[ra-venous]

warrantless

Cooler air speaks to bones like

the warmth of your forgiving hands on my thighs,

telling me i'm beautiful

(which is refreshing considering the

multitude of bodies i've scanned with my fingertips

lately,

only to leave empty-handed, or

understaffed in the department of connection).

But it only comes, of course,

with the price of being impermanent and where the

muddled communication of silence seems

all the more confusing.

Because last night felt

as easy as five-year olds

catching fireflys in mason jars

(with complementary knots abound in stomachs

due to the unexpected way I slid your clammy palms toward my chest,

cupped, and

you moaned,

and then apologized,

claims of not meeting male expectation but,

I assured you it was my preference,

and then there seemed calm).

But the shame you felt from muffled sounds

under intensity of present feeling,

flustered and, alight with tension flooding capillaries,

I feel in giving voice to feeling as much,

this much, and in the notion that

since last monday's passing i've repeated,

over and over,

the playlist of particular voices you'd shown me and said,

half shy, or nervous, or maybe as if it'd have been to be expected,

that music is stabilizing for you, grounding.

So i've been bicycling, listening,

resounding the sounds in my head, and singing.

Those songs are swimming in your energy and

make moments feel right when I

let go of handlebars and pedal with hands in air and

body in motion and

remember. And

it feels right.

Smiles stuck to lips all days subsequent.

Remember, too, that

for some reason

I keep discovering fleeting people who

make lasting imprints in my ribbon,

rhythm,

though it feels so disjointed and

I feel tripped up on

moments and mementos of people

slipping in and drowning out, and

I know I feel safe and content in my

solo morning rituals and memories,

it's just that interjections and

unexpected ease make a life less lived alone

tempting.

[occasionally, eh, often, I write and find that the words for which I wish to convey escape me or rather, convey in the negative some things in which I have left out—although I suppose one cannot be expected to put on display a 360-degree version of oneself within a verse someone else is to read aloud in their own voices. . . . etc etc etc]

[ra-venous]

ybor: friday night lights

juxtaposed; you live side-by-side with your neighbor yet you've never even seen how they live. at least, not lived it.

you're in denial as you walk down the roads--juxtaposed-- is your car next to their sleeping bodies tucked beneath the church awning.

but I always smile when I walk by knowing that there's life in those bones and that the sheets which cover them, well, I try and give them more warmth with my mind. although I always remember to keep dollars in pockets in case eyes ask, and they often do.

the streets of Friday-night crowds yield bare-fleshed juveniles, frat boys, and hungry eyes scoping out meat to bring to bed and wake up to (or not) the next morning.

you live on their doorstep tonight, those who make homes of streets. you call them "freak," you deem "untouchable,"

and the 62-year old Shirley tells me she smells like piss but she can't help it and that you've neglected to look her in the face and all she needs is 12 dollars for a bed because tonight her home is raided by those who overlook the lives of "other," and of course, the pigs.

[ra-venous]

fright

i feel fringe and beneath this skin lies a desperate fire sunken into bones and flows through blood and i feel fringe with tear stains soaking every page of work i managed to pour out this afternoon because days off never feel like days off and if they were i'd probably criticize myself for it anyway but i feel fringe and it's hard to go to work and try to blend into the atmosphere where your mother and brother and old friends reside when i feel fringe and i can't complete sentences without bringing up allegations cast onto this culture which isolates us who need you most and people write it off as "too serious," or "depressing," or "abrasive," or "we have to walk on eggshells." i feel fringe when i feel so disconnected and the only ones who seem to console me are those trapped behind the barbed wire and i can only see his expressions through the indented chicken-scratch and it mirrors me closer than anyone out here.

[ra-venous]

after valentines

you asked me to write words to your chords because on occasion you'd play them and notice that something was missing. but we can't contrive song like we can't contrive connection or maybe that's just for the honest ones.

i sip coffee near unopened blinds although light breaks through each un-insulated crack in this house-- eventually requiring us to rent a heater which now makes itself practical by acting as a perching spot for cats. but i woke up alone today, so i sip with silence.

i expected to have a headache this morning with the amount of tears falling from eyes post-study beers last night. because after we talked i left to read about kidnapping and 'mayhem' and why common law applies gender to certain laws.

it seems slowing down is impossible. while you'd take walks in the woods i'd sit behind glowing blue lights of laptops and textbooks or standing for 8 hours at the whims of a customer. i always wanted to walk with you but it got to a point where you wouldn't even ask because you knew i'd turn down any offer it got to a point where i didn't even know why.

the resent that sometimes lies at the intersect of romantic love like when your lover is experiencing things you aren't or can't or-- it feels so immature. like the intersect should be, vicarious happiness and love for the unexpected experiences of another but all i could feel was anger sometimes.

you asked me to write lyrics to your chords with the chorus of 'she wants to be better.' although i know it was just a thought. it was gleaned from my previous vocalization that i knew i wasn't being all i could.

i always seem to think i'm ready for certain things like i always know what i need. . . for six months but after that, my mind becomes muddied. but i've never loved someone and let them go so soon even with pretext or context or reason. i keep wondering, 'why am i just not trying harder?' is there really a stick to measure by, and what is the right behavior? we only grasp by example, but the examples this place gives us aren't so clear.

when energy collapses it seems we can't trace the intensity, like, where did it move to, and who's got it now? but maybe i wouldn't make the best use of it anyway.

[ra-venous]

aquarius

yesterday was your birthday and i called you from outside the jail orient road near the hardrock casino we used to joke about going to in old age, together, texas hold 'em and father-daughter fun like when i used to watch you play world poker from behind the computer chair and you'd sit for hours spitting ice back into cups filled with high-fructose corn syrup and maybe some captain morgan or maybe that wasn't until later

who can remember.

you didn't pick up the phone but i wasn't surprised and i left you a voicemail in a somewhat sympathetic voice but i didn't expect a call back and i didn't really want one.

but i still cut oranges the way you used to for me when i was 7, 8, and on the way the bar would do it when you ordered a drink with citrus wedged into little arcs like half-smiles, you always cut fruit like they were meant to be in cocktails and i still eat mine this way when i don't feel like dealing with rind and sticky fingers atop keyboards or armchairs or cats. you got fired for drinking at the bars where you worked with the half-moon citrus and sliced strawberries.

and i go by most days without thinking about you, really, because it doesn't matter and we all have to move forward but yesterday was your birthday and i was reminded of driveway sing-a-longs to the stars in my faded pink nightgown i was 5, you were young, too. and i looked at you like i did the stars so big, and bright, and unreachable in certain ways but so close to me in others. stars keep shining until they burn but you were always dulled. i looked at you like the stars when i was 5 because it felt so lonely otherwise because love from my mother felt so far away and i always wondered what i did so wrong to her or maybe why i couldn't just be better or what was wrong with me. to this day i wonder if my self-criticism comes from days where i felt i had no faith from mom.

but it's funny the way things switch, the way she stepped up when you stepped down the way she threw her arm around me i was 12 at a cheerleading competition (was it miami?) and i had succeeded in flying into the arms of the air seamlessly she was proud or maybe she saw in me my happiness and was proud of that.

you cried because she looked like love and we looked like love together for the first time you could remember.

the last vivid memory of you i have is standing outside of christmas, tears running down my face, and you begging me to take a picture with your son because you hadn't had one of your oldest with your newborn, i was 21, and i awkwardly stood as you put him in my arms tears running down your face and snapped a photo. i left after you kept insisting you knew me to this day i'm still not sure if you do because the way you said it was so misleading like i should believe you because you knew me in my faded pink nightgown, in my sandals picking up my 10th birthday cake with cats on it when i was 11 and my mom gave me my first thong it was pink, too. but your heart breaks at the slightest changes when i decided i didn't drink carbonated products you questioned me when i changed my mind you hit me but it only happened twice.

but yesterday was your birthday and i felt pangs of sadness for not thinking too much about it. because truthfully, i see your face in every houseless man in his mid-40s who is white, bald, stocky. i see your fragility, and emptiness in vacant lots, unused, and torn apart of potential by societal circumstance. and we have failed you. and thinking of your emptiness hurts because i fear it resonates within the hearts of many and echos through the American experience of so many lost souls and i'm terrified to face it. empty humans hurt me but the worst is that i remember at the last wedding i was at thinking that i would never have a father who would walk me down any aisle if i ever wanted that and that i didn't care because my mother is two-times as strong.

and i knew how much that'd hurt you. because we were all you had in a sea of no feeling you found feeling in us.

happy birthday, Aquarius.

[ra-venous]

sometime late november 2015

fuzzy daydreams wax heavy on ink-smeared fists; faraway.

like the time you said you wouldn't leave, so i did. like how i now only think about the memories which have yielded everything they possibly can, and now i just cradle the dusty, photographic images like weeping lovers in my lap. but how i don't want them back anyway, or how we're only just afraid to move forward, like always. the unclear avenues don't sweep themselves up- for the leaves collect, and ancient they become before we conjure enough courage to move the immovable, and we're never seamless.

and today i ash on cold apartment floors surrounded with what feels like empty air only maybe i'm the empty one.

and a few days ago, i said aloud, 'maybe that's depression. maybe it's back.' rearing heads again and trampling familiar feelings of like and love and pain and care, and instead we just sit empty, chain smoking the 7 dollar pack of cigarettes and rising, rising like the heat in november. rising like the fists of my peers used to; where did you go?

the feeling feels useless.

what is it that makes us classify and compartmentalize such intricacies of our minds, and the drive to understand such complex insides, and it feels demanding; to meet the expectant questions of others with silence misrepresented and hidden between the patterns of our parents and the children in us fighting back, but limbo, in limbo, rest assured here there are no expectations only disassociation. and today i find myself here again, it only took 4 years.

[ra-venous]

i sat at the mouth of the hillsborough as darkness waxed heavy and stars finally shone through thick, foggy night cypress clung to dirt and rainwater not yet sunken swam to the knees of such elegant creatures i wish to be a tree sometimes and to think of the strange intricacies we all fall into and out of in a matter of days, what can happen nightly. waking up in the morning to question, "will today be the day everything changes?" and what does that even mean. car doors slam shut outside our structured homes stucco what the curly-haired boy told me he hated as we passed by the churches in pasco county in his tank of a car white, stained, illegal. actually, until this moment i thought it didn't matter apparently my heart misleads just steering me down dank alleys populated by only those with inability to share right now, anyway right here, anyway but when will the time ever be right. passion, not circumstance. but i wish to be a tree sometimes with sharp-toothed leaves tracing the outline of your figure as you waltz through fleshy forest the way you traced the outline of the art all over my body embracing it in a way no one had prior anyway my other point was to talk about the human condition and about how i wonder what movies like SLC Punk would be like if the characters were all non male-identifying people if everything wasn't so wrapped up in male vision and if the way people viewed me wasn't only caked with things like 'beautiful,' 'unattractive,' or 'not thin enough.' but that's the package pre-wrapped ingrained and given to us every year it's the only holiday consistently celebrated because we don't need Hallmark for that every minute we purchase goods directly linked to the message freedom is the road to death because you're not used to it because it means change because change means death of a piece of you of me my horoscope told me that health mattered this week but i sit here, drinking leftover beer and attempting to reach out to one who forgot about me weeks ago months and really, you probably didn't, you're just hiding, or i'm too much or you're too sad it's weird because i reach out in those moments and you don't car doors slam outside but i wish it were birds and i wish i were in a forest and i wish i could be there again infinitely because what was it like to be connected and in a world of such instantaneous connection i just can't help but to feel more infinitely gone from the faces i may be able to see less blurred usually because i'm unable to be present and i wish i wore a crown of feathers like someone once depicted and if only we were like the mirror images of ourselves perhaps we wouldn't fall so infinitely into existential pits because what is the human condition and is it exclusively human or does it belong to all consciousness or perhaps the trees are more wise we always knew they were i wish to be a tree sometimes but i should probably cut it out because right now i'm human and i don't like boats with engines because they make the river shaky and dead it feels like all life stills under attack afraid of their own movement that boat made waves for minutes the impact the scars are always so much greater than we can see

[ra-venous]

you write of the ethereal unreal, subreal, you write of god and maidens. i shrink at the thought that perhaps you'd be embarrassed of me.

i write of crass love and allusions to riots steadily filling up hearts, streets, respectively. i don't bother with assimilationist rhetoric or hegemonic assumptions of how one should be. i'm not embarrassed of most things except maybe the pre-noon beers i ingest, an excuse to keep feeling dulled just enough to invoke other feeling just as uncomfortable.

[ra-venous]

saturday night wrist and sabbath as eyes tumble over estranged words tripping on fragments allocated only to the minds of those with weight of prestige

find solace in the thought of tangled vines creeping through windows of a freshly painted living room and footfalls to be resonated by those of friends and cat comrades making an entrance with sand-covered coats

[ra-venous]

walls

when we speak of mere humanity encapsulating us in prison bars or birds which can't escape the plight of gravity i understand but think, momentarily, about the real heartache of those whose loved ones are behind walls and trapped without tangible love think momentarily about the heartache of spending your life on a cold concrete floor

[ra-venous]

deafening silence skips beats and i silence myself for the first time since last i was able to hold it together

[ra-venous]

further

cosmic: the way i describe my gratitude for those whose voices have struck chords so deeply as to alter the path of my appreciation, more than just subtly.

cosmic: the way i know we'll be stranded on other sides of the world and still thinking of one another, at least sometimes.

cosmic: the way i'm in love with you and want only nothing but resonance for your spirit, to be heard and echoed, as will echo in me forevermore. the way you turn away, and with salt in my eyes i wish you luck, always.

[ra-venous]

done

wasted and not referring to my gut. coffee with a long finish and something to sleep with, warmly.

[ra-venous]

last thrsday

sweet sleeps with sorrow; mothers birthday kisses turn to birthday texts and you keep wondering why things are moving so fast. cheeks still wet from weeks ago because you still haven't slept and the days are continuous, unraveling - new rolls and shades of light, but night takes over and seeds are sown deeper trapping themselves from sunlight.

[ra-venous]

short

sitting on a tattered pedestal, a crouched, unruly spine pokes at me to spit out truth and stop fearing honesty in the eyes of others, to let it drip from my own tongue. but the distant eye of the future eases my ability to stay far away from what i know is right.

[ra-venous]

i am not a sack of skin meant only to fill your cock with pleasure i am not flesh succumbing to your entitlement over and over and over again. i am no longer willing to be subtle or pleasant or smiling, especially if my smile pleases you. every day is a war zone, every step taken out my doorway - a little farther onto the battleground. and i don't want to hide or change because i'm "distracting" you, because i am not your sack of skin which you feel owed because you waltzed into this world with a dick. and i'm over it.

[ra-venous]

post-sex

i've developed treason in myself with incessant back and forth on issues relating to self-preservation. and i'd rather be sitting with you beneath dusty fans, in smoky, ill-lit rooms filled with bad metal and bikers, in the darkest corner of the bar you tell me you're boring that your life is leading nowhere but to buy time biding time, but i know there's more. sometimes i wonder if people think we're siblings the way our curls mesh and mend like one another's, but then i think about how at night, post-sex cigarette we stare out your window, elbows to sills, naked in glowing moon and you tell me of when you ran around this place with your sister, and how your mother grows her mango trees beautifully, calculated, only now the trees aren't here anymore, and maybe there are only ghosts. but i'd rather be sitting with you beneath dusty fans, in smoky, ill-lit rooms filled with bad metal and bikers, in the darkest corner of the bar you tell me that you can't even think your time is wasted, because if you did it would mean you were thinking too much - except for your early twenties those were certainly squandered. since september we've crossed sparingly since our feet never really rested in same soil for more than mere days. but then

...blegh too sad to finish writing finished piece tba - eta eventually