Yet
I need you
like the world needs sunlight.
I need you to cover me
like a blanket in the cold, lonely night.
I need you to link minds,
connect with me,
recharge me and fill me
with passion and excitement
and energy and lust,
bring back meaning and purpose
to this broken eggshell life,
but I haven’t met you
yet.
I submit to you
all of my poems, songs, and stories,
my heartbreaks and victories,
loves and doubts,
verses like stars and rain,
infinite worlds of possibility,
times and places to fill stories,
poems and memoirs,
lyrics and music.
I need you to publish me and edit me,
give my stories out to the masses,
but I haven’t found you
yet.
I pray to you.
You are my god, my savior.
It is you who comes
when the weight is too much,
the chains are too many for me to break.
This world, this life has become gibberish
in the Tower of Babel,
but you can create a rock you are unable to lift
and then you can lift it.
You can make nonsense sensible
and make the sensible nonsense,
but you haven’t intervened
yet.
I wait for you,
any of you and all of you,
but the sands of this hourglass have fallen.
You might be my woman,
my once in a lifetime love,
my hero or my savior,
but you need to show up now
because I’m a skeleton,
bare bones shouldering the load alone,
hanging from the cliff side
by a pinkie,
but I haven’t fallen
yet.
4/15/2024
I’ve had to come to terms with a lot of hard truths lately. I’ve been fighting and not accepting. But I’m not going to be able to live my dreams.
I’m too old to from a band and have a hit song. I haven’t been able to get an agent so I won’t be able to get my fantasy series published. I’ve outgrown it and no longer believe the messages it was meant to spread like belief and hope and love. I won’t be able to write or edit that story any longer. I can barely write anything at this point.
But the biggest and hardest truth I’ve accepted is that I’m gonna be alone and I’m going to have to find some way to come to terms with that. I’ve never done well alone but I have to find a way to hang on for my kids.
I need to focus on my kids. I have to try my best to help them live the lives I wasn’t able to live. I have to motivate them and encourage them to live their dreams before it’s too late. I have to help instill them with confidence so when they meet the people they’re meant to be with, they don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made. I don’t want any of them to grow up to be like me, hopeless, angry, bitter. They’re really all I have at this point. They’re my life and I want the best for them.
Spring
I woke up
thinking of unpaid bills,
dwindling bank accounts,
kids and birthdays,
lost loves and obligations,
all of the things I need to do
stacking on my shoulders
like nations and oceans
on the back of Atlas,
but it’s Spring,
the weather’s nice,
the flowers are opening their eyes
and yawning, stretching out
to the warm hugs of the sun,
and I just want to go for a walk today.
The Night I Killed Poetry
I took poetry
and its pretentious tight backside,
bent it over,
and let the spankings fly,
fucked it doggy style
until its cheeks were red with pain,
bleeding out passion,
erasing all formalities.
I stole its metaphors,
alliterations, allusions and illusions.
I broke the windows of its past,
and while professors and students looked on,
lined up to publish verse
in literary journals and magazines,
I ran off into the night
and threw all those literary tools
into the sewer.
I flushed big fancy words and thesauruses,
French and Latin phrases,
translations and fancy lines,
all lace and velvet;
I flushed them all right down the fucking toilet
where they belong.
And I was left with
fucks I just don’t give anymore,
middle fingers and rock hard cocks,
sex, drugs and rock and roll,
cliches and bad words,
angry blunt and shattering fists,
punk rock and alternative angst,
confessions of heartbreak,
life and love and death,
all bleeding out from the page and voice
for your fucking listening enjoyment.
If Only Just
If only
I could just find a way
to pay my bills,
live comfortably again,
not under the shadows
of storm clouds and bombers
waiting to rain down hellfire,
catastrophes and tragedies,
suffering and devastation.
If only
I could just forget
lost love, dashed dreams,
soulmates who disappeared
like mirages of lakes and palm trees
in this desert of loneliness,
gritty sand
that cuts like burning razors.
If only
I could just hope
in this wasteland of darkness,
this vacuum of emptiness
that seems to start within
and it spreads to encompass
the entire world, the entire universe,
like a black hole ravenous with lust.
If only
I could just promise
my kids futures that are better than my past,
lives that are better than mine,
a little less painful, full of heartbreak,
futures full of laughter and love,
but childhood is a sunset
in the rear view mirror.
And “if only”
is a prefix
for something that will never happen
and “just”
is a word we use
to tell ourselves things are easy
when they’re really the hardest things
imaginable.
Foundation
I keep finding myself in craters
of desolation and destruction.
My world has been rocked so many times
I don’t know who I am anymore.
I can’t figure out
left from right, up from down,
which way to go
and where to not go.
But every time
I find myself in one of these craters
of aftermath, doom, and hopelessness,
I find my kids there with me;
they’re my rock, my foundation,
the only things I have
worth building on.
Sacrifice
I can’t keep laying myself down on the table
as a sacrifice for everyone else.
I have the right to exist,
I have the right to survive.
I can’t keep letting myself fade
so others can be happy,
so others can live while I die,
so others can love while I cry.
I’m not Jesus. I’m not Moses.
I’m not Mohammed or the Buddha.
I’m just a weak man
who’s trying to get by,
trying to navigate the pain and strife
in this hell we call life.
4/10/2024
Today I’m supposed to start working on my self assessment at work. I’ve been really screwing up for the past year so I really don’t know what to write. Maybe “with all the shit I’ve been dealing with in my life, it’s a miracle I can get out of bed in the morning. I’d have offed myself a long time ago if I’d known this was what my life was gonna be. So my self assessment is this: it’s a miracle I’m still alive and breathing. Anything else is above and beyond.”
I feel like writing about how I make a great salary but can’t afford rent or utilities because my estranged wife who told me two and a half years ago she was gay and wanted a divorce has refused to sign the papers because she’s getting a free ride from me. I’m paying for two houses, two sets of utilities, four kids, and her. I feel like writing about how I have four young kids ages 4-10 who are struggling and having behavior problems and depression issues because of their fucked up, fractured home lives. I feel like writing about how my mom is failing mentally and can’t remember to take a shower or brush her teeth or do all the things we take for granted and how my brother moved her closer to him so it wouldn’t be as big a burden on me but I’m missing her and constantly worrying about her and I don’t even have her phone number or address. I feel like writing about how my dad died four years ago but I never grieved him because my life since then has been catastrophe after catastrophe. I feel like writing about how my soul mate who I had a short fling with is with another man now and it’s killing me emotionally and intellectually along with everything else. I feel like writing about how hard it is to work when my mind is fixed on her and my heart and soul are aching and dying. I feel like writing about how I no longer have a person, a helper, someone I can turn to. I’m drowning and I have no life preserver, nothing to reach out for. No hope.
I feel like writing about how amidst all of this, I haven’t been evicted, my electricity is still on, my kids are being fed and have a roof over their heads and the structure and discipline I’m implementing are improving their behavior. I feel like writing about how rather than sitting around moping, I’m playing music at clubs and bars, I’m facilitating a bimonthly writing workshop and a poetry/spoken word open mic. I feel like writing about how I’m constantly getting out socially and meeting new people. I feel like writing about how I’m taking karate classes, working out, and running through all my pain and sorrow. I feel like writing about how I’m in the best physical shape I’ve been in my whole life. Though there are still nights I spend alone missing my kids, missing the woman I love, smoking weed and trying to watch movies to keep myself from staring into a bottle of pills.
But somehow amidst all of this, I’m alive, living life even, and trying my damned hardest to move forward somehow.
Today I’m supposed to start working on my self assessment at work. And I feel like writing all of this. But I have to stick to work stuff. Accomplishments and whatnot. And I’ve been barely holding it together, sometimes not holding it together at all. I haven’t accomplished much of anything at work. So even though I’ve done so much, and just turning on a computer and typing a sentence is a miracle for me right now, I’m afraid all I am is a blank page.
Absent
This morning
I’m crushed
under the weight of unpaid bills,
children who aren’t with me,
but most of all,
the weight of your absence.
It permeates all that I am.
I’ve become defined
by what’s not there.
I am
your absence.
My limbs have been amputated,
my heart pulled away,
my mind gone,
only thoughts of you left.
I am
your absence.
I’m empty space,
a black hole,
an absence of life.