absolute freedom,
it used to be the goal—
until I learned,
having nothing to be tethered to
is its own kind of hell,
its own kind of jail.
Tag: philosophy
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Break your life into verse.
To run on this path,
or to stop; savor,
inhale—
step,
stop—
gravel crunch, silence,
eyes closed, heart open,
holding the Sun’s hands.
step again, stop.
there is a hidden movement.
a leap in every pause.
such speed in stillness.
such stagnancy in those who cannot stop moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving moving—
lips move,
but frozen on the same word.
find the symphony.
make a hymn of the cacophony.
rescue each layer from its doom:
to be swallowed by the whole.
do not let life be noise:
let it be music,
and please:
stop, and listen.
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There is no such thing as poetry!
Just speak! No — bellow!
Do not contort yourself. Those screams in your gut were meant to echo through mountain ranges. Do not place them in a closet shoebox.
Do not “try” to make it sound pretty, do not “try” to make it poetry— else, what was meant to be the liberation of your soul will become its jail cell.
Every poem: a love letter, a confession. A love letter to yourself, to the natural world, to another. Write it for the ears of to whom the letter is dedicated— not for the eyes of who might later stumble upon it, who might judge whether this love was love.
No, there is no such thing as poetry. Do not look at a paper and say, “I am going to write a poem.” Look at your heart and ask what it has to say. Do not judge its answer. Give it the pen. Do not stand in the way. The river will flow. You will later look and say: that is a poem. Almost by accident, it happened.
More important than the what of your writing is the why, the why is where the “poem” exists. “Why” is the lifeblood of human existence; the lifeblood of human existence is poetry’s ink.
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I’ve come to worship
at your body’s temple.
I am on my knees
confessing the sin of my desire.
Your curves are scripture—
I touch the divine—
I’m in ecstasy.
Light, white, blinding.
No—
this is false.
I know not anyone
worth bowing to.
I cannot
make you my idol.
I will not.
I’ve had quite enough
of love
that puts me on my knees.
We meet face to face,
or we do not meet at all.
I give—
but I also receive.
No more love
that is a one-way street.
Done am I
placing the divine in another,
as if they, and they alone,
hold
all that is holy,
like I am damned,
and my salvation
is bought
through martyrdom,
dying
for an unfeeling God.
If you are holy, then I am too.
If I am damned, you are too.
Scales of my love: balance.
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Sometimes, the old Catholic in me
rears its pious head, telling me
that prayer looks like aching knees
and the scrubbing of my shame,
until the grime of my very aliveness
soon after builds again—
but that gentler voice within
blows this smoke away
with but a whisper,
asking me how I want to pray today,
and what part of my body would like to do the praying?
is it my feet,
dancing in the grass,
is it my hands,
tracing an oak?
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my revolutionary ideologies
are capable of utter destruction.
do you know how loud a hushed mouth is?
listen: there is no greater noise.
a hurricane of silence.
I made myself delicate,
public displays of my underbelly.
I dressed a fortress in a house of cards:
meanwhile,
I saw the straw that they called a castle.
silent observation: toppled.
at least to my eyes.
there is no gaze more piercing
than a gentle one.
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The sapling does not tell itself: once I am tall, once I am strong, once I am at last a great oak, then and only then will I be worthy of sunshine.
We so often tell ourselves: once I am great, once I am deserving, then and only then will I love myself, then and only then will I be worthy of love— as if love is not the very sunshine we need to grow tall, grow strong.
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purified in the stream of hunger, eating the sin off my bones. self-subsistent self-destruction. if less of me exists, maybe I’ll exist less. longing for freedom, for lightness. gravity loses its hold.
will I be made worthy if there is less of me? is the price of love emaciation? flesh falls off the bone. tainted flesh, tainted flesh. find your cell in our red light district, snare a passerby. the less of you there is, the more noticed you will be. you grew in size, began to hide in plain sight. just longing for someone’s eyes to get stuck, to stop their roaming, to decide that in the rough, you are the diamond.
but I was taught it is my own flesh that obscures the diamond. I pursed my lips to expose my own worthiness. I pursed my lips, but starved for love. I pursed my lips because I was starved for love. I pursed my lips and only grew hungrier than I already was. who denies themselves, hoping for the hunger to abate?
make me holy, make me holy. the price of holiness is your own damnation. you long to be the idol, the price is truth. glitter thrown on lead.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 