We Are Fire!

Fresh off existence, a friendly resistance. Rhyming is like sighing it’s all funny business! Taxes relapses reshapes and prolapses. A spinning sort of yearning unbecoming and surly. In the wee hours of night big, brash, and burly with no ending in sight. Used to flip these switches! Used to drill those fillings! Used to fill up and use up and bring in the killings! In the stark lips of persistence kissing me dreamily this missed opportunity or maybe it’s still waiting for me. For this strict contemplation, a musical sort of apparition coming down from the mountain cumming and sounding so sweet! An insatiable appetite Of the body, c*nt, and brain Of the swimming, shining, sinking, climbing failing, hoping, reaching, groping. Trying oh so trying to hang on real tight, but the flower in the bud wants to burst open on sight! Both the Dragon and the Phoenix are bound to take flight!

Snowy White Egret

Bennu comes at exactly the right moment. A piece of time encapsulated by the plumage of snowy white feathers and a long, elegant neck, long gangly feet tapered, resting on the top of a streetlight on red. Barring this existence from further chaos. This complicated year shot off with a BANG! And landed in my heart, with bright red eyes, like the streetlight, just a pause until the excitement captures me in its loving embrace. This GIANT twisting inside of me, hopeful, fearful, bittersweet, strange, lovely, expansive. The unfurling of Japanese Cherry Blossoms, slowly, each bud tightly wound tight until the petals are ready to BURST! into a glorious pink flower! So much movement, intense rapture of humanity, community, friendship, camaraderie, openness, seeing all the flaws in everyone, and still loving every little bit. Bennu knows that I was once a robot from another life, another land, created in another galaxy, solar system, planet; brought here, to earth for one purpose and one purpose only; to understand what it means to be human and live in a human body. Every sense of mine has always been heightened, and it’s overwhelming at times, and elation, bliss, orgasmic, and stimulating sometimes. The beauty of Bennu, the Egret or maybe a Crane or a Heron or some other lithe water fowl a striking semblance of peace in this hectic world where all is undone ready to be made. The trick to being an adult is to be an adult. To grow the fuck up is to fiercely love each and every part that has gotten me here, but also allow each and every version of myself that is yet to become, exist, while simultaneously being in the moment. Prescence is infinite, and so is the afternoon light bouncing off those soft white feathers. To love another person as much as I love myself, well, I’m still working on that…

The Albatross

And on the bough of grate arrest Sat a lady with toweled unrest And with it a notebook Black as soot Parched and swollen Stomped, a black boot And through the Pandemic she wrote and she wrote About fears of her body being crushed by the throat With it came sorrows when her family was good Surrounded by friends online and much food Surrounded by parents by brother the like Still she felt trapped Still she sought light In a dungeon of her own making Born of sweat, slime, and drink Harrowed and shaking Ghastly to think That this isn’t the end Nay, only beginning Stuck in her bedroom like a warped castle hanging Velvet ropes shuttered her eye And garden troves shuttered her thigh And brains pumped by news All of the time, er, all of the time So she shut out the world As impeachment enclosed Across the country Dead justice rose Not zombies nor corpses not copses the like Send her the script of a worn phantom tike She once was a child, now she airs thirty In ere few years, will she be worthy Of the spite and malice Of the spit and chalice Of the whirlwind that adulthood becomes, Leering its awful tight grin Pale teeth embedded into her skin She wishes, oh she wishes she ere a child again! How many a time now has she dreamed of escaping Lockdown, social distancing, shelter in place, resisting Once a grand circus, now deserted incased Once crisis inverted, now heavens did race The lady waited The lady prayed The lady wished, and hoped and brayed The Albatross which was wrapped round her neck Not by rope but by feathers So weary and pecked The actual bird wrapped its corpse round her throat But she slayed it, sliced the dead bird clean off! And let it sink into the dirt and decompose to rot There goes the rhyme Blessed and recoiled Well in her prime She feels so old, so boiled But the Albatross A great wanton flight Unusual, still That mates for life And carries no strife Still, she swung in the knife And released its rolling sore Now it burdens her no more And then the lady mariner saw the light!

All-Nighter

I haven’t stayed up this late since college or maybe it was sooner I just wasn’t paying attention. It’s 6:15 am on a Sunday morning and I saw the sunrise covered in a white shawl like my love life in mourning but where people dress all in white, not in black to celebrate. Like how I will wear a rainbow dress or a colorful suit on my wedding day to truly reflect who I am inside. Caps Lock and Auto Correct are both a curse and a blessing; so is pulling an all-nighter. It’s just me and the silent world, ghost birds and distant early traffic. It’s just me and my lonely heart empty of all the the racket. I have given away my favorite college leather jacket the one with the red yarn woven on its sleeves, but it was time to say goodbye. Hello adulthood captured in lockdown hidden under blue medical masks and KN95 and hand sanitizer and face shields and endless new cycles on TV. It’s funny how chill the universe seems under the guise of no sleep. I forget how this will affect me, maybe it will tear me apart, maybe it will bring me together? I am weak from the journey my body’s taking me on, a head spin from 1960s, 1970s and 1980s rock to late 90s and 00s emo and strange music that has no genre yet. I found out that Tool music videos are mini horror films and I cannot stand it or sit through it. Stanley Kubrick was my fascination last night, as was QAnon and Incel and conspiracy theories and Kdramas and Korean manga and fantasy comics including witches with their hair chopped off. That’s a wrap! What is “emo” anyways? Emotional? Yes, I’ve always been emotional and hyper-sensitive and an empathy and a simpatico person. Who will be my match now, after the tables have turned? After the fire has gone out? Who will light my Olympic flames once again and burn me bright? I have no idea, but I’m ready to find out…

You Are A Mystical Creature

Fatso You are and you aren’t Whale You are more than the labels they give you Cow It’s over now Their insults cannot hurt you Giant You are not in middle school anymore Ugly They cannot hurt you anymore Lard You are a grown-ass woman almost thirty, unapologetically queer, hairy, with curves and breasts and wide hips and pretty dips and They cannot cypher their words, syphon their insults by relating you to a beautiful big creature Cow, Whale, Lard, Fatso What is a Lard but a singling A bright beige soft nosed creature with brownie eyes and long lashes like a taper with a hooked nose soft and long like an elephants Flappy points of ears that hear well with tiny sharp teeth like a land-locked manatee or a furry caramel Beluga whale Their insults only refer you to necessary creatures who give their life to feed you and their intellect to empower you A Fatso is a bright blue animal that has shimmering rainbow wings (like a dragon) and thin curly white horns and milky grey eyes with a fabulous feathers and a fanned tail of royal purple that soars through the skit at light-speed and can bring the rain with its melodious cries When they or you or they or you or They are you you know Insult you they are not insulting you because a Lard and a Fatso are both such intelligent creatures mystical and fervent glorious and gargantuan Large, yes But beautiful all the same They have sharp teeth and move through the earth or skies whenever and wherever they like These animals have freedom Just like how you have freedom in how you think about yourself which is to think of yourself as the sexist, prettiest, cutest person alive now isn’t that great? now isn’t that grand? You are gold plated and steel incorporated and glass blown and light shadows thrown and haggling heights and shaved delights and a hairy symphony and a harrowing city of sparkles that twinkle in the night. You are beautiful and might just save the world one day. You are a mystical creature of the highest creed and no one can tell you otherwise.

Nights of Elation and Terror: The Barn Owl’s Hymn

A little bit of hope goes a long way. Sometimes the process is painful. Starts out as a dragon and turns into a jelly cake. From hard scales to soft jello. A little bit of hope goes a long way. Billie gets it. What it means to be single. Open, aware, and calm. Totally okay with being alone and NOT in a romantic/sexual relationship right now. Being single means Freedom. This year is coming to an end. Still not normal, still full of fear and anxiety yet a little bit of hope trickles into neon green hair and dreams and fantasies become one One. Two. Three. I’m fine with being a dragon with its wings clipped. Or an Barn Owl whose caught in a cage. Stuck in her barn with lots of family and hay. At least I can see; at least I can hear. At least I can holler and swear! I’m healthy, anxious, horny, stuck. I’m waiting, wishing, wanting, fuck. I’m wilting, frigid, blooming, muck. I’m growing, changing, holding luck. A little bit of hope goes a long way. And Billie, I’m counting on you… I’m counting on you to get me through the nights of elation and terror.

The Vulture

Ahead we tread a year turns and I scavenge, I survive. head pink and shriveled wrinkled and leathery shrouded in a gift of brown or grey or black, cape or black feathers I take death through my nostrils and blow it out eat it up with no scent (I am immune to dead flesh scent and have a weak nose) I scavenge, I survive. No matter the circumstances or the state of the world I laugh at a Global Pandemic nothing can get me through this tough skin I have seen death in so many lifetimes it is a cyclical cycle passed down through thousands of generations people plants animals minerals the earth and all it’s beauty purging itself of disease through disease. Ahead we tread wary, hearts broken but I will always be there with my tar black feathers and my pink, gray, wrinkled head wise beyond my years I say I am immune but I am not immune to fear that eats away inside me like nothing else. It sits right below my diaphragm like a tiny crystal bead or stone hard shiny clear and refracted sparkling and always embedded beneath my rib cage. And as I fly up into the bright blue horizon that chilly, desert wasteland I flutter and hover staying between heaven and hell. Living in a sort of purgatory cleaning up messes and sweeping under the rug Like a garbage truck Like the Liver I dispel rot within my industrial gut I eat zombies for breakfast I chomp bones to white powder in my strong black beak I cough up bone dust like cigar smoke I throw up green poison I am immune to rotting flesh I devour the end I unleash a new beginning I am the Vulture Ugly, yet beautiful at the same exact time Scary and bold, I go where no bird has ever gone before. I am not scared of death, I eat it for breakfast. I scavenge, I survive. Ahead, we tread to a new year and I know one thing for certain. I am surrounded by white light. My family is surrounded by white light. My friends are surrounded by white light. I am lucky. I am grateful. I am healthy and my family is healthy. I know one thing for certain; we will all get through this together.