What if our cleaner lines were gobbled-up by my pen?
What if I sketched our imperfect borders into nothing?
What if I created perfection; a blank slate?
What if I swallowed the wrong words instead?
What if I said the right thing and you stayed?
***
My final poem of the year, written for the final Real Toads prompt ever: PLAY IT AGAIN! with REAL TOADS, hosted by Kerry O’Connor. I chose to write to Kerry’s LET’S FIND OUR POETIC VOICE prompt and then – as a tip of the hat – to erase, clean, or “un-write my voice”, as many of the wonderful prompts here directly contributed to my poetic voice growing and stretching in ways I never imagined possible.
Thank you to everyone at Real Toads – both the hosts and the contributors – for all of your efforts, encouragement, and support. I know this isn’t goodbye, so I’ll see you all out there next year.
After erasure, starting anew,
I’d begin with you in permanent ink,
and perhaps myself next in shading-pencil,
or even a charcoal, perhaps not
quite that dark or indelible.
You see,
I don’t know
where I’m supposed to be,
but it never really matters
as long as you’re here
with me,
and not necessarily here with me,
but somewhere
on this massive rock,
daring to exist without meaning,
exchanging meaningful vibrations,
we’d bubble, churn,
and ooze into anvil-clouds,
raining grey slivers onto sunsets.
Because I love you,
and that is true and fine
and completely permissible
even without my understanding;
I say the words, and I feel it,
even as I don’t know exactly
what it means; I mean I chose it,
but even had I not,
I’d have it all the same,
splitting my breastplate,
spitting into my denying eye
as the heart rushes to keep pace
with the words that won’t come,
claims that get caught out-of-sync
like an 80’s high-hat sharp-hit
where a 90’s boom-bap snare-kick
should land as planned.
Nothing went as planned;
I crave order and there is none
and that is perfectly fine
except when it isn’t;
I desire structure and superstructure
even as I chafe at the yoke
holding us together; holding us apart;
I’d shatter the firmament
for your fleeting smile;
with a snap of my fingers,
I’d snuff-out the sun
if it meant that my final moments
were sitting on a rapidly cooling
solitary park bench
next to you,
hips scarcely touching,
in tranquil silence.
I’d ruin the image,
saving your sketched outline;
my greatest work.
How can I possibly remake this world,
the next, or any other?
My own name,
now and beyond,
lacks structure or meaning
unless you write its narrative
with hands that shape its very context,
or unless you call upon it,
breathing its purpose
with your own lips;
which isn’t the same as saying
without you in my life, in some way,
I am nothing,
but it’s oddly similar to
The Commodores without Lionel Richie
in that I struggle to find the point.
But what I do know is this;
I’d begin with you
in permanent ink.
***
“True intimacy is a state in which nothing exists between two people; no space, no inhibitions and no lies.” – Ranata Suzuki
Have you ever had pure intimacy?
Not to be confused with lingering,
humid summer passion,
it is timid, pallid winter sun
kissing ice crystals with fleeting beauty,
arriving at low angles on high latitudes,
vulnerable, rarely intense enough
to accompany morning tea,
breaking fast after breakfast as lovers
franticly throw open south-facing curtains
capturing as much tenuous warmth
as time and nature allows.
Ever leaned into a winter sunset?
It ignites frosty edges of clouds,
embracing with fiery shadows,
but then it is barely there,
gone in a ghostly cirrus whisper,
leaving Mercury in retrograde as lovers
shrouded in twilight wonder
if it ever existed at all.
***
“But I couldn’t control my restlessness, an eagerness for violation was growing in me, I wanted to break the rules, as the entire world seemed to be breaking the rules.”
– Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, a novel by Elena Ferrante
We should forget.
It’s better this way.
I won’t divine
entangled spirits
from rat-nested bedsheets,
shades unfurled,
eclipsing shame.
We have fun.
Yeah we did.
No love misplaced,
like spilled spirits
and tongues.
Yet I return,
haunted spirit,
to the mistake
we never made.
***
Inspired by Real Toads Words To Live By, hosted for the final time by Rommy. We were asked to reflect on a word or quote that means something special to us.
Ironically, as someone who loves words, I drew a blank here. Ultimately, I settled on a quote from a book I’m currently reading (Book three of a four-book series by Elena Ferrante, collectively titled Neapolitan Novels.)
I’m kind of bummed that Real Toads is so close to ending their amazing run, so I’m trying to contribute more to their remaining prompts. It’s bittersweet, but as with most finite things within our cosmos, nothing lasts forever.
Sure, whenever I complete a form
that’s nosey enough to ask,
I check the corresponding square,
but I’m just some random guy
born into a reddish-brown shell, and
there’s no option for human doing his best,
given the tattered incomplete playbook
passed down for generations.
Everything I learned about being black
I learned from others, from momma’s
early-warning games that life’s not fair,
the playing field isn’t level,
and the rules are different for folks
who look and sound like us; that the
difficulty settings are disproportionately
skewed; that there are folks who hate me
at first sight, before I could even begin
to hope to win them over
with a smile and a silly joke.
Being black can be tricky, but
what can I definitively
tell you about being black?
You’re better off asking one of my
blood relatives who are black and proud;
I don’t know if I’m not black enough
or not proud enough, but by all accounts,
and my admission, it’s probably both.
I’m amused by the idea of claiming pride
in something I had no control over;
it’s not like I achieved anything; it’s not
like I’m one of the best blacks like Barack
or Beyoncé or K-Dot; I’m just some dude
who popped out of his momma with
reddish-brown skin, a fear of
creepy-crawlies, and a love of words.
Being black can be bemusing, but what
can I honestly tell you about being black?
To be honest, I don’t think about it
very much these days, not unless
circumstances compel me to.
I’m certainly not doing it right,
just ask anybody with the
privilege of voicing opinion;
I don’t speak the language well enough
for anyone; if I’m confident, I’m too uppity;
if I’m insecure, I need to be saved
from my own ignorance; if I’m silent,
I’m one of the sneaky ones; if I’m loud,
I’m one of the angry ones; if I’m
actually angry, I’m a threat
that needs to be stopped by any means
that will most likely withstand
judicial scrutiny.
Being black can be maddening, but
what can I unequivocally
tell you about being black?
It would seem that I’m unqualified
to say for absolute certain.
My chest rises and falls to its own cadence.
I smile big smiles, laugh belly-laughs, and
dream dreams like any other common human.
Tears well in my eyes, and I weep
openly during sappy love stories,
or when a vigilante is acquitted
by his peers for murdering one of my peers.
(Granted, we’re all peers, but my neglecting
to use first-person singular possessive here
could be perceived as not black enough.
Refer to “being black can be tricky” above.)
I have irrational fears of spiders and zombies,
and a hyper-rational fear of meeting
the wrong policeman in a dark alley
after fitting the description.
You know the description;
it’s always the same description.
Being black can be terrifying.
But what can I fearlessly
tell you about being black?
It can be tricky, bemusing,
maddening, terrifying,
all these things at once,
and sometimes, when I’m alone,
staring at the stars above
on the blackest night,
as starlight takes eons to reach
where blackness has already been,
waiting indifferently for it,
it is an absence of all these things,
for when the cosmos
overpowers my brown eyes
with overwhelming proof
of my own individual insignificance,
that is when the truth speaks to me,
that being black is human,
and is but one of many facets
of our collective humanity.
***
Trigger warning: The video below contains satirical graphic gun violence.
Inspired by dVerse dVerse Poetics: On Shades of Black, hosted by anmol(alias HA). Other writers contributed to the prompt here. I know this one’s in dire need of editing, but I may leave it as is, as it came from an honest thread of thought.
“Though your eyes are kind, I’m afraid,” she confessed, lying nude before me.
“Me too,” I said through angelic gaze, “but I see something in you that I can’t explain.” I gorged myself upon her kiss. “Deep within you; I must have it,” I continued urgently in the fading light, embracing her shoulders gently, sliding towards her neck, enclosing her throat with the yip of her last gasp, her fingernails, sunk into my clenching forearms before dropping lifelessly, dangling from her naked corpse.
My ecstasy was interrupted by her now-disembodied laughter. “Foolish mortal,” she hissed, “now you are mine forever,” as my body slowly dissolved. “Of all my new candidates, you surrendered yourself completely. Now you will never know pleasure without death; never the sensual without senescence. This is the barrenness of harvest or pestilence reserved for only my favorite Incubi.”
Hephaestus’ Waste & Cosmic Rubble 