Coeur et Ame

[theshakespeareanfool]

It's Fake If It Can Look At Me

I consider myself an atheist

I long for opportunities to have faith

To believe in something

But I don't

Not in any of the things presented to me

I marvel at the human capacity to worship

To organize around some kind of central concept

A deity, an entity

I don't like gods with faces

Ones that can look at you

It reminds me too much that they were drawn by human tongues

It has led me to a conclusion that frightens me

But that brings me peace all the same

There is no such thing as God

Not the way you think of one

He isn't dead, we have not killed Him

We may as well have though

We brought Him to life

Birthed an unknowable creature to lord over us all

For what?

For what real purpose did someone write it all down?

For any God?

Folk tales and myths, I understand those

Why does the river flood sometimes?

Why do those flowers not look like any of the others?

What the fuck is the nighttime and why does it happen?

But a creator king to rule and control our whims and passions

To punish anyone who dares to live

That bites

I can't think of any single purpose a God like that could serve

But not all Gods are shaped that way

I like the ones without faces

Change, Love, The Rain

I love the Gods that simply are

Not the ones that expect ought from me

They need no worship, but simply move

God is Time

An unknowable law of something written by no one

Man wrote down something to explain it but never to control it

Or to control me

Time is a system of measurement not a way of life

Change is simply reality

It is everything and nothing

To sit idle is to change

God is inevitable but we can name it

I don't believe in Gods with faces

I don't believe in Gods written by Men

[theshakespeareanfool]

Le Dieu des Bouffons

I have decided to be powerful

I have decided to be large

We are only ourselves and the selves that we see

Shelve the other views I am the eye: panopticon

The earth spins as slowly as we call it to

It could be fast if we compared it to something slow

Comparison lets in dread that sets in, bets on emptiness

I have decided to be beautiful

I have decided to be wise

No man of god nor woman of his opposite

Another deity further removed

Those empty thrones and silent gods whose faces cannot be familiar and yet are who speak to us in tongues like wind but can’t be understood: I hear them

The nothingness compounds and sounds like rounds of choral excess

It is not that I have stopped winding at the mirrors silver spell

It is that I have decided to love them when they look at me

We are small because we desire context

I am the god of flies and worms

The god of frogs and flowers

Cottagecore is fae nonsense made human, we are playing at something and we cannot see it or hear it or know it but we know no end to hubris and desire

I have decided my own context

I own my context

I am secondary not because I am not the protagonist but because being the main character is unnecessary for joy

My story isn’t the one that opens the book

But it keeps needing reading page two hundred and twenty three over and over again hoping for something else, something more

Not a different end but something to carry the whispers of angelous humour off that one sentence I can’t speak out loud

“He did not choose to walk forward, but chose for the world to shift behind him”

Redacted

I have decided to be

I have decided to live

I have decided to love

I have decided to be

I have decided to grow and reach for something else

Not in dissatisfaction but because I can be more than this

Because I am not done growing

Because I have decided to become

I have decided to be bound by my branches, not my roots

The god of small things cannot reach me here

I have decided he cannot

I am not comparison

I have to decided to simply and indisputably be

I am the god of possibility

The human evocation of potential

And would I fall or fly?

Would I leave the comfort of home at all?

What have I decided?

Who has the right to know?

[theshakespeareanfool]

Like Spring When it Snows

The world is so quiet, left to its own mind The sound of fingers rubbing before the snap connects Even that could break the branches of the great willow, me I know what you’re thinking, but I’m not one to weep I like the world when it is loud, when it doesn’t have time Urban drawl melting to rosebuds dripped in glitter like sunlight It’s hard to describe the monotony of the cacophony of it all I love the noise But the cold catches it all and swallows it whole The city doesn’t exist, somehow A cemetery in a snowstorm The fog keeps it all to itself, a selfish lover who swore they weren’t jealous The city and all its lights, its bars and booze, its patrons, lovers Intimacy in the subway station, metro sexuality And it all goes quiet, a silent film in black and grey Ink dancing on the wind, threatening to dry That is the wintertime to the cosmopolitan Grey and depressing to some but I find the aching moans of it comforting The city is so loud and beautiful that the silence is like a warm blanket But what of the rain, when tracks flood over into rivers under rivers Above roads The Highline in low mist and a threatening roil of foreign linguistics It’s loud but not the way it typically is Like someone yelling within the din, barely cutting through In a language you think you recognize but certainly don’t speak Someone tries to shoo them away but the clouds don’t care They migrate anyway Have you ever been through a blizzard in April? Or maybe on Halloween, when Fall dresses itself as something else to scare you We are all made of the noise, of the intimate somethings, someones It’s the pockets of quiet that make me love it I am like Spring when it snows Alive Breathing, bursting from something cold and empty to those who don’t look The cold has a smell to it The snow makes sound when it hits the ground It is the quiet that makes me love how loud the city is Witchcraft in boxes hidden under my desk at work Pockets of futurepast Maybe nothing is real, you know? Ah, but you wouldn’t know, would you? You can’t really know anything, you know? Trick question, but a treat to consider The world is so quiet, left to its own mind I’m loud when I do that Maybe that’s the magic of everything The city melts away to silence amidst the noise And in that little pocket of Springtime snow I can hear myself Like a headstone in the mist, it’s foggy but it glows A stone is not a stone, merely, when it rests on someone’s head Can you see history? Does it make you a willow tree? I can’t see myself in the city, I’m too busy seeing everyone else Like Spring when it snows, there is quiet in sound The stillness is quiet most places But the city? It is the sound of snowfall When no one is moving, and the universe is muffled When even stars dim their lights The city seems to breathe It wakes from hibernation, but not from sleep Can you hear it? OR does it sound like silence to you? 

[theshakespeareanfool]

Social Anxiety

It’s not to simple as we like it to be But it’s not like it’s complex I have a complex A simple one But nothing is straightforward I can’t solve my problems by staring at them They look back at me, I get nervous The demons have eyes I didn’t expect them to have eyes Between sleep I try my best I really do, or I think I do How much of reality is perception? Intention never seems to be enough A witch without magic, we’re just people Just human, and what a savage blow So simple, so complicated, so unnecessary I am trivial I can’t make eye contact with myself Can’t maintain a mask stitched up with moonlight Gossamer intentions floating on starlight Waves on the edge of the wood Sometimes people leave you halfway through the wood Sometimes you lose yourself I am sad today I wish it would rain Then I could look the demons in the eyes Then maybe I could sleep I am tethered to something But naming the monster makes it monstrous And what is a monster? I should be working It’s not so simple as we’d like it to be But it isn’t complicated Take a deep breath Take a step forward Feel the chain tug on your ankle And decide 

[theshakespeareanfool]

Soap Carving

I shed your fingerprints like molted feathers from my wings Glittering and rose-hued stands my soul Salted water flows free nevermore for want of you I reclaim my life and time To name you by some truth would be dishonest disservice To me you are a beast with many backs, with many names I shall call you many things, though not call you For all your appearances to me I am stronger I reclaim my life and time I shed your scent like leaves The heart dies a slow death but at last I can see Buried in the sand I have shed the ocean Unearthed the tombs of saints Excavated the paving stones of pathways I’ve not tread four years I reclaim my life and time You have never been inside of me Occupied the space between my heart and ribs You have never been inside of me I walk freely and unchained A tether to a man by choice An entity refusing to chain, but allowing enchainment A tether to myself and walking as I please I shed your memory like peeled skin after a week at the beach Chip away the stony embrace of age Dipped in solvent, stripped of wear I am new, I am clean I shimmer in the sun and more in the moon Venus, Cupid, or who you will The God of Self Loathing has no place here For the God of Self Love is his brother And the cycle breaks I reclaim my life and time Breathe in Breath out I reclaim my life and time Breathe in Breath out I shed your touch like wildflowers’ honey I strip the bark from the birch It drips from me, a drain in a sieve There is no call for bloodletting But I let it flow from me Heaviness to the Earth I am full I shed my skin, a snake in the wild I have forgotten you I shed the fat on my soul I reclaim my life and time

[theshakespeareanfool]

Alchemy

Fool’s gold fools the wisest men For fools know fool’s gold won’t be taken Fools turn gold to diamond dust on breezes far away Give a fool a piece of pyrite Watch them turn it over at night Fumbled in a tumbling, foolish game to play With fools you never win, fools know all the rules Never let them take you in, fools have all the tools Let them break it down and make it golden old and longing for a stake Check your back at the door Check your pockets much more Not too often or they’ll know where your watch is Take the back entrance please Take a snack if you need Feed the belly of the beast that says That fool’s gold fools the wisest men For fools know fool’s gold can be won Fool’s gold’s real for fools who play The dangerous game of who’s to say? Fool’s gold can’t be counterfeited Fool’s gold fools gold’s wiser keepers Foolish, foolish men

[theshakespeareanfool]

Streetwalk

I used to think New York City was a beautiful place That visually the city held mass appeal How could you now love the way the streets glisten and steam? The ambient siren songs and unexplainable echoing The way the skyline looks painted by a brush dipped in liquid gold The sunset not caring light is fading away For the ironwood bronzes and glimmers for hope But then I saw the way people would look at this city I saw the way people try to live in this city All of its ugliness is not beautiful The tragedy of man is a city of gold, half empty, with its people on the streets Empty subway cars are passed up It’s someones home for the night And though the door opens, you did not knock It is impolite to enter uninvited Citizens like vampires walk on the shady side to avoid the sunlight Too hot, they say Or too visible We let humanity lapse in inorganic space in organic landscapes made inorganically Everything is constructed Even the idea of beauty But then I found another understanding of my city New York is not beautiful It is not free and daring To be queer in this city still brings fear to my shoulder Tapping me as though to say “Don’t forget what you are seen as” Even white and male presenting I am frightened of the light Will my skin glisten with my pride and make me humble Make me hide? And I am one of those who walk freely and without disdain No subway car is home to me No need to beg to survive, no risk of rain But I do believe there is something in the soil here Nefarious, placed there by men who long to steal from those with nothing But it is there, and can be made something else It permeates throughout our bones The bones of a great, toppled city of steel Glass skin lets you in but not too much Still limited by our own sight if we have it They always hide behind glass You think they’re being transparent, so you stop looking I don’t think this city is beautiful anymore But there is something to be said for its char There is a magic in the hands of men 

[theshakespeareanfool]

The Binding is Fragile

There is a kind of nonsense to the act of being The human flesh is weak Not for its desires, not for carnality It is simply weak We are so easily broken So easily moved So wonderfully simple in the way we are complex Every being jumping up and down Screaming “Look at me!” But why? Are we created by those who see us? Do we hold shape only when a hand is on us? We are wind Just wind, ever chasing motion to insist upon ourselves that we exist We leak when we are overfull We leak when we have nothing left within Can a person run out of tears from crying to much? Can you be held too tight? So tight your shape is different now Who were you before the sun came up? I am so tired of the day The sky is melting and still the day persists I can hear it dripping into something Like a siphon it drains into the space between IT is like air As we are wind Ever chasing motion to insist upon itself that it exists I have never sen my face It has been given to me IT is so hard to breathe with lungs like these How long until my fingers cannot remember your skin? The shape of a person is so intimate Put on display and yet unknowable What does it mean to be? Don’t ask me what To be what? You say I finished myself There was no thing There was nothing What do I look like? How does my skin feel? What does my tongue taste like? Do you love the way I look? Do I look human anymore? You have stolen my face IT is nonsense to exist It is exhausting to live and to breathe and to be Humanity is not designed to live We are not designed to be But we do we are What do I look like when you can’t see me? What color are my eyes when you dream? I keep insisting that I must exist IT slows the bleeding I am melting Like the sky, I drain into something like the air Can you see me? When I close my eyes, can you see me? Who am I with the lights out?

[theshakespeareanfool]

The Beholder

Never but when he sees me do I feel seen Truly and properly visible Surrounded by the chaos of a swirled up sky Like someone with a needle has taken the the foam of a latte A hot one like I never order But to sit in nature To find an unnatural nature of glass and stone Rough and smooth hewn for presentation A cemetery of seashells and of broken bone Steel frames twisted, crumples like foil His hand is not so sweet that it cannot harm But it is hardly more than soft to the touch I have held his gaze before Felt skin on skin for far too long The smell of ginger and cardamom The smell of sweet cinnamon stripped sticks uncoiled, sugary and sensual And skin like the ocean had polished it clean He looks like the sky And he calls me beauty Dear Nature thinks of us as artistic pursuits Each of us molded by his countenance and air And when I am swallowed I feel it all the more strongly Why do we name storms? Is it because we are afraid of them? Or is it to greet them as a friend? When we are destroyed and the light can claim us When shadows are not to be found for their is no absence of anything No sun to cast them What is the opposite of a shadow? I am not a weaver of spells I am a maker of fog And in the center of his embrace wrapped up like nimbus, Icarus Rooted to the soil Too close to the core I sink beneath his waves and I am seen He watches me He threatens me with chaos not to inspire fear but to display his power I am in his eye I am vulnerable and like to fall But it is in that peace, that perfect shadow of light and clarity That I feel the most at peace And I am beautiful 

[theshakespeareanfool]

Between the Bottle and the Burial

If the world must end Then let it be done with it If the universe closes in Let it snap itself shut and betray its own misery Why the tantrums and yelling? Why the drama and protestation? If it’s chosen its end let it end itself quietly We can protest but the universe screams I am tired of suicideational dreams Let it go if it goes and we’re well worth the struggle Of kings and of men who have long since destroyed it all Anyway Let us mourn our own kingdom The fallen and brave And the cowardly too who have been swept away And the ones who can’t write their own names at the ballot box Carving our streams into wooden tree carcasses If the world must end Then let it be done with it Swiftly Hemming and Hawing and scratching and clawing Birds with no feathers flock wildly in tethering Everyone to everything The earth itself might start to sting As we openly call for our own destruction Fearing again what we’ve been requesting I’ll do the math if you’ll write the obituary What is several billion to match? We are on our way out and we can’t place the corvids Smarter than we are the staunch and the morbid Who take a little death as a little treat sometimes Who can fake a little death as a little treat at times? We can fake a little death as a little bit of sweetness in times of crisis I don’t want to die but I’m tired of this If it all has to end what’s the point in the bliss? If the inevitable Remains inevitable Why do we prolong the curtain calling our names? Must we prove we are worthy of cheering? Not jeering? Let me go let me cry my own heart out Let me know I can rip my own heart out I have dug all the graves I can muster And buried myself when each grim night was over But what’s it all for I’ve a churchyard of emptiness Coffins with no one inside but the memory Tell me again why we go with such noise! I am begging you, screaming out I have a face but no more breath to scream I have lungs now to breathe but the effort it seems Is too much for my body My damnable body Why do I wake every morning again to it? Why do I dream of the starting and end of it? Why always the same dream? Why a feather on the wind? What am I? If the world must end Then let it be done with it Who will you have been when the curtain closes? Will they cheer you for your performance Or for your character? Who were you when the bomb dropped? What was I afterwards? 

[theshakespeareanfool]

There Is A Floorboard Loose

The hallway is empty Except for some paintings my roommate might have bought They lived here before me I have no intention of outliving them, nor of outstaying my welcome A light in the bathroom mirrors one by the front door A room for living unlit and unforgiving isn’t much for living Hard to cast a shadow when there is no light I have lived along for two days Around 60 hours now, I guess And will for another 24 more if I had to guess again And I have cherished a kind of silence it is impossible to hear The kind of silence when the only thing you hear is your own sound Headphones still in, clacking on a typewriter Ambient video game music turned low enough for YouTube listening Spotify plays it’s fourth ad in a row for the fourth time this hour it seems And I am alone That’s never been a thing to bother me I like being alone I like the silence The ambient emptiness like a blizzard in the city Snowfall in urbania It eats the noise and light The cars become like waves on a shore nearby I like to be alone But the darkness in my living room isn’t from the emptiness of the space It isn’t about that It’s about me

[theshakespeareanfool]

Solve 4X

I am always myself

That is all I can be

That is the baseline

What is new is just you

And your changeable moods

And that is frustration

I can model my life

Predict every right

The wrongs still persist in the apples of eyes

I know my own value

The X is unknown

A variable changes an equation

But my life is always a set value

I am predictable

I am the agent

But you are the limitless emptiness somewhere

I’ve no idea what you could become

What has become of me?

Am I only me?

Am I all of me?

Solve for missing pieces

Search for answers in empty homes

The mirror was taken down long ago

The walls are still fresh where it used to be

The chalk scratches eagerly on the board

I am standing in front of my peers, writing nothing

They solve the equation

Determine the value of variables

How can I know what you’ll bring to my life?

How can I know how to keep you meaningful

And still reach the goals that I have?

Be a non zero

Zeros are out

Be a non hero

Heroes aren’t out

But they aren’t quite in

The equation is letters and numbers

A sentence I cannot translate

I am always myself

That is all that I have

So how do I get there?

How did I get here?

What’s it all mean?

Find me the meaning

Variant you

[theshakespeareanfool]

Authorial Intent

I want to be loved, I think If I had to take a guess I might call that a motivation What do you think inspired the artist? What burning reason did he paint the door red? I think perhaps the door was red when he got there Did he want to be loved? Or did it just happen that way? It took loneliness to make me reflect on the others The people who’ve wandered in and out The people who’ve wondered in and out But loneliness is not so terrible I don’t mind being lonely But I mind being loved Today I told a friend I longed to be held and valued We were walking to get iced coffee Wearing coats and commenting on the sun of the Fall And the way that people have made us feel And she threw an arm around me and said “I’ve got you” And my body relaxed for the first time in awhile It wasn’t her most typical affectionate display She just heard my sadness and felt compelled And how beautiful it is to be loved We care so much for romance What has romance done for my self esteem that friendship has not? What woman has not told her lady friends how gorgeous they are? What woman has not heard the encouraging words of a drunk girl in a bathroom And not desirable, worthy, beautiful, or good? But I want to be loved because I am lonely With all her love And all of mine I would love for someone else to hold me They have no name, no face I know And yet I long for them How strange to be nostalgic for things I have never known Not to say I have not known that kind of love I have, I think If I had to take a guess, it changed my life But I am lonely Not alone, of course But surrounded by love In a sea of affectionate and the belief of others I can hear the hollowness of my head Love doesn’t heal my heart But it gives me something to think about And I thought about you

[theshakespeareanfool]

Click Tap

I’ve been sick and a little bit bothered

Click clack click snap

I’ve been touched but I want to be smothered

Click clack click snap

I’ve been home but I’ve never been home sick

Click clack sick slack

I’ve been lost and a little uncovered

Click click click

And I am so damn tired of being someone else

Every time I think of being free

Cause it feels like a prison somewhere deep inside of me

Am I the me who’s drunk in bed with you or am I just a little bit of click tap

Up all night and I smell like a bar fight now

Click click clap

You’re on me but I can’t get him off my brow

Click click

I am on fire but still I’m drowning in this trap

Click snap

I swipe the forest of its trees while the sun is down

Click click slick

And I am tired of wondering if I am myself when I’m in someone else’s bed

But not the bed Id longed to be in waiting for the smell of brew

I am haunted by being someone else’s first choice

I will make you all into another click tap

We pick our friends like we pick out paint chips

Try them on but only with one coating of society

And all the ills of dating haunt my every move

And I picked one and he picked three

So somewhere two took me to bed

It doesn’t equal three

Click click click

It doesn’t all add up to me

Snap snap snap

Snap your fingers, tell me twice, I screwed the wrong way down

And now it’s all stripped like a tinder box devoid of any matches that I want

There’s only one I’d like to burn

But I gotta get rid of the rest first

I wish I could rest first

Tik tak click clack tok tok tok tok tok

I am tired of being someone else when I’m alone and Wasted

Like my youth and all my aspirations left behind the door

I spend my whole life subverting my expectations, getting disappointed

Step by step the wrong mans rights

Are just another little bit of click tap

[theshakespeareanfool]

When the Puppet Can Dance

I don’t ever want to be that for you again

Especially if you are still the you you were back then

It isn’t up for discussion

I am not seeking instruction

Cause I am not that me and I cannot pretend

To be okay with anything

I’m not okay with everything

I got what I deserved andthatsmore than I can say of anyone else

I am quite myself again

I had waited for ages in eyes like the ocean

Waded my way through the mismatched devotion

I am an endless cacauphony of emotionality

That’s my reality

And I breathe you into my dreamscape

Where you have power that you can’t hold

I wait upon a glass throne to be yours

But I’m so much more

Cause I’m mine

I am over zealous of jealousy

You held me in your palm when I

Belong in mine can’t you see?

I get to be me

Cause I’m mine

I don’t ever want to be that for you again

Especially if you are still theyiu you were back then

Please understand my intention

I am not seeking attention

I have enough of my affection

Saved for a rainy day in the dead of winter

I am a sinner

Urban harbinger

Now that the strings of the marionette tie to branches on trees I myself have planted

Rings on my fingers and puppetry dances the day away into the dead of the night time

Candles burn down on their mantelpieces

I am transfixed on my own, my pieces

I am the master of all that is mine and that’s me

I am free

Free of my heart

Free of the part of my life I had buried inside of the tree

Like gardens in orchards competing for nutrient soul

And for sunlight and rain

I walk my own way through the meadowed forests

Undergrowth, overgrowth, canopy, storm cloud

Ribbons of sunlight

The birth of the morning at dusk

I am morningstars radiant offspring

I am conspirator to the feminine hell

I am child of the morning and eventide

I am for me

I am for free to my sky

All as it should be

All as it ought to be

You are not for me

I am right for me

[theshakespeareanfool]

After the Fall

Then I am like a concubine to the day I once thought to be paid for my services And he does pay me But I’ve made ne’er a dime from my body’s graces Poised and played for coins of gold Little light circles of warmth from the heavenly ribbons of the canopy Dangling from it like curtains for the eventide They keep the day in They keep the day in So I become a courtesan for the night In those hours I am enjoyed I am passed between the stars and remain in my bed It never feels like mine but I know it must be I’m in it, after all And who would invite me into theirs? The day? Perhaps Perhaps not A year goes by in a statement She blooms from the earth to wither in emphasis, beloved of the sun and shying from her warmth But will she come tomorrow? A year in a day The Spring turns to Summer And somewhere in the chill of death, Autumn appears It flaunts itself, dressed in splendor and majesty It invites me to bed To the sweet darkness of the evening star Venusian, distrustful Tasteless, yet ambrosial And it leaves me, fading into the earth as it does It sheds each brilliant color, green in the air and brown on the soil But I swear it flashed in reds and gold I fell in love But only with the night when ice crisps leaves to crunch But after? Why, Winter comes

Then I am like a concubine to the day

[theshakespeareanfool]

The Blue Dalia

The night walks on spindles Takes long slow steps, calculated, purposeful A careful shadow here and there His lantern swung in wilding arcs Consistent and measured but seemingly impossible Guided by a terrycloth speckled with pricks So the rain seeps through in drops, a flood from above And sometimes we are fed by unclouded blankets A picnic of nothing but deep blue and emptiness But sometimes the night brings his friend She clouds his lantern, but keeps him still A calmness in her chaos keeps him still She imitates his cloak and brings a shadow here and there But she lacks control IT is the fun of a storm in the evening time When the sky darkens in two modes The light squeaks through You can almost hear it A band of something like the sky And the grey child of sorrow IT keeps him still The night walks on spindles Far away and much too high But we wait for his cloak to shield us