The names of God...

Mattered not

What you believed

Was a glimmer

Of the truth

And you love

As you hate

And you kill

Then you give

As you laugh

You cried

Your deceit

An open heart

Only lies

Forever truth

Blood flowed

While water flowed

I'm sorry

I love you

Coveted money

Sloth

Avarice

Greed

Sin

Forgive them Father

Yes you spoke the words

But did you believe

Yahweh

Jehovah

Alpha and Omega

Michael

Raphael

Jesus

For my name is legion

And we are many

Our Father in heaven

There's a rebellion brewing in my bathroom mirror—

me, learning to love the geography of my face

while the world keeps trying to sell me

newer, better versions of myself.

This is how revolution begins:

with small acts of radical acceptance.

I collect their opinions like fallen leaves,

watch them pile up at my feet,

beautiful in their own way, but dead

and no longer feeding my roots.

The wind can have them.

My body is a democracy of cells

voting yes to existence

despite the constant propaganda

of magazine covers and sideways glances.

Let them whisper. My bones know

their own worth.

Remember: they called the first flowers weeds

until someone was brave enough

to make them into bouquets.

I'm done asking permission

to bloom in my own soil.

Some nights I practice saying my name

like it's a love poem,

even when their voices echo in my head

like stones dropped in an empty well.

The echo may last,

but I'm learning to drop roses after it.

They say I'm too much—

too loud, too soft, too sharp, too round.

I say: have you seen the ocean lately?

It doesn't apologize for its depths

or its shallows, its storms

or its silence.

So let them talk.

I'm building a home in my own skin,

hanging pictures of my accomplishments

on the walls of my ribcage,

painting my mistakes in gold leaf

because even they brought me here.

This is how you love yourself

in spite of:

You plant your feet like trees

and grow anyway.

Let them call it stubbornness.

We'll call it survival.

And when they ask why I insist

on taking up so much space

with this wild, untamed joy,

I'll point to the sky and say:

Have you ever seen a sunset

try to make itself smaller?

So there have been a few new developments. I haven’t been able to start running or lifting weights since I got stabbed which sucks. I really need every outlet I can get right now with all the nasty bullshit I have in my life.

Work’s been particularly tough. Seems like I can never catch a break. I’m doing another person’s job now. He retired and I took over all his stuff. My boss and my program manager have me on a tight leash. They know about the separation and the four kids and everything but they need results regardless. What they don’t know about is the Mary Jane ordeal and the strain that’s put me through over the past six months. I wish I could just forget she existed. I just can’t seem to get over this one and I’m starting to think I never will.

I went on that date with Michelle last night. It went really well. We got crab cakes, talked, played pool at a famous Baltimore nightclub. Then we hugged and she left. I guess I’m old fashioned. Hugging seemed right this time for some reason. I wasn’t ready to kiss her yet and I don’t think she was ready to kiss me either. She’s a divorced mom. Perfect for me I guess.

But last night I had a dream about Mary Jane which just about fucked up the whole experience for me. I haven’t talked to her in six months and she’s still having that much of an effect on my life. I can’t wait until next week when I can start up the superhero stuff again. I have so much angst and anger to take out on some unsuspecting criminal gangster punks. I want to crack some skulls, smash some faces in. Yeah, Anakin Skywalker’s got nothin’ on me. I’m a real life Incredible Hulk.

So I got my armor suit in the mail this morning. It’s black and badass looking. And it’s supposed to be resistant to bullets and stab wounds. Cool beans. I had an interesting conversation with Amy when I picked it up. Good old Amy is always good for an interesting conversation.

“What’s your super hero name gonna be?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“You know. If you’re a superhero, you need a name.”

I chuckled. “I’m not really a superhero. I’m just an asshole who likes kicking peoples’ asses.”

“Well you still need a name.”

“Mike.” I grinned.

“Ha ha,” she said in her most sarcastic voice. Which in her case is about as sarcastic as you can get.

“What? It’s my name.”

“Whatever. Well don’t go getting yourself killed. I still need you to carry my groceries up the steps for me. And imagine what your kids’ lives would be like if all they had was their mom.”

“It’s the one reason I don’t off myself and get it over with.”

“I know. You’ve told me many times.”

I smiled. “Oh I actually went on a date last night. My first date since that shit went down with Mary Jane.”

“Careful,” she said. “Don’t forget our deal.”

“Oh right,” I said. “I won’t mention her name again.”

“How was the date?”

“It went well. Good food, good company, good times.” I frowned. “We just hugged at the end though.”

“Why is that bad? You don’t have to fuck every woman you go out with on the first date. Maybe that will happen. Or maybe you just made a new friend. You had fun. That’s what matters, right?”

“I guess. I have enough friends. I don’t need friends right now.” What I really wanted was someone to get me over the hump with Mary Jane. I was sick and tired of being lovesick over her.

Amy frowned. “Somebody could hand you a million dollars and you’d find something wrong with it.”

I smiled. “I mean nobody’s just gonna hand you money and not expect something in return. With that sort of money there’d be some insanely thick strings attached.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

I started walking down the steps with the box of body armor, which wasn’t as heavy as I’d thought it would be.

“Well I’ll see you later,” she said. “Tomorrow I guess.”

I turned and smiled. “How about the Masked Fucker.”

She shook her head. “That’s a description of what you are, not a name.”

When I got home, I found some red duct tape and put a cross on the chest plate with it. Good a symbol as any. The red looked really good on the black armor. And as for the cross, I’m a Sunday School teacher after all. And I’d like to think God has played a part in all the times I could have died but didn’t. And boy, you only know the half of it. I’ve been dancing with death my whole life. I can’t figure out why God’s been keeping me alive all this time but there must be some reason.

Orion,

Do you ever feel like two people? No, a hundred; a thousand? Do you ever think that freedom comes at such a cost, and that happiness does too?

I say, where does who I am end and who I become begin?

I am, in many ways, myself. But even that is everchanging as the reflections on a rippling water's surface. Constantly influenced. Constantly adjusting to the circumstances. Should I hold my own a little more? Should I be who I am or who I become?

In some ways, I am everything. All knowing, all powerful. King of my own destiny; maker of ideas and my own world. And yet none of it comes to fruition without people, or earth, or day, or night. Should the daylight take hold of me, I am one being. Should the night, I am another. It is the same of those around me. My face a mirror, a ripple, just light glinting off the edge of glass. Bouncing effortlessly from one state to the next.

I readjust. I am many people and many faces. One who is joyous, one who is tired. One who believes strongly, one who is weak. One who is adventurous, one who is cowardly. I have changed, and I no longer can distinguish selves from other.

There are two minds. Rational; dream. What the rational mind knows the dream mind rejects. What the dream mind conjures the rational mind denounces as impossibilities. I live in a thin space between the two, where both come to me, pleading, and I, knowing nothing and having no assurance, sit idly by and make rash judgements. I cannot be governed by either. For the rational mind rules with fear, and the dream mind with hope. Reality sits with me in between.

Who am I to deny a dream its influence? To let the promise of something beautiful be enough to wrap my fingers around it, grab it, let it drag me to its natural end. It sounds easy until the rational chides me. There is nothing so beautiful as to be worth the cost. There is no action without an opposing reaction. There is no such folly equal to following what is unproven; what is only a dream.

I am torn in two, or four, or eight. Continuously and indefinitely. Each face not recognizing the other. I am more soul than body, more space than presence. There is no end to what has no beginning.

Forgive me, I have written with no end in sight. I seek answers no mortal can give. Just know that I consider everything just so. And that for that, I am aggrieved. In this world I may only take one action per decision, and I handle each carefully. Forgive me, then, if I make the wrong one.

Yours truly,

Artemis

Waltz with me

Beneath the trees

Of plum

And burnished gold

I love you more

Than all the leaves

That swirl beneath our feet

principle of minimal departure means everyone is closer to their own mind than your mind when you start reading a book and as the book goes on you whittle them down and try to get them to see the things as you do and you spend the whole book training them and i think lispector did that.

We are our own worst enemy

October 28, 2024

Have we been played for fools?

Have those that seek our trust

Really seek our trust funds?

If the Sword of Damocles should fall

Will it sever our bindings?

Or our will to resist further bondage?

Have those that have us

By our hairs rendered short

From birth

From selective breeding

Explained as evolution

Never explained as slavery

Our gilded cage was made of gold

The price they paid for our

Acceptance of servitude

Then gold became gold plated and then gold painted

Finally, they just redefined rust as gold

It was cheaper this way

This way became their way

Having never otherwise known better

Their way became our way

We urged others not to rock the boat

Then we made that policy a law

Instilling another generation to servitude

We rested on our laurels

We rested on our broken spirits

Our overlords were satisfied

With our ignorance

With our weakness

Accepting scraps from the bounty of our heritage

The overlords are long since departed

But their memory persists

No one dares fight their legacy

The trains always ran on time

Was our excuse for our subjugation

As we crushed the will of those who thought otherwise

We are our own worst enemy

Surreptitious Rendezvous

October 27, 2024

I want tonight to be slow

I want to move without you moving

I am always on the top

I am very wet

I never bathe

I emit a slime on surfaces in which I come into contact

I am insecure

I take all of worldly possessions with me

While on top

I don’t want to see you

I just want to identify you

But you must see me do what I do

I will call the shots

Secreting with each move

This is my way of marking my territory

Or reducing friction

To make things easier for me

You will have to get used to it

Eventually, I will tire

But you must never show fatigue

Eventually, you will deny

That you serviced my needs

It is our surreptitious rendezvous

That we take to our graves

Quite fond of my find

So I keep her in mind

(Not that I have much of a choice)

She warms with her gaze

Leaving me in a daze

Plus she has that sweet soothing voice

Knows just what to say

To make pain go away

When words fail, there’s always her touch

I had to be shown

Or I’d never have known

That I could love someone so much

Now that it’s been felt

And the cards have been dealt

There’s no way that I’ll ever fold

Bets stay as I planned

And I’ll play out this hand

As long as it’s hers that I hold