In between work and married life, I’ve taken a lot of time to look back at what I have written. I needed to look at it with fresh eyes and a different perspective to see what worked and what didn’t.
Last year, I had the idea to put out a chapbook of poetry. I think my time as a neophyte slam poet are done. My style does not cross over into the world of live performance as well as I thought it would.
At some point, I felt that the writing needed to change to try and pull people in (whether with topical or political subjects) and when I tried it, something was lost. The ones who do it well, excel at it. I, myself, do not do it well.
The chapbook was to be called The Blackbird Seven; seven pivotal moments in a life, from beginning to end. Each piece would be numbered, (Blackbird I, II, etc.) to symbolize a piece of the newly deceased character being carried away. Some pieces were meant to represent captured moments imprinted, some were emotions from formative years.
The idea changed many times from its inception; first, it was to be a fictional character, then it was about my own experiences and memories. As much as I like the concept, I could not find a way to make the pieces connect and instead, now have seven disjointed pieces.
Instead of releasing something that I did not feel was 100%, I will be putting it here.
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I.
A Sorrow Broadcast
Dear friend, I sing here to curse your name
That you should take a life as valued as your own, two weeks ago this day
This pile of dirt holds your truth
I find myself losing breath when speaking, reflections show me wings
And a sadness that beckons me to try my luck at flying
Struggling to keep my head above a water rising higher the more I walk this path alone
Here is a toast…
To the growing void in me
One that spreads dead feathers in the places where warm laughter would sit
My eyes match the sullen stares of my elders finally accustomed to the realities of what life is
We had talked about this for years
On buses and trains, drunken and reckless, through the youthful city we revisit
But cannot reside in
Those were the best days of our lives!
Things will change…
Somehow, we knew what lied behind our parents’ hopes
That dreams and fantasies were proven to be a matter of luck of timing
And we had obligations to fulfill…checks to write…jobs to work…
No one has changed the world without food on the table
Cheers to the anger…
That put holes in walls and dents in my knuckles
For you have humbled me
Swallowed up
By the years, the bills, maintaining small comfort
This shit catches up to us all, doesn’t it?
I fell short
But you…ran away from it
Never trading a piece of yourself
What courage it takes to look at everything we are, everything we came from
And say
“I don’t need it…”
What sorrow do I broadcast with my every move?
This rat race is no longer fun without your disregard
And I tell stories about you to whoever will listen
This blackbird on your stone is becoming me
A carrier of bones and old memories
Casting no shadow
No longer feeling its heart
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II.
Vanishing Days
These are vanishing days and I am troubled
Something keeping me from placing words on paper in unique strings
Bringing clarity that I desperately need but all my numbers are decreasing to zero
Wax dripping from the burning touch of mysterious, divine fingers
A tired mind pushes me to find truth
To cease speaking any words lacking resolution
Believe me when I say I am sick of keyboard warriors
Endless arguments never made in person
A circular distraction
Occupied fussing with toys
We are insects too fascinated with the shiny lights ahead
As opposed to the steel engine pushing forward
Faster than you can run
Yet I am hit with petty, empty emotions
Except for one…
There’s not a lack of, but an adverse reaction to its presence
Unable to focus and grow collectively
We stab at the hands of unassuming strangers
Seeking the validation reserved for those who truly educate
Always the ghost in hallways of loud voices
Silent observation never put me in the crosshairs for accusations
But rest assured that no one would survive with reputation intact
Should they attempt to take what is mine
It’s all about one thing…
You think I don’t know what it means?
The idea that you cannot let go of someone
Desperately needing a punch in the face because you still care about them?
The days of living on good memories are vanishing
Replaced by a fight every day to hold onto what you deserve
In the wake of passive insanity
Of people who would rather sit alone in the dark than work together
And keep fighting the ones who never turned their back on them
Creating new enemies from their own mind
Never getting up and making the change needed most with their own hands
There is no other way that I know of
Some things cannot be controlled, but I will not be controlled
To the woman who waited two years to fly 20 hours and watch me falter
I am sorry that I am not as strong as you thought but I love you
And nameless men will put me in the fucking ground before I give up on us
Let them pour that dirt with the same conviction that goes into these words
I am tired of hate
The anger that feeds these pains in my stomach at night is useless
For so long, it’s been the fuel for my hands, the catalyst for my life’s work
But there is something else here now
What could it be?
What have we been ignoring?
How long has it been waiting?
And vanishing?
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III.
An Invisible City…
Within me is an invisible city, populated with history
It turns and revolves like clockwork, stirring up heat in these early winter hours
My hands are cradled between my legs
The numbers of the clock in my car struggle to change in below zero air
It is here, where I prepare for cubicle service
Eight hours of routine digging through telephone wires
These internal city lights flicker with the same frequency as my eyes blink to flush tears
Breath creates ice across the surface of the dashboard
Three blocks of memories to walk before the car is warm enough to move
One:
Years ago, poetry club and a ride home on the same bus were common ground
She and I spent our summers finding ways to reveal our fears
Becoming writers
Practicing loud, complicated art in messy bedrooms
Two:
Pouring our vulnerabilities into carefully worded emails during her semesters away
She wore white dresses with flowers in her hair and white pearls across the neck
Clear eyes with furrowed brows
Billie Holiday without the heroin
Three:
We sang a blues beaten beet red by lack of human contact
Left pieces buried in the other that we will not get back
When we talk, there is a reminder of summer in our words, so conversations are brief
Yet somehow, we remember that we made each other better
Four:
You said that we write, to save ourselves
To this day, I think about superheroes
Whether on damaged Midwest roads
Dodging potholes like raindrops
Or ingesting two cups of jet black electricity to shock my city
I am not a morning person
Every spreadsheet falls victim to the rivers of ink inside my blood
Coercing me to pray to these paper altars
Untouched
In hopes of finding a new language to define this metropolis I carry
When I dreamed as a child
Images formed through a dancing darkness behind my eyes
A sequence of shadows that speaks to me still
Begging me to give them life
Two lined arms to the side, majestic circles for hands
A small dot of mouth to show the stoic understanding of the burden placed upon them
To watch over this bustling world made of pencil lines and amateur shading
Reminding me there is still a place for my heroes here in the world of big budget monopolies
There is an infinite amount of personality in stick figures
Within simple bodies lay carbon hearts
A lifeblood with my signature
Moving through veins crafted by my own trials
They are dying to be freed
Hands move into prayer position
Hidden underneath endless paperwork
And the city begins to move again with startling precision
Paving new streets
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IV.
Belly Button
Anger was written into my DNA, I was raised with it and around it
It is who I am
Everywhere beneath crackling skin, blood boils then settles
I make with crafty motions to let everyone around me know that all is well
A cool, casual demeanor is important to maintain, they say
Yet with every idea and ambition that I fumble
There is fleeting contentment, over analysis, insecurity, rage, meditation, repeat
My reflexes are coming under fire
Awaiting the loss of a façade I took years to design
My faults are the harsh medicine mixed within the food
Laced with every mistake I said I would handle right before she left her country
There is fatigue in my bones
My contradictions are no longer interesting
Weaknesses no longer endearing
Every day, I feel I am failing to be the vision of what I could be
Looking back to the smashed cage that bred me
Sheltered, ill prepared to handle the questions I didn’t even think to ask
Caught at a fork in the road of my decisions
Baby, have you ever felt lost?
Didn’t anyone ever tell you that nothing you do will matter?
Unless you are willing to step outside of yourself
No one will believe what you say until you believe them
I am halfway between being a man, and staying one when things go wrong
And though this anger comes in short bursts, it is still enough to alienate
Making me second guess every face that smiles when I do the dance
Bringing out charming laughter to replace that brief hatred
Show them it doesn’t get to you, but it does…and it might always
The dance has no appeal; the moves are too rehearsed
Maybe no one can live this long without becoming a cliché
These wings grow tired under the stones I said I would burden forever
The weight is heavier than I thought it would be
Feathers fall showing broken skin
The name of my love is etched deep
I am everyone who has ever been in this position
So why do I feel like everything bad still happens to me only?
When we shower together
Your finger will sometimes trace the edge of my belly button
And sometimes, you push in
My stomach tenses when I grip your skin
Bracing as if you were trying to dig out a better me
There are times when I can say I do not love everything you do
But I am here, holding on
How long before I can shed my own anchors?
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V.
We speak in video games
My brother is a grown man with the mind of a child
Unable to articulate universal angst to express thoughts and emotions taken for granted
Yet excitement often pours from him leading into breaks of dialect
Fast moving hands, repeating phrases
All sounds of a forgotten language buried beneath concrete shackles of disability
The expressions of a lost people, I strain to find the meaning
Years ago, I discovered a way for us to connect, we speak in video games
We speak in plumbers and Pokémon; we are as snakes under cardboard boxes
With guns blazing, swords clashing
All the furious lights and energy to stir the imagination bringing forth the bridge
Visual media burned as a catalyst to home schooling
YouTube and Playstation after schoolwork allowed countless attempts to get the phrasing just right
Over and over at all hours of the day, memorizing, recording
Understanding emerges making communication slowly possible
My star pupil
Valedictorian in the fine arts of Mortal Kombat, Soul Calibur and Marvel V.S. Capcom
Tinkering with the colors and combinations of clothing for characters
We share opinions through the fashion options of space pirates and world warriors
The waters of conversation sometimes bubble up into frenzy
“hey jr! look at that! What happened to his head? It exploded! That’s called a fatality…
Choices become preferences, which evolve into favorites, culminating into personality
But some days, there is nothing but a brick wall
Regression into silence of prison walls, where every question you ask is ignored
Brother, can you hear me? Yes
Why are you sad? I don’t know.
Why are you angry? I don’t know, stop talking please!
Motor skills are hard to recall, eyes staring in directions further away from a normal life
Babies born spared the random collection of genes are molded like clay from the beginning
Into a reflection of its makers and the world around them, for better or worse
Teaching my brother is taking knives to a tree, taking endless patience and diligence
In guiding the growth of an incomplete work of art
In 2014, the average cost for behavior therapy for children with autism is $17,000 a year
At 21, there will be no government programs to teach him how to survive
I envy the inner workings of his mind
The fact that he does not yet have to know what it means to worry, or to dread
Or feel the corruption of the world around us
Brother, do you know what is happening outside?
I’m okay! Not to worry!
There is fear of what will happen when or if I go before him
A smile on his face, a laugh that echoes through the rooms of the house
Replaces the discussion we bury and never fully hold
I refuse to die while him becoming institutionalized for the remainder of his life
Remains a possibility
My purpose, more than words on a page that need to be written
To shape the mind of a boy into the strength of a man
Press start to begin
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VI.
The Genesis of Memory
Dylan Thomas became a hero for me
When he admitted that he wrote not for ambition or bread
But for the lovers in bed
Those words I would find in defining times
Buried them deep in the back of my own
Leaving an imprint
Writers document life in floods of paper and ink
Poets capture an entire existence within moments
An echo of distant music left for an audience to discover
To tear apart
Fill the infinite blanks in their minds
We write for ourselves
For those who can’t or never wanted to
Those with no choice, no option, no desire
Even if we did not realize it
It belongs to all
The real function of human beings is not to spread a seed
But to spew information
This is universal, subconscious, and undeniable
In literature, social media, networking
Through infection, invasion, war
Written words work the same way
Exchanging ideas and moments
Sadness to dispel sadness
Darkness to defend darkness
Death to stop more death
We hear the signals, process the data
But we have our own destruction to make
There is no future without it
Records I leave behind will mark the dirt and grime
Touched by me, as well
No false pretenses in my words
Just the slow evolution from the day that first imprint was made
A check to check life, with a flair for dark clothes
No money, no connections
Just a handful of comrades
Living the stories with me
Spreading the infection we embody
First place prize was never in the cards for me
No trophies or degrees
Just honest work until an honest death
Nothing else matters but words on a page for me
The cycles of technology will bury this work
Deep into lines of code, easy to download
Stories survive as time charges on blind
We carry on
Festering, spreading the disease of knowledge
Virus of existence, language of experience
Spit it out and become your history
Words on paper spark fires that burn relentless
The genesis of memory
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VII.
A dual elegy…
They say that when a person dies, a blackbird carries their spirit to the land of the dead
Sometimes their energy lingers
Residual motions imprinted in time through strange phenomena
Finding themselves struggling with the presence of living creatures newly ripped away from them
Shoved back into their faces, older, broken
The lifeblood within their shapes, bodies no more, still remaining
It pushes to stay alive
Relevant to familiar faces with histories are empty
Leading to doors moving on their own, drinking cups flying from their hands
Voices off-screen shrouded in distorted whispers
A language of static misinterpreted as messages from beyond our world
This is wrong.
I am alone here, but there has to be others
We are not lost in clouds
They are always around you, never quite remembering your names
I am barely holding together
A ghost is nothing more than a revolving door of memories
Formless
The passage of time moves with the persistence of busy highways
Images stick out but are quickly shuffled aside
No time for true sadness, only calculated movement
Showing you the fate of all things
A universal truth appears weaving between the rushed narrative of the world
We are weak
I speak these words to no one
They have echoed across endless sky for as long as I have tried to speak them
What afterlife is this that you are made a spectator for the death of all others?
The actors on this stage are unprepared for what is waiting for them
No airport landing with relatives long missing
No heaven or hell
Fire or light
Companions or vagrants
You will see everything you left behind wither
A garden of lost flowers, my exit proved to crack the foundations of so many
Far stronger
Honest men turned wayward shadows
I used to be their rebellion
A woman given a child she didn’t choose
So convinced that she could not create a decent human alone
I gave her that chance
There was so much hate in my absence, but she succeeded
Some people don’t realize how much damage they inflict simply by living
People bouncing off of each other, spinning fictions of negativity
An evolving chaos we perfect daily
Whatever soul remaining has been poured out onto phantom pages
Spread out across life
It is all I think about, it is all that is shown to me
In dead black wings, I will follow you
Singing in aching fervor
The journey is far more vicious than its destination
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Thank you…
shadowart 