10.31.21

GARFIELD
welcome home little lion
your days here are counted – not sure who’s keeping track
some twisted under-creature pulling on the scales

we’re not so different
except youre better

i count sand and curse our lifespan while you headbutt jackfruit kisses in the face of cardiovascular failure

i want to be like you
learn from you

if it’s not too much to ask

3.12.21

GARFIELD
this fucking perfect cat with it’s stupid perfect personality bringing it’s stupid perfect friends through my shitty imperfect door.

GARFIELD

3.1.21
Some time ago I compared callouses to the biceps of passion, and I’d like to revisit that if I may.

My palms have been aerating clay for days now. They’ve created breathing passageways for soil, roots, and skin. Yes, skin. I’ve worked my hands to raw out the blood.

My palms are tainted salmon now, I can’t open the fridge without them spitting beet and cherry on the handle. To mitigate the damage (and pain), I’ve tucked them in lotion oiled latex gloves throughout my day to day.

When It’s finally time to plow the soil, I protect the latex gloves with garden gloves.

That keeps my hands happy, they love the plow, the shovel, the grit. Though the do miss my cat.

I’m sure there’s poetry in there somewhere.

2.27.21

GARFIELD
to hell with anemia
I’m building gardens through with the moon.

2.19.20

GARFIELD
we’re speaking through the stories of archetypes
deaf histories with legends about legends with throats too raw to tell themselves.

So we cover the drywall Mardi Gras, knowing Ash Wednesday did more than confess on its knees for the preacher.
Who can blame her.
Name one person who wouldn’t suck off sanctity-pretend for a chance at sanctuary, and I’ll call you a liar.
Or maybe you haven’t war, my friend.

Instead we thank the secrete lovers with their potions and elixirs, or the ones with clock to the timer. Makeshifters turning garden nights to fantasy. A time where friends are just that, no doctors turning stethoscopes to your cadences, Hydras spawning heads in a loved one’s confidence, no tension lines between lovers old or new, instead, a night where accidental accents fit the story-line.

for that, I’m grateful.

GARFIELD

2.12.21
the inspector came today.

He uncovered several cracks on the stucco, gaps on the windows, and shivering on the vinyl floor

among many other things

I’m not sure what encouraged him to eyeglass the un-dusted corners.

I think he may have found the masks I keep in my closet, or the ones I take off in my solitude. Maybe he liked the wings in my laughter, how they’re naked to strangers.

My mirror my have tipped him off to my timeline, too short to bother with ciphers of the mundane, or maybe it was the chimney — holding cradle to history; a decade of keep me warm by the fire, another spitting ashes from a California sky.

Maybe he knows all seven-hundred square feet of this building will be filled with home, I think he sees that in the bookshelves. All near dust-railed by book hinges. They don’t fail to rub their body against the bookshelf a few times a week. Hundreds of characters, thousands of pages, millions of words promised a place to be remembered.

Maybe he knows a short life is synonymous with defiance to impossibility.

Maybe he’s just a decent guy.

12.20.20

GARFIELD
premonition or manifestation
I doubt anyone would care to know

today we’re lunacy, and Kismet snuck a ride with La Luna.
Nothing hides here, we give sense to the absurd; painting Grey Gardens color untamed. Ankle length skirts and headscarfs turn wind sails coveting a little skin, “come here, come out now, the water is warm, the game is fun, and drinks are complimentary.”

so it does – tuna cans and stale bread pumpkin the afternoon into night, skin playing up the ankles, knees, thighs. Hair curls Halloweening with lipstick. lipstick and tits. They glue to eyes to keep eyelashes company.

this isn’t just challenging reality, this is playing hopscotch with possibility. Skipping that stone beyond chalk-lines and hitting the back of restrictions’ head. Tell them, tell the they lungs can breath when there’s purr in your lap, and wizards deserve black cats as much as witches do.

like butter. bread, sex, and butters.

12.20.20

GARFIELD
I’m still trying to determine the difference
between different, and unusual

Grey Gardens are unusual
I guess that’s what happens when luxury is your birthright
the weight of so much gold bends the mind
it re-shapes the senses

Like I re-shape her hair
Curls and lipstick
lashes blinking lust into my spine
cracked, wanting to bookmark how her dress
highlights every curve used to hiding behind collar shirts and trousers
this, this I treasure in my my my
memory chest
a different look to the same eyes

unusual would be giving my number to a man with too much nerve
to roll back his car
at our exposed thighs
how fucking dare you
claim right to my attention
tongue hanging out your mouth – more canine than human

unlike you, feline
who wondered in tonight.
different, or unusual?
you turned my home neverland
a place that time forgot
or maybe, a place holding it’s breath,
hoping time wont stumble upon it.

It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. And I try to dream responsibly, but I couldn’t have dreamed you into existence. Because to love, so purely, so quickly the same being that shuts your throat closed sounds more nightmare than dream. Whoever you are; not unusual nor different. The same togetherness of destruction that comes knocking at my door.

You are proof, that sometimes Kismet just happens.

12.14.20

GARFIELD
and after cleaning the mucus off the walls
cleaning the fallen leaves from the closet
dusting baseboards and throwing away the rot in the fridge

I figured I’d find “my home” again.

Instead, I find new smells, better lighting, less clutter, more calm.
the person I was before the leeches stuck to these walls
is not the same person I am once I finally burned them off

that feels good.

GARFIELD

12.5.20
linen forts are as much blanket screams of romantic inclination, as they are last ditch efforts to disprove my tendency towards an inherit avoidance for these types of things.

So, wont you do yourself a favor and shut up about it? You, like everything else, will grow, get old, and die. So take your new romantic tendencies in stride. Put them in your pocket, polish them a place on your skin. You either learn to idealize them, or you let them weigh a hole in your pocket.

You’ve changed. It’s okay if you didn’t see it coming. Probably for the best anyway. Pride would have blocked the door to momentum.

Don’t blame pride. She’s the gatekeeper between the world, and our most core. In this scene she’s just doing her job.

Sometimes, however. Growth doesn’t need core’s permission (or acknowledgment for that matter) to mold our new skin. She sneaks in through a window, leaves footprints on the walls, drinks all your tea and leaves the soda behind. It isn’t until we find ourselves picking rose petals from the garden, that we realize there’s been a guest in our heartscapes.

Pride here, can do nothing but look back and guard its new.