Existentialism

Jack | he/him | 20 | poet and occasional artist (icon by eaurthling.tumblr.com)

[ubiquitousentity]

1/3/21

Your name like a marble between

my molars, rolled on the enamel

too large to swallow. 

I kept it in my mouth, 

savored the weight,

tucked it up by my gums

or wedged it where my wisdom teeth

used to ponder.

Now I confess it to the bathroom sink,

clatter of glass on ceramic, still

too large for the drain.

[ubiquitousentity]

10 / 7 / 20

Lightning tracing veins on the inner thigh of the horizon

blue white and bright against the bruise of storm

pulsing dark, a pressed ache

tenting to the needle contour of skyline.

[ubiquitousentity]

9 / 18 / 20

How do I explain to my English teacher

that I want to carve myself into a hundred thousand

little pieces and lay them out on a tarp in the back garden

so I can count up the sum of myself

under the hot breath of August-who-exhales

summer rushing past blue tongue sky

in blood and muscle and bone

because I do not see this body as my temple

and I do not feel with my heart or my hands

enough to make the flesh worth keeping

without her writing

"see me after class" on the top of the assignment

in smudged blue (the same color

as the tarp spread over the drying grass).

[ubiquitousentity]

9 / 4 / 20

A summer misremembered

all popsicle chlorine drip dry on the hot deck

sugar puddle crawling with black ants

like watermelon seeds spit from the porch

into dying grass gone yellow

for the drought tomatoes split on the vine

sweet sick rot and the caterpillars

fat and bright.

[ubiquitousentity]

9 / 1 / 20

The glamor of bright light blindness

beauty

breathtaking not of taking

but of breath, over and

out in the scrub scrambling

through a soul that crumbles to sand

blood beneath the fingernail black

ink blot to memorize and recite

the right reasons.

There's a body buried in the desert,

dust wearing her face over

the fire but dust covering her face

somewhere in the cool underside

funeral mask red clay when it rains

as it must.

Confession is a flower whose seed

is only just planted and has not

grown white roots like lightning

like blind

like fine white hair under the shovel

knuckles taut sweat tracing riverbeds

is this far enough

deep enough?

Confession is a flower with dry red lips

and a tongue withered at the root

so this blood is your own

and you might just still be lost.

[ubiquitousentity]

8 / 29 / 20

Invoke the right hand of lightning

and the fractal burn, drinking summer

like a thunderstorm.

Call her mother, goddess,

Gaia of the green, gifts given

in violence, the real blessing in regrowth,

the real peace in the aftermath.

[ubiquitousentity]

8 / 28 / 20

Black trench

of a riverbed lit by halogen candle

silver of a fisheye

flicker in the rearview.

Only the empty repetition,

a roar so loud it is like silence.

Only the shaded starlight edges

of a placeless somewhere.

Only to breathe

or drown down here.

[ubiquitousentity]

8 / 27 / 20

Love's first bloom misshapen,

a gift the unforgiven make

of apology dressed in dewdrop

and desperation.

[ubiquitousentity]

8 / 26 / 20

Da Vinci's spiral traced on

the contour of your earlobe

while the golden Sunday dawn

prisms on last night's glass, your bathrobe

crumpled at the foot of the bed.

I could slow this moment

to an infinitude, reflection in the godhead

of a doubled mirror, writing omens

in the shower's steam, no Delphi

here, just skin to skin and earthen weight

pinning us in the sheets, myself, I

could stitch the angle of the sun in place,

frozen honey crystals on your cheek.

But it slips and so I'll see you in a week.

[ubiquitousentity]

11 / 11 / 19

I cannot reconcile the vastness of vacuum

with my own unsteady breath; I am shaking

too much to look through the lens of the telescope.

I am shaking

too much to touch you.

I have seen the Pleiades scattered like marbles

across the face of a mirror.

I have written odes to Jupiter, to her moons,

to the vastness of all being and that being

is vastly inconsequential but so,

so important.

There is no good reason to lie

about wanting, so let it be known:

I want to press my back into the summer grass

somewhere light pollution doesn’t touch,

just to see the empty gradient of a sunset sky

fill slowly with a much more distant light.

I want to ask: have you ever seen the Milky Way

in all her paint-spatter imperfection,

cast across blue darkness?

Have you ever cried because

there were distances you could not comprehend

separating you from everything else in the universe,

and distances you could comprehend

separating you from everything else in the universe

that might understand your tears?

Have you ever cried because your own blurring vision

obscured what made you start crying in the first place?

I want to show you Jupiter through a telescope

I’ll inexpertly balance on the warm pavement

of the street in front of my parents’ house,

barefoot and grinning.

I want to show you where the constellations fall

between the gaps in the treeline in the summer.

I know only a few, but I want to tell you

who taught me their shapes.

I want to show you how to see by the light of the moon,

how a syrupy night thick with cricketsong

is the perfect place to walk to the end of the street

and back, and have half a dozen revelations

in the space between.

But it is not summer.

It is not vulnerability under a warm sky,

it is not crickets and midnight lemonade

and a quiet old house settling into her foundation.

Not now.

Not yet.

[ubiquitousentity]

11 / 10 / 19

I am wearing black shoes and I have never existed in any way that matters and I don’t know where my body ends because like the butterfly whose jeweled rustle conjures hurricanes nothing is ever the same after I have passed through it.

[ubiquitousentity]

10 / 31 / 19

Come — let us hold a revel of sticky-sweet sacrifice, upturned hands and wet mouths behind the masks, all grasp and glitter.

[ubiquitousentity]

10 / 29 / 19

I find creation in the creases of my skin, hands empty with the act of making, all things flow out from here.

[ubiquitousentity]

10 / 26 / 19

I brought something alive — mother’s high heels sinking into the green shag carpet coming out wet and two shades darker. White walls, that’s gonna take two hours elbow deep in bleach. This glass casserole dish is getting heavy. There’s tinfoil on the top puckered, punctured, leaked a little on the ride over, stained my back seat, can anyone give me a hand? Perfect pinstripe, pointed toe pressing arrows on the hardwood, click clack, typewriter steps up trembling. Gold ring on his left hand knocks twice on the bottom of the glass. Put it in the fridge, it’ll serve easier cold.

[ubiquitousentity]

10 / 24 / 19

I’ll bring the bucket if you bring the net, and I’ll hand you crayfish plucked from the silt, standing in a flicker of black-silver fish, coldest thing on a summer day up to our ankles.

[ubiquitousentity]

10 / 21 / 19

Will you only hear my words if I drag them through my serrated jaws, like a knife through the tough steak of my own tongue, running them back and forth until the meaning strikes bone?

[ubiquitousentity]

10 / 18 / 19

I cut my thumb on the edge of the empty chicken noodle soup can tossing it into the recycling bin. The corrugation of the inside wall catches the slow slide of a small bead of blood and holds it just above the shadow line, quivering gently in the garage fluorescents. I recall that there is iron in my blood. I recall that there is copper in my blood.