There is an ocean inside you.

My goodness. I am a terrible blogger. Honestly, I only post this because I'm on google+ now, meaning my family can see what I write. Even now, I'm prattling on a bit, so I guess for those who can see this I'll give some insight into my life.


I've become, through a combination of emotional diversion and boredom, a passable street fighter IV player. For those of you who care, I main Dee Jay (because how often is your namesake a video game character (even though he's the bottomest of bottom tier)). That's really all I got to say about that. If you're on PSN add me (fatbuu8990).


Ahem. Anyway. . .


I'm in the editing phase of my manuscript, "The Time of the Mousetrap". I am in the planning phases of my full-length work, "Strangle". Both deal with aspects of depression and what it's like. "Mousetrap" I'm hoping speaks to the feelings you get when you're up all night just thinking and that thinking is tinted with what it means to be going through the early phases of the disease. "Strangle", so far, deals with the later phases, the point past sadness and anger where it's complete and profound nothingness. In that nothing I found so much that I want to share now.

I am come

from the seafoam

with hands full of conch and coral

to tell you

listen

there is an ocean inside you.

Skip

Tonight, the DJ’s got us falling in love again. . .

I ushered your noise into existence.

My basket-woven flesh tingled at your presence

my wooden legs stood tall as stone towers and my fingertip

rode along ridges and valleys of vinyl until both hummed your heartbeat.

You made me fingerpaint with the colors of the wind in the corner of the family room.

Skip

Somewhere, beyond the sea

your hands found my memoirs stacked like a stairway to Heaven in the basement.

They lay on the plastic rack that sagged until its two backs arched in ecstacy

and you talked to me in croons and songs about low-tide.

Every night, I sang you lullabies,

cradled you until the dust danced for a room empty save for your breaths

and in those days, the biggest worry was if you finally wore that Raffi record straight down to the bone.

I shone, in the corner of the family room

Stevie Wonder tickling my ivories

Charlie Daniels caressing my skin

Jam Master Jay playing with my mind until I spoke in tongues

but time will seal all things

and the popping faded

the dust settled

and I stood as a queen’s guard.

I guess

you weren’t my prince any more.

Skip

Middle school

Skip

Prom. . .

Somewhere over the rainbow. . .

You brought her down here. Hand on hip, firm grip and gaze to your shoes.

Clicked the Stacy Adams heels together 3 times

There’s no place like home there’s no place like home there’s no place like home

and then you look up to her face and realize there never was

setting the floor on fire, cutting rug until my grooves became grooves

and my life had purpose again.

Skip

Can we get much higher?

Do not ask questions to which you do not want the answer.

Skip

Shots of whiskey

Skip

Shots of friendly fire

Skip

The shared syringe

Skip

The unemployment line

Skip

Seasons don’t fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain. . .

What is it about you that makes you break so many silences and never heal them?

A child never forgets his first toy and we played

and talked

and wept

and slept

and now the room is empty save for your breaths,

fast and ragged on the front porch.

Home is the place

where if you have to go there they have to let you in.

This isn’t home anymore.

I watched you crying in the rain

would break to make the cacophony to blow out a window

I’m sorry

my volume knob does not go to 11

I’m sorry

I can only speak in others’ inspirations.

Skip

Strumming my pain with his fingers. . .

One time, you got your hair fixed. Beard trimmed. She told you

she found a new dance partner and you imagined her

clutching his back like a B-side bearing all his back-masking.

Singing my life with his words. . .

2 times the dosage, swallowing pills and swan songs until hope floats and you capsize it.

Killing me softly with his song, killing me softly, with his song. . .

I never asked to be somebody’s funeral march.

For 38 years, I taught you needles should scratch the surface

like the fingertips of a safecracker,

not break through vinyl

or crack through barriers

sending brains into overdrive, neurotransmitters skipping like a broken record

fight fuck flee

fight fight fufuckfuck flee

fleeeeee fight fuck flee

breathe.

Skip, I was collecting these discs to make another backbone

in case you ever needed it.

But there is some brokenness even angel song cannot fix,

some beasts that music cannot soothe.

Carry on my wayward son,

There’ll be peace when you are done.

Lay your weary head to rest,

Don’t you cry no more.

It will work this time. It has to.

“It’s enough to make you wonder if it’s better to be a perfect physical specimen than it is to be bright. If all the time you’ve spent lost in thought has been a waste, when all along it’s been easier to just -run-.”

—	Shane Hawley I've got a lot of work to do.

52nd Street

Davis places a nickel into the meter.

He says nothing. He walks to the corner and watches the sun set,

the ocean of light receding to a beach the color of graves

saves his voice for a woman he knew his whole life would be waiting there.

Hello

refracts through the air like a lighthouse beacon through fog.

Belle says nothing. She is waiting for a man she doesn't even know

to look her way and say

love,

did you know a fault line lies under New York City?

When she answers correctly,

as she's never sure she will with hard questions about geology,

she will notice him there, making echoes on the earth in tribute

to her tectonic skin

her smile, causing her brow and her mouth to move like mountains.

He is only a player in the most literal sense.

Never much for big band, just steel strings in hand and her,

his muse, hallowed be her harp-string of a heart,

thumping to the rhythm of black-and-blue ruckus,

prayers to gods of memory loss and escape.

Fate finds Davis miles away from himself -

kind of blue, or kind of silent. Tonight,

he is a million sacrifices of soundwaves

not knowing true love's real name,

gambling like the lord is coming tomorrow

so he must sin well tonight...

Safety safely secured me a seat at a feast

when all I want is a sandwich with you.

Belle smiles bashfully,

feeling bold in a sleepless city

roused from half-real reveries.

Name the time and place,

she says, feet shaking and tapping to the rhythm of rolling rocks.

Belle begins moving, dancing like she forgot what year it is

what block she was on

who she was waiting for.

You.

His hand glides up and down the neck of the instrument

like a lover just returned blind from the war

as its case lies discarded as last night's mistakes on the sidewalk.

He holds it firm, praying this is the day an upright bass becomes a love poem

thinking

Wow, if pretty could kill, you'd be the Manhattan Project.

And he'd be the last survivor.

And she'd be the last thing he'd be alive for.

As Davis plucks strings like he is a puppetmaster

and Belle dances like a liquid Pinocchio

but she only wants to lie with him

as the quake hits crescendo

and the notes

become notes, strips of papyrus carved with quartz saying

You are the rhythm playing inside me

and I lose the beat enough without throwing it away.

My body is sheet music

and you sight read me flawlessly.

Courtlan did not get arrested that night.

He did not get one too many traffic tickets

and was not told to give up his car

or his jazz spot.

He gave the renaissance lovers a place to go,

didn't attract the police to Davis and Belle's loitering love poem.

On the other side of the street,

Belle dares God to snatch the papyrus from her palms,

her paper skin turning stone, glistening as she falls into

his arms like a suicide, back-first...

his hand moves up and down her neck

his instrument

his lover

his instrument

his lover...

His fingers explore her skin.

52nd street

lays scattered like a deck of cards waiting to be picked up.

All that jazz...

but what's a handful of clubs to a royal flush?

Love, Davis says

did you know a fault line lies under New York City?

Under 125th,

Belle says back.

Davis packs up his past just in time to feel the rumble of downbeat.

He takes Belle's hand, walks to the wreckage they created and says

See? It took God six days to create the Earth.

In one night, I opened it just for you.

A swingset on Homestead Road

June 8, 2011, 10:38 PM.

Up and down, I listen to T.I. and look at the

fifteen stars that are visible like teeth I hope to still smile with when I'm old

and gray. In the bushes I hear footsteps. I jump, half-cocked, from my seat

burying my knees into sod and sand.

I remember:

the skyline, the night, love, beauty,

these are not things that belong to me.

My frame is too monstrous to catch butterflies so I crush cocoons

and hold on to the technicolor wings

taking what I can get, I remember

people like me don't unfold, we burst.

I am not a star but the pile of dust it leaves when it implodes.

Rewind: dinner.

We are talking around the table about classes and theology

and the subject shifts to the subjects of my writing,

my love of superheroes and love stories without proper endings

I explain I write what I know.

The subject shifts to the reason why one of the guests

had been avoiding me for sixth months

and she explains she was just busy.

She was the fifth to say this;

I wonder which of my inadequacies did it this time.

The beatings I received at 6 years old

turn into a furrowed brow at 22.

The raised voices that played the violin strings of my childhood homes

turn to hushed tones on stage and in places where I can let go of my roar.

The jeers from when I was in grade school

are the weights that hunch my back quasimodo even now.

But that night, fifteen random stars smiled as my feet and the corners of my mouth

turned skyward.

I wanted to hold each one,

feel its warmth before it supernovas into memories

like I know we are wont to do at the most selfish moment

and name them,

stick them into a bottle like water and play them with my fingertips.

23. The issue of X-men where Beast's mutations furthers and he turns blue.

119. the first time I said "I hate you."

840. The night my best friend told me I'd always just be second to her.

912. 5 shots of tequila and a broken jaw.

17. God just makes some people different.

263. When you can calculate prime numbers over 100 in your head you're a nerd.

777. The ugly boy you could never love but who always rang the bell on time.

323. My last fight 8 years ago.

324. Bloods broke into my house. There was gunfire and I couldn't walk anymore.

613. You want to know how I got these scars? I weighed my mistakes in an iron maiden.

540. On one knee, hands pop-locked into prayer position; the last time I say "I hate you."

400. I loved you enough to let you go.

13. I'm diabetic and starve myself.

04. The shattered violet lantern ring and the empty bottle of gin beside it.

1,209 is so distant I'm afraid I'm making up its name.

It sounds like Daddy, are you proud of me now?

Did you see how high I swung?

How dark it was?

I promise I wasn't afraid.

Parthenon (original; not to be confused with the poem on my Tumblr)

From the highway,
the city always looks smaller.
At night all the comers and goers flying
down the street
look like fireflies waiting to burst
into a thousand rainbows and these
these are my first memories of holding your hand.
I want all nights to end this way,
watching the cars crash into pillow cases full of rose petals,
the light shining just so.
"Picturesque" should have met us before it defined itself.
I'm sure it would have had something to say about our feet,
bare and dangling over the infinite catwalk
that seduced us.
It would complain of our pulse being too loud,
too syncopated.
It would ask why we were a symphony of lips parting
then meeting
then parting
then ask why it must be just a word
dribbling off of a third grader's chin.

And I know nothing of either.

Some nights, I feel lost in a sea of love letters. They're addressed to all of my closest friends, but none of them are mine. I'm just the messenger. The waypoint. I give the people what they want and they thank me with hugs and "I love you"s; none of them feel as real as I need them to when I need them to.

I'm not the type to get angry, but if I were, I'd be infuriated by the feeling. As it stands, I'm not motivated enough to hold grudges. I don't cry as often as I need to, I'm too harsh on myself, and I still treat my scars as if they are something of which to be ashamed. There's no real point to this blog post. But writing it made me feel better.

In short, nothing, no matter how inane, is for nothing. I love you, person reading this. I hope you're having an amazing day or night :-)

Lost.

I.

She called me beautiful.

I don't think it's because she's in awe of me.

I think it's because she doesn't find me attractive

but refuses to hurt my feelings by saying so

so she sticks to a word that can be as ambiguous

as a deep breath before your first kiss.

II.

There used to be a graying tower

where their cottage by the sea sits now.

They're waiting for the day the ship finally comes in,

the tears tearing its hull to bit after it's realized

the crew's families stopped on them years ago.

III.

I used to love her,

but I learned a long time ago

that some things simply don't translate.

La Douleur Exquise

doesn't mean anything to her tongue but

I'm not good enough

is all I have

and it doesn't ever mean all that I need it to.

IV.

This language is beautiful,

but there are so many words confused in their meaning

and they're never what I need them to be

when I need them to be.

Some days, I wonder if I'll ever be good enough.

I'm going through changes. . .

The day I found out "<3" had been added to the Oxford

My grandmother used to tell me

"It's the little things that matter."

As I grew older

I became fascinated with the cracks in the sidewalks

and the lines in my palms,

the tick-tock of a clock or a revolver moving closer to midnight

and the click-clack of the woman's high heels on the street corner.

When I was 4, I was diagnosed with ADHD.

The doctor said I may never know words

and 20 years from now,

as I thumb through the dictionary with my own son

I'll have to say that the man who spent 10 years in school

and 10 becoming disillusioned

was right.

"<3 - noun; a sacrifice you weren't prepared for; an evolution you were not ready to face."

Natural selection doesn't happen in booms and snaps;

it's the tick-tocks,

the seconds you never notice until they've walked away from you,

that you cursed for moving too slowly,

leaving nothing in their wake but letters signed

<3

<3

xoxo

;)

I'm honestly not as bothered by this as the poem would make it sound. I am disturbed by it, yes (only because I can't help but compare it to the artist formerly known as Prince and that worries me greatly) but as a dear friend said "it's cool to see how language has changed over the course of history." Granted, neither < or 3 is a letter. On that grounds, I do wonder where the line will be drawn. But I'm interested to see how things will change.

What has been the strangest change you have seen in your lifetime? Anything at all, hit me! :)

Love.

Write more tomorrow.

A recurring theme in my life is trying to make sense of people, and my repeated failure to do so. This could simply be because I'm tackling something way too big for me, but it could be that I'm approaching it wrong.

Not that many people know, but I have kept a journal for years now. I stumbled upon an entry the other day that read:

"I'm not sure how it happened. But Everything changed tonight. Didn't win the iPod but this is just the beginning. I feel free. Write more tomorrow."

I did write tomorrow but it was largely irrelevant. The point I want to hone in on there is the first two sentences. Not sure how it happened: unsure of what it was about that night (my first slam and the first time I really started believing I was on the level of people in my current performance group, EROT) and unsure about my life after that point. Now I can't imagine it going any other way. It reminds me of this video (let's be real, you knew there'd be a video):





I like that the "write more tomorrow" sentiment applies for other people. This poem is so very relevant to where I am right now. Trying to find the biggest number I can think of, but certainly keeping in mind that no matter how big I can conceive, I am still capable of infinity. We all are.

Love.

I suppose the butterflies in my stomach
are yours now.
I'll give them to you
as soon as I binge on her photographs
purge until our smiles match
and they fly away, to resurrect in the eyes
of someone with a hope ever being that close to her.
Butterflies play in the sunflower's of royal gardens.
I'm meant for moths but they never live as long
and they hurt coming up but I smiled all the way through.
There is nothing logical about love.
It stutters when you look her in the face,
when she chats with you on Facebook about the guy she has eyes for.
I suppose this vocal tick
be
be
be
belongs to you now, too.

Chase

It is never too late
to learn how to run, new.
Broken legs be damned.

Dear God,

This is just to say thank you
for the $20 I found near the extra classes.
No one ever gives me money and the only time I can eat
is at free lunch.
Thanks for reminding me
even poor people
deserve 3 squares.

I wonder if you exist

in tonight

if double rainbows ever show up after

blizzards

or if the Aurora Borealis

is ever visible in Australia.

I wonder how many guitar strings

you'll have to pluck away like scabs

to find that all along

you

were

my

favorite

color.

I am nobody's Nobody.

There’s something about hiding

that reminds me

pain is what makes us human

and loneliness is what makes us monsters.

They say envy is powerful.
It will consume you if you let it
and where I'm from,
it rules like kings do:
that subtle control
everyone falls victim to
and that history will say
was constructed from fear
but really,
it's that want for what you can never have.

I wonder if You will remember me tomorrow.
Or if You will simply fade into forever
like "it will be OK" or "this too shall pass."
These cliches are not things to be hidden behind.
I have finally figured out who You love more.
Forgive me for the sin of not knowing your favorite color
or the dreams you had before your crucifixion.
I just didn't want to overstep my bounds.
How was I to know it would lead me to being forsaken?

Pretend to like me long enough
and You'll never be rid of me.
I should have known then what I know now:
if we were created in God's image,
then He ignores calls from broken friends
and makes up excuses not to see his kids, too.
But I just want to know what makes them so special.

NO! NO!
I will not go gently.
NO!
Not until You've answered me.
NO!
Not until you've noticed me.

I wonder if You'll remember me tomorrow.
I wonder how many days of one prayer short
and one miracle late it will take
but I know better than to think
it will change by the morning.
But in case you do read this
I guess I should give its proper end:
in your son's name I pray,

Amen.

Whispers

Barely existing,
some rumors are meant
to hang in the air.
As it caresses
the ever-shrinking space
between his ear and her's
or her's and her's
he doesn't even know
the meaning behind it.

Two days ago,
it was
"I heard his poppa's not well."
today, he could swear it was
"what's the use in crying now?"

Dusk

The smell of rain
her hair
gunpowder
The smell may change
as he sits on his stoop
the streetlights blinking
into and out of sync
sinking, sinking
as he reads the paper.

The day ages, inches
towards sunset
painting his tenement
technicolor.
Seven ways to midnight
it's green tonight
right in the middle
no rainbow too big or too small
to fit in his old pipe.

Hush

Hushed

prayers fall on deaf Ears

in mosques where women cannot reunite their hands with the maker

Allah Akbar, but bars me from meeting him face to face

Venus has never been so far from Mars

and he carries on his war alone

so the Jihad is

Hushed

As the night

in a neighborhood

different from the ones I grew up in.

The silence hides secrets

searing into skin

bruising my body the brittleness

of glass slippers.

I wonder if Phillip ever laid hands on Cinderella

if I should just

Hush

clocks as time stops

and Outkasts aren’t the only ones sending bombs over Baghdad.

My tongue cannot perfect the complexities of rebellious language

so I communicate by blinking and nodding

the silence is the most powerful scream

so I yell at the top of my lungs to a husband

who fights against himself.

Is he coming home tonight?

Or does the patriotism have him bleeding his true colors?

The intuition says yes but the logic says

Hush

and don’t ruin a good thing with doubt. . .

He’ll be better tomorrow.

Rough day at the office. . .

he’s under a lot of stress.

And I will not forget my place

even if it’s a square peg forced fist-over-fist

eyes painted the color of the midnight

a knowing nod to the lipstick stains when I do the laundry. . .

What would your mother say?

Probably say the same thing as she did then.

“Sometimes all you are is a trophy.

Be grateful for what you’ve got.”

Hush

like I always have, and listen to the radio for news.

Locked within the confines of volume knob and military code;

I forget how old it is sometimes. The realization

that this war just turned 9 and the knob only goes to 10

makes me hopeful that the conflict will soon end.

Send home those prisoners of war

and let the wives of war stop being prisoners

to the din of gunshots and hollow eyes.

There is no turning back.

You can’t go home again

after terrorist attacks

and the conflicts that spark them.

I just want the walls to

“Hush!”

He says, lest I wake the neighbors.

“Wipe your own blood from the floor.

I don’t want to hear it anymore!”

I wonder what I’m worth.

Too sweet to be arm-candy

hanging on for dear life

as the ghosts of social circles

that look at each other but never see anything

provide the backdrop to backhands behind closed doors.

But how much more will you take?

You can’t go home again

but I’ve got to get the Hell out of here.

I was not made to

Hush

the raindrops in the desert and shake the dust.

These dust-devils toss and turn my landscape like bad dreams

but my position won’t allow me to say anything

though it’s just a jumble of syllables to me now

my vow is as broken as my crown was the night he took me

but it won’t break the seal on the back of my throat.

These words spoken through whispers and coded language

and my cipher can no longer decipher them.

Am I ready for the change?

Or am I just ready for the day when I don’t have to

HUSH

Let me figure things out.

Pack my things into a single suitcase

leave

Never return.

Where am I going from here? In dead of night,

In silence. In medias res

because I’m so confused right now.

I am louder than this.

You are louder than this. . .

DEAR SELF

HUSH

And load your guns with slugs made from tatters of my hijab

AND I WILL PROVE TO YOU FISTS DO KNOW GENDER ROLES

as the explosion sounds like a storm and pierces your heart

TO BURST YOUR SOUL INTO A PYRE OF ACKNOWLEDGEMNT!

I WANT YOUR FIRE TO BURN AS VIVIDLY AS MINE DOES

BUT YOU NEVER NOTICE ME. I BITE INTO SHOULD BE

BUT I NEVER GET A TASTE!

Never get a taste. . .

I just

Hush

Hush

Hush

Hush

HUSH

As I sit, silent, wondering what’s next

I see:

I AM LOUDER THAN THIS

I AM RUCKUS

AN EXPERIMENT IN NOISE

From Allah all the way to the tip of my tongue

Pursed lips, cocked back, LET GO

READY, AIM FIRE

BREAK THE SILENCE!