478 Identity poems

Danger from others provoked a change in my internal law. I was no flawed creature, but the unpersuaded sure made their case with their brutality. They tied me to a fence, began thrashing the life out of me. If the meek deserve to jubilee, in what bodies are we to defend our selves and supple registers of bonum. It’s time to confess I was never cruising for this bruising but maybe just cruising toward a rapid intercession of effervescent affection that could gift a beneficent fever among us. Angels arrived to inhospitality, and I hear my body still groan in that aftermath. ❖ I am my desire. Grew up a screw-up but bucked up a fuck-up, each thing I took into my nine holes was rotting, obviously. What perils when asleep, when en route, in the sea, in the wilderness somehow I made it through. When beside myself, I spotted an antidote toward a reversal in all places my biology doomed me. True witness was clarified by my thighs, chest, and throat. To quote that it’s flesh and it’s not— Now from my 1394 Utah Street room, a couple of blocks away, a strangers’ elegy sinks toward Earth. To keep watch of community beyond a shame that stills me— We’ve been put outside the populace to offset their enmity. ❖ Singing on my way back to Assisi a sissy, I’m thrown into a ditch. It’s my bitch of a knee failing me after so much cycling that groans as though flesh has worthy feeling. These thieves think I’m a rich troubadour, despite my nasal whine and valedictory hymn— the one about poverty, or maybe I am that bad of a mumbler? Since I’m not much of a stumbler, it’s a whim to be made inert through violence cops not long ago would round up the likes of me along Market Street so thanks, men, for making this human a humble and stilled thing, alive only unto your forces. Earth will be a swallower of your corpses. ❖ Made of dirt, would I know what dirt tastes like. While I was cycling, the earth and I exceeded living bodies’ partitions. Wishing that the strewn parts of you long gone ones would reassemble in a gust of florescence and soundtracks, I promise my legs can brace for any supple clamor. If the dead all rise age thirty, at twenty-nine, still ahead is my finest glamour. Thus I became a hammer to darkest anti-matter. Thus I became a ticking time bomb of kingdom expectation in my gray hoodie and sharp teeth. for Bruce Boone ❖ Bring forth any within you to save you. So made changeless, a wave or nerve to enact its fullness. If I’m raised over waste, hold me there to vomit the meat I’ve sucked down and peril I’ve soaked in through local commotion. There is a continent San Francisco at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. What is it to be equipping for the convenience of kingdom—      such as swapping spit with strangers, giving dogs a good scratch behind the ears, or fighting from my bicycle the cars that could spell my death in the papers. And drinking milkshakes in Mission diners. A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and I threw up at the sight of that. My only security has been to garden civility in city boots scuffled along the way by impedimenta to my solace.

I found the word for what i am when i was twenty-two and everything shifted not because i changed but because i had a word and words make things easier to carry

My twenties look nothing like the movies mine involve a lot of laundry and trying to figure out who i am without anyone watching which is actually fine the no one watching part

I dream in two languages now which one depends on what i'm dreaming about love: spanish fear: english most things: both at once

I am not the thing that happened to me i am what i did after and i'm still doing it that's who i am

My name is not difficult it is exactly as long as it is and sounds like what it sounds like if you can say chardonnay you can say my name try again

Family dinner and nobody says it the pronoun nobody uses the name my aunt still gets wrong i correct her she nods she forgets i correct her again this is what love looks like sometimes doing it again

I am not a phase not a political statement not confusion not something that happened to me i am exactly what i told you i am on the first try