The first time I ever felt like God, my child
was looking up at me, eyes wide around
pleading with me "make it different, Dadddy!"
maybe it was a rainy day, or something else,
a toy lost, a fever unbroken. I felt like God
because this is what it feels like to fail
something you created that has faith, believes
you can do anything. I know this isn't true,
even though I created things in my image,
like children. You make mistakes, you try to
unmake the image of Gods that created you,
This is how you know how Gods screw it up
on a regular basis. Parents are not Divine.
We are just another part of a grand design
we had no part of creating- an genetic line
of things angelic, infernal, but too often,
simply mundane. But everything is magic
tricks when your audience is so trusting.
Parenting is smoke-and-mirror special-effect;
a bright face we put on for our kids, that says,
I know what I'm doing and I've got a plan
behind all of this, I hope. We are making it
up as we go along, juggling while we struggle
to read books on perfect juggling, no mistakes;
knowing we are going to drop the ball sometimes,
the way Gods do. We are going to scar our kids,
cause them to reject us & pray, instead to music
of Gods closer to their own age. And if we win,
it is when we get to take off the Godhead, behold
eyes that know us now as human, and love us still.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Letter from The Brain to The Thighs
Remember when we used to walk
six or seven miles, just because
we liked walking? Remember
climbing mountains? You'd shake
from excitement of mounting
and descending mountain after
mountain after mountain range,
and I'd be high from the fresh air.
We lived in a body once, united
in purpose, but something has come
between us, and that was a backbone
gone to ruin. Now we are slow slide
avalanche down, we are collapse,
we are sand castles at high tide,
we are ramshackles, awaiting a match.
I'm saying all this because I believe
you are one of the few body parts
that still work. I don't count myself.
These days we walk, don't run, don't
climb, breathe bad, sweat the terror
of intimacy, call the sun the hideous
daystar it is, swear off hope as cruel
deception, and move slower, every day
almost every part, moving slower.
six or seven miles, just because
we liked walking? Remember
climbing mountains? You'd shake
from excitement of mounting
and descending mountain after
mountain after mountain range,
and I'd be high from the fresh air.
We lived in a body once, united
in purpose, but something has come
between us, and that was a backbone
gone to ruin. Now we are slow slide
avalanche down, we are collapse,
we are sand castles at high tide,
we are ramshackles, awaiting a match.
I'm saying all this because I believe
you are one of the few body parts
that still work. I don't count myself.
These days we walk, don't run, don't
climb, breathe bad, sweat the terror
of intimacy, call the sun the hideous
daystar it is, swear off hope as cruel
deception, and move slower, every day
almost every part, moving slower.
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Pain Scale for Fossils
(after Liv Mammone, after Taylor Carmen Savath)
... and how would you rate your pain today?
1. This is pain where you are in bed. I am
in bed, too. While you call this a "sick day"
I call it Good Morning...
2. Good morning. It is going to rain.
3. Good Morning. It's going to rain fire.
4. Pain is a forecast. Pain births itself
like a mythology. These arms of mine
are Egyptian Wings, legs like Roman
columns. I know my body is a temple;
my doctor speaks only in dead languages.
5. This is an unsure place, the knife's edge
of my body, the tipping point between, "Is this
as bad as the pain will get? Am I going back
to bed, or spend the day, walking in the rain?"
6. It is raining. It is always raining, or going
to rain, or threatening. My plans are rice paper.
7. Fifteen years ago, the pain that kept me in bed
for eighteen hours a day, is what I now call "ow."
Someday I will call "7" a favorite lost world.
The pain settles in layers, like fossils, like epochs.
8. Good morning. It is raining Tyrannosaurs.
9. Rain as soothsayer, rain as oracle, as doom,
as pestilence, and always, and entropy, and cause
of death attributed to... no more words fit here.
10. End game. Extinction event. Rain forever.
... and how would you rate your pain today?
1. This is pain where you are in bed. I am
in bed, too. While you call this a "sick day"
I call it Good Morning...
2. Good morning. It is going to rain.
3. Good Morning. It's going to rain fire.
4. Pain is a forecast. Pain births itself
like a mythology. These arms of mine
are Egyptian Wings, legs like Roman
columns. I know my body is a temple;
my doctor speaks only in dead languages.
5. This is an unsure place, the knife's edge
of my body, the tipping point between, "Is this
as bad as the pain will get? Am I going back
to bed, or spend the day, walking in the rain?"
6. It is raining. It is always raining, or going
to rain, or threatening. My plans are rice paper.
7. Fifteen years ago, the pain that kept me in bed
for eighteen hours a day, is what I now call "ow."
Someday I will call "7" a favorite lost world.
The pain settles in layers, like fossils, like epochs.
8. Good morning. It is raining Tyrannosaurs.
9. Rain as soothsayer, rain as oracle, as doom,
as pestilence, and always, and entropy, and cause
of death attributed to... no more words fit here.
10. End game. Extinction event. Rain forever.
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Surrender
It was a mundane enough place for a miracle
to occur. Doctor's office maybe, but maybe
it wasn't there at all. It could even have been
talking to my therapist. What I mean to say
is that it was a Wednesday, nothing special
about it, just the end of a long, useless battle
with myself. Addiction was still killing me
awake every morning & I couldn't remember
what consent even was, but it must be a lot
like self-respect: a mythical, hypothetical
thing I had traded long ago for a few hours
of feeling like someone else. Anyone normal.
My addiction and I were a winning team, if
by winning, you mean, on the couch, unable
to move, or uninterested. "This is a victory,"
it purred, a silken tongue, a certain poison,
as I stuffed my face into a horn, to muffle
the noise of living. But that horn was my life,
trying to wake me up. Addiction convinced
me life was my enemy. Told me to go relax,
have a drink, play Russian Roulette, blinded
to what this war did to everyone & everything
unlucky enough to be around me. Red flags
sprouted like grave markers & I'd be dead now
if I hadn't fucked that up too, more than once.
In 2013 I would go to bed, plain begging God
for death every night. That's why I woke up
so angry every God damned morning. So hard,
at the time, to have seen victory in not dying.
When finally surrendered it was a quiet thing:
"I think I have a problem, and I don't know
what to do about it, but God, I'm ready to try."
I didn't surrender to anyone, I just gave up
trying to die, and asked for help. I was tired
of taking myself hostage & demanding ransom
from the past. I dared to be selfish because
I had to try & do something good for myself.
I took a lot of things freely: suggestions, advice,
faith; things I never had before I let them in.
Now the sun shines, or it rains; things go on
as they had when I wasn't trying to die fast.
I've turned down the noise inside my head,
most days. I was given my life back. I keep it
in one place only" today. I sleep well, or not;
but I no longer pray to die before I wake.
to occur. Doctor's office maybe, but maybe
it wasn't there at all. It could even have been
talking to my therapist. What I mean to say
is that it was a Wednesday, nothing special
about it, just the end of a long, useless battle
with myself. Addiction was still killing me
awake every morning & I couldn't remember
what consent even was, but it must be a lot
like self-respect: a mythical, hypothetical
thing I had traded long ago for a few hours
of feeling like someone else. Anyone normal.
My addiction and I were a winning team, if
by winning, you mean, on the couch, unable
to move, or uninterested. "This is a victory,"
it purred, a silken tongue, a certain poison,
as I stuffed my face into a horn, to muffle
the noise of living. But that horn was my life,
trying to wake me up. Addiction convinced
me life was my enemy. Told me to go relax,
have a drink, play Russian Roulette, blinded
to what this war did to everyone & everything
unlucky enough to be around me. Red flags
sprouted like grave markers & I'd be dead now
if I hadn't fucked that up too, more than once.
In 2013 I would go to bed, plain begging God
for death every night. That's why I woke up
so angry every God damned morning. So hard,
at the time, to have seen victory in not dying.
When finally surrendered it was a quiet thing:
"I think I have a problem, and I don't know
what to do about it, but God, I'm ready to try."
I didn't surrender to anyone, I just gave up
trying to die, and asked for help. I was tired
of taking myself hostage & demanding ransom
from the past. I dared to be selfish because
I had to try & do something good for myself.
I took a lot of things freely: suggestions, advice,
faith; things I never had before I let them in.
Now the sun shines, or it rains; things go on
as they had when I wasn't trying to die fast.
I've turned down the noise inside my head,
most days. I was given my life back. I keep it
in one place only" today. I sleep well, or not;
but I no longer pray to die before I wake.
Monday, April 2, 2018
The 13th Amendment Trick
They say the best trick the Devil ever pulled
is convincing people he doesn't exist. But no,
that isn't true. And it wasn't the Devil that did
it. It was Man. A magic man saying, "Now you see
European... and now you see White!" or "This was
something undiscovered, this place, the people.
Now watch as he pulls Christianity out of a hat! And
cheap resources as if from thin air, and not
people's bodies. Please, trust him with your body...
now, watch him red cloth, watch him hard hammer,
look what he has done to you, body and country.
changed you from Human to only three-fifths;
changed you from your home to somewhere
in Hell; changed you from Free to Owned, a thing,
property. And when America said, "Show's over!"
back in 1865, he said, 'Just watch!' and took ahold
of Freedom and abra cadaver... turned it into Prison
Labor!" And the Gods of Industry, black-hearted White
Men said, "This is Good!" and Presto! pennies fell
from Heaven, splashing on a stage already blooded.
is convincing people he doesn't exist. But no,
that isn't true. And it wasn't the Devil that did
it. It was Man. A magic man saying, "Now you see
European... and now you see White!" or "This was
something undiscovered, this place, the people.
Now watch as he pulls Christianity out of a hat! And
cheap resources as if from thin air, and not
people's bodies. Please, trust him with your body...
now, watch him red cloth, watch him hard hammer,
look what he has done to you, body and country.
changed you from Human to only three-fifths;
changed you from your home to somewhere
in Hell; changed you from Free to Owned, a thing,
property. And when America said, "Show's over!"
back in 1865, he said, 'Just watch!' and took ahold
of Freedom and abra cadaver... turned it into Prison
Labor!" And the Gods of Industry, black-hearted White
Men said, "This is Good!" and Presto! pennies fell
from Heaven, splashing on a stage already blooded.
Sunday, April 1, 2018
Anniversary
To miss a thing
that you don't want
back, create a target
then refuse yourself
any means of reaching
it. You stare at it,
target stares back.
A moment hangs
in the still air. Maybe
it's raining, this wet
thing your face becomes.
Nothing happens, nothing
changes; nothing is done
or over. Everything hangs
like a moment in between
non-thought and inaction.
Still- there is you, the target,
the rain, if that's what it is;
a battle that hasn't been
fought again & yet lost again
if that's what it really was.
that you don't want
back, create a target
then refuse yourself
any means of reaching
it. You stare at it,
target stares back.
A moment hangs
in the still air. Maybe
it's raining, this wet
thing your face becomes.
Nothing happens, nothing
changes; nothing is done
or over. Everything hangs
like a moment in between
non-thought and inaction.
Still- there is you, the target,
the rain, if that's what it is;
a battle that hasn't been
fought again & yet lost again
if that's what it really was.
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