#howawfulinnocence

[csoip]

stubborn hope

the capacity of one to do terrible things is the capability to do beautiful if only given different circumstance.

we are born, and the war begins.

the first breath we take is a struggle and so is every one from there on out. when we come headfirst into this gaping maw of a world, the first thing we learn is pain and how everything is made from a wound. later we will feel the place we came from, our mothers holding hands to their chest to say we stole from their bodies and their bones, and if we were stubborn the seam of a scar will run across to show our mark of regret. we did not ask for this and still we are paying reparations for the havoc we have made in the flesh of those we loved. the beginning of learning the cost for our actions and that intent is always harm for good or worse. whether or not we meant to fight:

we are alive, and we fight on.

reverse a movie of war and you will see a different story than the one before. a plane lifting from the ground and bullets unfiring from the edges of holes stitching themselves together, and time is the unstitching and we are the movie in fast-forward to unfurl disaster from our closed fists. we are weapons we have not come equipped to disarm. we follow the paths of our missiles, mothers, bodies hurt by hands yes and not our own to have another life ripped from our bones. whether we want to or not. hold every last piece of you together to remember the first shock of the world: we were made to live, to live and survive, that stupidness that keeps us going through life: down on our knees and we still try to get up, push shaky onto unsteady ground to say come at me again, and again, and again, i won’t ever. give. up. we fight until we are a mess of wounds barely held together with sheer will, but what happens when there is no more war to win, when there is nothing more to lose?

we die. and this is what is left:

stubborn humanity. forgetting, again and again, and thinking we can rise from this past in a different manner than before. to come from anything other than pain and leave more than just our fragile bodies, a lovely imitation of how we fell into this by giving the trembling want of life our startling consensus: if we were given more than what we asked for, cleaving a hole inside something already hollow, we think we may have been something beautiful. we think that thing that we could’ve held inside our empty hands the whole time could have been named hope.

[csoip]

how awful innocence

you can take terrible things and use them to do good. yes, they are still terrible. but take that body and grow flowers from poison in the earth’s veins and you will still have a bouquet to heal and hold. seep aggression into poetry and write beautiful murder. kill every version of yourself that still holds scars and your weeping eyes will start to harden. from coal to diamond we turn combustion into love. firestarter heart that burns or tames; tempered into temperance from abuse. it used to be beautiful to be dying. we are still dying to be beautiful in a terrible, awful way. only innocence can think to turn decay into preservation, capture the spread of sickness from cell to bone and it looks like flowers blooming inside of shattered sidewalks. this thing is gonna kill you no matter what you hope and it’s gonna kill me too. crack the lightbulbs with a scream; turn the power out with heavy winds. open the window to run out. block the doors so no one can get in. you’re leaving behind something terrible and i’m trying to turn it into something good like you asked but that awful innocence of yours left no room for reality. you can be too good, too naïve. i can’t live up to these expectations. my terrible will remain terrible as i run away with anger and roaring winds to escape this good, your awful innocent and how your eyes looked at me weeping then turned to glass and hardened in your death. this thing is gonna kill you, flowers or not, and over your grave i planted marigolds: unspeakable mourning so from your sickness comes light. this body turned deathly into deathless.

[csoip]

the unquiet night

TIME IS A CONSTRUCT CONSTRUCTED BY BITTER ENDINGS AND THE SPIN OF A WORLD IN THE GAPING ABYSS THESE STARS ARE DEATHLESS AS MEMORY THEY CRUMBLE INTO DUST LIE AWAKE AND LIE TO YOURSELF THAT THIS IS NOT THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT HOW LONELY WE WILL GO.

[csoip]

aborted machinations

in the end i don’t regret this having such a body and these bones. 
they do me small kindnesses and in return i try to be more gentle. gentle is not easy. gentle: to hold with no intent to harm. to let go when it is needed. sometimes letting go is harder than holding on. you are brave for this. to recognise that in it all you may not be necessary. sometimes sitting down is harder than standing up, to say that you could both be wrong. sometimes we cannot truly see the right. i am trying to be more gentle but you say: what does it mean to be gentle anyway. what does it mean to be anything? i say: don’t confuse gentle with weak. this is not weakness. this is strength to say you can be happy without suffering for it. poetry does not lend itself well to happiness. a breath not caught, letting go without leaving a mark. we cannot stop clawing our way through reason in an effort for the undefinable this. every attempt is burned and we don’t know how to stop. how do you define happy? how do you know the difference between the words in cruelty and in gentle. stop everything before it’s over and abort these movements halfway through: happiness leaves everything half-done. this body deserves more than what i can give it, stopping a life unlived, unloved. this gentle that i show it; i am sorry for the motions that i put it through. for all of it in the end i don’t regret living with such kindnesses as a heart. a head. fingers that can play a piano, toes that can dance, lungs that fill unsteadily and wobble within a rib cage close to breaking. for the choice to give up gentle or to continue being draped across these bones: carry on. do not regret this, please, do not catch your breath. keep your lungs trembling in the new made light, one breath at a time. your heart will beat unbidden because of some small kindness in our making. that’s all i had to say. that’s all i ever had to say.