suspended belief for the sake of getting through the day is giving my tree top goals a new way to sway and explain to a room full of people i admire that a name change will rearrange the concepts and change their desire from the past as we fuse to one another there is no co-pilot we’re working to create this room where curiosity walks through the door daily with questions of wonder, who is bill bailey and why should we welcome you home from the places you visited to report back that there is a world out there under attack it’s our duty now to educate children to understand that it’s not weird it’s something they haven’t been around and if we create a culture where safety is key they’ll leap off every page into infinity and humility should take center stage listening listening listening to someone else’s rage as the light glows and lives we should continue to give a chance that we may see the stream stop and witness all of eternity. 

please, take a knee it’s a sign of respect 

our flag is confused as we resurrect the rhetoric brought back by a heretic who is just a derelict 

bring us together is not his fad it’s going after jersey clad dad’s with hashtags and Sads! 

history is my sister see cause we have all fought to explain some mystery attached to rights of race or sex and heaven forbid you’re one of them mex – i can continue to spew about text books that skew though today i’m not a montague or capulet let me set the stage for half of this scrawled on page i’m not on my knees for you 

that’s your daydream sage

i bend my knee for the world to see it’s them not me who’ll stand by idly while you fuck with math and divide our nation like moses the sea reaching for tablets to trade your twitter station

never hoping to reach that mythical honalee where puff would greet you with a mighty roar and just like that show you the door so we can heal the gash that you salt with every assault on our national vault of treasured movements and chocolate vanilla malts mixed at lunch counters to counter the taunter who pokes and prays on ways we display that humans are one and not yet done fighting for future daughters and sons. 

I can’t breathe a black t-shirt filled with shoot around sweat and kneeling now is some sort of threat to thunder clap ignorance that brought no rain and they’re blinder than melons though headed that way all the same 

‘what you’re scared of’, as i point this finger of shame, isn’t an excuse anymore for shoving aside solidarity and laying claim, that isn’t the point, we can’t let you off that easily. explanations expounding excuses are exercising educated thought wasting what i bought, they need to be caught and we give them legs to keep running. filtering through memes while watching and cursing the entertainers on your team, spending the day praying away gay and pressing screens. what does this mean? it’s making me mean it’s creating a space inside my bean that can’t stay fat feeding on lean. nested people that can’t seem to be seen. the distress you press into that green bellied art called seek and destroy is a ploy to toy with washed away boys and militant compasses guiding our light though day time television isn’t an escape anymore except for reasons to clean your pores and that boils down to a subservient crown of thorns on my chest he’s crying i comfort though i’m not his best yet maybe now i can resurrect this town to see again the way we were found wandering in pacts of pleasant sounds, stinking and eating our skills were found. the lenses are focusing, blue spinning into red confusing yellow the clarity of black distorted by minions it all turns to white with a march to march against march and the ides plays out everyday, we walk around backwards hoping to splay wide open one another today and roll in our innards easing away this awful five act play. wasn’t it all over a bowl of bitter beans anyway? 

It all seemed so silly as sunrises ate another day with you yelling and thinking it’s ok to shelter our minds like bob the storm i relentlessly all the while am torn that torture devices are still being used and you captured my hurt and left abused 
…

The clock was something i never wanted as the ghosts are gathering for another year stirring and whistling my attention they have that threat grabbing moment i left sincere wishing you were nothing but a mirror wiping me clean that cat jumping on my chest and making me mean a nauseating purr a congested stir the claws digging just rip my flesh and leave me alone the catatonic nature of my movie and the phone a place is reaching out a voice so soft and serving me 
…

Stop burying my lines and kicking the dirt this is where i stand where i hurt where sunken shadows survive in a time of need and bleeding is a sign i can still see a measured pace when walking to you i shouldn’t have to think my hair unglued horses pulling her now she’s nothing new a darker tan and these words i slew street lamps lost leaning and forgotten tomorrow may blister pop and shotgun rallies will hear our cry the sincere absolving my last lie will you listen to me before i drowned will you kiss my forehead the wrinkled crown a sometimes serious situation calls for class glass shattered and breaking its time to go make sure you listen before the show 

…

insecurity raised his hands i called on him and made different plans we won’t play today but mom please i shut the door walked across the room and…blank

There wasn’t the same anticipation as yesterday 
ghosts carried our relationship it had to be this way with yellow stained fingers we shook into the night i never wanted to be the one to close your eyes leaving you without a sense of understanding the spinning  words spirling through chattering teeth and i went with you to visit that place underneath the corner store where her accent held the door while we politely used her more to race home a portal to the dome of our frightened neck bobs and stand still day jobs hiding in coolers to refresh the senses i worried about you knowing what my mind says on mornings when i forgot we were broken glass motions i’d try and recall all the lies that were spoken when i figured out death with you in that chair and contemplated eternity with a single hour stare and we kept getting up and moving and blinking and thinking and skipping away from one another so blind in that room where seth laid out our tomb and welcomed us in, a final womb, would we fit this time i was five eleven you’re five nine and inches apart looking down on me i finally recognized we were sitting and you couldn’t raise up pounding i muttered wake up wake up this isn’t the right path i listen to your laugh while dying, drowning the last piece of what they did to you. and you were gone. leaving a record of where i belong. i’ve looked for you. bye.

#2 not done?

Stand still invite the thrill of looking into a glass pill to imagine the drill that you could go through every morning to get this thing right only missing a final goodnight with you lying next to me a freedom of fancy it may not matter now that i see your dance see it isn’t up to me if you tend to cry when shadows that collided now merely pass by in a lull of forgotten children’s songs and rhymes i crave the times we could willfully stop in to spin in that grin and rub with sin i can only imagine where it whisks us away they’ll never see the planted smiles of our secret plan in order to stay here we have to demand that the frightening and forthright will always be in sight so send that letter and try for the better fight sprint to someone else i get that you met her or him and that’s perfectly fine a winter left wondering if you remember my line is open empty and waiting if there’s something i could do.

I may have just screwed up, as a parent
She asked and I told her 
It was a bit more complicated, of course

We believe in mystery, the spirit of not knowing, curiosity that comes in the months when it’s snowing, seeing stretched wide smiles stitched by a surprise that the fairy left bedside is the opposite of suicide

Now gone

Well, dad, are they?

She looked me dead in the eye and said ‘Is this all real?’

Real? Yah, this is all real

Is he real, is she real, are they real

She reeled 

Reality? 

The rush of being truthful, not wanting to retire this tradition of trying to tread so lightly they can’t hear, the churning mind a touch of fear came crashing through with a lilt to her voice

Well, are you him?

We’re all him, seem to dim the bulbs flashing she gave a grin, then, the rims of her glasses filled, my eyes spilled the spool and words ceased.

A long beautiful changing stare, I remember this familiar feeling from before, she was 6 weeks old, sleep deprived and uncertain, my connection just beginning, she looked at me, our eyes fell into one another it was the moment I knew, she trusted me, it was simple, as love should be

Now.

I couldn’t stop it, the cat jumped over the moon with the cow crashing through the bag, tension and innocence trapped between our stare the tides of youth turned 

I just need to hold you,
Question after question. 

Doubt? 

Or, is this all a part of growing up?

Yes, we are who you thought was them yet we are all of us and there is still him and her in you 

A pronoun parade marched past her pre-teen door with a parent pretending to patch the porous floor of puberty and ‘oh what for’s’

Ugh, she should have drawn her own conclusions pounds in my chest, could I have held on like the rest of the questions and decisions without the curtain pulled forward, no, we’re the wizard, you’re the wizard, we’re all this thing the dread and undead, breathing beauty and movements. nothing is gone the words have changed she is now a different player in the game. 

She asked, and I told her. 

holding on to this mind as it takes flight 

i wish i may i wish i might not think incessantly about how i fit in to this circular path of birth and redeath and never is there time left to figure out if i’m still with the person who sat in desks at eight years old wondering if i should do what i’m told and testing every one of their molds to find they push back harder when you figure their code and crack the case that we all need that warm embrace the fear we trace like chalk outlines around one another forgetting at one point i may have called you brother, if you liked my sister which you better not i know your intentions even when you were too young to know it’s not polite to wipe your snot on someone else’s pant leg in the middle of gym class you’ve grown up fine and less of a mess so if you’d like to find me and carry me down from this lofty intersection of lost and found a place i go to become unbound i dare you before i’m buried in the ground. why would i want to spend my days free living so close to my eternity. it’s up here. come on. 

yesterday’s stream bothered me to read it’s cadence was off and the words disagreed

i can’t go back for another year 

to put in the right ideas to make my feelings clear yet i hold dear every rush to second gear as i round my fifth sentence the flow starts making sense and i could give you a buck fifty but i only have thirty cents which you should surely spend on cindy to get into the cinema so she can get lost in the screen where she’ll never be seen and the only act she’s in is an obscene in-between of broken strength and adrenaline that nobody cares about as we stare shout and keep your eyes down, focus on the crown of my head as i spin round the glitter glue that left you when years passed by, the ones you long for now with your oldest goodbye i slipped yesterday and wished we gathered more in the courtyard of forgetting that sunday afternoon, just us, that’s me and you, that’s the only two i think of when the pallid stall door closes in my heart’s top drawer thinking of bleeding myself on the kitchen floor to make sure you knew that’s all that’s left, a goodbye letter written in panic. the final slam of my eyelids shut. not my game. i move through easy rhyme coming back to you every time a wish and thought there’ll be something new scarecrows in our field and a week for us to chew, on the fat of our love while the buzzards swim above and play, leaving our discontent hearts melting in that summer day.

pressing matters like kids scatter when someone has to press their thumbs for nothing they’ve done but spreading the crumbs to find a way home that was never known and internet connection left them alone with a phone while swimming in seas of people they meet with a head nod and knowing it’s their turn to greet the person for an upgrade to trade for a faster model this ones full throttle like energy drinks why do you need to stay awake to care what people think it never will make it’s way to your screen they’re judging the people outside their bay: you know about THEM right in the corner of the left i think a few are on my list but just so i have a gist of what they say and how they act i can surmise for now i’d never write them a contract it’s up to me now as i walk alone holding this bone a faithful friend left me and now i drone about flying above you humming and the noise doesn’t bother neither does the fact that i record your life to understand mine and stay stuck in a bubble. they always say ‘how are you’. and i reply fine.

she was trying to sell the last one. though sitting there desperate it was tough. it didn’t matter as she packed up, at least there was something for her to carry, it gave her arms purpose and kept others believing she was headed somewhere though to her it was the same there that she has walked to since losing her sense of self while she sat in high school seats, desks too small where no one noticed that black bic scrawl saying help me before i fall, head down, suffocated screams in daydreams

this wasn’t where the inability to spread her lips started

it was the walls of a birth canal coming from emotions too small

she couldn’t swim and when the light got dim she went mute no one could dispute 

her house never laughed about a toot 

they were too busy picking up shit and to quit in the day to sink and sway away to a place where side eyed visions lay didn’t happen in the usual way it was ducking and dodging the verbal assaults carrying a barrage of faults, insults and turn abouts that were never fair play.

she recorded the sounds of her past alone in a room and wants to share them with you. 

a stolen unmoving voice, finally consistent and predictable.