ultragrief

[ultragrief]

i am the million dollar question

i am the freedom of poverty 

if you win i will buy you that house

i will keep the heater on

and the air conditioning below 70

we are too rich to care 

i am the million and one chance you win

and there are more than a enough people on this earth

risking the same win on the same loss

at what cost is it to bet your future on one thing

by making these plans too early 

before you were even handed the money 

[ultragrief]

if you decide to live on with me for what few or more years i have left, with the chance i may give myself the choice to forever float above the rot of a bridge eager and ready to fall, foot in and foot out 

you will not forget the mortality of a person when you look at me, even in a moment of peace underneath what little skin i have left. i will be alone there beside you, and you will grow tired and frustrated of the stones i carry in my sleeves 

be my hearse and take me to the beach to swim through those waves with you, i am heavy and bold and you will ask yourself how is someone is so incapable of refusing to set down the grief even for a moment with all the love you give and not see the mirror of my fathers crooked life looking back at you

and i will hold your hands in mine each time we pass a cementary and tell you “yes, you are enough to stay” but the dirt underneath my nails is still fresh from the moments before facing me. you begged me not to try and unearth the same skeletons, and you will see over and over again how i will disappoint you.

and i will pity you on my last day. 

“how sad of a life it is to have loved me, all alone you’ve grown old in the heart of a hospice that i have left long before you came”

[ultragrief]

everyday i drive to the store and think about how i can’t live with this pain. how the grief has driven me to the point of no return and i will never be able to recover. i’m unsaveable and it’s too late for me. but i park my car and go inside anyways. “im going to die, im going to die right here” i keep repeating and walk to the bedding isle. a woman next to me smiles and laughs, “i hate shopping” and i laugh too. “same.” i replied with my own endangered smile, this stranger somehow unearthed. and we both share a moment of fimilarity. a stranger comfort. i do not know her yet i felt she has saved me. we say goodbye and i go to the next isle. i forgot what i was doing here.

[ultragrief]

if my uncle, aunt, and dad died young does that mean i will die young too? is tragedy just born into the blood the moment you hit the air for the first time? i just cant imagine myself melting into puddles of skin the way you do when you get old. my face cant become any longer than it already is. my dad told me once about how my great great great grandpa killed himself at 40 because he couldnt stop hearing a fire alarm. his body wanted a early exit from the smoke and i get why now. he was saving himself. so if i die young just know it was meant to be. isnt that what family is all about, having the same exit?

[ultragrief]

im tired of the same day. the same sound of a dull drum bouncing off my bedroom walls like a bullet and i wait for it to hit me. anticipating the moment it goes through me and how ill smile when it does. no more cutting my nails, i can let them grow long. can you imagine how they’ll braid through the roots of a tree? i’m not very picky. whatever it may be, i hope its beautiful like my mother and soft as my little sisters hair. 

[ultragrief]

you are my father and a nazi 

and you are also a jew  

a self hating jew

you are the coward

holding the gun to your heart

who couldnt live with himself

after holding the shower door open

in the promise of a clean and warm afternoon

you are no longer the father you used to be

and should be 

and should have died being 

remember when you who gifted me a star

on my 10th birthday

and tore it from my neck 10 years later 

you who starved yourself thin

the before and after photograph of you 

behind the fence in your eyes

looking nothing as you once were

and how i remembered you 

you made your home into a barrak 

wet with your blood and shit

and scraps you have left behind

in the beds where your children sleep

you make murder of us

my mother, your wife

who gives what she has left to her children 

without hesitation

we do not starve because of her

she is bones because of you

we count our own heads now

to see who made it through the night

the way you used to every day before school

we drag our feet to the next empty place

and you are the bolder we carry 

you are heavy metal

just made to run us tired

to die where we stand

to become your victims again and again

you nazi, you who play god

and i am what you have made of me

[ultragrief]

there is no such thing as a present without you here,

only memories

[ultragrief]

“why god! why would you take him from me! it is too soon to bury my father! please god, i still need him! i’m begging you god, bring him back! why would you do this to us? to his family! why!” 

and god laughed,

 “why not?”

[ultragrief]

I want to tell you empty rooms have begun to smell like the last time I saw you. How it begins with the smell of gunpowder and a fever. 

Then the musk of sweat I watched drip down your spine like a cold can of coke on a August day. 

Then the sweet smell of flesh and butter croissants, and the taste of iron from the bullet lost in the belly of your beast.

I chase the scent so I can hold the smoke of your gun in the palm of my hands, and mold into the shape of your face, 

so I can tell you 

again and again and again

“If you leave me, you are going to kill me” 

and mean It this time.

[ultragrief]

love holds their fragile, but patient hands to me

loves fingers are spread wide / waiting to hold

but you should know, before we go further

i am in love with a shadow

and if i may leave, 

that aching shadow for love

my final and selfish act

to betray you, and your memory

that there is still a chance

you find a door - to an empty living room 

and you become hopeful, and certain,

i am waiting there 

just as i have always been, right where you left me 

only to see an empty chair- still warm and creased 

and you must think i no longer love you, 

that i have choose to abandon you

so you give up, and leave for good, 

never to come again

if i had only waited a little longer to fall for love

why couldn't i have waited,

just a bit longer

[ultragrief]

there is not a reason i can find,

to make sense of your death

there is only catatonic, unreasonable anger

so unresponsive and unable to be solved

how there is nothing that could be said, or done

to make me believe in the divine faith

that you are somehow in a better place /

i can only imagine you, crawling on your knees

through some garden maze - 

in the deepest of nights, in search of a way out 

frustrated in every attempt 

you might make to escape

but never the resolve or the outcome, 

you had hoped for.

and i know you wont accept it - 

that there is no coming back 

from the final decision you have made,

                                                          and neither can i.

[ultragrief]

my body has become a fossil, tears a solid amber 

ive become rooted / and still

i cannot bring myself to grief’s door

with pounding fists, and beg for mercy

to ask when does his shadow, become a tunnel

where at the end of it - 

i can see a meaning for his death 

shouldn't this loss become history

it's been two years now

but why does it feel so present

i want to feel ancient, like an old writing 

about what once was

not what still is 

[ultragrief]

you told me once,

“where there is death, there are ants”

so i look for signs of your trail,

that push in your direction

so desperate for my attention.

to point a finger, demanding i remember,

how you are smothered alone, 

in the damp earth

bloated and rotten

how if I held your hand

you would slip right through mine

how your bones, have become hills / 

shaped as my childhood home 

with hallways, and no doors

how your marrow is a bedroom

that plays a terrible cry

that trembles the floor like a lip

groaning, 

“do not forget about me

for when you do,

i will crawl on your feet, 

and bite your legs.

i will dig through your nose,

into your eyes,

and to the back of your head

so that you may never forget

there is no peace 

without me”

[ultragrief]

she is / the fresh smell

of a new book

a beautiful,

untouched spine 

she is tough, and naive 

and spread apart, 

like the red sea

fold her corners, 

bend her pages

her hymn

is smooth paper, 

a held breath,

and the flutter of fear.

now broken in, she is used,

and passed onto the next 

but the crinkle of a page

tells the story of use 

signed,

         “i was here first.”

[ultragrief]

i’m driving home, 

and suddenly,

there you are

just across the street

in your frayed jeans 

worn out sneakers / 

and round gut

and i believed for a moment 

you are almost home.

your ghost is my forgetful hope,

my own sick game.

[ultragrief]

who am I

if not in love with grief?

[ultragrief]

his death has become

a holy dance /

to stop moving my feet -

is to no longer breathe, 

it is to betray god /

sick and unconscious

may you strap me in,

to that gurney 

for i will dance even then. 

when i die,

pour me into that 

shallow earth,

for in death, 

darkness and decay,

blinded and the unknown,

i will still be dancing for you.