morning

Seattle

rain.

coffee and the burning of incense

my plant on the sill absorbing

the rain, wind, and album

while it rotates on the player

my dogs full

head full

all the decades lost and drained down

my feet bare against a throw rug that costs

more than my last car

and my blood tricked by health

my body snapping back into form

mind tricked by money

but today remembering the old days

the shit days

the days of running on fumes

in every sense of the phrase

an inch close to suicide without

even knowing it

the road and cities and sabotage

the faces and

the teeth in those faces

the rats inside of them

the roaches inside those

and the rotting insides

of them

but I sit here and drink coffee

Disintegration belting out from the

speakers

a nice contrast to Bad Brains

while I fed the dogs

and stretched

-yeah, no shit, stretched-

and watered the plant

which I’ve named Tom Araya

because when it was given to me

by some woman last year

it was just a stem and three leaves,

and it was thirsty

and shooting up from a

small, dark pot

and for some reason,

my mild synesthesia

placed a summer orange glow

around the

dark blue planter

and I heard Araya scream his

famous intro

on Angel Of Death

I’d never had a plant before him

and today Tom Araya is much taller

and living in a much bigger planter

15 or 16 leaves, his stem supported

by a bamboo splint

and next to his trunk in the soil

a new part of him is shooting up

in three stems from his badass

origin.

I sit here and listen to the rain

the album

the burning of scent

and time

and maybe wonder

but that’s what age

must put between us and

the world

and it’s what we use

to keep feeling like there’s

a fight to win

but I think about my plant

both of us abandoned by whores

after birth

both of us rescued by

soft hearts

and grown

from those hearts with

the best that they knew

and even though

I let time and populace

and myself break me down

from soil to trash to nearly saying

fuck it

I held on through words

which became my own soil

and I became their synesthesia

a slave to the source

to that place, the core that

has never stopped burning

toward a sky that we will

never know

regardless of how much

we praise it and mystify it

and give ourselves over

sitting here in Seattle

the rain tapers off

and I glance at Tom Araya:

I’ll keep getting richer

and you keep

getting

prettier.

I thought I saw it in his eyes once

I thought I had been the cause

But soon enough I found

I wasn't the ones feeding the flames

I thought I saw it in my eyes once

I thought he had been the cause

But soon enough I discovered

It was me going up in flames

I thought it was a beautiful thing

Something to keep safe and cherish

But soon enough it revealed that

It was a destructible force

It winds itself

Around us

And doesn't let us go

Until we're nothing but another set of ashes

Scattered in the wind

I have complaints:

Just about nothing!

Thanks for

A fun night!

I wish it was

Not over yet.

All night,

I thought

It was fun.

Now, reversed.

"It was fun!"

I thought,

All night,

"Not over yet..."

I wish it was

a fun night.

Thanks for

Just about nothing.

I have complaints.

5/12/15

I don't get dreams every night

Everything feels the same

But my cats fur changes every day

Walk by me in your galaxy pants

Remind me of a world I once knew

I stand on my head

And get warmth from my world being upside down

I see a man in drag and smile at his courage

I see a small girl pick up a guy almost 3 times her size and I inhale

I don't get dreams every night

I don't remember all the things I've seen

But nothing can ever shock me

How could it?

5/24/15

Traveling through this concrete map

I've never seen this place before

But I swear it might of came up down the block I came from

The buses squeeze me in with all these strange strangers

I've never seen this person before

But their scent reminds me of my teacher in third grade

I'm licking this creamy ice

My sweater is in my back pack

The shoes I'm wearing, wear away with every step

Excuse me as I graze through your life

Leaving treads of snail-like slime

The rain with come

It will soon wash it

Until next time

Do I smell like something from your past?

My life is moving in slow motion

When I was younger,

I never fell from a tree

I never played hide and seek

I never saw first love

I never had a true friend.

When I was younger,

I never hid away from my family

I never trapped myself in a room

I never did something out of adrenaline

I never was an adolescent

When I was younger, I used to make

People laugh while on the inside

I had to bear with brewing storms

And darkest silences

When I was younger

I never gave my first kiss

When I was younger, I never felt loved

By someone who was not a relative

I never knew what passion felt like

While hiding, feeling scared of getting caught

When I was younger all my life was solitude

When I was younger, nobody knew

I needed everybody

Because I was dying alone

When I was younger, I knew

I was surrounded by love

My mother, my father, my sister and my aunts and uncles

Grandparents

But never a first love.

Now that I am 23, I look back at those lines

And still weep until I can drain the darkest ocean inside me

Now that I am 23...

What am I?

DA 2015

More than 200 billion galaxies,

Each with more than 200 billion stars,

Countless planets,

One universe.

We start with:

One planet,

One sun,

One moon.

Then suddenly,

More planets,

More suns— no, stars,

More moons...

An endless void

Waiting to be discovered.

A cryptic message

Crying the mysteries of life.

A puzzle with only half the pieces;

A book

Half-written.

So little is known,

So little is explored.

Endless possibilities,

One universe.

It's weird

Change

Part of me really grieves over change

I've lamented talking about it because it something I had to do a lot of this year...

The beginning of 8th grade

I've made it but only partly

The other half is waiting for me at the end

But it's a difficult half

And it's making fun of me right now

But we do that, so I guess that's alright

I quickly step through the first months, I am already taken by how easy I have had it

But then again I stitched up my heart at the end of summer, so I keep my emotions fairly hidden, unless I feel the need to talk about them which never happens

It's hard being on the outside, I have realized that in many ways I have changed my approach to talking to people after feedback

I never changed the way I dressed but this year was the first year I was okay showing my arms in public

I used to never think of wearing short sleeve shirts

Now I do

I swim through the muddy water of the next months

Knowing it was a good thing not to let my gut drop at certain social stuff like I did last year, because I wouldn't have my gut anymore

I stayed quiet when I felt it necessary, I let people swim over me

And that's why I was last to get to shore

The last months I crawled through

Knowing my stitches had become worn, and I didn't want them to tear

So I came up with lists of all the changes I had made over the past months, thinking that it had been a successful year

And then one of my stitches ripped

Realizing that I could still make it to the finish line I tried

But the weight started to pull me in

But I wouldn't just stop at nothing anymore

Like I used to

And still do, but not today

I would cry and scream

And try every way to dig myself out of the hole I had created

With my stitches lose my tears started to fill the bottom of the hole

And slowly they started to lift me up to the top of the hole

So I didn't need my stitches

I started to carefully walk to the end

I was soaked but I was drying

Slowly but surely I knew I would get there

If my emotions can help me so can I

Through painful hardships and constant fear of messing up and being alone, I some how saved myself from falling through

The cracks I had made myself, without even knowing it

So I guess I changed, wasn't that my goal?

Or was it other people's

Am I not fit to stand my ground in front of them?

Most of me is myself

But sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't really have done what I did

In any scenario

Sometimes I wonder if the change that I really wanted

Wasn't coming from me