Passive Observer
It swims in through the wall
Like a goldfish swimming
Into and out of perception
And unexpectedly light
When you try it again to
To lift her little body up
(is it really all that you were?)
From where she lay to sleep
And like a fishing hook descends
Getting caught in your hair
That you try to take care of now
That you want to be alive
Like you tried to take care of her also
And you failed to
And the rain falls in against the window
Falling in through
so it gets in the carpet
So you pull the window shut
So you pull the window
down and latch it shut
And the water still runs through
Passing through the glass
like it's nothing
And you don't know what to do
It doesn't make sense, you wonder
What else you could have
done to stop this
When your actions are dependent on
Magnetism, weather,
and abstract gravity
And if I could have changed then
the person I was
I could have done something
And if I thought in patterns
then I probably wouldn't
As flickers of my patience decay
Erupting little thunder in front of me
And every time I breathe
it still keeps happening
Like maggots appear
out of nothing while you sleep
And it keeps being 3am
So I think I shouldn't be here
Not like how I am
And I'm passing through the floor again
Like I'm sinking into distance
And I think there was a different me
Who never saw you die
I wonder where she is today
I need to break
the walls of my enclosure
I need to let me breathe
So air comes in across the slit-up walls
It falls in through the perforated ceiling
The surface I destructed late at night
Speaking with my hammer
Beating with my restless heart
Early in the morning
Looking for my words
And wishing that I didn't understand
The stopped clock illusion
Like it was just between instants
that I felt your skin was cold
And your pulse could flicker back
if I just wait
Like dying is
a thing you fall in time with
And if I could de-synchronize
I might find you
Standing on the limb with me
It is becoming clear that my life was
infected with curse
And it follows me down
into absence to describe this
Answer the Question Yourself
No one is going to tell you
that it's time to start killing
You have to look in the stars
to follow their trail into heaven
You look out the window
at the street full of blood
That wavers and crackles like heating oil
They're pinning people down to kill them
They're doing all the things
you thought they wouldn't
So when is it time?
Paying attention will put you
outside of time again
So the stars in the sky chatter like teeth
So the wind is a finger curled backward
And didn't you make all these promises
That you wouldn't be quiet
That you're biding your time
That your cunning and willingness beg
a time and a place
So where is that now
When your pistol is cold
and you don't read the news
You know what you'll find
When you shiver
with anger remembering
But you're letting your memory leak
You don't want to know
what you'd think of yourself
Watching you
out of the distance of past
And you weren't always
ill out of weakness
It burst your immune system
And what about Tortuguita?
What about Palestine?
When you felt your insufficiency
So absolute that you couldn't walk
That you couldn't get home without
Wanting to kill them all
And what about Kel
Who didn't even die
But seeing his covered body leave
It made you feel ready
To pour out your life into
The cold, degraded street
You were ready to die before
You really did feel how
The Empire parasitizes safety
And you felt it well enough to renounce
The worth of your soul as individual
The meaning of your
words inside recuperation
If you were really who you want to be
Then you wouldn't be alive
And every day that passes getting
harder letting go of yourself
I know that
you aren't going to die because
You have these books to write
People you love
that you can't disappoint
And you don't believe it can get better
You're a coward
Being honest now
And this isn't about you
But you taught yourself
to only speak in these terms
And you're limited
Not as powerless as you want to be
There are plenty ways out of here
And everyone knows
that you're smart enough to die
But you lie about it
Because it isn't convenient
What am I supposed to do when
the world is the problem?
Well you're part of humanity
And you're white and american
So why don't you just
keep that guilt to yourself
Use a folding knife if you need to
But you need to do something
Dreams
That's when I died in my sleep
And you apologized to me, finally
It makes me uncertain being honest
Where do I go from here?
Now I am not being electrocuted
I am no longer being reduced and confined
Now I can look in reflections
Time goes by
Gathering moss will envelop me like napalm
Like I wish it were violent
You gave me everything I wanted then
It wasn't enough
To keep me from sinking through death
Waking again
You will never see my softening
Or the distance
that age creates from repression
In my dream then
You didn't know what to give me
Except for the food
that I made for your birthday
Uncharacteristically
Time deconstructs and accumulates me
Like the complicated number of ways that
loose coins can amount to a dollar
What does it mean
if I can live without nightmares?
I want to make things worse
I want to cross the river
I want to explain this
So I don't have to keep feeling nervous
Six hundred rounds of nine millimeter
full metal jacket cartridges
I can watch the sun rise
knowing night as ended
I look just like boiling water
when I feel like myself
And I don't know what I feel like now
Something that is not myself
That nobody else can name
Flies that land on the window sill
look like birds on a wire
But there are no longer
rotten materials growing in my life
So the flies and their maggots
have nowhere to materialize from
So there are no longer birds on my wire
And I'm going past the road
where my friend lived before
Who was disordered like me
but not as careful
Who didn't survive
Who calls me sometimes
From the place that
they live somewhere else
When they lost their apartment and vanished
Because their parents couldn't
recognize or speak with them
It didn't make a difference
The surface of reality changes
My friend is still living
Only somewhere that is out of my world
Somewhere that is more easily forgotten
And how can I be sober when
I remember sitting on the beach with you
Waiting to be exterminated
And now you are missing
One of the several I feel are present
Watching me be alive still
inside this comfortable apartment
I don't know what to do with myself here
except try to fall asleep,
or try to forget, or linger,
simmering and useless
I don't know what to do with this memory
And my dreams are like graphite
My dreams are like
the ghosts of little animals
My dreams are like paper cutting my fingers
My dreams are like stomach acid on gravel
My dreams are like
throwing your mattress in the street
My dreams are like pockets full of water
I do not recognize
my dreams when they confront me
Standing in the hall outside my room
Feeling like I should crawl under something
Trying to remember the name
And I didn't want
to see you make that face again
And I didn't want to see
myself surviving that
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