30 Poems in 30 Days - #1 Sandshard

We walked along the same shoreline grinding sand between toes
Nostrils flaring around the sting of salt vapour
and it was decided we evolved in the wrong direction.
And maybe it was the love-sick honesty,
or the twinkle in the stars keeping my head in the clouds
but I missed the glint of shattered glass in sand grains until my skin broke,
pooling bloody tracks underfoot.

Honestly, it was a nice assurance that my heart was working
a steady reminder that things were alright, see - we evolved in the wrong direction for today.
Picked a path just a little too early but it didn't mean we needed to die,
just deconstruct and go back to where we began
Where roots grew from love and sprouted an ironwood foundation
Strong enough to satisfy a need to explore, and keep lethality from our trials
One that keeps my head skyward and lets me step in blood-priced reminders that shards of glass aren't always broken - they may just need to be sand again.

Amy, I'm Told...

Remember when moonlight was a mystery?

In that grass-stained pre-decade time of life when thunder was just a terrifying sound without a name,  when everything was magic because nothing was science yet, and when tiger stripes on running shoes were legitimately awesome, because we weren’t anywhere near arrogant enough to wield irony.

To my next-door neighbour, I don’t recall anything I said to you.

Only my mother’s silk spun stories and occasional photographs have me knowing that you ever existed in the first place.

In these photographs, dusty and faded as your place in my mind, we stand near a crabapple tree and look at each other through a wooden fence in our backyards. I suddenly remember the first sliver my finger ever felt.

I imagine it felt quite a lot like this shard of memory, stuck somewhere inside.

Me, unable to retrieve it without my mother’s help.

Strange to think that back then, we only saw a fence keeping us apart; not the poor luck draw that made us best friends too early in life for it to matter to the people we’ve become.

Were you and I devastated when I had to leave the city? Did we even understand what was happening?   

Maybe it shouldn’t bother me, because all I can see are a collection of happy non-memories that mean more to my mother than myself.

Do you feel the same way?

Has anybody even reminded you?

What we knew then was so precious little. Everything we couldn’t identify is the reason we don’t remember now, our own cognition the ignition in the vehicle that drove us away from the magic of reality, and the reality of magic.

If I saw you today, do you think we would know each other? Our linking fence is our missing link, and it was never anything strong as chain to begin with.

Tonight, when the moonlight reflects off your face, are you as beautiful as what our memories won’t allow us? Or is it dampened by knowing what moonlight really is – just a reflection of the sun – mystery burned up, tarnished like the creased edges of old photographs – See, I’ve been making my own sunlight, and I wonder if you burn as brightly on your side of the string, or maybe if you’ve burned out. Has  your sunlight become a son like me, or a daughter like you, standing at their own side of a fence you’ll have to remind them of some day?

It seemed easier when moonlight was a mystery, and it didn’t take all these fractured steps to say that I don’t know you, but somehow, I miss you. It’s like I know all the lyrics to a song I’ve never heard. I want to feel that sliver again, taste the regretful flavor of crabapples. I want to remember you like my mother does – thrilled about the few years I had before the world had its way with my mind.

You could be anybody today, and that strikes in such a humbling fashion to realize that, whoever you are now, for a brief moment, I was part of it. Just as you were part of me, and are now standing in writing to prove it.

But who are you? Are you alive or dead? Artist or Engineer? Have you spent your time building fences, or tearing them down, and do you remember why? Do you think we would even still be friends?

When I step outside and look up at the moon, I know it’s the same moon we’ve always shared. I wonder if you see it too. I wonder if I’ll meet you there.

But I’m older now. I know enough that I can’t bring myself to believe that it’s possible.

I can, however, keep some solace in knowing that the mystery of moonlight still lives in you.

Winter Chill

(sung) And I heard it in the wind. And I saw it in the sky. And I thought it was the end.

I’m terrified.

Because gritting my teeth is leading to red crevices between them, and I’m tasting more copper than I can afford, and every moment that eventually passes always feels like I’ve finally slipped into madness, like I’ve fallen off a horse into the waiting jaws of my own inadequacies.

Trapped in a moment in which subconscious suffocates. Feeling entirely naked, yet somehow still tripping over shoelaces

Ego falls from the sky, raining like a meteor shower, striking insecurities with pinpoint precision.

I’ve dug my nails so deep into my palms that I’m too stigmatic to hold a pen properly, psyche drawn and quartered, body stretched, tortured, and wracked with guilt for trying to make myself into a martyr.

 All I want to do is stand up, but my spine has been replaced with empty bullet casings, and with no powder to ignite, my powers seem limited to sitting and rusting, or collapsing in a heap of exhausted steel so cold you would never know it once knew what it meant to explode – to provide combustion enough to trust in thrust enough that I could pull away from the gravitational singularity that hides in my bed, keeping me hibernating my way closer and closer to death.

And I wish I could take comfort in knowing that I’m not alone, but this is an awful place to be, and my rage toward it grows with every new face I encounter within it. Every pistol-popped pill bottle, every Rembrandt-wristed knife-stroke, every Kurt Cobain post-script that signs our fates in brain and buckshot on the ceiling.

But maybe, just maybe, we can collectively link ourselves to a point of momentum – take the burden away from our palms, become the thrust keeping us up, and know that collectively, no mouth in existence is big enough to swallow us all.

Let us ignite with our fury, no matter which form it takes, let us be brilliant – because we are so god damned proficient at explaining our perceived uselessness, let us apply our own brand of logic to becoming a compass in the night sky, one which all our siblings can see.

So shine, damn you! Be the daylight in darkness that keeps our eyes open, and our beds at bay.

Shine! Because the brilliance you can hear in yourself is less illusion, more illumination, and all you need to do is open your eyes to let the light out.

Shine! Because we too easily forget that the darkened basements we've abandoned are the foundations upon which our lives have been built, and they deserve a good inspection.

Stand up and do this with me - shine in whatever way you do, and tell the sun that if it should ever burn out, we don't fucking need it!

Stand up and shine, and I will shine with you.

(sung) And I heard it in the wind. And I saw it in the sky. And I thought it was the end. I thought it was the 4th of July.

Let us shine. Because I will not go out in silence.

Finding Fortune

This mic is a matchstick, struck to illuminate a revelation too few of us make, and even fewer admit.

I’m lucky.

Like the bullets speeding from the muffled muzzle of this world’s cheat-code handguns always seem to find that bit of skin that scares them off like chasing mercury with a finger.

Like how the majority of my problems are first-world, and those that aren’t still only come in first-world doses.

Like I still find time to complain about trivial shit, but don’t acknowledge the fortune in having someone to listen.

Lucky.

Because any time my luck has turned for a moment, I’ve never been put in a situation I couldn’t survive.

Because I’m allowed more than just surviving.

Because I have a life with honest friends who love me, so even though there ain’t no such thing as a free 

lunch, I can still get some food for thought.

Because I can dissect myself on this stage, hanging my intestines around the mic like tinsel on a tree, and I can feel safe doing it, knowing that I can get past the blood loss – and I wouldn’t have to put myself back together without help.

Because all the world’s a stage, and there is nothing “mere” about being a player upon it.

Because I spent years damning the wall I’d built, locking myself away from honesty, and never took into account that I’ve had access to the brick and mortar from birth.

Because enough people can relate to that, that it’s become cliché.

Because I’m never really alone.

But I’m still afraid to dance where anyone can see.

Still afraid to tell you how I really feel.

Tell you how even the memory of your smile can illuminate the most demon-infested catacombs of my psyche like sunlight actually managing to fill a black hole – that its darkness would swallow no more.

Lucky.

Like it’s not difficult to find the luck in my life. I can see Lucky Charms around every corner before I even get there, like this world spoon-feeds them to me because I eat Lucky Charms for breakfast.

Like finishing dead-last in anything is still leagues ahead of those who chose not, or didn’t get the chance to start in the first place.

So when this world brings the taste of copper to my teeth, when everything I see becomes a fist either poised to strike, or held in solidarity against me, when the chip on my shoulder carries the weight of the world, and I lose the strength to raise my arms in a shield, I can be thankful for the adversity.

Because the damage I’ve taken along the way led me to paths untraveled by my blood’s history.

Like these acid burns are all on the inside of my mouth, and all self-inflicted

Because each sacred scar serves as a reminder of what I can overcome, and the knowledge that has brought me here lives within each sliver of dead tissue like angels squatting in a hostel.

Wax-Man Rhetoric

When the wax-man came
He showed us how brightly we had all burned
A clean, rigid slip of paper passed with machine precision to each hand that he said deserved it
Written upon them was our appointed value to the world
After 8 years when our fire was still elementary, and 4 years in which we burned on high
These values were the fruits of our education.

Some flames were almost extinguished on the spot
Some leapt in height and scorched the ceilings
Many remained just the way they were.
And mine, as always, was blue and flickering.

Sixty six. My number.
My so-called value.

Flip that Sixty Six average and you found my percentile in the ninety-ninth.
I’ve never been a stupid person. I just see with a different clarity.

See…I never burned yellow.
I blazed blue the way I did, and when their golden-flamed curriculum overlapped with my sapphire sparks, we found some happy medium, and it earned me that sixty six in dull ink, dot matrix perforations cutting as sharp as the cookie-cutter comments written below

“Daniel is an extraordinarily bright young candle, but his continuing unwillingness to apply himself is what has resulted in his poor grade”

My continuing unwillingness to change the colour of my flame, like tiger stripes into leopard spots

I knew the presence of his phantom hands early on, felt his frustration in failing to shape forms he found to be functional. Each frenzied flicker I fired, caressing so many elements around me, never focusing on a still flame meant my own wax never softened…he could not sculpt me – simply snap me in pieces, which only served to make me burn brighter for every bit of wicked spine and spindled wick he exposed.

I was not made to fit into holders; to adorn walls as a decorative piece of a matched set.
I was made to burn blue, and flickering – to seek out those other un-golden flames and add my hue and temperament to everyone around me. Let me drip my body’s blood across writing desks that I might be an inspiration.

I flicker and it frightened him that my fire might spread – adding blue to each yellow and making him see green.

He could try to douse me in oceans of Wax-man rhetoric, but he would never realize that the ocean has more in common with my colour than his, so god damn it, bring it on

Sixty six suited me just fine – it was a grade in a reality not in sync with my own.

All he had given me was sixty six reasons to follow my heart down darkened tunnels and emerge in a place that flickers like landscaped wildfire that burns cross-spectrum and thrives in the resulting heat it produces

All he gave me was the confirmation that I was burning beyond his understanding, so bright as to identify with my future.

All he gave me was a double digit acknowledgment that I was better than anything he had to offer.

Brought to you by the Finest in Dentistry

Futility is just an excuse for people who can't admit they want to give up.

She said "I don't mean to burst your bubble", pausing a moment to re-apply her lipstick to the tumbler siphoning gin down her throat. "But isn't it a bit unrealistic to want to be a career artist?"

"I mean, it's nice as a hobby, but you need to face facts and get a real job."

I feel a twitch at the back of my neck. It's the physical reaction I get when my mind stores something for an upcoming poem.

And in most cases...I would let it slide. I'd semi-seclude myself in a happy place and nod away the moments of this person reciting an empirical grocery list of failed artistry. I would confine myself in the bubble that she so convincingly assured me she did not mean to burst.

But this time...this time there's something about her. Something about the certainty in her voice clashing with the uncertainty in her eyes. Something about the wretched-dagger stilettos that look as though they were designed for nothing -but- bubble-bursting. Something about how her teeth are just too...fucking...perfect...

I ask her name.
She tells me.
I then ask the name of the actress portraying her.

"Excuse me?"
"You heard me. What is the name of the actress portraying Shelley?"

She looks at me like my third head has just grown a fourth head.
Clearly she doesn't understand.

"Because, Shelley. This. All this. This is a facade. It is a farce, a fractured figmentation of SOMEONE's concept of reality. See, I know your secret, Shelley. I know that you are an artist as well. You are a damn good actress portraying this caricature of life, and your practiced motions are so subtle, that we would pass them off as ideosyncracies. Notice, how you clear your throat each time you cross your legs. Notice that you swirl that G&T twice, counter-clockwise before sipping, so the ice hitting the side of the glass will be as sharp and loud as it can be. Every part of you is practiced, primped and prepared for the world around you to see and accept.

"The amount of falsehood you exhale out of that prize-winning smile, that is the culmination of what you would deem a 'real' job. And you're right. No amount of blood and spit on a stage can match that level of reality. I just can't say that I want to be a part of it."

"But the best part, Shelley, is that you spit these foundationless concerns, verbal bullets of envy in compassion's clothing, because it's easier than accepting that I have the courage to chase dreams around blind corners, while you, in your arrow-path hallway can see all of the nowhere you're going. You're losing touch with the character you're playing, because you're handing me this advice like you're my mother, and you just want what's best for me. But my mother KNOWS what's best for me. That's why she says "Daniel, I am so proud of you.""

Hopping off my stool, I pay the bartender for Shelley's next round.

I felt I owed her. Being an artist is thirsty work, and here she had just written my next poem for me.

Orpheus in Decline

It was the kind of music that painted the image of eyes running with blood, having dried up the tear ducts long ago.
His was a home of dust and non-life, built with perfect acoustic resonance in a time when the world clambered to hear each note he struck. Cursed melodies now poisoning the air, making willows of the forest surrounding.

Folk would say "Follow the forest until you find the gray leaves. That's where Orpheus lives."

And there he sits, and plays. Growing his melancholy patch. Lyre fused to his hands by mud and grit, strings caked in filth, seeping and infecting stale, slashed fingertips.

Songs soar out like carrion birds, like life-seeking missiles, tongue twitch, flex, spit, and bitter lyrics sharpen the teeth of this now fanged minstrel.

Though keen his voice, his image is a reflection of the Hell he traversed. Face lost in matted hair, fingernails obscene in their hues, cracked and jagged from striking strings - his skeletal body occasionally visible through holes in the rags we would once have called finery.

"Eurydice"

Her name escapes his lips at last, the inevitable destination of his daily ritual.

He no longer weeps or shivers at the sound of those syllables, though he manages with one voice to deliver them with a polyphonic weight

He plays now, forgoing sustenance or any idea of care. He plays as punishment.

He failed her.

When asp's venom took her on their wedding day, he sang sorrow, played truth from his lyre
And the underworld wept for having claimed her
Hades, in unprecedented sympathy granted Orpheus his opportunity to bring her back
"Play your song, little Orpheus. She will follow you above."
The sadistic stipulation stated that were Orpheus to look back and see her before emerging
She would be lost forever.

And when his patience broke, and his head turned back, he gazed upon the last image of her face he would see

And he read disappointment. In his mind, her lips spoke "You have failed me" Before her visage evaporated, and he was left alone.

Orpheus descended into hell to retrieve his love. Only his body made it back out.

She was the dance that made his music necessary
The harmonizing beauty that paired so correctly to his melody

And her absence has left rust on his strings, locked notes out of key

But he plays for her, and will continue to do so until they are reunited

Until then, he simply, slowly crumbles.