1.15.21

MIRROR
we’re tempting vice while flirting with contingent
today, three is company while four is a crowd
and she crowds my friends mind with fire and gasoline.

I watch her spit venom in the psyche, turning attributes into demons replaying the same song until the lyrics scar away the light in their eyes.

She wants you to be meat from the canyon. Please, don’t let her sear the purity from your air.

MIRROR

11.2.20
Page of Cups crossed the Fool.
or did this Fool cross you?
what if I told you, just minutes ago I used these same hands to claw into my calm.

You’d hardly believe peace like this could be so violent. Maybe you can. I’m not catching those looks you keep throwing my way, let them go over my shoulders, and bounce off the walls. Breath expectation in, and breath me out with it. We’re more mirrors than weasels, you and I. There’s beauty in that, I promise.

MIRROR

11.1.20
What I’ve learned from you, in Death; There is nothing humble about Grief. She struts the refuge of your sanity at her own time, within her bidding, at her calling. Siblings teach you the value of sharing that way.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry, or bitter, not anymore. Grief, after all, is Love’s gentle reminder to not take up too much space. Admittedly, in your case she may have overcharged the noose tax of bearing the unbearable.

Another thing about grief; she’s not without mercy, she’s the first to weep for our original sin. In a way (a completely unpredictable way), that’s how she whispers her presence in our lives. All contraction and expansion. Sometimes present enough to touch, filling up the hole love dug in subterfuge. Still, we have the audacity to call it “empty.” There’s nothing empty about this. When she visits she unpacks lead on our feet, deposits salt in our eyes, and fills fills fills fills until we’re so full, even the starving wouldn’t dare touch another meal. It’s birth, or, rebirth in your case. Labor pains so horrid, they’d make any mother think the outcome of pregnancy is the origin story behind exorcisms.

I thought I’d had grief figured out. But to know grief is to know love, life, death. To know you, but I forgot you. Grief draws me a map to find the bits of you I neglected; I find crossroads and rest stops in songs you liked, books you read, habits you could never really kick. Do you still bite your cuticles?
I made the mistake to treat this sadness like any other meal, humble pie, sugar loaf. Grief is broth to the sick – you can’t separate the marrow from the spoon, and there’s no leaving the table until every last drop is drunk. And drink you must.

Refuse Grief’s medicine, and it will be your marrow’s turn to steep the water.

10.30.20

MIRROR
You pull your pen from your pocket and cross out madness
angry, manic lines, pushed and rushed on top the things
that scare you

I know that look; bitterness that resents the moment for showing too much
for showing anything at all
an angry foster shoving ferret thoughts back in their cage

but those words are the perfect punctuation to our chaos
the world needs your madness to exhale
even when they call their in-breath sanity

Once you called my eyes kind. That was morning.
Tonight, you call them thunder; and yeah, I might downpour on your lightning if you let me, that’s what happens when the moon is your only witness, but don’t be fooled to think sunrises will pause for our Autumn.

I can’t tell if you feel seen, or sane with me.
Both answers scare me.

MIRROR

10.26.20
To hell with daylight and its half-harted satisfaction.
Moonlight, you bring me guitar strings, culture, and released rage.

You have that effect one me. On people, I think.

Asking the questions no one dares ask. Chipping at my ice chest to dig for water. I melt on your lips the way ceramics melt on your bat.

You have no idea,
The weight that lifts with
no stone left un-turned.
and im so amethyst in your hands.

MIRROR

10.24.20
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
they kind of suck, you know.

sorry, sorry. That’s not to say you have bad taste.
But you do.
like the time you locked yourself in a bathroom crying at Sundance because the candles were made of beeswax and you couldn’t stop feeling the sting of the deceased.
or that other time you called me selfish for carrying my clothes in plastic.
My only change of clothes.
It was raining.

I don’t mean bad taste as in “it all sounds the same.”
I mean bad taste as in: How dare you think it will stay the same? How dare you not give the world the benefit of the doubt? how dare you not give me the benefit of the doubt? Bad taste like, we’ll never know if you thought yourself too much, or thought us too little.

At least when you were breathing, your voice-box gave us choice. Now you’ve muffled it with un-processed grief and left behind the climax of your disappointment as a legacy.

That’s what happens when you leave in a hurry. You leave things behind.
Unfinished bits waiting for the sailors knot to make them a little less loose, a little more beginning. That baggage stings harder than honey.

I can say this: Your chaos echoed. I found me digging for feeling in strange bodies, looking for catharsis in connection. The one you took, is the same I press against pillows and nothing feels good. Nothing feels good. Nothing feels good. Nothing feels good. Nothing feels good.

And I know, I know. I should be happy for you. You finally got what you wanted. And I know it’s selfish to rest my marrow to the bone and want to call it life, but when you lost your hope — you took a piece of mine with it. Because what good is the world if all the best ones keep on stinging our feet?

I’m angry at you.

MIRROR

10.23.20
when i was a kid, i watched a documentary about a momma leopard and her cub.
the cub was killed and half eaten by the time she got back from a hunt.
she cried for hours with the body between her paws, called out for it to come back (from where?)

then she ate him.

i’m grieving you like that. devouring old tunes and habits of yours to feel a little deeper.

i haven’t cried you out, i don’t know if i will.

i hope you feel honored in this grief.

this is all i can say right now, you’ve built a damn around my feeling.

i’m waiting for the avalanche

MIRROR

10.24.20
there’s dissonance between your skin and mine
all seven of your instruments
is what happens when you soothe caffeine inflammation
with golden milk,
weighing mixtures of turmeric and black pepper against untamed addictions

the ones we use to fill up the holes from our uprooted

we still find herbs in city-scapes
there’s still a garden in your skin

maybe that’s what happens
you loose your words the way i loose my touch
so we talk with the space between our eyes
you say mine are kind
i tell you they’re just tired
but you’ve got a red sun on your card that says tomorrow there’s saguaros
even if we can’t tell
dawn from dusk

10.16.20

MIRROR
oh shut up. shut up. shut up. shut up.
let’s set the record straight;
you left. I stayed.

im still here, i simply choose not to make time for insolence
im building a person of action and crisp
this chaos takes nurturing, it takes dedication, it takes focus and perseverance.

there’s a storm brewing in me. im electric with action and disposition. no longer splashing with my rainboots in little mellow ponds. i want ferocity, i want passion, i want feeling. this tepid, luke-warm, perfunctory, mediocre-briefness of “settle” does not compliment the tsunami in me.

im not playing this game anymore – recess is over
ball is in no court, i’ve passed my judgment, in this trial im jury, and executioner.

meet me where im at, or take your broken strings and leave

MIRROR

9.10.20
You seem to jump from my fingers every time i try to put you down on paper
like waking up to eclipse or twilight,
not knowing if the dawn brings constellations or falling oceans.
I bet your mother feels the same way. Which reminds me, when was the last time you talked to her? You should call her.

I imagine she worries about you. And I don’t just mean your nail-polish and dresses. Although if we’re being frank, yellow is so not your color.

You’re more prism spectrum on a cloudy day. Fractal practicality reduced to humanization. Iridescent opaque. Parchment paper dipped in pastel. The aftermath of oil paint picking a fight with waterwheels.

I guess you could say I’m angry.

When you said I’d lost my madness; remember, when you chose to Pied Piper roaches, it was your sadness looking back at me. And yes, I’ll agree the hand dealt to people like us tightropes the unconventional, but we are still here. There are only two jokers in the deck.

Dear friend, I’ve climbed more than just magnolias since I saw you last. Take this as a lesson; only on my worst days I may call my soul Burden.

It’s time you stop calling yours Curse.