hitachi-grill420

[hitachi-grill420]

a month of poems

disorder/chaos/mess

 organization is overrated,

in my opinion.

a necessary evil at best.

 perhaps my need

for clutter to burrow in

is an indirect method of self-harm,

by means of

 managing the Sisyphean task

of prying loose the memories

and forming the treasure map

leading me

to where the hell

I left my glasses cloth.

   $19.99/month

 do not doubt

for a single, solitary second

that if they commodify the sky

they would do so.

 black it out,

darken it,

allow us starlight

as a subscription service.

  Forgetful

 sometimes my brain

functions like a cell phone

with only two bars.

 constantly dropping thoughts,

buffering memories,

and whatever does make it through

is choppy, blurry, and

distorted.

  chewed up tin foil

 run me through the gears

like a penny

in one of those

souvenir shop

flattening machines.

 render me a

useless novelty

destined to be forgotten

in a sock drawer,

or at best

slowly succumbing to the

entropy of a souvenir box,

alive and dead

like Schrödinger’s cat.

  extremely gay

 i am

a (barely) animate

heart-eyes emoji,

staring forever

at the tough,

beautiful,

creative,

powerful,

inspirational,

incredible

women and non-binary people

and trans people

in my life.

 this is

less a poem

and more a declarative statement.

 my heart is not a fireplace,

but a signal fire.

  holler

 you ever just wanna scream?

not particularly out of anger,

or fear.

 just out of a desire

to be heard

and acknowledged

for once.

 it’s why I admire birds:

they let us know

they exist

and are entirely

unashamed.

 Finger

 in a very literal sense,

I saw inside myself today.

as it turns out,

introspection becomes easier

(and less productive)

when you put a fine point to it.

 it’s funny—

getting bloodwork done,

seeing that plastic tubing filling up

crimson

made my stomach turn.

 but there, in the kitchen?

seeing the blood paint the paper towel?

 I felt fine.

  probability

 assuming an infinite number of universes

there has to be

at least one

where

I didn’t just

roll over and let

you pull everything good from me.

 in that universe,

I wonder what I’m like,

not having had to rebuild

my heart with scrawled recipes

and gummy multivitamins.

 would they recognize me?

recognize this

patchwork Frankenstein?

 is the act of rebuilding

transformative enough

to exceed them?

 do you think they’d help me

gouge out

these final traces you left behind

on me?

  artistry

 while cleaning my room,

 I found a number of

coffee mug stains.

 a series of interconnected,

concentric rings.

 i do not think

there is any sort of lesson here

(besides that I need to learn

how to drink coffee)

but i thought it was

neat.

 a brief pause

to appreciate

happy little accidents

can’t ever be a bad thing.

 an anthem of sorts

 sometimes,

I psych myself up

in the bathroom

at work.

 only when I know

there’s nobody to hear me

(because, I suppose,

some part of me still thinks

any praise or encouragement

directed towards me

is shameful).

 the noises of the building,

only really audible when things

are quiet and calm,

become the melody to

my self-made self-help mix tape.

 I have grown to love

the soundboard of modernity,

of planes landing,

the hum of pipes

and of distant radios.

  Decade/decaid

 ten years

is a lot of time.

 I thought I would be

in my career by now

maybe married

(probably not, though).

 time

makes fools of us all,

though.

 I hope that

if I make it

to 2029,

it hurts a whole lot less

to look back.

 I would like rose-colored glasses

with the thorns trimmed off.

  a shorter poem

 I’m bad at

letting things end

when they need to.

 I grip on with

white knuckles,

dig my fingernails into

every single thing

 because loss

and being forgotten

scare me more than

anything else in the world.

  Dichotomy

 a friend once told me,

“Jay,

you’re awful smart

to be such a clueless bitch.”

 I have a hard time

focusing,

not tripping over my own feet,

saying things properly,

holding on

and/or

letting go as needed.

 The real world

is hard to concentrate on

sometimes.

The mental tinnitus

of my neuroses

and my thoughts

occupy my

mind’s bandwidth

like trying to torrent

on dial-up.

 I suppose it’s for the best, though.

 Imagine what I could do

with fiber optics.

  ghosts are real

 I believe in ghosts.

 Not for any particular reason.

I just think the idea of

leaving some sort of trace

(even a solely metaphysical one)

is nice.

 but today,

I do feel like a ghost.

Translucent and hollow

leaving nothing but echoes

and messes

as I glide around.

 I do believe in ghosts

just not all of them.

  creatures of habit

 every morning,

I make coffee,

feed my dog,

take my Buspirone.

 it’s simple

 but it’s a good way to start my day.

 i like these small

islands of order

in oceans of chaos.

 yet,

even within these islands,

lurk that great huntress

probability.

 sometimes, my dog has already been fed

or we see a new bird outside

or I’m out of coffee

or I take time

to prepare a pot of pour-over.

 one time,

a small family

of deer pranced through our yard.

 sometimes,

these little compromises in our routines

can make the routines

a little less dusty.

  Oceanic

 beaches are nice.

 (except for that one time

a bunch of mostly eaten fish and

manatee corpses washed up

on a beach

when I was little)

 they are

a liminal space—

the boundary between

the quantifiable, land

and the infinitely, unknowably massive

seas.

 crossing that boundary,

we are swallowed

more and more

by the mystery,

by the unknown,

and if we are not careful

it will eventually fill us,

consume us,

recycle us.

 at the bottom,

no light reaches

(save for the bioluminescence

of the quasi-xenobiological

fish(?))

and the weight of every drop of water

above you pushes downwards.

 i always wonder—

assuming one could survive—

what would that feel like?

would it crush you?

would you sink further down?

 one day, I’ll meet you

there among the coral,

the vents,

 and we will face the pressure

and we will either

drag Atlantis from the muck

or we will die.

  poem for the lines in our palms

 some people say they can

read your personality

or your future

by looking at the lines on your palm.

 when I trace my own,

I see the curves of

a bull’s head,

of the biohazard symbol,

of the calloused pinky

from holding my phone so often.

 and the lines in yours?

long and never ending,

curving at the edge like the horizon,

patient and soft like

cotton candy plucked out of time.

 there are worlds between us,

separated by dermal layers.

yet, our lines compliment the other’s.

 I can’t say I’ve ever

put much stock in palm reading,

but, hell

 I’ll give it a try.

  well, alright

 my grandpa

was a greyhound bus driver

and a very good one at that.

 his customers loved him

his bosses varied.

 they bugged him to wear his hat,

and he, in turn, refused

until the day

he got a speeding ticket.

 his dispatcher was furious.

Dispatch tore into him,

screaming for minutes into the phone.

 my grandpa just says,

“I don’t know what happened.

I was wearing my hat and everything.”

 I tell every boss I have this story,

to illustrate two important points:

One, I have an excellent work ethic.

And two,

 I have the stubborn orneriness

of hillfolk

chicken-fried into my DNA.

  streamed live from Kentucky, 11/12/2019

 a human body strides forward,

each step heavy with

purpose, leaving blackened,

foot-shaped scars in the cement.

 the heat radiates outward,

melting snow,

soft hissing joining the ambient sounds

of traffic on 238,

the wind,

the sounds of night.

 the body is covered in thorns,

wreathed in crackling fire.

 yet still it walks.

 in front of it stand armed men,

a judge’s bench,

walls and laws and

every other obstacle.

 behind it frolics other bodies,

some bright and rosy

others grey, dirt stuck to their faces

and under their nails.

 yet still it walks.

  poem for cold pizza

 there are things to be said

for small comforts.

 people assuming

I am incompetent

ignorant

or otherwise irrelevant

 is a little less

painful

with the weak anesthetic

of cold pizza

and my antidepressants

and a brief forgetting

of shame.

  poem for a morning run

 “there is no such thing

as a free lunch.”

 I repeat that in my mind as

i stumble into a stop sign,

hanging onto it

as the cul-de-sac warped beneath me.

 my legs wobble,

reverberating upwards into

my stomach, empty

save for coffee

and acid

and a piece of leftover Halloween candy.

 a neighbor,

in a wifebeater and boxers,

puffs on his cigarette while his dog

stares at me as it shits in the grass.

 the earliest steps of any journey

are embarrassing

painful

and subject

to strange and critical audiences.

 but today, I ran.

 not far,

not for long,

and not without watching eyes, but

 I ran.

 poem for a day I didn’t feel like writing a poem

 sometimes, poetry is easy.

 it’s like riding a bike after you’ve learned:

muscle memory,

your innate familiarity,

your own balance,

all coming together.

 today,

it was like I

Eternal Sunshine’d

bike riding out of my head

drug a scalpel through that part of my brain

and hopped on to do the

Tour de France.

 maybe the bike

is also on fire?

  reciprocity

 it’s a lot easier

to give other people

good advice,

 to give them

kind words, pieces of yourself

wrapped in love,

with care.

 unfortunately,

i am a one-way road.

I spew forth care

but receiving it?

 unthinkable.

far too busy.

 after all,

I have gifts to deliver;

 things to spew

  anticipating

 breathless, I sat at the bottom

of the waterfall, staring up

to its source, waiting patiently.

 my chest felt like a rope pulled taut.

i feared you’d fallen on your climb to the top

(i had sat out, since I’d hurt my back

falling drunk off the porch

a few nights prior).

 damn,

if I don’t wish that tension

hadn’t been in vain now.

  quarantine

 I am, essentially, the sum total

of a billion viruses.

poxes of sadness,

the belligerent fever of mania,

this infectious anger that bubbles

in my guts like stomach acid.

 A splash of cool girl bacteria,

a shattered Petri dish of septic anxiety.

 Inoculate yourselves against me.

I am a pestilence,

a plague,

an outbreak of rebellion

and sadness

and anger

and the radical desire

for the freedom of solitude.

  victory

 celebrating small wins

(even if, ultimately, their impact is limited)

keeps your spirit ignited.

 we may have only taken

one mile out of a hundred,

but damn

if this mile ain’t a pretty one.

  poem for colloidal silver

 colloidal silver,

in excess,

turns you blue.

 this is a more direct

cause-and-effect

than a lot of us can ask for.

 hucksters passed it off

as a cure-all, the

hypothetical snake oil,

a panacea.

 exploiting suffering for profit,

under false pretenses,

earns you a special place in hell

and I hope that place is a vivid cyan.

  poem for a scab

 I’ve never been sure how scabs work.

 i know what they do

 and that platelets are involved, I think

but beyond that, I’m stumped.

 I assume it’s something like patching a hole

or sewing a button on.

 with or without our knowledge,

our understanding,

our bodies repair themselves as needed.

our skin knits itself together,

diseases are fought off.

 we fight off a lot without knowing.

 perhaps it is better that way.

  an impulse

 don’t ever assume I know anything.

first mistake: I am a reaction.

vinegar and baking soda,

pouring up and over the rim,

spilling on the porch

on a hot April day.

 First mistake: i was prepared.

the ant stored up food all spring.

the grasshopper laid around.

in winter, the ground froze

and both of them died.

 first mistake: we cling too hard.

do you remember?

when you drank my savings,

slept with your space heater,

couldn’t spare a blanket?

i had six arms then, could lift

anything set in front of me,

but you left me outside and

now the frostbite’s set in.

 first mistake: we hold on.

I feel the phantom pains of

those six strong arms, of

the space left when I dug you out of

me, of

the cold morning air

and the lingering taste of

Kentucky Gentleman

and the smell of vinegar.

 first mistake:

not expecting you to jump

the day the cold blew in.

  poem for the embers

 anger is a good way to fuel yourself

especially when you don’t have

anything else

 to run on.

 but now I’m tired.

now all my insides feel burnt up,

the undergrowth in my guts

black and withered and smoking,

devoured by gluttonous rage

and my acid reflux.

 there are two wolves inside of us

and mine are both picked clean,

their bones bleaching in the dazzling light

of the thorium reactor that’s taking up

the scar tissue where I used to mine for joy.

 if I keep this bonfire going,

until I reach where I need to be,

will there be anything left inside me?

 is the fuel to move worth it

if only wreckage arrives?

[hitachi-grill420]

an old wives’ tale

In the back of Johnson’s Hollow (“back” here meaning specifically the furthest point from the nearest main road, Route 29) there’s a pond. Cattails reach up, a congregation of green stalks tipped in brown reaching up to the heavens. What water you can see beyond the cattails is covered in algae, a carpeting broken occasionally by the curious head of a turtle or a heron’s careful steps and precise hunting.

However, in the center of the pond, there is a small circle in which it all just stops. The algae and cattails form a watchful perimeter around this pristine circle, which remains still even in the strongest storms. Curious children who decide to investigate find that anything they throw in simple sinks into the water without even a hint of a splash.

It is into this pond that Loblolly Smith, or Lob to her friends, is slowly stepping. She borrowed her dad’s waders for the occasion, stopping every few paces to readjust the straps. The grown man’s waders probably weren’t designed for a high school freshman to wear. She pushes through the cattails, feels fish and turtles brush past her legs, and notices that the weeds and the plants seem to almost grip on and pull her back as she struggles through.

Finally, however, she reaches the center, reaches that circle of striking stillness. Peering down into it, she takes a deep breath, and asks, “Are you even actually real?”

And, almost as if awoken from slumber, the entire circle is suddenly one giant, unblinking eye.

Lob almost falls over, but steadies herself, taking a few deep breaths. As she looks around, she sees that all the cattails and even some branches of the willows on the bank seem to all be bending inwards, towards the eye, as if bowing in reverence.

“Um… so if I tell you a story… I forget it, right?”

The eye says nothing, as its mouth is in another pond. And Lob begins to pour her heart out anyways. It is not a tale of unforgivable evil, or a deep family secret. It is a story of evil that is heartbreaking in its mundanity. And as Lob finishes one sentence, she forgets the last, a process she would describe as being like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom so it drains as fast as you fill it.

Eventually, Lob’s story finishes, and she pauses awkwardly, tries to think of what to say, and then leaves. The Eye is satisfied. Lob is not the first, or the last. It loves to hear the stories. It has heard the war stories of old men. It has heard innumerable tragedies. It was used by local mobsters to silence witnesses. It thinks of the old lady, mind slowly slipping to the hounds of Dementia, who told it every happy story before the disease could take it, and how happy it made the Eye to help. And as Lob splashes away, a slight smile creeping onto her face, the Eye returns to its slumber, and dreams of one day having its own story to tell.

[hitachi-grill420]

salome, ohio

              “Salome[1], Ohio is the most boring town on the planet,” the teenaged girl spoke into her laptop’s webcam. “Nothing ever happens here. Last year, our corn maze only had three turns in it. I still have three more years until I graduate, and then I’m applying to every college in Ohio so I can get out of here. Like, on Tuesday Mama went out into the shed and killed herself again, and guess who she made clean it up this time? Me! Like always! It’s not fair.”

              After a pause, she collected herself and said, “Anyways, rant over. Hi! Welcome back to my channel and if you’re new, welcome to my channel. Like always, I’m Kinley[2], and today you’re going to get ready for school with me!”

              The screen seemed to buzz for a moment, then suddenly go dark. Kinley uttered a wordless grunt of frustration and slapped the side of her laptop. “Mom!” she yelled, leaning towards her closed bedroom door. “I want a new laptop for my birthday! I’m so tired of this…  this piece of shit!”

              “Language!” came a distant response.

              Kinley, in reply, silently flipped off her bedroom door. Sighing again, she attempted to turn her laptop back on, and surprisingly it whirred to life, or at the very least it sputtered to life. She went back to her webcam, turned it on, gave herself a moment to put her camera smile on and then was right back into her video.

---

              “Sorry, uh… why is an Ocular Unit’s recording of some teenaged vlogger relevant to this?” The voice was soft but dripped with boredom and a touch of malice.

              “It’s establishing background information!” comes the reply. This voice is higher, a bit whiny. It is the auditory analog to taped-up glasses. “So you know the focal points of the incident, and can more easily identify them and their roles, if any, in causing it. Well, not YOU you, but the person who is going to watch all of these OU recordings and analyze them.”

              There is a sudden thump, and then the first voice speaks again. This time, however, his voice is muffled. “You mean these things have been recording—”

              The second voice interrupts. “—the whole time, yeah. I thought you knew how an Inquiry worked? All of this gets sent to an analyst at central, and, you know… analyzed.”

              “Jesus fucking… alright, whatever, in for a penny, in for a pound, you know?” the first voice says, his voice clear again. “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”

              The second voice says, “Okay, so, to fully understand this we should start at the beginning.”

---

              In 2017, people in Salome, Ohio stopped dying[3]. Or, rather, death stopped being permanent.

[1] Location Alpha in your field notes.

[2] POI-22-D in your field notes.

[3] Classified as a Lazarus-class event of yellow magnitude.