it’s too bright now
eyes soulless red stung
see and take note
this can’t be all
the vast void turned
into the window framed
with nothing that was
something in the past
next to the hands
that are cut from
the palms bruises witnessed
how she tried against
the tides of repugnance
the moon births change
the breath shallow grows
exhausted surrenders in the
prophecy of city walls
final mortal sleep tonight
so long clandestine wallpaper
running from time outside
chased by ruin and stain
deep a vault secrets
tell of themselves
two lights we are
far apart unexplained
Horus sees his eyes
in our face looking
inward by the outward pull
storm you are so black
i am so empty
storm you are powerful
i curled up quiet
storm if i could touch your electricity
and send my atoms to rest
Taino walked closer to me he wrapped his poncho covered arms around me almost twice and began to cry sharing with me that his mom had cancer and that he dreamt i died in the 3rd street tunnel i cried for his mother too his words only solidified the reality of my having to stop being a junkie maybe i’d be a worse person for stopping maybe i’d be a better person for it that was the risk and the chance that i would have to take no matter how afraid i was i would have to learn how to live with this new sober self because the old junkie self was killing me i couldn’t die no matter how hard i wanted to there was something in me taunting me that i could not die and i would not die i knew every inch of this truth because i had tried to die many a time in the past and failed i failed for a reason that i didn’t entirely comprehend not logically like a scientist but like something a feeling walking in a dark cave feeling yourself through the black path with your fingers bloody and scratched up even in pain down to the bone you eventually crawl out into the light and the light will hurt your eyes for the first few seconds after my trip to detective Tate and several more visits to Taino’s apartment it took me seven years to crawl out of that cave and into the bull ring of life written about by Papa and even after all this time i still find myself maneuvering the symbolic lancets capes and swords needed to bring down the lingering bull-strength ghost of addiction
the stones speak
their skin rough
with the violence of time
yet they allow
a few wild flowers to push on
and greet the fleeting rays
of my dying smile
There was nothing unusual about the morning for seven minutes. Then the news came.
A winter suicide.
In South Central Los Angeles it was still nothing unusual. The mentally ill with a history of homelessness, drug use and unconventional survival skill die all the time.
We were going to meet to work on goals and stuff. Her new life.
By the simplicity of her allowing me to journey with her, no doubt my life would be changed a little yet again.
Not on the surface, but on the inside. In the marrow of my recollections.
Her life and my emotions were like the sugar in the sorry cotton candy machine. Fluffy and sweet disintegrating under her tears. They speak and share; inform me, keep me employed and then I feed the stats into the county machine and do it all again five days a week.
This one was shocking in a painful way like when you’re kicked in the ribs, but you can’t scream or your face will be kicked in next.
Then anger and resentment set in against the factions of claimants of caring and the keepers of those who matter.
Why did she only matter to me? I, a nobody as designated by said keepers.
Let us not scrape it under the crusty superficial bloody red carpets of the city. I grew up here too. I recall a running record of events. I recall the angles and twists of stories.
Driving through streets filled with junky dreams and the parallels of pathology and human conscience. Crypto gods hoard discarded lives outdoors to make room for the lives whose pockets they can pick within their trap doors.
Later I figured I couldn’t be mad at any higher power we’ve sunk so low I wouldn’t know where to go.
It appears that in the city the affluent are the only ones building up taking over God’s once very holy real estate.
In the night alone in my place thinking about her life and our collective deaths. I refuse to believe the asses or the elephants, the foxes or the talking heads from studios named after pretentious consonants.
Instead, in dreams awake I face the moonless sky. Light a candle with her in mind and believe the truth of the life in her humanity.
I don’t smoke anymore. I don’t pay attention anymore. I don’t do much anymore. Anymore matters not to anyone. It’s been about two weeks. There is a foggy dream pricking at my waking reality. There is a politeness as to not give away who I am, and who we are, and what we are not made of. Orion’s Belt has lost another Queen Sister. Look up, see? The castle shines less than it did about fourteen days ago.
Sitting next to me, he, young and professional talked to you about developing a plan for hope. Sitting next to me, your cracked yellowed fingers, stiff like frankincense resin, shuffled through your last official systematic memoir, but he and I didn’t know. Did you know? Or did you know you couldn’t go on? Your blue framed reading glasses made of plastic were spotty and needed a scrub. Your skin ashy and hair matted into a bun, those fingers searching for that someone who told you that you were fine so that we could tell you too
We met on St. Valentine’s, you tried with all of your might on St. Habet-Deus and laid yourself to rest on St. Alvaro’s soiree. Yet, when the old timer hard core practicing apostles hailed St. Polycarp, I stood looking at the west atop the building’s nest with my back to your door sealed by the authorities of science and service.
so
the
dark
came
rapid
stinging
in
a
flash
gone
but
you
took
my
name
words less spoken 