Sunday, April 14, 2013

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

“Is it ok if I used it to nudge several people towards Death Valley with it?”

epistle to tommy (november 2010)

Our family makes change
which we run from and then hate,
but cousin,
I know I at least do it compulsively.

Just like you ran,
hid, stole and concealed your stealing
(for drug money,
for freedom)
so do I shy away from responsibility
to anyone but myself
and my shaky clay heart.

I hide my mistakes too—just like you
couldn’t ask my aunt for the thousand dollars,
for a loan,
because you knew it was money you’d spend
on selfishness,
and didn’t want to disappoint—

as a child, I’d never ask my mother for anything.
Not even to define a word,
because I was afraid it was dirty,
to let me watch television,
or to follow me in the street.
In my eyes she was not even kin,
but a safe place I had denied myself
in order to succeed alone.

To succeed alone,
so as to never disappoint
no one.

written in san francisco, late january

I'm watching an old chinese man hang
his laundry from the fire escape
across the street from city lights.

I'm sitting in the third-floor window,

and thinking
cities
make me ill.

i'm starting to deeply resent the past
as it's resuscitated here
and rebranded to serve the unseen
purpose of money-making.

Right now, the new Kerouacs
and Ginsburgs of California
are asleep in oakland,
worn out be the violence of the East Bay Police force,
asleep
in a city that serves treachery to those I love every day
like all cities.

It only stops when the cops call it
clear that the spirit has died
and only the body remains.

..

Debord is right --

the society of the spectacle desires no connection
with the flesh and heart of what's happening.
The sad husks I see wandering around the streets of San Francisco
would rather buy the images of corpses
with long-dead brains rotted below the topsoil who knows where
than love the sparking
wildness that has grown up in the shadow of their excising.

Where are the tourists in East Oakland?
Where the the microphones recording the argument
I woke up to through the floor on E 62nd street,
the angry slamming of words
over money and desire
that some how tumbled me and Adrian groggily into a conversation
about the lived realities of gender performance
and our engagements with attempts at embodying masculinity?



I'm not kidding. This really happened, but
Capitalism has been too quick to snatch us up
for our vests and haircuts.

It couldn't give a fuck about our words
our struggles
our solidarity and love.

..

Fuck everyone

everyone who thinks that money is enough,
who contents on fake flowers
who can't be bothered to sew one button
onto the lapel of a silk jacket.

Fuck waste, and fuck want.
Fuck deep need that is chronically unmet.
The market, the spectacle --

let's burn it.

4/2


so much of my writing has been about the shapes of you
arched back, trail hollow leading
down to marble hips

triangle between nose and winking
left eye, curved lips rosy
smile round like the bottoms of yr glasses.

ringlets and hidden muscles
freckles i still smirk about sometimes
the growing collection of holes and marks
that contain you, whatever
you are or is or were

clothing that fit too tight

i miss a person who grew up
and i admire the person who i see now
still here
i am still here
my heart still
grown up but oh my god
i am still here

please stop
running away please
stop
running

untitled, two


today i cried while fucking because i missed you so much
except i don't know who you are and i don't know
where home is anymore.

all i can think about when i remember you
is the way your nose slanted
down from your eyes in some kind of weirdly perfect geometry
literally every memory i have of you involves
the strange triangle between
eyelid, browbone, bridge and nostril.

i loved you so much
more than i ever loved my own home
more than home as a word because home
as a word doesn't mean much on its own.
it is national poetry month.