a shoddy facsimile, a chimera of the mind,
invalid child born of a matrimony unholy!
Their world they believe they could touch in its entirety,
but their fabric extends beyond blind vision.
Do they not see? No. They could not for they would not.
Let them be content in their ineptitude.
Let them rejoice as strangers to discernment.
Let them paint the exultant fool.
Yet let us not fault them,
for they are us as we are them.
