ABNEGATION MEANS REFUSAL

ABNEGATION MEANS REFUSAL

i write a love letter to the way you refuse to make sense, defy everything. gravity, physics, that small thing you kept warm inside your hands, fighting death when it came calling. fighting the world when it refused to get out of your way. said, you can’t. says you: watch me, & you storm the barricade like a natural disaster to break everything apart. these doors stay open because you’re afraid of the dark, folded in on the couch, & even while you sleep your hands are curled into fists around roses, ravens that claw through the night. you unravel between slotted fingers to fall petals, ghosts, a chainlink fence & a body, stand defiant again in abnegation. your shattered ribs & shoulders hold feathers, drift soundlessly out to sea. i love you again every time you say no, each time you prove them wrong. you stand, you’re breaking, you are selfless because you give to hold on. one time you brought home anything you found that looked lonely. quantified this scales to a monstrosity, an unimaginable heart to make its resting place behind your sternum, heavy in its beat, steadily giving out. you don’t know how to give it up. you don’t know how to say it hurts without pushing past the collapse. you shudder & the thing within you trembles, that smallness tucked inside those hollow bones, how no one can make you do anything but how you are trying to make up for everything. i don’t understand how all of you can be contained, why you don’t burst apart at the seams, if you are sheer will keeping yourself inside. your hands hold tender still the world, shut doors with cautious keeping, fight on in spite of bloody apparitions. you, the brave. you, the selfless. you, refuse to stop loving with every inch of your body, refuse to make sense, refuse to give up anything that makes you what you are, & i write to pay homage to that godless magic. they say: bow down, give in, cave to something greater. leave that there to die, wither away, kill the hope blossoming, fly east in the winter, say yes three times and believe it say no and don’t mean it. drop the heavy heart inside your chest, so apathy can make a home. give us everything you are. & you: refuse.

poet ask meme

a. what other poets style do you emulate the most?

b. do you write with too much imagery or too little?

c. write four poems in one day or go three weeks without writing anything?

d. do you have your poetry organized or are you more likely to write half a stanza on a one dollar bill and then spend it by accident?

e. bird imagery or ocean imagery?

f. what was the last poem that you loved?

g. do you write about people or landscapes?

h. dreams or real events?

i. who do you write for?

j. what is the worst thing about your writing? what is the best?

k. what’s the best line you’ve ever written?

l. how much do you edit a piece before you consider it complete?

m. how long does it take you to write a poem?

n. ghosts or angels?

o. god or sunlight?

p. soft or harsh?

q. safety or happiness?

r. how long have you been writing?

s. who is your favourite poet? you have to pick just one.

t. what is your favourite line of poetry?

u. would you be okay with never being well known?

v. slow or frantic?

w. what colour is your poetry?

x. who, if anyone, do you send your new poems to?

y. is your poetry light or dark?

z. write a couplet (a short poem with just two lines) about pulse points.

the apparition jupiter

i don’t really feel like i’m there, the ghost of jupiter says. it hovers somewhere in the middle as an unsettling voice booming from above with no body to accompany it. it’s just like i don’t exist, the planet says in a hazy shroud of mist. all the ominous portents are making their way towards jupiter in a procession. that gaseous body shifts even further from view as the spin of red-orange storms whips across beneath the surface, hurricanes and thunderstorms brewing inside with no containment. lightning will strike. but who will get struck? not jupiter, the disaster passing through like the dawn. so mighty, and reduced to so little. the planet fades to a dull sunset, an afterimage leaving this feeling that there should be something there that isn’t.

only two things make me sad: one of them is life, and the other one is trying to live it. i am always afraid of regret. always afraid of the wrong thing. too many days spent in the closet, on the floor, throwing up with my head in a toilet. hands trembling like the wind and i’m still trying to live with this. that tremor won’t ever go away. how can i tell you to live when i don’t want to? and there’s nothing i won’t do to want to. all these admissions and omissions of how much time i really spend trying to function as a human being. isn’t that what we call life? this hell we’re in when we can’t call it hell? we keep on through the precarious existence of the balance between burning fast and flickering out. when it’s beautiful, hold it close. when it’s ugly, hold it the same. if it makes you sad, cry, and i have to cry too. when i see things that make me ache, all over, and want to curl up so i don’t have to face it, i do for a little while. but i still get up when the alarm goes off in the morning saying ‘cheer up. you’re not dead yet’ and when it says ‘one more day’, when it says 'be happy’ and when it says 'ní hên píao líang you are beautiful’ i have to get up. i have to get up for all those who can’t. yes, it hurts to breathe and exist and live but isn’t that what it means to be human? breathe. stand new-made in the shivering light. 
 if you still have a day. live it while you are shaking.

REMEMBER WHY YOU BREATHE :: o.m. 2017

the unquiet night

TIME IS A CONSTRUCT CONSTRUCTED BY BITTER ENDINGS AND THE SPIN OF A WORLD IN THE GAPING ABYSS THESE STARS ARE DEATHLESS AS MEMORY THEY CRUMBLE INTO DUST LIE AWAKE AND LIE TO YOURSELF THAT THIS IS NOT THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT HOW LONELY WE WILL GO.

i return howling

black ringed eyes of smudged morality / questionable practises of immortality.

after ten thousand years you’d think we’d start to lose the taste / of salt and skin, lips to face.

kiss me still when i am inhuman / a beast wandering through the night.

here we are in the forest, teeth and claws and all / here we are in this dark humanity, ready to fall.

even then when i am lonely / i dream in full moons, bruised skies turned holy

i still sleep quiet underneath the night / i return, howling, home to you.