Gestate

There's a rambling staircase
Creaking shrieks with every quantitative step
Every bottle of potential and kinetic
Starting and pause
Forcing bold decisions and outright statements
Similar and replicated in the twisted
Mangled inner self importance of every
Mid-block Maslow sparkling mysterious
Diamond shine pyramid
It begs for an understand of the dialogue
Of chapters void of need; dead-centered on character
Development and evolution
I sit atop the railing
Legs dangle to the sides
Do I slide? or step
Unable to mimic or mime a mime
I see-saw between chapters

Down on the cold basement cement
Barefoot and bleary-eyed
You call to me to make a decision
Watching the grand staircases of Titanics
And theatre halls in my peripherals
I compare and gestate
Screams from the basement door
Remind of errands and chores
But your voice beckons a decision
Slide or step...
I wrap in the options
And gestate
I paint imagery of gliding para sails
Drifting down staircases like the ruffles
Of sea foam fishtail cocktail ensemble
I drool over thoughts of mountain climbing
Hippie granola ambitions
And I call to you push me
Up or down
But touch me
In the direction only your eyes can know
Are the most
Beautiful

Collapsed

Domesticate me.
Pour me into a bottle.
Shake my ingredients and rethink my recipes.
Because gently and tenderly I rethink my own
I toss my inner monologues (and admittedly dialogues)
Into passionate little girl holiday snow globes and watch the petals dance
When a gentle smile breaks its way onto your face
And the sunlight from a day we have seen nothing of
Glides into the darker corner of your eyes
And shames the shadows of the room
For haphazardly attempting to emulate the dramatic darkness of your hair
When I discover a new concentration of color, a freckle, a mole
A sleep sheet crease taking hotel stays on your back and face
I am reading a book that is changing my life
I am uninterested in the daylight
Nor the moon
Only the slowly faded dances of time and placement of light
From right to left as the day passes
And I feel content knowing your position in my arms will change
Only as circulation is lost and cramps creep
So we change our forever embrace and lazy collapse
Sighing occasionally like tired beasts content in winter
I am with you unproductive and unchallenged
However busier and deeper in thought
Than the most hectic of school days or think tanks
Fallen like a golden gown of a golden queen in a golden age
Limp and lifeless but somehow with more grace and presence
Than when before I was draped across a beautiful bare back
Collapsed and gentle
Breathless for hours, constant in space
It is but nothing for me to plan my days around inactivity with you
Seeing as I have no clever illness nor disorder deemed official
By the pharmaceutical wizards of modern medical masterminds
I can offer only a poor mans apology
As blame is a virtue of the richer
I can offer only an apology for not throwing my emotions upon the nightlife
And arranging symphonies to be played out of rooftops
Great dinners to attend in the honor of our engagement
But rather hours of lethargy and sluggish behavior
But I beg an explanation
Draped and collapsed
Fallen and gentle
Touched in soft breath by the days progression
My heart beats so I’ve run the deepest marathon
Into the height of the Andes
Stripped of all oxygen and pacing
Regardless my stubborn appearance
As a person of hummingbird premature heartbeat
I feel still too weak to experience much more
Than experiencing that of you
And I
And sheets
And pillows
Cigarettes and wine
And conversations
Finally someone I am more interested in than myself
So interested, in fact
I spend little time explaining a thing
You deserve more, it’s true
Scores of novels and pages of tutorials
On the inner workings of who it is holding you
And I’ll uncover more as I go
Peel as you see fit
But peel as you lay
Collapsed and draped
Inanimate and domestic
In charge of whatever
Shaking my holiday globe
And laughing at the shadows in the room.

Scene Selection

I have felt the ticklish breeze
Cross over my face and run through
My hair like rye
Seen the credits role and waited
On the repetitive
Unglamorous
Menu screen
All the while waiting for a sequel
I am listening to the droplets
Forming stalagmites
And standing, guilty, in a puddle
My life is changing
Skipping forward
Chapters at a time
Sometimes
And patiently breathing on chaotic mountaintops
Sometimes


The main event:
Reoccurring and threaded
Ever so pleasantly
Through the pages
And templates of my everyday
However
Would be that the best of howevers
The gusty bustling
Cluster fuck
That I have come to know so gently

Sometimes its just moonlight
Tickling the curtains
And cold January breezes seeping
That cause your forearms to goose bump
And just seeing that transition
The proven breath of life full action
Run across your skin
Makes me jealous in ways that cannot be blamed
On infidelity nor electronics

But of skin cells
Holding tight
To hold you in
I want inside
Or you outside.

How unfair to ask death or sex
To a person incapable of controlling emotions
Damn me all to hell and back
But I want closer.
And isn't that the ultimate scream of the lover?
if nothing but...
I am at a plea to not just watch your freckles
Dance as you laugh and keel
And pull back in a confused and scared place
Of moving right back into a belly laugh.


No,
I don't ask to watch your beauty markings
And perfectly places symmetries experience
Life
I ask to experience that
Life
With them.

Sunlight comes soon enough
To melt the hearts of winter.
What happens to the fern, ever green
Through winter
But an even greener bloom?
I am grateful for your greenery

I am not satisfied to stop.

So squeeze me, for lack of
A better word.
There is rarely a better word anyway.
I am struggling here to find the placement
Of sounds as we stand.
So
Shut the fuck up
And squeeze me
Until I melt into you
Or we die there
Together.

There are two outcomes:
Death or sex
Unfair,
But asked of young lovers
Impatient to get at what’s good for the getting.
We have both been bad.
Only the good die young.
Squeeze me
Until I am your freckles.

Whisper

My blood starts to rush

Cheeks starting blush

Heart pounds in thrust

Voice turns to hush

When the story of us

Is spoken on tongues

Of others

I am without you

Just one part of two

Awaiting my cue

And I had no clue

To tell you the truth

But oh now I know

And oh how I know

And I swear I’ll show

You more as we go

But a life lived halfway

Just rambling for days

Words cheaply made

Proudly displayed

But then thrown away

Then discarded

Have caused this drought

This sense of doubt

This shyness I feel

At confession

Because to my dismay

I’ve nothing to say

To give such a weight

As description

Our words are afloat

Carrying me

Weightlessly

Preciously

Simple and real

And to say how I feel

Might sound appealing

Most of the time I want to

But to give our hearts weight

Is to tempt fate

With tying those words to the earth

And earth is to tying

As life is to dying

So though I am trying

Tonight I’m not lying

I’d much rather hear

Soft on my ears

The story of us

On the tongues

Of others

Let them see where we are

Who we were

Where we stand

Let them lament

The precious present

And compare to our past

Let them hope we last

Let them laugh

At our facts

We will unpack

More weight from our backs

And soar to the stars unspoken

Unbroken

And untouched by time

Blurring the lines

Of yours and mine

Doing just fine

Silent

Divine

So stay with me here

In this stratosphere

Where the skies are clear

And the words we hear

From people so dear

To us

Tell stories of lust

Stories of love

Stories of trust

Stories from tongues

Whispered in love

Whispered in hush

Whispered because

They are whispered of us

Divide

Divide

Most people probably don’t think twice
Spending days nicely
Iced over
And stagnant in thought
Don’t got what I got
But aren’t quite as lost
I am not most folks
The way my thoughts flow
Is just so damned…over
And under and just in case
So lacking in taste
So very taste maker
Wondering questions until my head overloads
But if you don’t know
I’ll just get it over
I am not most folks
And sometimes I wonder
To myself deep under
Those quicksand covers
And fly-paper sheets
What’s okay about me?
What’s expected of these
Situations I seek?
Am I old enough to love?
To find someone?
Is it just lust?
Or is he that someone?
Am I in the right time
In some sort of time line
To pretend to find
This perfect guy?
Or have I
Found this guy
Whom with I
Cross divide
Multiply
And swan dive?
Or has time
Outlawed this deed?
It’s no secret
The rushed pearl-lacking shells
Both family and self
Have pretended to love
And done nothing but rush
While the upper class mock our haste
And now I lack taste
But do I care about taste?
Or am I just lying to myself?
Which self am I tonight?
It’s hard to spot lies
When I don't know who I
Even am tonight
So I decided
I am just listening to the arguments
Letting ladies and gents
Of the booing crowd run free
I will close the debate
And leave it to fate
Just watching it play
Out in my brain
As the voices rush the stage
Freed from their cage
And fight to the death

One voice reminds me that I never tear down
I never start from the ground
And destroy my shit
I never edit
I never just sit
And start from scratch
Ideas are hatched
From ideas and piled up

But then another voice joins us
And tells me I keep dreaming
About the plots that he’s scheming
To keep on cleaning
His sheets just for me
So I won’t see
So I blindly
Run through
With no clue
That he’s fucking two
And I am part of a team
I actually dream
Day nightmares
Voice two takes me there

But voice three is quick
To get rid of this
Or rather build on as I said
Inside my head
It’s loudest yet
Voice three has led
Me into the peace
Some of the greatest artists I know
Tear down and rebuild just so they grow
And get a better sense of the piece
And tend to its needs
Remembering
Only the best of the first
For the rest of what’s left
So perhaps I’m scared
And take myself there
So that I am aware
Of how great it is here
Where I can still steer
Myself in the clear
And there are no Dear John Voicemails
Just smooth sailing
So perhaps my fears are artistic
I just don’t realize it

Voice four comes in
Like a goddamn siren
Blaring some shit
About how crazy this is
And how much I focus on love
How cheesy I look is disgusting
I have bills to pay, addictions to kick
I have a job that literally makes me sick
I have school and I’m broke
And my god who knows
The last time these bones
Had a glass of milk or a gym visit
So whats with the shit?
Who cares about this?

But I promptly tell voice five to get
Voice four to sit
The fuck down.
Voice five comes in not loud but real
And cuts off a slice
Of the silence
And we sit and chat
About how great it is that
From where I’m at
The world is happiness
And I have everything to learn from
And nothing to lose
And a man I adore making me choose
Between the voices that quake
With cosmic vibrations
And I get the sensation
Of them all shutting up
All becoming one
Voice number five
Is on our side
And I breath a sigh
As I decide
Once again so am I
And return to my
Originally scheduled program

Where you and I plan
The next five holidays
Take turns hitting play
On ten million voicemails
Six thousand emails
A million soft words
In both our bed’s curled
Up in our arms
Snoozing alarms
And walking with exhausted smiles
Waiting inside of
These quicksand blankets
And flypaper sheets
Finally
Knowing tonight
It’s perfectly fine
For me to divide
My mind
A million times
So long as voice five
Will close the blinds
Shut my eyes
And silence my
Insecurities
I’ll meet you in sleep
Wadding deep
In the pillows that keep
My head company
In place of the heat
Given so sweet
From the man responsible for these thoughts.

mindsprint snapshot

i cannot write a poem tonight. more like this morning. i cannot sleep, eat, or smoke. I can only sit and think about the millions of changes I am both in the midst of and running head-first into. aside from my personal struggles, as complicated and tangled as they may be at the moment, i am in awe of my self in this world, in this country, right now.

for starters i am reflecting without mercy the decision of California to ban gay marriage. so much comes to mind, i simply must list with no direction. why california? who is so conservative in california that they are not affected by a single gay person on a daily basis. California? HEY FUCKER THAT'S OURS! and suddenly it isnt. the one place i was raised to believe would always act as a home to us is now closing its doors officially. i see now that perhaps the next decade or so will only lend itself to our comic and provocative use on television. This is sickening. I feel on some level that we are simply in a normal period, however. Call me lazy or spoiled by previous minority struggles, but in the 60s blacks were what gays are now as far as television and movies are concerned. Now we have a black president. Perhaps we are just in our 60s. Thank god we are even in the past century. Most other countries might as well still be in the middle ages.

We should have known from the start that this would not be easier than most struggles because all we wanted was rights to marriage, a seemingly personal establishment. I feel as though my generation of gays (the kids that came out thanks to the tireless work of every single generation of gays before us. thanks to shows like will and grace, queer as folk, singers like Christina and advocates like Rosie) had no idea what was happening, and only now is it clear. the simple fact that these issues are on ballots was astounding. The fact that our president has referred to us as "brothers and sisters" of the nation is something i still cannot bring myself to accept. nothing that good has ever happened. But our work is ahead of us. While the nation battles every other issue we need to fix with great haste and detailed mapping, our struggle will be no different.

I used to compare the bush years to the 60s, with emo kids and punk rockers replacing the hippie, and pot still running the show. Now i see the bush years were the 50s. repression and silence and hatred and stiffled voices. thats what the 50s says to me. The 60s say change. unheard of change. Anti-war, feminist, black power, student rights, supervised leadership change. Perhaps this giant dogpile of change will now echo in our times-in the next four years, but now that we have an entire administration on our side i feel as though it might go more along the lines of what i gather from the 90s. While i know nothing of the 50s and 60s i was a child in the 90s. Completely politically unaware and living in a small missouri town, I could not recall what any of the social happenings felt like, as i was out with trees and anthills. but perhaps this makes me a better candidate for what it felt like in the 90s. i remember the media arts, the faces, the moods, the words exchanged.

Earlier tonight when i could not sleep i watched clips from the tony's from the 90s. I have no idea how i stumbled on such an odd keyword search, but regardless i fell in love. I fell deep into a nostalgic love of what i remember to be a decade where the dumbest show on television was dawson's creek-a show which boasted a group of fairly decent young actors speaking lines of eloquence not yet heard within its genre. I miss that. I miss that a show with 'big words' and smart dialouge was made fun of for its simplicity. i miss just how sweetly everyone tried to be PC. i, of course, realize in hindsight that much of the attempts of the media to promote 'equality is cool!' and 'everyone wins when the world is colorblind!' came off as forced, corny, and did little work to open up actual dialouge...but the attempt at bettering society with basic ideas, no matter how missed, makes me miss the 90s.



But when i think about why the 90s offered what they did, i think about the clinton administration. the funding schools recieved for programs that filled my tiny redneck head with a million images of people of color-basically the only exposure i would have for many years-being close friends with people of other colors, and even with white people. My school taught me not to do drugs, to stay in school, to love everyone, to work hard, and to take care of the world. I was barely taught a minutes worth of patriotism or nationalism, and i left school with a sense of belonging-even as an outsider.
i hope that during the dawn of this new day in america's history we can expect the best case senario: a juxtaposition of both the 60s and the 90s. extreme change, overwhelming desire to fix as much as possible, and an administration that has the all the tools it needs to begin what looks to be a long job. It is now my hope that we can all follow suit and do whatever it takes to keep up with the times.

I am more than excited to live in our nation's capitol at this time. Not only is President Barack H. Obama a neighbor of mine, but everyone in DC is as blue as the sky. Gays, Latinos, and Blacks make up most of the DC faces I know. while my friends and family in missouri will celebrate in thier hard-to-find liberal circles, keeping far from the disgruntled republicans, i will be walking in the streets singing praises of the greatest time I will come to know as a young gay american.

i am truely lucky to be alive.

when I think back to the year precedding my arrival in DC i am astonished. i was living on my parent's couch hating the country, hating the president, hating my life, my situation, my entire world. I had no job, and with every job I got in my parent's town I was fired for revealing my status as a queer. i had no money, no idea what I was going to do, and no hope. I had just quit my job as a stripper only to drop out of college not once, but twice.
I was on my way to the naval recruiting office.


I am not taking a metro into my job in our nation's capitol everyday while i take on my education full force. I live under the ruling of a democratic, left centered government with the very first black president in history. My causes are relevant, my country is waking up, I am a city dweller in a place where people understand me. I am on a path to fulfillment, both spiritually and financially. I am in love. I am not in love because of a lack of options or a hope of what could happen. I am not in love because of a need for a second income. I am not in love for boredom, depression, or unwanted pregnancy. i am in love because i found someone whom I love.

I have that option in life now. I have a million options. I am soaking this shit up, because children will ask me about this time for the rest of my life. i saw Clinton impeached, I saw 9/11, i saw britney shave her head, i saw mellisa lose her hair, I saw Heath Ledger, I marched in protest, and i voted. i saw Barack obama, and I cried like a baby. I saw barack obama and I will see the next four years.

Finally Silent

There are bottles of thoughts
On table tops
Getting knocked
Over by the constant
Shakes my heart makes
Just trying to escape
My chest and take
Me over
I am swallowing gulps
And whispered high notes
Trying to coax
My mind into no
Trying to hold
Not to go
Where we both know
Our conversations belong
I am getting so close
To just letting go
And spending my nights
Curled up inside
Those three little words
Walk without turn
Leap without look
And take pleasuring knowing
When I land on us
I can say duh
Because I am feeling what its like
To know the truth despite
What the past might
Have stored on its side
This is no fight
I am having inside
This is a truth delivered on time
To this boy inside
The boy who cried full
Stop, yes, no, and wolf
Now I swallow my tongue
Just watching us
Take the words from the poet
And I’ll dance how I feel
Can’t try to conceal
I’ll paint and I’ll squeal
Take this tongue from my throat
Keep the peace god knows
But there is no
Way I can stop myself from these words
Three little ones I’m sure
You’ve heard
And as I whisper those lines
I can feel in your eyes
The terror inside
What am I
About to say?
You are welcome.
Because god knows for me
To finally
Stop silently
And not jump blind
Takes some kind of guy
To drag my behind
Into a kind
Of patience
And just so you know
I am dying here
Just to finally clear
These words from my throat
But I know
One day I will hold
You and we’ll see
Knowingly
Family
Terribly
Nervously
Approaching
Moments to go
Then I’ll turn and tell you what you already know
But not today
And I must say
Woo boy
You’re welcome
I’m about to explode
But you’re just so yes that I’ve got to say no
Because when we get to where we go
I want to see what it is that we have been growing
Make time to step back and see where this goes
Hold tight to your tongue and enjoy the show
Three words can be such a terrible load
Who needs three words when you’ve got a whole poem?