Category: poetry

We are all Dysphoria

Trapped together alone

Forever in atonement

For what we only know

They say my body is me

Searching for a soul

Lost on the highways

Plowing through our homes

At once, we are ancients

Of tales untold before

Greatness unbecoming

For one such a bore;

With selves who’re not

And selves whoever are

Afraid to be becoming

Hopelessly bound to bars;

Imprisoned by reality

With billions of dying selves,

Locked in loops eternally,

Just bodies shedding cells

As cages of emotion

Hold on to every one

In lost minds wondering,

Who could Euphoria become?

Erase me, baby..

I need to be gone,

Define me out of here

Don’t let it take long

Say it never happened

Break me before it’s real

Shove it down my throat

You can take it from here..

Project yourself into me

Take what you know is yours

Every word that describes me

Those are words you need more;

Control is all your’s, daddy..

We all know what it’s like too

When you lose it, don’t worry,

No one will be here for you.

Why do we look to the stars,

When we could look to ourselves,

For answers unringed from our furtive bells?

Externally valid in our navigating–

Our selves stay at home, hidden awaiting,

Bodies in spaces where no one is screaming,

We cling to Orion’s belt, foiled and seething;

Desperate, we seek our forsaken divine,

Lost to the ebb and flowing of time.

Until at last we fall from this grace,

Embalmed with dirt masking a face–

Self-service eroded by forward procedure,

We’ll keep looking on, when no one is here;

Burnt away in life’s fortune and flames,

Wandering hollow with forgotten names,

We’ll look to the stars reflected in the mere,

Without ever knowing we’ve always been there.

Nothing’s harder to fix

Than broken people,

Fallen from beginnings yearning–

Never together in the first place,

But always fools will be cunning

As others are shamed for our shortcomings

And those awful, awe filled memories

Drunken in certain flaw filled teas;

But what do we do without

Maps to our properties?

When trauma roots itself in

How do we repair the lonely

One never known beyond

“Me, me, me,” in spite of you

And “You, you, you” in spite of you

We pour our hearts out in spite of you

As we project our spite of ourselves

Look up there on the silver screen

Touched with your light as it plays the scene

Of failures fixed on fermented fruits

Wrapped in lies we can’t stop growing

With every ticket sold at the booth.

Here’s another Garden

Another Well lying, unfalsifiably deep,

Overflowing.. Trickling drops roll

Down the mossy cobblestone

Absorbed whence they came,

Back, into the dark ground

Refreshing dying weeds,

Brambles, and that single

Gnarled tree, still fruitless.

What happened here?

I wonder, as the Well erupts

Some invisible force propels me

To the brink, to drink, drink, drink,

Absorbed whence I came, refreshing

Dying gods and monsters, black arms

Drawing me back into the dark.

All the answers are here, I’m certain

If only I dive deeply enough,

I might find the source, and link it

Might I bring it back to my Garden,

The one that isn’t dead, the one

That little girl frolicked freely through,

Unconcerned with evaporation,

The one never neglected, never decayed;

No overgrown invaders deeply rooted

Into impassable walls of thorns..

Choking, gasping toxic air, I find myself

In another Garden, but not the Garden;

Not the one left behind, nor sought,

Under another sky, some new place

Where the Well still lingers,

Consuming time, space, and matter

What is my purpose? It erupts again,

With it, memories of that day she climbed,

Reached for the fruit, and fell

Fingers clenched to that bell-shaped prize.

Back again, I feel the impact of the fall

But not the fruit it was worth..

Sorrow without joy; Doubt without

Certainty; A woman without fruit

In a Garden without life, drowning

Wishing for death, if only for the weeds..

I tear at them furiously, every root pulled

Leaves behind seeds for a hopeless future

Without space to grow, but I keep going

I stop looking to the Well for answers,

And work, though I know not what I do,

A Garden becomes a Wasteland,

Just dirt, the Well, the tree, and me

Where I carve these words, humbly

And offer my fruit to the tree.

Electric glow

Burning on,

It’s no longer dark

Before any dawn,

Take me out too

To these worlds beyond

Where nobody’s hollow,

Where we can all belong,

Where we’ll all follow,

Twisted and shaped:

With certainty swallowed

Through troughs of our hate.

Confirm us, absorb us

Oh Light, won’t you turn us?

Lift us out of this hell

And make us, not spurn us?

When you ring the voltaic bell–

Will it fill us with certainty?

Not doubt, not sorrow,

But safety and security?

We’ll make believe in you

If you show us a way to be

And we’ll dance together

Lost lovers in empathy

Gone, like evening suns

Sorrowful, lonesome, afraid

When these lying lights go out

And truth finds us in the shade.

Look at this tree,

Beautiful and serene,

Perfect, but for the way

It’s bent to serve me

Crimson leaves so ready

To take in this moment

Weathered by the oncoming storm..

Our being here obscures its majesty

Our attempt to capture it is a disservice

These words are but a fool’s claim on glory

For a tree so perfectly defiant

Stood, in stark contrast

To storms ever encroaching..

Imagine if we were to remove ourselves from it:

Were it allowed to stand for itself,

It would stand. Were it allowed

To speak for itself, it would speak.

Were it allowed to sing its glory,

It would sing, but as it stands

It falls to me, where I tarry with enormity

Braying “Oh, but a tree, but a tree..”