my hands

My hands are invalids.
They stink with rotten muscle,
That digests into lethargy before my eyes.

The knuckles swell with disuse,
And redden with a bruised quality
From banging my thighs
As I walk with no destination.

My hands betray me.
They submit to looking feminine
With pale fragile nails.
They’ve overthrown the calluses
That I’d beaten into them
For the sake of a higher purpose.

The fingers have grown clumsy.
They have snipped their own nerves
And the will to hold on.
They care for nothing I offer them.

My hands are my enemies
United against me in protest.
They sever me lifeless from obsession.
They rescue me.


clr

An Example from the Past

Let them hate us,
Let them ignore us,
Let them get angry,
Let them resist our insistence.

If they knew for sure
That we were wrong,
That we are unnatural,
That we didn’t deserve equality,

They would sigh at us,
They would brush us off,
And smile at their superiority,
Like you’d smile at a silly dream.

But they wouldn’t hate us,
And they wouldn’t fight us,
And they wouldn’t argue with us,
They wouldn’t be angry.

So, please, be angry.
For my rights, get angry.
Because when they get angry,
We become real.

Breathing In.

Choking on despair,
I sob for my own fate.
You assume my pain is from you,
But please don’t assume anything.
I am here, but I don’t belong here.

I had my perfect story
For a short time
A short while ago.
Yet I am here,
And home is not.

I smell the daffodils
As they peek open their first leaves
Ready to try again this spring.
I am not ready to try again.
I am empty of my own suchness
And emptied by my own thoughts.
I believed myself down this path
And so here I am.

I am the red queen,
Devoid of self-fulfillment,
Nestled so tightly in the knitting of my own dark cloak
I cannot gasp for air
And I sweat in the heat of my own breath.

My lungs are wet with heavy seeds
From which grow weeds of sorrow,
Vines of negativity,
Strangling the bloom of compassion,
The most beautiful blossom of all.

I know nothing except that I do not live here.
My life is being lived, but by whom?
I am not living here,
I have a home in somewhere that is lost
But I don’t live here.

I have no answer because there is no answer.
I have no question because no question
Can ask what I ask in my heart every moment.
I have no strength except to put down my fists
And stop fighting my reflection.
I have no courage except to wake up from this feverish dream.
I have no choice but to become a lotus
Growing from the mud that was me.



clr

Holiday

You are my Billie,

Pushing rhythms from my soul.

You are my Indiana,

Letting me fight in your scuffles.

You are my Neruda,

Cooing metaphors for me into being.

You are my Butch Cassidy,

And I would follow you anywhere.

You are my Frida,

Wretching my errs onto canvas, on display.

But you are my genie,

Enslaved by my whims.

You are my Rick,

Giving me one last chance.

You are my Ilsa,

The one I chose to let go.

You are my Billie,

Pushing rhythms from my soul.

CLR

don't worry

And then we ran,

Ran like snow drifts,

Tumbling and stumbling

Laughing at the moon!

Wait! that’s not how the story goes.

It looks like this:

You smile forgivingly and leave.
I say nothing

And leave, too.

Leave with no choice

But to come back tomorrow

And smile at you again.

It’s not like smoke, or a dream, or a metaphor.

It’s just that sometimes…sometimes,

I want to say I love you.

But I won’t do that to you.

Don’t worry.