Ma

you are a work of art,
the celestial individual that vibrated with the desire for life,
to enjoy that which you earned
that which you fought for
that which you were willing to spit into the face of God for;

and for that you never were,
but you were and you did!
you existed and were mother to any and all that needed it,
daughter to any and all for whom you could share a space with,
wife only to one, my father,
who in your absence is still whole
and yet missing his half which completed him.

you are the resilient cry of war,
having been bred and raised in war;
you are the translucent made solid
with the childbearing hips which carried me,
carried your daughter,
and carried the daughter that came before that who lived for just long enough for you to desire her

and in the void that was the absence of her laughter her smiles her physicallity,
you filled that love into my sister's and mine's cup
until it runneth over.

you completed the puzzle of the household you built with your man,
and now we find ourselves empty of vitality
but we will find it again --
for that is your legacy;

the triumphant swan song of those who yearn and search and find and succeed.

I miss you dearly and fondly and eternally, Mother.

I hope you see your father again, for, despite all of his mistakes and his transgressions, helped form you

the woman who filled more space
than the void that you now leave behind.

Rest at peace, Ma,
for we will meet again and I will tell you all about the things i did the things that I saw,
things that you were never allowed or knew how to dream about, but that because of you,
I am able to live.

goodnight and goodnight.

1030

1030
&i'm on no. four;

what a time to be alive.

have you heard the sounds of ocean- liners against the derailing cacophony of plymouthean waves? i was once but a mere student of all, but all was too much for such a simple-ton and temptation led me to become godlike in a manner that led to delirium -- delicious and lascivious.

"i want what i want when i want it"
as of this moment, i want you: now. i want you un-burden'd by clothes or morality; i desire you lustful and tempt'd --
for truth

for enigmatic translucent epiphets
that loosen the pressure of your legs

for vile mis
understandings that lead to volominious arguments that culminate in temper tandrums deflated by the promise of bawdy transgressions against godalmighty

for aromatic evenings in which you are not you and i am not i and the w-hole hubbub is merel-y fragrance in frenetic cache

for erronious depictions of what tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows promise in lilted tongue and broken speech

for broken disjoint'd sessions of love-making made with a strong absence of love

Reading List 2017

January

01 – 07            The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts | Milan Kundera
08 – 14            Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates
15 – 21            A Field Guide to Getting Lost | Rebecca Solnit
22 – 28            The Blind Assassin | Margaret Atwood

February

29 – 04            The Ways of White Folks | Langston Hughes
05 – 11            Nausea | Jean-Paul Sartre
12 – 18            A Brief History of Seven Killings | Marlon James
19 – 25            We Should All Be Feminists | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

March

26 – 04            The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 | Richard Brautigan
05 – 11            We | Yevgeny Zamyatin
12 – 18            Malinche | Laura Esquivel
19 – 25            Bastard Out of Carolina | Dorothy Allison

April

26 – 01            Demons | Fyodor Dostoevsky
02 – 08            Demons | Fyodor Dosoevsky (cont’d)
09 – 15            Wide Sargasso Sea | Jean Rhys
16 – 22            Telex from Cuba | Rachel Kushner
23 – 29            Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed | Tennesse Williams

May

30 – 06            Mr. Potter | Jamaica Kincaid
07 – 13            3 Lives | Gertrude Stein
14 – 20            Hot Water Music | Charles Bukowski
21 – 27            To the Lighthouse | Virginia Woolf

June

28 – 03            Nightwood | Djuna Barnes
04 – 10            The God of Small Things | Arundhati Roy
11 – 17            Blow-Up and Other Stories | Julio Cortazar
18 – 24            Jim Crow’s Devil | Marlon James

July

25 – 01            The Devil and Ms. Prym | Paolo Coelho
02 – 08            White Teeth | Zadie Smith
09 – 15            Madame Bovary | Gustave Flaubert
16 – 22            Giovanni’s Room | James Baldwin
23 – 29            When Things of the Spirit Come First | Simone de Beauvoir

August

30 – 05            The Sheltering Sky | Paul Bowles
06 – 12            Switch, Bitch | Roald Dahl
13 – 19            The Vagina Monologues | Eve Ensler
20 – 26            Practicalities | Marguerite Duras

September

27 – 02            Play It as It Lays | Joan Didion
03 – 09            Tropic of Cancer | Henry Miller
10 – 16            Hope in the Dark | Rebecca Solnit
17 – 23            Justine, or Good Conduct Well Chastised | The Marquis de Sade
24 – 30            Cannery Row | John Steinbeck

October

01 – 07            Invitation to a Beheading | Vladimir Nabakov
08 – 14            Men Without Women | Ernest Hemingway
15 – 21            Wise Blood | Flannery O’Connor
22 – 28            The King in Yellow | Robert W. Chambers

November

29 – 04            The King in Yellow | Robert W. Chambers (cont’d)
05 – 11            Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison
12 – 18            Invisible Man | Ralph Ellison (cont’d)
19 – 25            The Cocktail Party | T.S. Eliot

December

26 – 02            Black Boy | Richard Wright
03 – 09            Everything Beautiful Began After | Simon Van Booy
10 – 16            The Temple of the Golden Pavilion | Yukio Mishima
17 – 23            Their Eyes Were Watching God | Zora Neale Hurston
24 – 30            A Christmas Carol | Charles Dickens

31 – CONGRATULATIONS!

A Study In Memory

i maynot be able
to

help you forget -- but,
i can help
you

replace:

mem-
ories dreams
love-
s hopes

just as youcannot help me
forget

but you have started
to helpme

re-
member

Green and Emerald

if orangeries would only, but then again why wouldnot

they -- i heard
your fragrance whisp'r'd along
the un-blossom-d organdies and
decay'd cherrie blossomss
and just like that;
when has summer ever depriv-
d us of God? or Sex (for that matter[s])
?
one is as Lavender'd as the other.

i painted you all in an acrobatic blue, but i
knew the difference; after so many affairs

only i could. do you
see mypoint...
do you still faultme for having
offered you

greenandemerald
castles? it
was
innocent (i swear)

but the end is all one
as orangeries are,

but, honestly
why wouldnot they?

A Reflection on Passion

To contemplate the vibrations of waves hitting shore, I must pause
contemplat
-ing the first time I press'd
my fingers
     into your goosebump'd skin
and you held on;

you taught me how to take a deep breath
make
-ing it last
longer than a sum
mer sunset.
Do you hear the waves?
Do you hear the sirens?

They are gasping for oxygen they don't need, and yet
what is more coveted than
That which is not for us?
Not for me?

forgive us (for we have sinned)

the Glandular hypothesis
contains something of the ephemeral, of the rotund, of the obsolete

something of the fecund, the titanic,

something of the past, the present,

(It contains no trace nor shadow
        of the future)

the hypothetical Glandular hypothesis

was designed by the hand of God, by the hand of the Abyss, by the hand on the clock that

reminds us: we are already late;

by the sacr'd hand that holds us as we cross the street, cross our hearts,
cross out the names of the ones we once lov-d,

Chin up. and Steady on.

the Glandular Hypothesis will be proven wrong December the 32nd, approximately; and June 15th, exactly.

Chin up.

what testicular vanity has lead to the procedural involvement between Faith & Reason -- anything to secure our place on top.

No. 1

To know who you are,
Where you live,
Where you work,
Where you like to drink,
Where you like to eat,
the street on which your old apartment resides with all the living memories of the boy whom you used to love (and possibly still do),
the grocery store you were against because you understand how gentrification works but they had the best selection,
the restaurants you know because other men had taken you there and you appreciated each date because you now have new recipes to recreate at home,
the library near your house that you will visit when the day is slow and if i was near we would either go to together or go on a day trip to visit your parents your sister and your niece and nephew who would (hopefully) come to see me as their uncle not by blood but by a stronger bond: choice,

to know of your existence
to feel what i feel
to feel what you feel

to attempt to fight against time
and to only wear myself out because that is the only fight that cant be won;

to know all of this and for it to still not be enough:

this is the definition of injustice.

A Study in Competition

In the time it takes us to remember,

we have missed an opportunity to
make a new memory

A Study of Existence

Time is

a matter

Of minutes
And

Seconds;

Life is

for stories
and

memories.

A Study in Bullshit

"God doesnt make mistakes"

i heard that earlier tonight,
and i thought, bullshit.

Cobwebs Soul & Stars

I am drunken with delirium;
a sentiment brought on by watching you, imagining the way you saw the room tonight. was the shade of flame the same shade that i saw bouncing off your skin?

was the bass as out of tune for you as it was for the woman sitting next to me, foot bouncing feverishly, as though horny and frustrated? did the wine taste as red as it look'd?

i watched you recreate life on a scrap of repurposed oxygen, and what a window! that pianist had twentytwofingers!
but of course he did!
how could i not see that?
What was i wearing?
did i spill any whisky or mouthwash into my beard?

I ran away to the bathroom for a respite of too many thoughts, too many lingerings and i was haunted by all the musicians doing dope and crossword puzzles; lines of coke and playing backgammon, figuring out the imperial evidence necessary to prove that you and i were there for a reason.

Perhaps not.
Perhaps the lavender i saw was a reflection of the wailing sirens i witness'd just as the drummer let one go and bop bam pat pat pat zing,
did you see that?

i know you did.
You told me so when the radio was off
and your voice carried, broke, then continued,
all the while i was wondering: when was the last time you sang for someone? when will you sing for me again?

do you hear this as a song?
shall i keep singing?

Wintertime as Isolation

been spending time throwing parties, punches, throwing away needless memories throwing fits of misanthropic festivities;
somewhere in all of this, i stare out my window seeing only trees.
Leavves falling.
Falling leaves.
Everything (re: everyone) leaves.

The leaves donot fall in a picaresque singularity; instead they fall in clumps, showing me that one needs to be a part of something in order to be remembered.

Through the wall i hear child's laughter. Either the television is on and what i hear is a recording, or the little girl next door is excited for dad to have come home. And all the while i can't stop thinking about the marmalade i never bought at the little shop round the corner from yours.

I am no closer to reliving yesterday than I am to forgetting tomorrow.

In Defense of Antithetical Illusions

Fragmented muses dance in
stolen silence, hindering an inability
to conquer myself's fear.

humbled is too strong a word,
and yet, here i am,
waiting for time to go on -- to continue;
to take me by the hand,
to listen to what i do not say out loud.
as children we cried when appropriate,
now, we tear up in empty theatre halls, film playing steadily, and yet i'm unawares
of anyone anything,

unaware to the couple sitting next to me at the bar, fighting

giving up on each other

too afraid to look into the other's eye,
because they'll see what was once good, and what still might be could be and very well is, and instead look around, at all the "possibilities"

thinking that happiness might exist in another lousy drink, over dimly lit candles, with someone they havenot yet met.
Or, what's worse, they think that their misery is more worthy of a story;

they think fourty years into nothing,
imagining themselves imagining running into someone they once loved, leaving thinking,

"what if"
& "if only"

fuck this and fuck that.

i tremble -- the world is collapsing at its edges and its core,
everyone i love comes to mind;
you, enter stage left,
and i freeze,

please be well.

A Study In What We Cannot Change

You once asked
me

to not make
you

a story; so i made you my future,

then You decided to not
be My future.

All i can do now
is make you a story.

A Study in This Moment

I am not ready for yo
u

To fall
in

Love with
Someone

that is
not
me

Passion.

Tonight

I feel in fine spirits
And for that reason your face comes to mind (clear as day),
as though you were still laying next to me;
i find your scent as though it were the compass pointing me Home,

and yet in the darkness of consciousness you are no closer to me than the end

and i am caught shaking yearning vacant elated tempted and devastatingly holy.

Bring me the water from the well you spit up. I won't drink it, but i'll keep it under my bed, just waiting for my final moment of lucid-ness:

One last drop,
and i'll surrender to the Universe

the way i did when you decided to walk in to my life; i only pray that i am capable of being that awake and that aware again.

The Perplexity Between This and That

I wonder if there's a version of us, somewhere, anywhere, in which we are laying in bed together, instead of me filling the emptiness with words, these words, like a prayer; a version of us where we're still holding hands, instead of me holding my breath, where the wind smells of chamomile and not like the roast beef my downstairs neighbor is cooking for her boyfriend who is celebrating another birthday; an us where you are happy and i am happy and your sister is still Here, and she happens to be staying with us because instead of being gone, she is here, celebrating our love, because she can see just how much i love you and how much you love me.

If that version of us existed, i wouldn't need Immortality. I would want to be mortal. I would love to fear the day i no longer existed just knowing you would miss me. Instead, i know you don't miss me, and pretending to be okay with that is beginning to really take effect on how often i smile in a day. I can count the amount of times i have smiled in the last month. With you, i could keep track of how often i didn't.

In this version of us, i have to waste time wishing you would come back.
In that version of us, i would spend my time making you laugh.

Let's be that version of us; this version is eshausting.

A Study in Distance

once,

we were distanced only
by mere ignorance of
the others
existence;

now,

what is our excuse?