Poems

This is what it's like to love a wolf:

He will bite you.

You can love him with all you can give him, and he'll still bite you.

You know this, and you still love him.

He tells you,

"I am a wolf. I am scared and shot at and abused and I will bite you."

You know this. He is a wolf and he will bite you.

He won't listen when you say you love him.

You think he thinks of you as the same as the men who shoot at him from their property lines.

You reach into his cage, try and pull the bloody bullet lodged in skin and fur and flesh and-

He bites.

That's what wolves do.

You can try and tame him.

Love him as dog and man, wife and husband.

Try and save yourself from the fact that wolves bite.

It takes more time that you can fathom to tame a wolf.

Besides, you like to love a wolf.

Because he loves you as a wolf loves you.

You know that he loves you.

He loves you, and he bites you.

You know that.

But does he love you as a wolf loves easy prey?

You've made yourself easy.

You let him bite you.

This is what it's like to love a wolf:

You try and make yourself an easy meal.

I am trying so desperately to be Atlas.

All I want is to take the burdens of everyone onto my broad shoulders-

Let me carry it for you.

Let me help you.

Let me be strong for you.

Please, in turn, ignore how I crack.

How my arms shake and burn with pain.

Ignore how I am not Atlas-

Let me be Atlas!

Let me hoist your struggles far above you.

Let me be the one who helps you.

I am trying so desperately for you.

Please just believe, for a moment, that I am Atlas.

Believe that I truly can carry all of this alone.

That way I can try to believe that I can, that I have the strength.

Let me be Atlas.

Let me hold the weight.

Let me carry the world-sized weight of everyone's burdens.

Please excuse how I am breaking.

How my knees crumple and how my fingers bleed as I adjust my grip.

No need to reach out a helping hand!

Simply stack more of your weight and worry in my arms.

It will help me-

It will make me Atlas-

Or it will kill me in the attempt.

I am a knight.

Prideful in my position,

Strong, shining.

Brave in the face of fear.

Leading the way-

A protector.

Beating back the dark with iron.

A sword doesn't know what it hits,

It swings where it's pointed.

A knights job is not comfort.

A protector does not mean a comforter-

The sword I hold points where I look.

Many people look to me-

For protection.

I can deal with protection.

I am made to protect.

It is my duty, as a knight.

I take pride in that.

Many people look to me-

For comfort.

I am not a comforter-

I do not take pride in comfort.

It is not where I look.

I am a gleaming, shining knight.

So many people look to me for comfort.

They should not look at me so long.

Do they not know that I will look back?

A sword swings where it's pointed,

And it swings where I look.

"Its not the end of the world,"

I scream it, let the sound of my voice ring out.

"How many times should I yell it to you?

The world isn't ending,"

I say it with authority.

The ground is solid under our feet,

waves gently rolling up the shore.

You don't believe me, it's easy to tell.

"It feels like it, to me!"

You scream back, the noise breaking with fear.

"I don't understand how you don't see it,

don't you feel the end?"

You say it like I'm out to get you.

Shaking like an earthquake is ripping the world in two,

damp with tears like the ocean has already swallowed you whole.

This isn't the first time you've screamed apocalypse to me.

One day I'll be cruel enough to let you believe it.

But today I take your hand in mine,

Lead you away from the shore.

Try for one more day to keep you away from the end of all things.

You can reach out and touch.

Grab, even.

Grope, claw, bite down with your teeth,

But God forbid you hold on.

Don't you know this is impermanent?

Stupid child, playing games

Made for adult hands.

You pass it on, because it's not yours to keep.

You can reach out and just barely brush it,

Electric, ecstatic.

Soft, plush, press your fingers into flesh.

But God forbid you hold it.

Don't you know things like this are finite?

Stupid heart, wanting touch

That cannot last.

You pass it on, because you can't hold all of it.

You don't want to keep it alone,

You want to touch it, grab, grope, hold-

Stupid childish heart.

You should know better

Than to want what you can't hold.

How cruel is it to hit an animal?

A working beast, a pet?

A dog?

Public says cruelty.

Watch the dog destroy it all and bite your tongue.

Don't yell,

Don't scold,

Don't hit,

Don't grab it's collar and pull it backwards.

It'll see you as a villain, unsafe.

Trusting when it can't.

Screaming, crying, gnashing your teeth

(Like an animal)

How do you stop an animal?

When it bites?

Hit it, cruelty. All harm is cruelty.

Pull its leash, cruelty. Harming it's throat.

When it bites itself?

Hit it? Cruelty.

A spray bottle? Something to stop the biting?

The bottle makes it flinch. Cruelty?

Is a flinch harm? Is that cruelty?

What if it's chewing off its own leg.

Is stopping that cruelty?

It wants freedom. Is that something to be curbed?

What if it's chewing on the wrong leg?

What if you can get it out of the trap?

What if cruelty may work?

Animals can be stuck in their ways.

Feather plucking,

Skin biting.

They can rip at their stitches.

Is a cone cruel for preventing natural behavior, because it restricts mobility?

Feeding from a poison trap.

Is holding the trap away preventing a natural behavior, because eating is natural?

Wake it up, watch what it does.

Tries to catch its own tail and wins,

Bites hard, hurting itself.

Yell for it to stop and it drops it in fear.

Grab its collar and pull and it drops it in pain.

It's own tail forgotten,

All blame on you.

What should have been done?

Let it chew?

Stay silent and still?

Cruelty, why didn't you stop it?

Make it stop?

Scream and pull?

Cruelty, why did you hurt it?

Resist the urge of punishment,

Give approval of its actions?

Let your bones snap so it can keep in a spiral?

(Step away? Cruelty.

Step forwards to have a hand in that cruelty.)

Can you make yourself an animal?

Speak to it in a language it understands?

Bite and growl?

Chew off your own hand and become a poor imitation of an animal.

Like a cat with his claws stuck to a blanket,

I cling on to this time with all I can.

There are moments where you know there is no turning back,

Where you can't look Eurydice in the eye if you wanted to.

I've never been good with moving on, in my own ways.

Meltdowns and dread as a child when someone left home without me, without goodbye,

But I wished no goodbyes to that home when I left it.

My life is circular, coin shaped.

Flows into itself with two stark sides.

An oroboros that moves forwards only, fundamentally not what it is.

The unknown is terror made tangible when stepped inside.

The future is hazy to me, the past a brick wall to my back.

Like a cat I pull threads from the blanket when pulled away.

I wonder if they'll take my claws, cut the first bones from each of my fingers.

I sink into the dread of change I knew so well as a child.

Hearing the garage door open, so sure that whoever was leaving would not come back home.

Everyone always made it home.

Will I be so lucky?

Will I take my claws from the blanket,

Will I let go of myth,

Will I step into my future, my head held high?

I hope so.

I speak to you as a message.

Through story I reach to you, your three part name ringing solid.

You are real to me, too real for what you are.

That keeps you safe, in the grand scheme of things.

I wish I could make you even more real.

Craft you from flesh and bone,

Carve you into something immortal.

I want you to know that you speak to me, through me, and that I will give you voice.

I want you to feel as real as you are to me.

You can't know this, and you already do.

You aren't real.

You can't feel, can't know.

But I know that you do.

"Write a happy poem",

Such a simple idea.

What makes me happy?

I imagine blue and grey, purple and green.

The colors that dance as I rub my eyes,

Pondering what to write.

The words "happy poem" and my writing do not often coexist.

But I can try.

I see blue eyes, grey eyes.

Laughter and future.

I see bodies, shapes, a life ahead of me.

Far ahead of me, but still ahead.

I see late nights melt to early mornings in a future I am so very close to.

I see laughter so strong it carries tears, hands grabbing for stability.

(I feel the joy already burning my cheeks, a grin so wide I'll feel it hours past.)

I see two animals, alike and separate, so much the same even in how they differ.

Each containing so many others, each like bodies of water I so very much want to drown in.

The blue and grey meld together in a way that I never thought I'd be lucky enough to have.

Here's your happy poem:

A field by the ocean,

And soon they will never have to be apart, ever, ever again.

I don't belive in omens,

But I've found one each term.

Dear Squirrel #1,

I found you by the sidewalk

A big path, not far from the fountain.

You weren't dead long, maybe a few hours.

I called for you to be cleaned up, a more respectable death than most squirrels.

I didn't know what it would mean if I didn't see another one.

You were a one-off chance, that doesn't mean anything,

Right?

Dear squirrel #2,

I found you in the plaza,

Not far from my front door.

I had found you alive, just barely.

I called for someone to care of you, sick thing.

Im sorry nobody came.

Im sorry you died alone, in the rain.

And, most of all, I'm sorry they left you to rot for weeks without removal.

Two makes a pattern.

I was in grief that second term,

Thinking I had lost a rope to my soul.

They took so long to get you that I let myself fester with you,

To try and make you less alone.

Dear Squirrel #3,

I found you on my way to class,

Right along the path I walk every day.

You were a cold dead when I found you.

Mouth bloody, laying by the base of that tree in the mulch.

I didn't call anyone for you,

I knew you'd be taken care of soon enough.

I don't think I even thought about calling for you,

To be completely honest,

I was more excited about being right.

A dead squirrel, each term?

Perfectly delivered, freshly dead,

Perfectly ready to wrend meaning from.

Dear Squirrel #4,

I found you coming back from a meal,

Just a bit away from where I found Squirrel #1.

You were deader than dead when I found you.

Bone visible, flesh worn away, some fur left clinging to whatever you had left.

I didn't call anyone for you.

You had been left long enough I think it would have been rude to.

It all means something, needs to mean something.

It means this can pull to a close,

Wrapped in a bow.

It means that I won't be waiting for any more dead squirrels,

And it means that, hopefully, I can move on.

I won't lie to you.

I won't tell you that she's transformed,

Magically, into what you see today.

I'll tell you to your face that she's dead.

That she was young, sweet, light as a feather,

And she blew away just as easily.

All her fake innocence she played so well, finally dead under what I am.

You held her, knew her, once.

All 8 pounds held in your arms.

I think that's the last time you knew her.

You held so much faith in her.

I'm sorry, are you uncomfortable?

Let me make you comfortable.

She lies dead, somewhere, small and alone.

Ripped her from her bed dreaming of dancing and wonder,

Beat her bloody in the face of what she was.

That I hated her and still hate her for all she was.

That she screamed for help the entire time.

That I drag her body around as a sign of hatred.

Or maybe she just left one day, and she'll come back.

Gave up on being a daughter, decided to try something new.

Threw her young self into my arms,

Let me use her skin and bones and teeth.

That one day she'll realize her mistake.

That eventually she'll come crawling home.

That if she doesn't, she definitely wanted to.

And I could go on with that comfortable lie, if you find it comfortable.

But even a murderer, kidnapper, the man who ripped your sweet daughter away, can want to speak the truth.

She understood I would win, and she welcomed death.

She knew that, soon enough, she wasn't going to make back to the home that she knew.

That her secrets would be kept secret,

That her name could remain clean and holy, even just for a moment.

That she could be taken and changed and killed, as a chance to finally live.

(She died as she lived; not telling you shit.)

Too much and not enough.

Too big for these small boxes,

Too small to fit in the crowd.

They see my masculinity as scary, too much.

The other side doesn't see it at all, too little.

There was a time where both sides would at least try to see me,

But as I become myself they both push me farther away.

Too much of a man to be queer,

Too much of a queer to be a man.

My queerness is who I am, wholeheartedly.

My masculinity is who I am, wholeheartedly.

Not a tightrope balance to walk between,

Not a fine line of separate things.

What happened to that acceptance I was promised?

It was there when I told you I was a man.

Did it leave when I started looking like a man?

When instead of lithe and small, I grew broad and loud?

At least the other side never promised me acceptance. They never told me I would fit in.

Will I gain it if I meet their standards of masculinity?

If I learn to not shrink myself, use this body for its purpose?

Too small for these big boxes,

Too big to fit in the crowd.

I've always been scared of you.

Your omen haunts me since childhood,

Screaming in terror at your noise,

Told that I didn't hear you,

Sent back to sleep.

I'd always find your bodies, eventually.

Even now, the phantom of your buzz makes me freeze.

The sound of you sends me flinching and spiraling.

I imagine you:

Sucked into a vacuum,

In the jaws of a dog,

Released outside safely,

Smashed on my boot tread.

And now I see you dead every day.

Resting on top of that doorway,

An omen, a sign.

Nothing good comes from you.

Invasive, infective,

Previous home and new terror.

Something good can come from you:

I can use you as a sign to never go back.

Every poem I write gets longer and longer;

Clay in my hands,

Stretching, showing my love for run-on sentences,

Of unrhyming meter,

Of mismatched metaphor,

Of motifs paired in threes.

Crack my fingers and they burn,

Heart aches and my pen bleeds,

Breathe and my shallow lungs pitter.

It can be hard for me to keep up with my own words,

They melt, run, gum-up my jaw,

Like clay stuck to my hands.

I'll leave this one short,

Unfinished for your viewing pleasure.

I see predators and I want to make them prey.

Feel a predator's pride crumple in,

Death at the realization they aren't what they are any longer.

Broken to be remade in a new image,

Praying that they'll be made into good prey.

See hand and paw clasped together:

Begging unneeded forgiveness,

Pleading for sweet punishment.

Large jaws for a swift kill,

Sharp hands for a harsh beating.

I want to maim freely,

Sit atop my throne of god and taste worship.

Feel how a predator turned prey can pray,

Unguided and open worship.

Sweet terror melting to pleasure,

Two tastes that blend into sticky ambrosia in my mouth.

Good prayers go to God,

And good prey gets eaten.