Where Poetry Lives

Thousands of tongues laughing from a single mouth.

[cosmicliability]

4/30-- sorry i’m late

I am so broke I’m shattered I am so lost I have been using another’s hands As my roadmap home I am so sad I’m tired And I am so tired I’m bored

If I wake tomorrow It won’t be before noon that I stir It won’t be another morning coffee shower egg muffin combo It will be lawnmowers humming A new desert void of meaning with endless nothing Sifting through more nothing If only I could fall through it Maybe become nothing with it

I am in recovery from my adolescence Like a 10 year binge of trying to grow up In a way that didn’t suck my soul through my nose

Maybe I should be concerned with what I have missed For taking a greedy chunk out of your day Nothing has changed except my presence It would have been the same had I not shown up You, keeping lock step with every clock in the room Me, absently hoping this is something that will pass

I had a traffic jam in my living room this morning Except it was somewhere closer to the jackknifed thought wandering around the kitchen …it gets a little hazy. There was real fog involved, of course. It is a lie that I am a liar But I am not always right. (Maybe I shouldn’t tell you) I am a safe haven for criminals

I have been reading articles about people like me There are so many ways to label this I can’t be sure how inaccurate the terms are

I have started making up new words Reassigning vocabulary a code worthy of the 1930s

To be quite honest with you, my whole world has been turned up and shaken loose for change three times since Tuesday, so I am pretty sure time is just a construct

I have been dreaming so long I’m not sure I am awake Or alive Or the real difference between the two

[cosmicliability]

theft is the root of art (3/30)

We can’t all be Mozart. We can’t all be Jackson Pollock Or Björk Or Andy Warhol Or the next big slice of party in the room. We can all be fish Told to climb trees Our limbs made for swimming shifting currents around us as we wish to move, Wood made too solid for these flimsy fins And it’s always our fault. We can all be crazed our minds so full of cracks we can’t help but let some gold leak out. We can all be lost, looking for someone or just on the way home. We can all be about five years old. Ready and curious and scared.

You can’t always get what you want.

But if you try sometimes, you’ll find, you get what you need.

Come on, walk me home.

[cosmicliability]

2/30: when your poetry is unabashedly just a diary entry (and why you ought to not apologize for ever being a bitch)

i quit my job today because there was no microwave in the kitchen this shitty little excuse for a kitchenette had enough space for 3 bottles of henny, a wine cooler, a sink, and a mini fridge.

but no fucking microwave. how the fuck am i supposed to eat my hot pockets in the middle of a 7 hour shift?

the executive director decided it was fine to email the entire staff “she is nuts!” with me listed as a recipient, and clearly implied in the subject line. as though she were the first person to recognize this. as if she were the only person to notice, when she hired a poet, that i was just a little bit more than what the cookie cutter could slice. as if i were dangerous.

well, bitch, there is a reason it is my middle name.

truth is when you can’t manage to provide the means to feed someone for any large period of time you represent the part of this country that voted for trump you represent the people who would rather see a high test score and decent statistics than a happy human being that can eat warm food.

do you have a microwave at home, randee? do you only use a stove? are you afraid of radioactivity or do you just not think that it matters for people other than yourself that we can manage to run on fumes and good grades and poorly planned schedules?

if there were no kitchen at all, maybe i could look the other way maybe i could decide this was alright, we all forget stupid things sometimes. hell, even if there were no microwave in this stupid little corner but there was also no deep stock of booze i'd consider this to also be a small mistake but i know you keep your people here later than they need to be and you understaff everyone on purpose so that when you close up you can lock the door and drink to the parents that waste their cash on your services because you know these kids ain't learning shit other than how to take a god damn test and never see you again

the marvelous part about all this is that i know when i was putting my coat up in the same room as a decanter that probably cost more than my next paycheck the a/c on blast while it flurries outside that your staff hates you. your staff hates you, randee. they know you are wasting their time. what they don't know is we're all planning your demise. in the back of their minds, in their dreams, we are burning your shitty tutoring building to the ground with the kids that you shout at for not wanting to solve for x who hate you even more your shrill voice echoing their anxiety and while all of us may smile to your face we have all said you're nuts. the biggest problem is that you have none.

[cosmicliability]

the draft (2017:1/30) (happy april fool’s day!)

it was probably just last week we both tried to tell each other the same thing in opposite ways at exactly the wrong moment

a long time ago i told someone (maybe just myself) i would always be hard to love that i couldn't accept someone's affection without first smacking it on the floor and crying over the spill

i decided when i was a child marriage is much like my sister's perfume something i wanted while home alone but ultimately never be mine

i told you it would always be this way my hands too tied up in other things to hold your's and i want to say i was kidding but that would be a lie and it isn't a joke nor is it funny

[cosmicliability]

Beautiful Losers---Forever and always.

The ending of a reading series, especially one that’s run as long as Loser Slam, is a bittersweet event. Of course there were tears, sad ones and happy ones. There was much urging that “this is okay” and so many faces that said otherwise, even though we all know that the poetry goes on. In many ways, it has been an era. The rebirth of poetry to Central Jersey. A new generation was born here–metaphorically and literally.

I have spent so much time (days, weeks, hours—cumulatively, I will never be able to recount) preparing for this ending. I think there were many people that wanted to write something special for the occasion, a proper send-off poem or collection of stories that coalesced into a perfect concise description of the last twelve years. I am glad I didn’t bother trying because the only person that could do that justice was Chad himself. The guy that plainly said the most poignant things at the end of his shows, the one that gave us this space in the first place.

Still, I know I am struggling with a very bizarre sense of loss–we’ve gained a community and learned much about ourselves and each other. But who will be there to personalize each introduction in such a sarcastically Jersey fashion? Where will we go on our search through the empty nights? Who can look at a list of names and magically know who will keep the microphone warm, or which will buffer the sad shit with their quirky? What banner will unite us? Who will tell us awkward stories between poets to turn the mood around? Under what file do we put our memories now? Do they go in the archives just yet?

Some of these questions are my own attachments to this legacy, but I know there are many others that felt the “end” as a ripple through their life that finalized the changes they’ve been through. So many poems were read last night about being home, finding home, building a house or leaving one. One Loser described this as a break up. A really intense, inevitable break up with a partner that doesn’t want to go but needs to. Leaving a relationship before it dissolves from neglect, at the height of its joy, is better for everyone.

I don’t know how everyone’s lives were changed by such a simple thing (okay, running a slam is so very not simple) as a poetry reading–I just know we’ve all been shaped through this experience. There are many people who came to this place at a hard time in their lives, during their rock bottom, and an open atmosphere and good humor brought them back up.

For me, I came out of my shell as a person and was able to use Loser as a space to recognize my potential. I made the slam team in 2013 with three poets in my peer group that had been attending roughly as long as myself. That summer I jokingly referred to us as the last Inkwell Graduating Class. This was a place I went to instead of college–it was my secondary education. I didn’t always do my homework assignments or show up to “class” on time, but I was always eager to learn more. I didn’t understand until recently that my real homework was much deeper than performance or line breaks or research.

This was the first time in my adult life I experienced a genuine artistic community. Our homework has always been to get better. As writers and as people. To see something a new way, to walk away from every show feeling inspired enough to lay awake at night recalling every word that touched us. To find the closest diner so you could talk ceaselessly to your new best friends. To look past our boundaries, put our egos down, and embrace each other in the name of poetry and the guts it takes to bare a part of your soul to a room of strangers.

I don’t know what will come next, aside from what has already sprouted. There are more regular open mics in New Jersey than I ever knew about before and even more that can certainly give a nod to this reading series/slam. This community has built strong people, poets, and leaders–our “alumni” are all over, keeping the flame going. There are slams in New Jersey that definitely spawned from this beautiful place—find them, drop your ego, and find your low score there.

Between May and June is when most schools graduate their upperclassmen and send them on their way. After 12 years, Loser Slam did a lot of lasts: held their last finals, sent their last team to National Poetry Slam, and finally, at the beginning of the new school year—held their own graduation ceremony. The certificate isn’t on paper, the diploma was written all over our faces last night and etched into our hearts.

We all graduated from Loser Slam. With Loser Slam. And to my fellow classmates–the Loser Slam Class of 2016: Grace and peace unto you. Se'lah.

[cosmicliability]

Haiku (20/30)

1/30 fire walks with no man in angels' skin it sings a summer melody

2/30 ‪#‎senryu‬ All the pain I never wanted came in a package looking like you.

3/30 A sweet breeze across Smiles from relief joy and now Life made new with love

4/30 Depression takes more Space you'll never get to keep "Sad" won't run this deep

5/30 Curled up on my floor Not quite dressed but unconscious Snoring through the gin

6/30 What is victory? What do you win? Gold trophies Or eternal Joy?

7/30 Don't think I can't see Your eyes close rapidly with Drink--I am not blind

8/30 Poetry boner Intellectual blue balls Rub me down with words

9/30 Fear is in the eye Of the beholder--you don't know It will be gone: blink.

10/30 Midnight snacks--the answer After trauma and nightmares Pajama party!

11/30 Love: oxytocin Sweat, smiles, and better dreaming Chemistry is sweet.

12/30 Hold me in my sleep We can call it snuggling Or, too sad to fuck.

13/30 Guilt glosses my chest Breaking the morning in two Rage beats affection

14/30 Lethologica: A word that has escaped me Yet, nothing more apt.

15/30 Loganamnosis: The source of insomnia Poet nightmare fuel.

16/30 Spamming poet friends / while stuck in the waiting room / better than murder. (senryu‬)

17/30 Pissing for the Man Corporate hopes for hippies More water than weed

18/30 Masculinity: Boner jokes rule the whole world until you go soft.

19/30 You told me you wanted to die, but you must pay with your very life. (senryu)

[cosmicliability]

Legacy 13/30

i wanna learn how to be a better poet and by that i might mean i wanna learn how to be a better person one that understands that although poetry is the one thing i am sure i know i do well that there is something else i can cut into it may be stone or clay or wood but i want to make something new out of something that will always be

the torture of knowing that inanimate objects will live out their life to be just as they are while my hands crave something new to shape into the world i want to carve your name out of my chest i want to give more to this world than just a barrel of sentences i wish my mark was something stronger than a sonnet.

[cosmicliability]

Meta Four 11/30

i woke this morning to your bedroom. your sheets curled around my ankles and your pillow under my head. i came to find that this was your body i was in, your feet and skull. somehow overnight, we had crawled into each other's skin and wrapped our lives blanket burrito around ourselves.

i try to place our feet on the floor but your ankles take me dancing across the rug and straight into the bathroom see, even your body knows your priorities better than me

i learn more about your hands in a matter of seconds than i ever did as a friend i thought i had watched your fingers close enough but i can feel them now, and i understand the itch

i get dressed in something i think you would wear an awkward top with a swishy bottom or perhaps just a t-shirt over a dress? i'm already thinking about this too much, you would've gotten dressed 3 times over by now.

i stop, realizing the madness of this freaky friday sunday morning. for the first time, ever, i look around at who you are. how your eyes see things with the aura around lights and your heart has a beat similar to mine but still unfamiliar.

i scan your walls for signs of something only your eyes would catch tripping over familiar nicks and scratches on the wood paneling pausing fondly over record albums, each with a story i can only hear with a scent. if i did not know you at all, would this be less magic would this body be less you with me steering are you any more like me in my flesh?

i feel a pull in your gut this is not hunger yet but something your muscles remember a regret you keep deep inside something you feel all the time

i ask you questions trying to find this small yank there is a bellowing beast within you that wants only to shout through your mouth a primal scream is beckoning through your bones it only asks that we make change that the world see what can be so much better. i am met only with doubt do you not see what you can create? you have mountains and stories within you a gargoyle army, protecting your deepest treasures. i'm surprised you don't forgive yourself more often, there are so many things you do that are not mistakes.

[cosmicliability]

Rip 8/30

I feel this is the deep dive. The breath before the rumble. A farewell spoken in silence. To what, we cannot be sure Except we have felt it, certainly.

Once, I was sent to the wolves They called me puppy Instead of dinner. They sent me on the Great Hunt We are kin.

Twice, I burned alive Three times stoned Four, a cause I didn't own. I am not but lost Rather, moving faster than ever before.

On the brink of the gritted teeth I stand with palms open Ready to clench

[cosmicliability]

Footnote 5/30

footnote to bob dylan's "she belongs to me"

she's got everything she needs she's an artist, she don't look back she dresses herself in accidentally saved heirlooms from everywhere she's forgotten those boots are on purpose. the caste system in India is still much intact, with merchants and priests and scholars and farmers ---though I am not entirely sure there is still a place for a warrior class I am still sure our world has misinterpreted the warrior spirit and kept it caged inside battles with guns and arrows and swords. the tools of our war are closer, within the body and within the mind. the separation between priest and farmer, between artist and warrior are as futile as the boundaries we draw between nations or food on our plate.

I am a soldier of Art and God. I worship with an ode and paint with prayer The battle could take lives or just mine to land the final blow against the illusion that we are separate and alone.

[cosmicliability]

Blowies! For Everyone! 3/30

performing poetry is much like performing fellatio

remember to use your teeth sparingly your audience is sensitive you must remember to be tender when you can.

you may choke a couple of times the anticipation is not lost in fact, amplified.

use your WHOLE mouth, not just as a hole. remember, you are still you separate and unique this process will not claim you this is about each moment make each one count.

this isn't about love so don't take it personally just go with the flow this is about fun

[cosmicliability]

Resurrection 2/30

when she lived on the east coast her name was probably co-pilot but she never called me captain. she knew my name better than the government and somehow whispered it under the name "you". she called me her rock but she was water flowing through my impossible.

my home state was trying to kill her stealing every love letter and cent and sense of will. i still hear her laughter in my throat even when it's been months since i've heard her voice. her hands visit mine without asking while it makes me gleeful to dance inside her elbows. we called her fire goddess but she has always been my road map.

her life would be the battle to be reborn. to be made fresh. because she is more than the sunrise on lilies, the pale caress of the moon's path --she is more than morning glory or bonfire she is the whole sky blue and gold on the same canvas. from the blaze comes a dawn from the night, sways saplings.

[cosmicliability]

Sisyphus 1/30

i thought i was strong enough to begin with. i thought i could muster this boulder up the mountain alone. every morning it came rumbling down to my front door, waking me with thunder. i know it takes all day to get it back to the top so i forget to eat or shower or smile. i have forgotten that this is fruitless only that it must be done.

i am hoping it will be over soon. i am always hoping it will be over. i know one day the earthquake will be on the other side and that this ache is not eternal. that morning will start with a feast and i will take my time getting out of bed. there will be no guilt. there will be no memory of all the hours i left shoving heft away from my safety just my shoulders laying down flat and my back feeling unimaginably light. for now i will carry and push and give and try to drown things i never wanted to know.

like how i never wanted to see the anger on your face think that it was mine to fix. never wanted to be hoisted so far into the air or think that it was impossible to be done before. it is strange how love can haunt your bones even when you reject it so harshly. it is strange how hurt can separate itself from pleasure so cleanly. do you feel this too? the phantom pounding it's way through our veins even though we still remember how to swim and we never took that needle for ourselves. do you feel my tears slipping into someone else's eyes as i lay awake remembering your touch? do you cry yourself to sleep wondering how this went wrong? do you wonder, as i do, how we even made this into a mistake?

i haul you up the mountain every day and by high noon you are grappling for my throat. were you lifting me up? was i on your shoulders? if you had let me fly this whole time, would you still just be clawing at my tail hoping i'd stay grounded with you? but i am breathing now and you are an invisible monster a balled up memory of human flesh made gravel. your skin had been silky but for some reason it's all scales now. you told me this was help this was helping you were helping---i'm surprised you didn't know how disappointment could sink through your chest and dislodge enthusiasm and every single bone that you didn't know the shove better than i.

no, i'm not surprised you were blind especially since you insisted on the future. as the confusion passes, i find myself missing only the softest parts of you. not your lips but your eyes. not your hands, but your heart---your youth, your fervor. your joy.

i can feel that day coming soon when the thunder will just be storm passing with the wind and you will be story i tell over coffee as a warning to someone who has never known love before. who can't recognize their own voice being pulled into someone else's hands.

it may be a week or a month or a year away but it is closer with every sunrise. what a season it's been, love, how the spring is bringing new flowers for you to name. how the winter was the weight of chains washing away and some day soon, i will be free of your dungeon.

[cosmicliability]

You left a bad taste in my mouth this morning. I'm not sure this is different than all the mornings you greeted me with kisses or coffee or shouting.

I tried to wash it down anyway. More pancakes, more biscuits and gravy, more sausages, more coffee and juice.

Water still tastes like your heavy insistence and caffeine like your hands around my waist. I am swallowing my tears at the table, keep my red puffy away from the dining room so I don't have to share the space between us with an audience. Don't have to admit that I'm wrong or weak. Don't want to be spectacle. Don't need to be afraid that you're still right behind me trying to puppet my experience of your idea of SAFE. The right song, it’s true, but you always hummed the melody wrong with your shitty shitty timing and I still feel all the wrong keys. 

Why did you rear your ugly head into mine last night? Is it because I'm back in Brooklyn without you? I'll admit I felt your ghost wrapping around me when I stepped onto the subway your presence a different flavor of all too fucking close and I am standing in a god damn sardine can. Your fingers reach in and churn my stomach but I am calling this anxiety and asking when I ate last. What I am really asking is how could you not know I was your prey? How dare you force me to accept servitude as love? When you bent your knees and curled your spine it was a predatory crouch, pulling me closer for show, to tease me with the idea of longing.

Your voice in my ear, a whisper to block out my thoughts. You're the reason I can't talk about any of this and you're the only one I can say any of this to, you piece of shit. Thief.

[5000letters]

Peel your heart like a pomegranate. Offer it to him, palms outwards. Say “eat.” Watch him come away stained red by you. You’re in his teeth. He’ll kiss you with that mouth.

Azra.T “Fruit”  (via petrichour)

[cosmicliability]

New Year, New You

On the night the stars began to fall, I met a boy who had caged himself into his head trapped himself in sinew. His body was warmth and water and whiskey. He spoke with a playful tongue, always somewhere inside a cheek. His skin was smoother than I expected but his hands were tied up in something we couldn’t see. He hid behind his own eyes, kept his heart a dreamer while all the others were dying. He had learned how to drown in water and only years later found it kept him running from himself.

He couldn't remember more than 60 seconds at any given time yet found my name on his tongue faster than he could down the next shot. I peered past his glasses and caught him sneaking around, rummaging through memory for a burden he couldn’t shoulder any longer. I asked him about the obvious —you create a labyrinth in there, don’t you? The child smiling back had no memory of faults or cracks lining the edges. The lips pressed wide told me he had been searching for this and it was supposed to be here… or was it over there ..nevermind, how, with his hands on his hips how did you know how to find me?

I wanted to tell him, I know you because I know myself. But I couldn’t risk being so honest so soon. I couldn’t bring voice to this truth, not yet. A great Zen Master once said, two enlightened souls cannot speak for they know the same. But I was more afraid than awestruck. How is it you look like yourself in so many different ways? I didn’t want to tell you there was a part of me that has always been your’s, waiting to come home. I didn’t want to tell you that when our bodies touched it was too soon, that your breath on my collarbone was too sweet for me to let go. I want to so wholly, so tangibly, hold you close to the beating heart in my chest. I want to kiss your neck and feel your shoulder blades.

There are too many ugly words attached to what I wanted to say or do so I caught you instead. I don’t know how to do this without making it sound like we oughta get a room, but it should sound like making love. Exploding through the world, a celebration for defeating all calamity, at least for right now.

I just looked like a miracle from the outside. Our hands washed one another so that I could see that you meant it, I meant it, we didn’t have to say a single thing because we already knew.

[cosmicliability]

Even miles away and hours before I step onto the planks, my hips are bending and swaying. My hands are subtly waving to music while I control the status of the crosswalk with a wink. The busy street a mere blink of memory, the train ride just barely in the past, the smell of salt air greeting my cheeks, this embrace from such a distance, I felt you beckon me across the dunes.