dream job

there is something so sacred
and tender about the strength
resting across your shoulders
that asks to be crawled upon,
and the broad plain of your chest
that seems so willing to be carved into.

i would like so desperately
to peel back your skin
and suck the juice
straight to your bones.
--to grip the back of your neck
and show you i am just what you're looking for

if we could get past the posturing
and the petty politics
i could make you realize
that when you look at me,
it is your knees that should be weak.
because i have the power to make you tremble,
to make you invite me to wrap myself around your torso
and squeeze into your ribs
until you beg me to never let you go.

no one at work would have to know.




anthony.

Originally performed on open mic 2/17/11
Originally written on 7/23/10

We slept side by side and woke up in a heart shape. My spine curved to accommodate the emptiness you could fill and your forehead arched to reach mine. With our knees touching and our chests sighing, someone watched over us and laughed inwardly. There was a whisper in my ear and I mistook it for an unconditional understanding of where I would always be. If it wasn't a definition left to the dreams that happen in the satellite hour of consciousness, I might not have to look upon that moment with such delicate longing. There was no backward or forward in time---only the complete conglomerate of some essence of one magic fitting perfectly into another, no desperation or wild rallying; just soft, light, content. The happiness of half open eyelids in an unbelievable, unremarkable miracle.

I used to struggle to tell dreams. The struggle to explain with painstakingly accurate detail the occurrences from another realm used to take me all day. with time, I have learned that my dreams were more fascinating to me as I saw them than to anyone trying to paint their own picture with my words. I slowly learned that the message to be found was not within the placement of the walls but the broadness of your shoulders. No, wait, that's not right, it can't be. I learned how to keep dream and sleep separate---where were we? Ah yes, my chronic obsession with talking about my intimate adventures of feathery dreams. So I rode a roller coaster right off the tracks and into the sunset where I found the dragons living in the glory of the blazing sun. (Your breath became the fire in my gut and the sleeplessness in my lungs.)

I was traveling over the snow and ice, over the highway separating us from realities and time. It wasn't a spark that came from your hand as it grazed my cheek but a fresh tenderness. I felt a renewed wordless something and it spread from your fingertips to my depths. There was an unimaginably large grin on our faces that started in my eyes and spread to your feet. (Or was it the other way around?) My eyelids wrenched my sight back to the road and then suddenly I was awake. I heard a far away, familiar voice scolding you and I wiggled my toes remembering the sensation of your touch without any contact.

Laying in bed and continually recalling the memory you traced into my skin will not bring me closer to any conclusion. I've grown older in such a small amount of time, all I have to do is close my eyes and I could be back there, wherever that may be this time. Now the problem is not that I am scared of tomorrow, but that yesterday and the fantasies beyond dance out of reach and it seems less pertinent to mutter any yearning for them to return. It was never about how far I could go but how long I could keep it.


Originally performed for slam competition 2/10/11
Originally written on 4/2/08

Ghost in the Doorway

I had this dream where you were a large skeleton. You still had organs and a face, but I only saw your bones. Just like the world still had grass and trees but the only thing that mattered was the moon. Perhaps it was too dim to notice anything other than stark white or maybe that is all that needed to be paid attention to. It was more a matter of what was happening than any of these surface details.

You walked with me, like any skeleton would, and we didn't say a word for a very long time. Finally when words came, it was music and images. Light dancing across fields in places we had never been, wind traveling in trees we wanted to climb. I do not remember where we were, but that we weren't going anywhere special. What we would find did not surprise us, but reached into us and fed us life. I couldn't hear anything but your bleached thoughts and I don't remember how I looked. Perhaps I was just as naked as you were. I only know that when we touched it was like fire and when you held me there was nothing but the heat from the furnace inside your chest.

It will be a long winter if I don't see you again.


Originally performed 10/21/10
Originally written on 10/7/08

Stereo in the Kitchen

it is when you begin to apologize that you know you may be in trouble...

"Ennui unbridled, let's talk to kill the time.
How many styles did you cycle through before you were mine?
And it's been a while since we went wild and that's all fine,
But we're sleepwalking through this trial,
And it's really a crime...it's really criminal"

Everything was awash in orange
and our mouths were filled with grins.
The table would morph into a new mess each night
and the furniture would tumble down the stairs.
We could walk into each other's houses,
drink a glass of water and keep walking.
The sky protected us when we played basketball in the dark
and candy on our tongues could melt anything away.

Long drives and drunken lost living rooms,
dark hallways and loud basements filled with sleeping people,
a television kissing you goodnight
and a kitchen sink to wake you in the morning.

To name the things that changed you
is to remember who you are
and if it's the difference between
the hole in my diary or the clippings of my soul,
I'll carve something righteous out
just to tell these stories again.

Some love stories were never meant to be sold to Hollywood.
Or to last.



Note: This is a summary of the events of last fall and the feelings that went with it. I lost a job and a friend last December, neither of which would want me back. The love story is not of romance in this situation but an idealized adoration for a group that was family. I had previously referenced death before things began to fall apart not thinking I could lose this.
In short---last October was a lot of fun and I'll really miss it.


Originally written on 10/20/09

Still Life

An edit of this. Feedback is thoroughly encouraged. Criticism extremely welcome.

Eons have passed since we walked through that green maze to bronze fields.
Yet I have visited our park so many times in my thoughts,
with the heaviness of death hiding so close to my heart,
it would seem as though it was only yesterday since we were walking side by side.

With open eyes and bare feet,
the music of the air spilled into our ears
and we swayed like stalks of wheat.

Under the blue autumn sky,
I can still hear all of the words you ever spoke
echoing through the blades of grass.

We were not silent then;
we were not patient
and there was no need to be, either.
Our souls touched and grew inside one another.

I can only dig down so far
to find where there is a difference between us.
It would not matter if you lived in any other place,
if I could not see you with my eyes.
We were born to meet each other and live to learn.
(Perhaps if we had never met I may have died?
What about you?)

If my legs could carry me,
I would run.
If you could open your mouth,
you would conduct symphonies.

It was so simple for us.
We were creating worlds by discovering what already existed.
We were flourishing in the void.
We were making peace by not needing one another.

My only fears for you are that fear would get in the way of any life worth living.
That something could paralyze you beyond ever
understanding or experiencing the most necessary affairs.

Waves passed and oceans flew,
time churned and next thing I knew
you were walking away from me.

The crisp air hit my lungs and I decided this wouldn't be when I chased after anyone.
I was tired of walking so far North
that I forgot where the beach lay.
When I was at your place
I never knew which way was home.
I got so comfortable in your bed
I began to dislike my own skin.

Four years ago I might not have known any better,
but four years from now I might say the same thing.

I take a deep breath and plunge in.

---maybe I'll find you after all.

Cold Goodbye (The End of a Chapter)

Everything has a piece of you that I love(d) waiting to sneak up on me.

And it feels like I did when I stumbled upon that empty village;
when we walked into that cold apartment
with a breeze that came in through the floor
even with the windows sealed shut.

I know because it's like walking in on yourself
as you look over old, broken memories.
And look, that's where I held your hand,
and that's where I fell for you all over again
and that's when we did, and we felt, and we were.

Looking back on it, the barrel of tears in my throat can't seem to say enough.
Just a washing of waves through the grains that were once mighty stones.
A harsh light on the silent night walls of buildings.
The cloudy air of the coast,
the unrelenting roar of waves,
the disappearing horizon line.
Just a quiet surrender of the giants to the fall,
a whispered goodbye to someone and something
long gone
and faded.

Inspired by the track "Zerthis was a Shivering Human Image" by Eluvium, urgency, reminiscence, longing, and a strange sense of happirness.

Reflection

He is my Ganesh
And together we are painting the walls blue.
The color of clarity.
Instead of knocking down the walls entirely,
but still recreating the sky no one else can see.
This is about the brevity of sainthood,
or the fear of happiness.
Because the questions we're asking aren't:
"What could you lose?"
or "what will you gain?"
But more of a quiet: "What could you possibly be missing?"
I need not so much a smile
as I need a gentle nod.
Just enough reassurance to move forward
without the push of a stroked ego.

A Study of Surrealism

I want to blame the exhaustion, but the truth of the matter is that I'm crying like a child because I'll miss you and everything is going to fall apart.

I've missed people before. The way that a finger misses the weight of a gaudy ring by keeping a phantom buzz on the skin.
But I'm missing you in a different way. The way my grandmother's boyfriend misses the use of his arms. You don't realize how absolutely necessary your muscles are until you need to do something simple like scratch your nose.

My second confession is that missing you wouldn't be nearly as bad if it weren't clear to me how much everyone else that I already long for will miss you too. It makes me want to turn off the television I've been watching in my head. It just broadcasts reruns of emotions trying to rip apart the screen. Everyone else's feelings are projected onto me and all of it adds up to missing someone I barely know, crying until tears can't come anymore, and feeling a fire lit within me that I seem to have forgotten.

If only I could wake myself up from this dream, I feel like I could get others to run alongside me the same way you do.

Before This War

There is a man and he rocks me.
This steady motion follows a path and sets music to life. The notes show a dreamscape he's only spoken of before and here it is on the walls around us. I could live in his arms, just in this moment. So that every time he holds me I hear the same melody whispering from another dimension and another time.

This is a different kind of safety, where I am not just saving you but you defended every bit of me.