Buildings collapse
under a red sun;
the oppressive heat.
Concrete crumbling.
The cracks in the sidewalk
are growing.
A man impaled
on a crucifix.
Nine floors above me

Ich bin ein auslander

I want a voice
that makes God stop and listen.

I want a voice
as visually expressive as sign language.

I want a voice
that makes junkies
give up the needle and spoon
to get high on vocabulary.

I want a voice
that ricochets
from person to person
and makes each one
sting from the truth,
empathy
and recognition.

I want a voice
that shakes down cancer
and gives me
it’s change.

I want a voice
that drags nails
down chalkboards,
reverses,
and returns ocean wave rhythms.

I want a voice
that speaks riddles so deep
that when solved
bring tears of gold.

I want a voice
like sustenance
for emotional famines.

I want a voice
that terrifies
oppressors everywhere.

I want a voice.

The way heroin withdrawal
makes you itch.
The way worms
come out in the rain
The way long term cocaine usage
makes everything in view appear white and colorless.
The way Jesus
is a symbol of violence.
The way Hitler
loved art.
The way enemies
never shut the fuck up.
The way caged animals
are often more violently dangerous.
The way peripheral vision
is sometimes better.

The way I feel
for you.

This sadness.
This envy.
This anger.
This disappointment.
This grief.
This hopelessness.
This melancholy.
This restlessness.
This inaccuracy.
This misanthropy.
This obsession.
This oppression.
This sensitivity.
This helplessness.
This slowness.
This agony.
This darkness.
This apathy.
This apathy.
This apathy.
Is a-killing me.

The light refracted
through drops of rain on glass
hurts almost as much
as the realization that this weight
will always be with me.
It is an unbearably infinite silence
between the notes
that I both long for
and try my hardest to avoid.

This light.

This darkness.

There is nothing else here for me
except that.
Everything else is a faded dream state;
A pain.
Frozen in me
as a threat;

As a gift.

I still have things I’ve not spoken
Like days spread out before me;
Filled with frozen memorandums
in the decay of winter.
Fill me with pills and lies
Then release the trap door from under me.
The future?
The future of what?
There’s really not much there
That I yearn for.
What I want is
Here;
Now.

Sadist that I am,
I masokissed your forehead
then regretted second by second;
this history of mine.
Scratch until you reach
below my ugly surface
until you reach my even uglier core.
Your denial of me only leaves us both doomed.
Known more for my sadness than for my selfishness.

Wave after wave after wave…

The confusion
pulls us into its undertow.
As blister becomes callous;
becomes scab;
becomes necrosis.

So many of the people we love are no more.
They’ve fallen away in numbers so large
that they’ve become nothing more than statistics to others.
Many have been left to lead lives which were more like punishments.
Lives that became subjected
to an overwhelming emotional terrorism.
A sense of fear
which can take away so many things from each of us;
worst of all our connection to a reality-based perception.
Many were left to believe
that our lives were not the only things lost,
but our safety was gone as well.

Was that demonstration of pain enough for you?

To use love as a weapon;
to use love to harm;
to inflict pain;
to even kill -
That is not love.
That is a panic-driven attempt to destroy.

As deep as the destruction was felt
by so many,
and for so long;
It pushed us into becoming stronger.
We gained a deeper sense of community and family.

As a result of the attempts to destroy us

WE
GAINED
LOVE.