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A TEXT POST

14/31

She called me a fucking fag, and meant it.

She said it like she wanted the grin permanently from my face
It was the first time someone used a homophobic slur against me.

I wasn’t sure how to respond immediately to this almost stranger.

I don’t want to put on a front and act like I deserve your sympathy or empathy or pity,
I don’t.
But I felt the power of that word in the instant it takes for two separate atoms to collide.

I felt every bigotive cheshire grin walking away with the same victory drooling mouth
That has wet the memory of every gay, bi, lesbian and transexual that has ever heard
The white ringing hate mushroom into the cheap fission reaction of this word.

It is this word.
And that one, too.

But it’s more.

It’s the question.
The look.

It says more.
It says there is pain here.
It says I am weak, and this is how I know it.

As the pressure dimpled my skin, I searched for the answer in a cloud of devastation I have no right to know how to navigate..

Despite being heterosexual,
I looked dead-straight into her motherfucking soul and with the most confidence I have ever had in my life said, plainly, simply,
“And proud.”

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A TEXT POST

15/31

Girl’s got a sense of humor.
That’s what you said the red tootsie pop wrapper tattoo on your forearm means.

You said your time was coming, but you weren’t done fighting yet.
Six hours later you were down to your tank top at work
Screaming, “white girl wasted! white girl wasted!”
While two tables were finishing up.

I agree your time is coming.
I can see you’re not done fighting.

But Corona be damned if you weren’t having a good time!
I mean, you told me you were still having a good time! 
You told me this while you asked about recovery.
You told me this while a Corona emptied into your throat in 3 seconds
You told me this while your tattoos sunrised from your work clothes.

I like your smile.
I like that you were hard on me the whole time I was training.
I like that you asked me about recovery.
Shit, I like that you were in and inundated in good spirits at the end of the day today.

But, damn if you aren’t an engine revving at a red brick wall when you ask me questions
Like that.

Girl’s got a sense of humor.
How many does it take to get to what you want. really. like really really.
Girl’s got a sense of humor.
She works it like a station full of dollar signs. 
Girl’s got a sense of humor.
She needs it now.
The fights almost over.
Girl’s got a sense of that.

But damn if it ain’t a lotta fun before the party hits the wall.

White girl wasted!
White girl wasted!

I like your smile.
I like your tootsie-roll pop wrapper charm.
Girl’s got a sense of humor.
But you can only take so many licks, girl, before white girl wasted becomes
Waste of white girl. 

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A TEXT POST

13/31

I suppose I should thank you now
You led me here

You are not aware
Because entire oceans separate us
And I thought and think it for the best
That we have this drowning between 
What never had life to begin.

But if not for the flecks
Of coal filtering what remains
I would not have found the love
I know. 

It was here
All along, aside the fool.

So I suppose I should thank you now
It was the marks I took from you
That allowed these hands to press
Like millions of years
And unearth diamonds of life where I fell. 

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A TEXT POST

12/31

“The Flower For The Thorns”

You can’t unknow the daddy shaped bruises in mommy’s heart

Or the absence of silence on quiet summer evenings

We can’t unknow that lovers are easily replaced by levers

A simple jarring motion and they’ve successfully moved your world

Upending that comfortable comfortable

That home you finally made in safe.

I can’t unknow you kissing him days before I was 

Set to spend the rest of my life with you

I can’t unknow you falling for a him that isn’t me

I can’t unknow that I messed up too

Or that you’ll never know that.

And maybe if I just told you, 

My beautiful flower,
We’d be okay.

There wouldn’t be a you shaped blank line

Sitting on a desk somewhere waiting to be written.

And we can’t unknow that sometimes we move on

And sometimes we sink in our beds as they fill

And we don’t have the strength to yell
Bail, goddammit. Bail.

So sometimes, maybe that’s okay.

If we could unknow even one thing

We would be bent with the idea

We would eventually want to unknow this world

Unknow the pain

And incidentally unknow the triumph that comes of it.

I don’t want to know what handing you
A bouquet of stems would have been like.

I’d rather the thorn remain.
So I don’t have to unknow the memory
Of my beautiful flower.. 

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A TEXT POST

11/31

The art of deception
Is more than magic eye
Sleight of hand
Or double talk

It is extra milk money
In my fifth grade pocket
It is two wives and none the wiser 
it is CIA, FBI, NSA, and the UN 
It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing  

It is weapons of mass destruction
14 years of “I never hit your mother”
Affordable health care
The BP clean up effort
We’re just sleeping over Aunt Maureen’s
For tonight
You clean it up
Pluto is no longer a planet
The Great Recession
We’re adding jobs
Things are getting better
Osama Bin Laden 
Democrat’s
Republican’s
Two party system
You have a choice
The terrorists or us
You have a choice
Mom or Dad
You have a choice
You don’t think I did it, do you son?
You have a choice 

It is making someone believe

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A TEXT POST

10/31

I’m looking for the leaves to
Kind of
Lead me

I’m hoping they will
Make my decisions
They will
Show me that anything is possible
Even in the fleeting moments
Before you die

So if I’m not about to do
(I don’t know, either way)
Then couldn’t I become
This thing
They wait all year
To see 

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A TEXT POST

9/31

I’m just this boy, right
And I’m sitting next to you
Trying not to fall in love again
Because
Goddammit
I can’t 

I have all the moxie
Of a pillow fort right now

But your smile pivots 
At your hips on this bench
You are moving like
A sapling now
And every word is a perfect breeze

I haven’t felt this bashful
And honest
In a long time.

Goddammit.

You look at me
With the corner of your lips 
And I know,
There is not much I can do
But put out this sign that reads,
“No Girls Allowed”

Your mettle is not to be tested
Not in that sundress.

So you turn it around
On your way in
And it reads
“Welcome”
or
“Home”
or something. 

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A TEXT POST

Why I Laugh (8/31)

Because sometimes the questions are ridiculous

Because responding to anything with

“I know it’s a little foggy, and late in the day

But, I’m pretty sure there’s a Unicorn behind me”

Is fucking hilarious

Because sometimes the questions are too tough

Sometimes life makes assumptions

And we all know what happens when you make assumptions, life. 
 

Because discussing what modern metal bands 

Could take Pantera in a fight is ridiculous

Of course Pantera would kick their ass,

Those were the fucking 80’s

And their guitarists name is Dimebag Darrel,

That’s straight up O G
 

Because sometimes outfits look funny.

Especially fanny packs.

Especially monocles.

Those are verrry diff-er-ent laughs.

Because sometimes it makes more sense than crying

Because sometimes it leads to crying.
 

Because

Shit

Sometimes

What the fuck else

Can you do
 

Besides laugh at the fact that my friend Bob had cancer

And he never smoked

And some people smoke for 97 years

And don’t even cough
 

It’s okay,

you can laugh.

That’s irony.

You can laugh because

Their smiles give us permission to.
 

Laugh

Because while Bob is lying on top of a bedpan

Without strength enough to lean past the extra long straw

That brings him water,

He still finds it fucking hilarious

That I can’t hold a straight face

When he tells me

He still does not understand his cell phone.
 

Because he has leaned in

On several occasions

Without remembering he has already told me

“This IS the best medicine.”
 

I laugh because she doesn’t know I hid her keys

So she would stay for fifteen minutes longer.
 

I laugh because

Shit

What else can you do

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A TEXT POST

The Reluctant Traveler (7/31)

He walks in with puffed sandbags covering his eyes

Like mine feel when I get out of a heavily chlorinated pool

Or after losing a fight.
 

I reach for the coffee and he hands me a cup before either one of us says hello

We both know we are here for the same thing

We both know without either one of us saying a word that we are sick, sick men who have done a lotta bad things to alotta good people
Who were probably only trying to help us

And I don’t have to ask him his story to know that’s why we make a 7 am meeting on a Saturday morning in July.
 

These rooms always feel the same

Like 40 sardines on shoddy aluminum chairs in a church basement 

Too salty for a world that will just spit us out anyway.
 

These rooms always have the same

Smell.

It is cardboard and coffee

It is waking up and boxing up the past

It is…

moving.
 

And you can see it in his eyes

The reluctant traveler

He refuses to open them

For the dawn is much too bright

And seeing the light is much too much

At this all too early hour of the day

And I ask him, how much time you got?
 

He glances past me at the clock.
 

Before he even has time to not reply

I can see it in the muscles of his cheeks

That he is not answering this question with sobriety

That he is opening up an empty box

Instead of himself

He is setting inside the fragmented remains of his pride

That have been shattered by too many times his drunken hand found his lovers face

By too many words there are just not enough apologies to erase

And not enough time in the day, to avoid them all

He is setting inside bottle after bottle on bottom after bottom

None of which was never enough

Not enough pain to drown out the histories of his life

One which he couldn’t stop writing into with all the care of a sailor on leave
 

He does not yet know that we choose to carry our burdens or nothing at all

And it is too heavy, it keeps spilling out

Every time you try to pick up the pieces

And I can see it in the shuddering muscles of his cheeks

And a shaking of a hand that starts behind the swollen lids of his closed off eyes

That he is taping and he is taping and he is trying to close the box again and again but it never stays
 

So I say 

“Today.

You got today, right? 

Just like me.”
 

The forehead wrinkles holding his eyes closed unfurled and I saw the oceans he was hiding.
 

He said,

“I’ve never been anything but a drunk.

I don’t know what I am without it.”
 

My breathe collapsed the last levees holding back his oceans

And the simultaneous splashing of the two of us trying to come up for air can make for a lotta waves

But he steadies the pond and looks over at me for the first time today, and says,
 

“I know we both given a lotta grief in our time. I know we both asked for forgiveness from a god we don’t know how to name

on a lotta days that look a lot like

…today

But, even if I don’t make it outta this world sober,

I’m gonna remember today. It’s all I got.”

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A TEXT POST

6/31

There is this theory 

That angels are good 

Because they don’t have the capacity

For evil.
 

They are washed of 

Blemish

By the rains of the lord

And renewed each day

To engage the battle for 

Morality.
 

But if you’ve ever felt

The slow burn of crack rock in your lung

The easy low of heroin in your nose

Or the jagged crystal 

Of alcohol at the pit of your gut

You know it is not righteousness

That makes angels.
 

There is a saying that goes,

“In order to know heaven, 

One must have endured hell”.
 

I believe Angels are 

Those who have returned

From lives which told them 

You can be nothing

You are gutter

The trash

The homeless wipe with.
 

There is a different kind of high

Comes from trading stolen baby formula

For a bag of glass

To still your fragmenting fingers

Those that have 

Known the depths to which

Humans can fall

Are the only ones who will ever know

The extent to which humans can rise.
 

I believe Angels have stared 

Into the gun barrel of their own soul

Enough times to know

Russian roulette is not a game

For those without heart.
 

Angels are not free of temptation

They just know what it tastes like.

They know the scream of lovers

The song of addiction

The black hole of a strangers pupil

And the dance of the devil.
 

There comes a moment of reprise,

When opportunity

Circumstance

And one solid look

Are granted these angels.

They have decided 

They will forever sleep

In the bed they have made.
 

Angels are good 

Because they know better than anything

The capacity for evil.

They are intimate with the symbolism of dawn

When seen from too many tail ends of nights.

They know the only way to tally their debts

Is with the risen souls of strangers.
 

Angels got those wings by

Breaking their backs

Sifting through the wreckage

Of their wake of destruction.

When they decided to become angels,

They had to walk through hell

In order to get to heaven.
 

Mirrors were made so 

Angels could know what it’s like

To stare into the eye of the devil.
 

Angels are good,

Not because they don’t have 

The capacity for evil

But because they know it

As the cauldron their wings were formed in.

The only thing left

Which can still get them high.

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