Deus Ex Humana

Bucket List

I’m really not sure about this one but I’m posting it anyway.

I always felt that being an adult was some sort of achievement
as if getting through the tyranny and textbooks of education
would earn you some sort of medal
“No I already did that, I’m grown up now”

I see now that’s not so true.

Age is becoming important- 
I already can feel time slipping away
falling through my fingers like so many water drops
and I’m left with wet hands and damp shoes.

So I’m making a bucket list.

One.
Before I die I want to see the Atlantic Ocean

Two.
Before I die I want to watch as the human race crests the asteroid belt
and falls into that cold beautiful aether over neptune
I want to witness the birth of a new civilization in the stars

Three.
Before I die I want to get married.
or at the least have a wedding
Because I love the idea of a party for the sake of love
even if the legal backing will never be sufficient for me to support the institution
Three addendum.
I want to see the institution of marriage destroyed before I die
         Three Addendum 2.
         I want to destroy the institution of marriage
         (but not weddings)

Four.
Before I die I want to have children
Two, ideally, and I want to look into their eyes and say
“No one should ever love you more than yourself
and you should work every damn day trying to beat that record
with everyone you meet.”

or maybe just
“I love you” and
“Your gender doesn’t matter, kid” and
“I don’t care who you’re dating but they better treat you right” and
“Please don’t come home too late”

Five (and this is the last one I have so far)
Before I die I want to make sure my death will be interesting

because all my life I’ve been looking for an adventure
and I think I’d be doing the world a disservice
if I didn’t provide one in return

The Gray House

This is a little piece of writing I did in high school that I recently rediscovered. Surprise! I like it. I’m posting it here.

—-

The house was gray. The house was dilapidated and run-down, the shingles were long unpainted and shelved haphazardly on the roof like so many boulders on a grassy hillside. Wood peeked through the colors- once so vibrant- that ran down the sides of the building, old fingers grasping in futility to the past. She was gray, and the house was gray.

They say she moved because she was unhappy, which was only partially true at the time and less so in the present. She moved for three reasons: One, she hated the city; Two, she hated the trucks that would scream and growl past her window every morning; and Three, she was drawn to the melancholy in a way that she herself was not at all happy about. The house that was gray fulfilled all of those conditions, and furthermore it was vacant. Her name was Karen and she used to be a lawyer. She would like to have a garden, but for now a cactus would have to do.

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GOD i am so tired of this passive-misogynist poetry that no one seems to call out enough

that shit where it’s like “women are so good and beautiful and x and they deliver babies and that’s the pinnacle of beauty” and it’s like y’know what that is really not your concern, dreadlocked guy at poetry slam. 

This dude literally called women “delivery vehicles for the divine”- read, they can have babies and that is the best thing. 

UGH it is so infuriating and I’ll go write a snarky poem all about how gender shouldn’t matter and i’ll do it in September because fsck that noise

springtime rains

sometimes thoughts get deafening.

sometimes the way that the words curl in my head make
rivulets and whisper-whorls in the babbling babbling brook of my
cranium
and I don’t know if there is room for myself

I didn’t use to like poetry.
I thought it incredibly pretentious that someone would think
that others would care about the drip-drop of thoughts
the leaky faucet of faulty rhyme scheme and clove cigarettes
(smoke ‘em if you got ‘em)

but sometimes thoughts get deafening
they’ll drown out your murmured “me” and pleading “I”
and I’ve found the best way to relieve this pressure-
this dam in my skull- is on paper.

sometimes thoughts are pouring through the cracks
in your brain, through the fissures in your conscious mind
and there is no cork no plug to stop this torrent

and i don’t have a quivering lower lip nor
quaking spine to comfort this flood this burgundy pouring-out
of bloody words and soaked prayers
my flesh is not built to house a feeble floodgate
my bones are not steel beams and concrete walls

so i cannot stop this tidal crush, I cannot stem the downpour
i can only hold comfort to the victims, sodden and dripping
and honest,
brutally, brutally, 
honest

i can’t write about happy things probably
but i like the sunshine i guess

Childhood was sea shacks and driftwood
Blue sea and barren sky
Tourist towns and skeleton piers dotted
With iridescent attractions
Coin slot throwaways, boneyard adolescence

When I return I’m not sure
If I ever left

divinity is shit

If there ever was a god he never spoke to me
If the cattle-borne stacks of wood that raised a church
ever had words for the only son of my father and mother
     they were not spoken.

But something was said to me in the back of theatres
and concert halls and between two sweat-soaked bodies
of teenagers, lithe and young and not caring
     and those words rang out like the loudest gospel choir.

All my life I’ve been looking for one worth living
something akin to novels and and folk songs about
nature and death and love and everything beautiful
     something true.

Because it’s been a long time since I’ve been young enough
to tell you that things are easy for me, that my plans in the future
were something that I knew of and not something constantly
     constantly in flux, clay in the hands of an infant

There never was a god that talked to me
There never was a god for me
I’ve never cared to have one
But sometimes I’d like to have someone to lay blame on

Saplings

We were planted, two saplings in the forest
the forest at the corner of 17th and Lawrence if you want to be specific

I was sprung into being in the cold winter and she came two years later
in the same cold winter
we were born in the snow and it has forever been the truest warmth.

Our parents used to say that we looked like twins.
Certainly
our first years of pale skin arms and tufts of black hair
made us inescapably familial

but as I grew and sprouted leaves and gangly glasses
and she filled out and grew her hair long, falling over her fir needles
we were certainly
different.

We are growing apart.

very small poem

Bonnie and Clyde started out with the whole world at their feet
my Shakespeare professor punctuated this thought with a wistful look

they had the world as their oyster 
but look where they ended up

Tragedy ends with a very small world
two people, one car, a million bullets
Tragedy ends with a very small world.

I don’t think he’s wrong.

But on this bed,
when I’m staring into the curve of your eyebrow
and the hazel flecks of your iris
and the beautiful beautiful points of your eyelashes

the world is very small too.

Adolescence

I grew up in three houses.
My mother’s home was warm and red.
and earth tones. My father’s home started out the same
but he never had the same feel to it.
he never
got it.

My mother’s house was incense and cedar
and fires.
my father’s house was food and love
and beards, sometimes.

I grew up in three houses.
because over time I was building my own home
i drew up the plans on new blueprint paper
(that i bought from woods and my imagination)
and under candlelight because i was an
adventurer

I drew up plans and gathered the wood that i could
sneak from the firewood stand
and glue and nails and screws and all the things
that my parents taught me about
that my sister and i would make-believe with in woods behind our rooms

and truth be told i’m still building that house
every now and then there’s a setback
i’ll have a hurricane plow through
   heartbreak winds tearing at my single-pane windows
Or a flood, because my sister accidentally ran her car into the dam 
   and i was forced to confront the fact that we’re growing apart
   and all the water ruined the carpet
or a fire
   because I forgot to turn off the flames
   of the oven

I grew up in three houses.
Three homes
three rooms
three fireplaces
four people.