Like A Sunrise In Reverse

like a sunrise in reverse

i could believe in a fate / where none of

this happened / there are worse things

/ than making it up as we go / than

headlights driving south / and a song

like waves crashing into a cliff /

singing of oblivion / and the hope inside

it / the way the headlights / shine down

the road in front of us / curving around

the mountainside / we drive into the

abyss / and we are swallowed by the light

/ of passing possibility / eighty miles an

hour / headlights / glorious and merciful

and bright.

tell him that there are other ones and zeroes

10100 / 101 / 1100 / 1100 1000 / 1001 / 1101 10100 / 1000 / 1 / 10100 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 / 101 1 / 10010 / 101 1111 / 10100 / 1000 / 101 / 10010 1111 / 1110 / 101 / 10011 1 / 1110 / 100 11010 / 101 / 10010 / 1111 / 101 / 10011 00000000000000000000000000000 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111

things that could've been

for once i’m writing something pretty with no twists or crooked lines. this is what happened after all the pages went blank and all the endings happened in a way that was bearable. no one got left behind. no words left to say. just something simple, the spin of seasons from spring to summer to fall to winter and over again. it’s living with someone for years without ever getting tired of them. staring out the same window without thinking the view would be better somewhere else. maybe don’t call this love; call this contentment, being able to stay in one place in one house and one home. no poetry here in the ritual of every day life; hang the laundry out to dry, feed the animals and wash the dishes by hand. it’s talking to someone without screaming and whispering without still being too loud. say hope without being sarcastic. loving someone not because they saved you or because they were your hurricane heart, but because they made the pages fit together in a way that seemed reasonable. you could puzzle your logic out and it happened to be bearable. just this thought, even.

dear physics, a eulogy request in advance

Aaron Freeman, can your physicist come to my funeral too and explain my own dispersal? in my head i see them standing by the ashes talking about the metaphor this funeral represents- the spreading of what’s left of me, the explosion of my infinitesimal self into everything else. or maybe that’s just the poet in me, making up things as i go. they’ll probably stand and say we are all made of molecules, and matter before we ever even begin to considered cells, the division of life into life with or without kernels before nucleus comes neutrons spinning in the centre of things all the biologists will have a fit. but they’ll still wait with one hand on the urn, and say biology can’t comfort you like this will. say something about the law of conservation of mass (you were anything before you were this and you are everything after this until all the edges). something about stardust. dispersion, refraction into light. your physicist takes a seat at my funeral and i’m hoping it’s a comfort and not another reminder that i am in a thousand other places except for here. my english teacher mother tells them to restate their thesis and conclude in different words; your physicist and i know this is all in my head because funerals are for the living, and when this all happens i will be six days dead burned past the point of no recognition into the point of disintegration my bones fused together and crackling with delight, decomposing cells wicked away with flame- your physicist gets up again, walks so slow up the middle of the row to say i have done two funerals today, one for a catastrophe and one for an atrophy. someone once told me they could feel themselves slipping away. someone once told me there was an explosion implosion inside their curled up lungs every time they tried to breathe. a finger in the ashes and your physicist lists off its chemical composition to the mark, using words like the element of surprise or eloquence or a rare one, a smile. somewhere within these molecules they say there was a person once, twice, forever and now they can never die. or what’s left of them at least, is that us or an eternity, not until the ends of everything. the physicist sits down, science in their lap like a bible or a comfort. i am not here to witness but if i were scattered to the winds in my own fragility i would think even your physicist might cry if they come to the funeral.

this is not poetry. this is an atrocity you tell me to call poetry, shove words down my mouth and say, take this and make it into something i can recite. make it rhyme and make it about anything except everything you really want to say. cell membranes. protect the cell from anything it doesn’t accept. its own personal wall right outside the doors where it can live its own xenophobic life in fucking peace. yeah, it feels great about blocking everything it doesn’t believe in out, saying if i can’t see it it’s not real. if i don’t believe in it and don’t let it inside my walls that means it doesn’t exist. wearenotsomethingyoubelievein. saying it fast enough so you can’t even get a breath in. it’s a cell fucking membrane. this is tyranny, you commanding me with lines like bars i refuse to be striped by, don’t want that on my body. don’t want that in my bones. can i write poetry? yes. will i write poetry for what you want me to say will i write poetry for you. it’s not a question of can or cannot, it’s a question of what is. this is my response when you say “write me a poem” about this. this is a poem about why i won’t write a poem, why trying to fit your words into my mouth cracks my jaw in three places. my head my heart my soul. why when you ask me to write a poem about something i don’t stand for something you can’t even sit down for to me that means you don’t care about a little girl with rainbow face paint crying, or the bodies of dead men lining the streets where i used to live. when you say write me a poem about this you’re saying don’t write one about this and this is so much more important. fuck no i won’t write you a poem. not because that’s taking away my choice. not because that feels too much like splitting myself open just so you can take the pieces. but because i’ll be writing a poem about the right to speech and the way if we don’t take that, if we don’t choose to stand up for something that is bigger than ourselves, we become the atrocity. the neutrality of life is not an option. if you are not standing, you are dead in the ground and your body is just another roadblock we will have to overcome. this is not a poem. this is a war cry echoing through empty streets, and an army marching its way through every open door. this is not a poem in the way that we are not people: it is, but you just don’t want to believe in it.

THIS IS A WAR CRY :: o.m. 2016

PERSEPHONE: fuck the seasons. fuck change. peeling a pomegranate / only to find rot, blood-red hands for nothing sticky fingers and silver knives. empty but coming back for more, this / winter came quicker than we expected, came with a vengeance. sick from the inside- how it looks pretty but when it’s cracked open //

split, thick pulp rushing from inside juice dripping / and swallowed the brown. the red. seeds whole and the crescent of a fingernail / cuts across the surface quicker than a knife would know to sever. how it is only aimed, fuck anything more than an attempt to break this fuck / me more than anyone. i would know what it means when you say the rot started on the inside //