bk-poetry

[bk-poetry]

return;

so many months have passed since i've washed up on these digital shores. mea culpa. i have returned. i am ready to apply overwhelming force to my love of writing.

please, forgive me for my hiatus, but i am here now. refreshed and ready to spill into yr head. let us continue this journey together.

[bk-poetry]

Depreciation

i. Snow is a bizarre phenomenon,   what else material is such finite   crystal. A unique beauty, trapped in identical mundane   destined to be a permanent worthless—   trapped in-between the feathers of singers. A transversion in between the living and the dead, the skylarks— the water self-suffocates in an attempt to embark. (she holds him close, but not close enough. But that isn’t why he is no longer there.) ii. I sometimes ponder   the meaning   of the vain. But the nourished always   comes back burnt   regardless.

iii. When i first met her the only thing i knew was that her skin felt the way love hurt.   Was a silk cottonsong.   I wish   so desperately that i could dig up,      from the rainbow-breath’d      who, in his temper,      guarded the dogwood                  so tightly— it cracked. And died.

iv. They always whispered   that the better place   was the one after this.   Whenever we were still crying n’ hyperventilating. I wonder where snowflakes go   after their better half   passes.

[bk-poetry]

Medicine

You’ll take care of me, that’s what you said,    bandages on my body all over    warmth when I’m cold. I’ll tell you every thought in my head, you’ll smile    tell me to focus on other things, the real things,    & give me my medicine. Each day the dose gets stronger,    I’ll tell you I’m building up an endurance,    when, really, I’m just waiting patiently. The nights are cold, shivering, blood feeling empty,    you’ll tell me that makes no sense, that it’s    just paper, just a story or fairytale I tell myself. The summer heat is going to finish me before this does,    I swear, I can’t think, the boiling of it all    the atoms that make me are evaporating. Drenched in water, I try to collect as much air as I can    desperately trapping it in the palm of my hands    before it has the chance to run away and escape. Building up, slowly, rising like the stars,    each day I tell you that I’m waiting,    but you won’t believe that it could go that far. The jumping back and forth, the sharp contrast    it cuts my skin, but nothing leaks out. Instead of a tender heart softly beating,    you already took care of that instead.

[bk-poetry]

Steady

Two lines that are parallel,    always nearby one another,    but never touch. Two lines that are perpendicular,    touch one another once,    but never see each other again. I think about that as I lay on yr chest,    a heart wrapped in ribcage against my ear, It moves the way a train-on-track sounds—    the thick metal beast ready &    connecting the two rails together,    steady.          

[bk-poetry]

Séance

They called the captain back to his ship.   Reckless storm could hold a tirade against him—   hoisted upon the members, his brow sterns & furrows. I shriek ‘do not let him go,   he is a bitter man   the sea has taken all he has.’ but they cannot hear.   Every dove synchronous with the ocean.   & at bay does the sand circle, 'round and 'round,   doomed destinies marked       i can no longer tell the difference between the ink and the message. But they called the captain back to his ship.   It was a broken promise else be fair.   Hearts made crimson only by the sunset   bleak’d whiskey, otherwise. His lover was a quarrel, in quarantine,   masquerade as something painted in pink—   i no longer can tell by map   where you can drown      & where you can breathe.

[bk-poetry]

Milk Teeth

Innumerable in strength,    the last bastion of any sort of    sense being made here. The world is on fire,    but at least the walking wall of words    can be made and sustained    with yr beautiful teeth. Let me count the ways    before I forget how to count accordingly The heartbeats beating like kettledrums,    the sycamore that was planted decades ago    finally large enough for us both to sit underneath of. The clock makes less & less sense. I think    I can’t find the calendar,    but the days are nights So what does it matter? As long    as I can keep this beautiful    walking wall of words But then, they finally told me the truth    that I can’t speak anymore, that    I don’t have a voice. If you bite hard enough,    yr teeth will break.

[bk-poetry]

Non-binary

They say there are two sides to every coin,    but I am more inclined to be interested    in the rimmed & misaligned edges.    The fringes of much smaller spaces    where the outcasts and never-mentions reside. Where the exhausted outsiders resign—    any hope of recognition from the greater mass,    any hope of ceasing their indignation       with this catatonic Earth & people. Make their cacophony a symphony,    make their stutter,    their stutter,    their stutter a melody,    make their spirt a Holy effigy.          

[bk-poetry]

Hatred, or Some Stars

The faces in the glaciers are crying across   the docks. Shufflin’ the speakers as i walk   the lines forty past fifty in the evening’s clock. I was given the chance to breathe—   i held my eyes tight tho, stopped seeing.   I know the blackbirds’ll make fun of me. & before i knew the pulse   there was the milk pouring from the sky   and hallelujah, our lungs were no longer dry. Yr lungs were no longer dry. Before yr chest became a petal-painted pretty lie,   where you stood there but did not ask why.   Why, oh why, do i have to die? Answer the populous of the populations   the cynics of emasculations   the petulants across procreation   the hoarders in touch with destruction   the crying princes clutching expired nations   the skeletal corpse of yesterday’s destination   the magnanimity of the constellations. We all point south, & we melt & we melt & we melt.

No blacked out blurs or unintentional international    firearms or firecrackers    eating off the faces of millions benevolent child & canine. Broken off deadbeat stars.   Forgotten branches   of a larger tree. & how my veins demonstrate    the path i’ve taken.    & how i hate most everything and am disappointed in all else.    & how i fantasize of leaving    it all to fingerpaint a new skyscape. Without broken bones   without the crimson hatred   without the soft, empty skin. But just as the sun invariably rises you know i’ll come back,   just flash me the eyes   that you want me too.

[bk-poetry]

Looking Above

I cannot help but feel as though   I should try to protest   whenever I look above to it all. The sky is so fiercely large–   the gaping maw of an unknowable beast   always looking down at me. How dare she?   I know I’m meant to never feel   so small, so unimportant,   so expendable to her. The rain falls, its friction on skin   clinging as a reminder,   making everything feel so heavy. Nothing is more cold than the breeze   that manages to lift papers away   red balloons that migrate elsewhere. The satellites that slowly glide above,   metal angelic, floating effortlessly.   Secretly not actually moving at all. All within the jaws of this infinite blue field   I cannot look away,   I cannot escape her.

[bk-poetry]

Length, Calculated

Open yr eyes like a camera lens,    assign vivid colours their formula. Where the mathematics meet all depends    on physics delicately. The calculus of love cannot stop time—    carve out the last pages carefully. Ink used like a surgeon’s scalpel,    the artist with a canvas of skin. Meticulously drawn out like the final    words of a novel you don’t want to    end.          

[bk-poetry]

Space, a Definition

i. The distance between you & me. ii. The separation used in between words. iii. The darkness that fills the gaps of stars. Those are all pretty much the same thing. Hollowness. The lack of something. An emotional zero. We don’t use it to its full potential. Somebody who didn’t speak English and wanted to articulate the most authentic of heartbreak— would say they felt spaced. Not empty, not nothing, just   missing.

[bk-poetry]

Off by One

There is nothing more terrifying   than the wonders of all existence   hinging on the perfect automata   that yr cells decide to perform. The delicate lungs, artfully crafted   like red featherbeds covered in rose petals. At any moment, the wind could pick up,   and it could all float away. The kettle-drum that marches on in yr center,   a rhythm too fast, a genre of tachycardia. It worries you, everything worries you,   and the beat just merely becomes faster. At any moment in time, this could all   come to an unannounced end,   simply because there was a small error   within the hundredfold complexity       of yr physiology.   Off by one. Fade to black.

[bk-poetry]

Light

You lit up my sky when it was darkest,    but you slipped into emotional coma. Midnight always has a silent carnage,    for when stars die, they become supernovae.            

[bk-poetry]

Opus, Magnum

Every day we inch closer towards the supermassive   black hole that gives us      stability. (control) & will one day   invariably      consume us. & they will grab you; as we dance   holding you tightly— with their aged hands      (wine) made up of the hips and crotch      of fireflies. They will drag you by yr knees (skull)   bringing you to yr birthdays. Like the fractal patterns, the wallpapers of yr womb   bed, so long ago. The blackbirds will recognize   the musk scent of yr hair—      the magnetic fireworks      the mustard gas & flower tombs. Gentle— gently rest, child.   Drink the soothing milk (baby)   crafted from the cattle or lakes. Connected to the oceans, composed of sadness,   where they drag you, now.   Where they play elevenths on detuned toy pianos.   Where the schoolbells ring only at midnight.   Where the fields grow when death stops his carriage      waiting for their frostbitten faces to blonde.   Where the harmonicas force winds to settle.   Where the volcanic ash arises from an infant phoenix.   Where the kisses from the broken necks of officers mend.   Where the freedomfighters from seven generations of freedom are jailed.   Where true love of teenaged plight goes to cry, for a while. Where they drag you, now.   (candles) stammering towards the lens. Do only one thing for me,   & promise me this all isn’t a dream      or meaningless reflections of parallels.   Promise me a less harsh divorce,      find yrself and tell me who they are.   Whisper coffee or dreams out into untouched      white sheets. Because every day we inch closer towards the supermassive   monster that gives us relevance. Plead with me, listen to her echoes.   —we will one day become history.      & the distant Kettering of Amerika will be forgotten. Plead with me, listen to her stuttering,   & do not tease or bully her,      for not knowing the routine, or fragments.         The universe is too young to handle it.   & do not fall in love with her,      for not knowing her routine will cause         improper heartbreak, never mending.

Because we will, invariably, always dance   inside her winter,   where the dust is blind. (prologue) because we will never know the breath   insider her,   where the patterns collide,      & crash,      & burn.      & never forget the scripture.      That the failure   is merely debris of an otherwise perfect human consciousness.

[bk-poetry]

The Usual Diary Entry

Dear diary, you are completely worthless.   For the past fifteen years I’ve filled yr pages   I’ve hurt my hand trying to describe   Each & every joy & trauma to you.   In intricate detail. These endless notebooks that compromise yr soul,   Yellowed paper, faded graphite, bleeding ink   A lifetime of stories, of people, of places       All of which don’t matter.       Or rather, will be forgotten.   In spite of my best efforts throughout the years,   Why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you just say to me, this was all for naught?   I wouldn’t have tried so hard, for so long.   An obsession with good stationery,       A taste for the right journals & pens.   So beautiful, yet filled with something       That’s so utterly empty, right? For every day I mark off, for every memory   Transplanted into yr heart, into a place   That I pretended cared for any of this.       The good habits I tried to form with you,       Every emotional mood I tried to make sense of. Dear diary, I’m hopelessly in love with you,   no matter how futile, no matter how worthless I am   I can’t help but feel that sickening sweetness       Confiding every dark secret to you,       Whispering the horrors from the darkness in my mind.   Nothing good will come from this,       But I don’t think I really mind.       I’ll still write to you every day.   Until my hand breaks, or my mind,       Whichever comes first.

[bk-poetry]

Blonde Death

Time eases the earth underneath yr feet,    slowly drawing him—the way it ties her. Time makes us grow wiser—except    when you shoot angels dead to the ground,    when you start to bleed the way music sounds,    when you forget how to lose what you once found,    when you try to walk away & yr still homebound,    when you grow older with the midnight air & drown. Appreciate the Earth—    grow grey hair, and then yr gone. Sometimes—I think—    it’s better to go blonde.        

[bk-poetry]

Who has seen the wind?

I called the lasting of suppers—  priests who became architects. Etching beauty out from stretch marks  that came from the annihilated womb. That became depths in-between crevasses;  yr body swerving into formless canyon. Sing out to the birds, now— they’ll go  deaf, in a while. From shattered snakeskins & eulogies  based in hypocrisy. We’ll rise, & shiver.  Lasting silver tongues & apologies. Because i know from Mary’s prayer that  when the sun goes down, yr ears will be filled by mother’s touch  by the end of the day.   And the dying will favour the crimson,  over the grey.