Depressive
Schizophrenic
Pre-determined
Un-determined
Genetic
Magnetic
Sociopath
Socio hath
No fury
Plead guilty
Please, jury
Un-innocent?
Magnificent
Split
Personality
No different
Mirrors
Facing
Each
Other
Oh,
My father,
Like mother
Farther from brother
Who?
Memory loss;
Memories lost
But you
Hold true
Hold fast
Put the past in the past;
Hold steady
Your mast
‘Till rain has passed
Season defective?
Reasonably detected
Smiles
Through
Sun shine
Filed
Under
Hasn’t got the time,
Money,
Or patience
To deal with the patients
That’re a little funny
Not all there
A bit backward
But, where
Are you?
This single bed:
With its creases, crumples and crevices
grooves weep; carved out to carry
these bones
to sleep
This single bed
for this single head
that has always said,
Oh,
how wonderfully poetic that my heart is not one - alone,
you know?
How it has that first beat
Then that which mimics repeat
like an echo
off those cavernous walls that keep it in tow
Indeed, it is tragic
That such a vessel should nestle
so tightly in our core
that we should ignore its plea for rest
while it slams that constant harpoon
against the cavities of our chest
But as you
press
your ear
to this stress…
It calms,
and I swear,
I’d let you drive nails through my palms
Should you smile so sweetly;
our hearts
beating
as one -
complete me
And I don’t care
if you burn crop circles running
about my head, if you
would take up
just one half
of this single bed
You know what’s a modern day tragedy?
That time when my mother
kissed my 13 year old cheek and told me
that I should always take pride in myself
But in that same breath, said,
Only… Not too loudly
As if I would proudly place a sticky note on my forehead
labelling it queer
The little box within my cranium
barely knew which way to think
Gender skated circles between my
ears as if it were an ice rink
And sex?
Well,
I’d never been so perplexed
I thought it just fine
that Barbie got along with action man
and that sometimes I’d rather go on an adventure
than play dress up
And I learnt
that gender
isn’t something you can mess up
or stuff in to individual plastic containers
telling our next generation:
This is how you should think
because of what is underneath
your clothes
I thought in rhymes before I learnt how to speak;
found prose too morose and satin too sleek
I liked denim -
alone -
the genderless fabric
When my skin had finally found home
the comfort sank in right to the bone
like the welcoming gnaw of a blunt-tooth puppy
that couldn’t care less how you dress
or wear your hair;
just that you are there when he needs you
And I pray, that one day,
I will be judged -
not for who I have sex with;
not for what is between my legs
and not for my definition of fashion -
but by the content of my character
And I hope that will be enough
for you
to be content with my character
My poems started getting longer
when I found a stronger meaning
in my calling
free-
falling
through
free-
verse
Never took the time to realise why rhyme
sounded so
perverse
to my mind
And what’s worse?
My gift is a curse
Because nobody wants to unwrap the bow
Though,
the present itself may be appealing
Nobody will open up to how
they are feeling
And yet, I’m sure there’s a reason
that the word, ‘silent’
and the word, ‘listen’
have the same letters in them
Just the same, the rain has felt wetter
this season
Stealing treasons from the beaks of
barking birds in the hopes that we
will be heard
and not just seen
This is not a phase;
not some teen scene trend
I’m starring in this weekend
This is
monotone
And if I have to,
I will stand alone
I have a voice
and one day,
it will be known
Fuck.
This
is not a love poem
It’s hardly even a poem
about making love
It is about pleasure
It’s about tearing off your clothes
as if they were pages in a notebook
It’s about kissing your lips so hard that
you’ll need chapstick for a month
About staining my skin with your sweat…
And the sheets with something a little more sensual
Filling the void between our dry mouths with moans;
groans of ecstasy
festering away at every nerve to run through our bodies
As our pulses raise and beat as one
Don’t you dare fucking stop -
not even for a second
Teetering on the border of my arched back
and the tip of your finger:
linger
just a little longer
We can’t go wrong here
You want me and
I want you
to
do
me
Harder than any math equation you’ve ever encountered
Mounted;
riding bare back all the way to South Carolina
before we come
clean off the track
and collapse back in to bed
with nothing but gasps
echoing about our heads
Dear social networking website,
I am not interested in men
I am not interested in women
I am interested in people -
not pronouns
I am interested in people
and not promiscuity
What I am interested in
cannot be defined
with a simple tick box
Because my sexuality
is so much more than keys and locks
I mean…
What about all the kinds of people in-between?
‘Cause I’m interested in them, too
and how they perceive not being a part
of your social normative spectrum
And personally, I prefer my lack of pronoun
Though people persist in calling me miss,
Oh, er,
I mean, sir
But only under my breath can I stir
that I
am not a him, nor a her
Not a he,
she
or an it
But an I -
plus a bit
And I do not wish for one minute
to fit
in
with this pre-school puzzle
that perplexes so many
Not for a pound;
not for a penny
Because I
am found
Between the mounds on my chest
that I’d sometimes argue as pecks,
lives a valve - a muscle;
a piece of the jigsaw you cannot pick apart
For no matter what race we are running, we
all came from the same start
with the same drumming hearts
beating our minds senseless
to the sound
of art
You ever notice how different light and dark are?
Not just in the literal sense,
but how they feel and act;
their personalities
See,
light focusses on putting the attention on everything -
whether or not it wishes to be noticed;
pushing it out and away from the safety and solitude
and
the darkness is in the introvert within us
It focusses on nothing but the heartbeat;
engulfing us;
rendering us dumb to everything - it protects us
from harsh realities while light,
exploits those realities
Light is a gossip obsessed journalist that would rather talk
about the death of Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson
rather than how successful their musical careers were
Dark does not care for formalities
Dark takes you as you are and is uninterested beyond itself
For these reasons, it is deemed selfish,
ignorant
and unintelligent
But dark is the silent genius
While light boasts of its victories as bright as the Sun -
dark plots ways of ruining them
not out of greed, but spite
Dark wishes the world knew that you
do not need light
in order to see
It is not a cheeky bit of banter
It is not an excuse
for acting like a wanker
You had her;
you lost her
Your heart cannot
foster
that much emotion
or devotion
to a motion
perceived on the day-to-day
Don’t pray today away -
stay
Just for a little while
Learn what it is
to make her smile
It’ll be worth a thousand tears of yours
to know what it is
to fall in love with her flaws
These are not wars
we are fighting
We are rewriting
laws
Lighting the torch of equality
Learning what it is to see
through the blind eyes of love
and,
through all of the above,
we are learning what it is to be… free
I never considered myself tall, dark or handsome
until the day you told me
that I could crush skyscrapers
with a whirlwind of my inspiration,
that my tan lines are kind of sexy
and that that one-eyed twitch of a wink
can part your legs like the red sea
Blink
Are you free?
Amidst the gist of a general society?
A nuclear family?
Pity
for a city so plagued by pollution that God’s pupils
might never see the sun peer over gas-strewn clouds;
roused by the only kid in class
that drew a bird in the sky rather than a fighter jet
and yet,
his father serves in a war he does not fully understand
But that makes him no less of a man than the fact he’s only
five-foot-three and burns like an Irishman in the heat
Repeat
We are all humyn
We are all humyn
No matter what shape, or what size
No matter what shape, or what size
Fuck the hate - immobilise
Fuck the hate - immobilise
Use your eyes for more than just sight in the hopes
that you just might learn to believe
everything that lies in between Adam and Eve
When I write a poem,
I write it as if it will be in an anthology someday
As if it will be the sudden change of atmosphere
when a tenth grade class turns the page - groaning
at the next lyrical work of art they have to analyse
only to be met by my face in the top right hand corner
He doesn’t look much like a poet, miss
You don’t have to be balding in your mid-30s to be a poet;
all you must do is feel
As liquid runs through to your hand
and slithers from the nib of your pen - feel
You are writing art;
your own anthology, straight from the heart
Feelings and emotions flow that never really belonged but all play a big part
in the creation of you
From the moment you were conceived,
you were a modern day masterpiece;
painted on the gallery wall of your mother’s womb
You were born as an artist in to the world of the blind,
left to find a way to make them see
that poetry
is not read -
it is felt;
dealt out as if it were an illegality in open mic bars that nobody has ever heard of
People speak fondly of Wordsworth and Shakespeare
but won’t open up themselves
out of fear of criticism
A citizen
in their own right - writing wrongs and
wronging rights - is a citizen in a new light -
reborn
in to the casket of your vocabulary;
every other page vows a new reason to mourn
for the beauty of a language you do not yet speak
Though you still seek something holy,
your Bible becomes a thesaurus and bores you a pen
Just say when
and everything you have ever felt will turn to ashes
Out of torn paper and burned poems, you will be born again - a phoenix
rising from the embers of a former soul;
braced against the sunlight of a new day and ready
to change the world
