What we wear upon our skin

comes down to how we

hold ourselves in light against

the grief, the bullshit

-the photos we carry within

are what we use

-hope against routine

the old poets are dying

today I read a poem about

Philip Levine by a writer

on Prose.

who goes

by the handle of

justinbarisich

and it took me back

to the days when the poets fed me

clean blood

before I became old and closed off

before I tired of the complaints

of the ages

and burned alive and dead so many

of my heroes because I began to sense

falsity in them

but the truth is and always was

what I know now

time only gives a sentence so many

ways

regardless of how we do it

I think back on this and I feel

somewhat bad for walking away

from them

when I should have realized that

I was one of them

even though I didn't want to be in

that club, I was born in it

not to spin this around on myself

but the weight of things for me

comes down to the word against

the page of the world, the old world

the new world, the world we will leave

and the world they will leave

it all burns in a circle

it always has

-a factory in Detroit harboring

steel poetry

-Bukowski's widow laughing to me that

their house will probably be a museum

-the sorrowful exit of Vonnegut against marble

-Hamsun's shamed picture next to Hitler

and all the deaths that carried the weight of beauty

into the ground to be buried and remembered only

by the readers they touched, and to be less and less

mentioned by those of us who have the reach to

remember them in poetry, in stories

all while containing and preserving our own

precious voices and self-respect

our own bullshit

that some other

fucker pushing 30 or 40

will start start detecting falsity in

and less of them than us today

will record them in poems

while those of us remaining

will constantly reach for the

resonance of Whitman

and other timeless entities

to ring through space after our deaths

but we will also forget this

during the course of things

and regardless of

whatever this is

we are only fed

by the hot blood

of artists.

It's a lazy Sunday.

She doesn't go to church because it's raining.

She misses yesterday.

It seems as if she is always complaining.

Her glass is now empty.

She drank all of her guilt, shame, and alcohol.

She is always thinking.

It seems sometimes that there's too much of it all.

The weight of my emotions lies heavily upon me like an elephant on a bird

My schoolwork is more social these days

My family is quite light I don't think to much more then fondly of them

I bought books to write in and then realized nothing is perfect to me

I weighed pumpkins on Halloween but the number only reminded me how big I am compared to them

I tell myself I'm okay when I sleep but there is a flood of lies under my pillow

I wish I could be weightless because then I could fly away from myself and my insecurities

Brackets on my teeth and in my smile remind of my world of imperfections

And that not everyone's documentary ends happily

Only the ones we see do

The colored over face on my snapchats reminds me that I don't love myself yet

All that pretty hair drifting through your fingers on the way to the ground. So light the sun blows right through, like caring was a dream. That heavy hand of hope pressing out color from adolescent afternoons, our hands slow, careless, quivering novices. All those noes before inhaling, stilling regret, then speaking. One more morning dive beneath covers before sailing down a river, smelling pomegranates, and knowing your stomach turns at their longing. The almost of an early Spring, one breath away from frost, the upheld pause, suspension that expects the fall. Inevitable, endless, earth; we no longer recall how to regain the moon.

Life is hard. Everything weighs you down. It makes trudging through the plasma miasma that is the quotidian. You are born, you attempt to thrive, and then die. The weight of responsibility bends your back as soon as you graduate high school and real life sets in. You go to war. You work in a cubicle. You serve food quickly. You fail. You live in your car. You eat ramen noodles. Nothing ever really lines up.

There is something out there that will make everything better though. In space, all your troubles become weightless and drift from your back. Life becomes simply drifting, in no particular direction, only as you creep between the greedy gravity pull from distant planetary bodies and stars.

Don't give up, give in, or give out too much. You're one in seven billion. We need you.

It's 10:14 pm, Thursday night

My lover lies naked in my bed,

the smells of gratification after starvation still drying on his skin

Too long have I craved the weight of his arm caging my slumber

Too long have I cried for his heartbeat as my lullaby

Yet I am awake

I sit in my chemise, wearing his comfort-scented jacket

Crying over the poignancy of Jeff Stewart's "Weight of Things"

Instead of dreading the moment this vision must again leave me

For the first time, not appreciating the pre-tour days we share

Craving words more than inconsistent love

Realizing what is timeless and reliable

Though desire is relentless, I may be graduating from the single-track idea that sexual release is my only calming faction

We humans are such fragile things.

The darknesses we hold inside us –

deep and consuming enough to digest galaxies –

have somehow found homes

in our foreign bodies.

We try to contain them with our weak minds,

pretending to comprehend their depths.

We camouflage them beneath our thinning flesh,

hoping the emptiness doesn’t leak out

or our false colors seep in.

But their escapes are inevitable.

Whether as a flashflood or an erected mountain,

our darknesses will make themselves known,

will have their ways with us,

will break us up to tear us down.

They’ll hold our hands as we climb higher

just to watch us fall for longer,

always waiting until we falter

near an edge to shove us over.

Then our black holes will eat us –

chew bite stab slice and swallow

until our insides are fecal and fallow –

and they will walk around

in our leftover skins,

smug shit-bags who thought we were

too good to be seized by what we hide inside.

They’ll go on pretending they’re us

until they can get close enough with someone else.

And once our decaying corpses

become too troublesome,

they’ll jump ship to their next hosts,

leaving us to rot and fester –

flailing as we fall to the ground –

slumped in a heap of ourselves:

the wasted snack of something

incomprehensibly stronger than all

our mental wrestling could ever grapple

or years of denial could ever outpace.

The air feels so light on my skin I almost feel it skipping over me; I settle against it like a good friend by my side.

It is as if the air itself supplies the energy in my step

The smile in my stare

The incarnation of a giggle under my breath

A chill comes over me so quickly it almost instantly becomes history

As the sun’s power overtakes the cold and its distance memory sits deep in my subconscious I ignore the little stain it leaves behind.

I rush to the sand and feel the crumbles of its moist dough between my toes

The happiness flooding through my psyche is so warm and so permanent

The chill comes again. This time it lingers so vaguely you wouldn’t notice if it hadn’t already happen.

The sunshine now feels dim and my head starts aching so slightly I must be hysterical

I ignore these mixed messages and run into the water; As I get ready to feel the cold blast of the grandest bath you could ever have I instantly get thrown back

It isn’t water

It isn’t cold

I am not wet

The sand no longer crumbles it stings and taunts me up my legs.

The chill just continues to get stronger and stronger until I am robbed completely of the suns rays

As everything I was feeding upon begins to slip away and the ocean turns black as far as the eye can see

I realize…I am awake.

if hearts are heavy

when we feel the pain of others

it should be no surprise

if they function improperly

and it feels like

they

sink

so low

and lower

when we try to share that pain

only to be told

there is only heaviness

and it will never be light.

Life is full of decisions and paths

Each carrying consequences unforeseen

Each leading to an uncertain future

These choices braid together to form a rope which supports you

Poor choices are weak threads

Make to many and it breaks leaving you shattered on the ground

But if you make enough right ones it strengthens the weaker threads allowing you to climb forever higher