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
FOX HYDE
10.23.20
see now, little fox?
see what happened?
you opened pandora’s box;
set the wick on fire
summoned the succubus
and after truths, fire, nightmares;
tealights refused to become bombs, nightmares were simple dreams,
and the truth was nothing more
than just that
unbristle that silly hide of yours
they were just shadows
GARFIELD
10.21.20
the unwilling morning is the hardest time to be awake
and 4 AM knows all my secretes
she knows i only sleep with people i love
which is probably not helping my current case of insomnia
after all,
you can’t just sleep with the moon.
my neck hurts, my shoulders hurt, my head aches
a type of tired that repeats old patterns it makes you
say the same thing twice
say the same thing twice
or maybe, instead of counting sheep i’ll
count the buckles of my future straightjacket
how many, do you think, to hold me down?
most people seek to be proven wrong
i seek to be proven human
can’t tell if i’m looking to escape my body
or trying to find it in other people
it’s better to offer no excuse, than a bad one
I don’t in fact suffer from insanity. Turns out most days I can actually say that I enjoy it. Because for fucks sake we’re all damaged. It’s a universal component of the human condition, like the stages of grief, deja vu, and expired coupons. The human brain wasn’t engineered to be othered the way insanity demands.
So fucking fuck you, you fucking dick prick brain. Fear’s a bullshit artist, and you almost had me paying museum fees. But I know there’s a pandemic out there, and courage is the ability to face what’s not defined.
I wasn’t made for predictability. And above all, I’m not willing to pay the interest rate due in debt that comes with worry. So, If I find myself in fears or desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world. So may I bless this stupid rock with some alien morality while I’m still kicking.
JAGUAR
10.21.20
once again, i lost everything i wanted to say in the things i kept secret.
i wonder what it feels like,
when i play at great dodge
another question you don’t ask
is just another blank canvas
for who’s benefit?
not sure who’s holding onto daydreams anymore
when i hand you my wrists
we buckle yours down
that unspoken agreement that knows
chains
are just my eyes looking for an exit row
i think you know what hides in my sheets
caught in the scene with the weapon
who gets away with murder when
they wash their linen because you see
no you don’t
the things you love
are still the shames old heartaches
taught me to hate
PANDORA
10.21.20
i fear you’ve seen me un-done
Sleep paralysis is rooted in problems with REM sleep. There are two categories of sleep one experiences throughout the night: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep.
i read somewhere that the reasons we don’t sleep at night, are the same reasons we don’t truly live during the day. i try not to think too much about what that means for people like me.
During REM, however, a person’s eyes will dart back and forth, but voluntary muscles are paralyzed (think your legs, not your heart). Kushida says this stage is when about 90% of dreams occur. Brain activity is similar to when a person is awake.
like your bed, or mine – all wrinkles and un-made sheets. Or the tealights on your dresser, or how the clothes i never folded in the starlight still kiss your floor good morning.
It’s coming out of REM sleep, when a person’s voluntary muscles are still paralyzed, that a person could experience an episode of sleep paralysis.
it terrifies me.
About 75% of the time, those experiencing sleep paralysis will hallucinate. “Most of the time, we’ll hear that it’s something frightening,” Kushida says.
to see you watch me frantically picking up pieces of well ironed habits. the things that fall apart shine a light on my ever so fucking precarious relationship with panic. i loose grasp of my anatomy the more time i spend in those in-betweens, watch cognizance slip from daylights, sense me crawl deeper into daydreams empty of structure or meaning. At some point they’re just open eyes making colors out of objects, a headache that doesn’t know where to hurt anymore, routine speech patterns slurred by sheer automation. in my comforts, i like to think myself disciplined enough to flip through pages of subtext. To place bets on arm wrestles between me and my imagination.
In fact, the hallucinations typical of sleep paralysis are frequently influenced by a person’s culture and described in terms of “paranormal activity.” There are descriptions from Newfoundland of an “Old Hag,” or witch sitting on the person’s body. In Japanese folklore, the same phenomenon is called kanashibari, which means “bound in metal.” Some researchers think sleep paralysis is to blame for reports of alien abductions.
that all means nothing. not when the aftershocks of grappling night fantasies leave you fog-irresponsive to mornings’ basic questions. im scared you saw me prism, and now you know me puzzle. not the pretty kind, either; pieces barbarically shoved into each-other to hold together the semblance of human. there’s remarkable shame in showing belly. i wanted so badly to make-belief i’d made habits out of power crafted substance; imagine the mortification when they’re exposed as nothing more than survival tactics. After all, what kind of person needs to make a bed?
This prevalence across cultures makes sense in light of Pennsylvania researchers’ systematic review of scientific studies across a 50-year period. The review estimates that 8% of the general population has one episode of sleep paralysis in the course of their lifetime. The study found that this number is variable within populations. For example, more than 30% of psychiatric patients had an episode of sleep paralysis, and the disorder is most common in adolescents.
im scared of the things you know now. the differences between you and i. you give up control, because you had control to give. i play hostage to my own brain, it holds me down at night. shows me faceless figures, cuts my lungs in half. it gags silent desperate hysterics while holding down wrists and ankles. the type that would make even the bravest person alive panic at shutting their eyes.
“Researchers are hoping to one day locate the genetic markers for the disorder, which has been shown to run in families.”
what scares me the most, however – is your collarbone. how it cradled my head in the throws of (what i hoped was) my country’s invisible (no one wants to see that shit) battlefield (i wish i could unsee it). chest-cavities turned pillows humming heartbeat lullabies in my ears. steady, repetitive, constant. it turns war-zone landscapes to sheep fields, and there’s no wolf here. Instead, the bruise i left on your shoulder levels with eyes choosing to see past aberrations– it skips, giddy joyous into sprinkler water as if saying “today you can’t, so ill soak it in for us both.”
“As of now, there is no cure.”
“For there is nothing quite so terror-inducing as the loss of sleep. It creates phantoms and doubts, causes one to questions one’s own abilities and judgement, and, over time, dismantles, from within, the body.”
― Charlie Huston, Sleepless
10.20.20
SNAKE.S.KIN
The Melodys I never said out loud:
I mended my heart, and made myself believe I was a chapter worth reading. Then you came along and re-wrote my story. You stapled my pages together and punched holes between my words. You played alphabet soup with the origami of the stomach I threw up in drunken incapacitation. There’s been screams in my belly since that night. Booze does that to people. It makes them stupid and like it.
You’re like that. Stupid, and I liked it. I should have known when I saw the Leo in you. The one that shines all lights on your glories while casting shadows around yous so you can feel just a little taller.
Not Leo like lion. Leo like puffer fish. I should’ve pressed needle to your bubble the first time I saw you haughtiness. I should’ve known you were venom when I saw all cheeks and no chin. Have you looked in the mirror? Even your eyebrows lack definition. But that’s what loneliness does to people, it makes them find other lonely people and tolerate the reason they were lonely in the first place. Now, what sets us apart, Un-Dear Puffer-Fish; I’ve learned to love my name while you run away from yours. One of us found company in our reflection.
In this America you so love and cherish, they are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest. Rapists cannot live with the truth: survivors cannot live without it. You’ve spent enough time in books and suds-therapy to know the verbiage, but don’t realize you wear their words like accessories. Crowd pleasing or self pleasing. Which is it?
And isn’t it sad. The question has evolved from a simple yes or no, to a “how many times? In how many ways?”
Here’s the thing. You don’t get to define yourself here. It’s pretty black and white. I didn’t want you. You didn’t listen. So, when you tell me your tongue was numb to the vomit in the back of my throat, I will tell you. “Good luck, I hope you find peace.”
Because, I’ve found mine, and nothing. Not even your denial, can take that away from me.
——————————————————————————————————————–
Give Them a Name
8 – Pollo, my brother / the neighbor made me suck his dick, convinced me it would keep him from getting sick.
14 – Ricardo, he was 22, and my only friends’ boyfriend. After he raped me, she didn’t talk to me for weeks. I tried to set my mothers apartment on fire.
18 – Thandor, North Carolina. We’d been in the cold and rain for three days. Nothing was dry. We were so desperate for a place to stay, we agreed to sleep in the mans trailer besides our better judgment. Bells and I held each other, and cried ourselves to sleep.
20 – First year in AZ. I don’t know his name. Their name? I was DD, someone roofied my red bull. Kali and Annya found me naked in the frat room. They rushed me to the hospital where they administered Flumazenil so my heart would not stop beating. They did not provide a rape kit. They took my bra and underwear.
22 – Alex, in a manic episode, left me downtown. No phone, no wallet. Three men and one ally. I came home with purple skin and a broken rib. Holly took me to the hospital, and called my mother. She was on the next flight over. They administered a drug test upon arrival. Within an hour, all results came back clear. They delayed the rape kit so much no viable seminal fluid was found.
26 – Melody. An alcoholic with an ego problem fucked me while I was black out. A feminist who says “She was asking for it.”
My best friend still blames himself for that night.
10.19.20
FOX HYDE
Orchestra Majora, tickle strings of crescendo
because the nexus is frightfully silent.
Fine, I’m a Cannibal. Deviant, eccentric, non-conformist, misfit of a rouge. But for all the crimes I’ve committed, there’s not a judge out there Good enough to sentence me.
Until then,
let otters be foxes.
10.17.20
DREAMS
I’m painfully aware that time is no currency, but on this day I’ve won the lottery.
To say something of magnetism. Your barbwire teeth and bristle skin are expert knife throwers. They fling sharp objects at anything that gets too close, stay right there, hands where I can see, I’m warning you not another step, there’s well-sheltered precious in here. You know;
your tender is no frail, and cages work both ways.
I’m milk and honey eyes, warm breezes, tree sap, and morning dew. It takes metal to hold together the supple of me.
In my daydreams, my gentle meets yours. Barbwire and metal erode away and our souls go “oh, there you are, I’ve been looking for you.”
But there are nightmares here too. Because I know the ugly side of magnetism. I hate to think what would come of our geographies if your metal meets mine. We may not be strong enough, to defuse a missile that weary.
20.16.20
FOX HYDE
i do my finest work
in the slippery draw of the moon