Dog Days

 

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Enveloped in more than just now:

hazel eyes open and close,

tanned skin alive with horripilation,

the speakers sing enamored songs.

 

Underneath the warmth of another heart,

entranced by the dark energy of another mind,

Lucid dreaming while awake,

I ask where else I could be.

 

Outside, the blood red bird cocks its head and pants,

Nature scars the Earth with claws made of wind,

the strong cyan wave becomes flat and clear,

a rock rotates around a blinding light,

history melts, hardens, and melts again,

The system overloads and restarts, it seems,

Every time I think of you.

 

A cigarette burns in the ash tray,

perspiration like mist over mountains,

a poster of The Grateful Dead,

the collection of clipper lighters

accumulating on top of the wooden dresser,

each empty but still beautiful.

 

If my eyes do fade away

To somewhere far, or close,

Forgive me.

I finally feel the roughness of my hands

Against the palms of innocence.

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Lo Que Fue España

 

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We were lost in the space between fake friends and Spanish skies.

Storm fronts made of black and blue ink that smothered menthol cigarettes into poetry, and we laughed through shattered phone screens, our anger ever fleeting like the sky's frequent photo-shoots creating portraits of our imperfections.

We adjusted the f-stop to blur life for a while, set our eyes to auto-focus and saw the names etched in the castle's bricks, and gave perfect one line responses to fractured family questions.

 

And we were encapsulated in the chaos of strobe lights

Breathless pumping that fueled our spontaneity, Our changes,

Our relentless bloom.

 

And we learned to keep our ears open,

Attached to nothing,

Connected to everything,

To keep our cards close to our chests until vulnerability ripped our hearts open.

 

Never were we afraid of the foreign whispers or Mediterranean mentalities, those that became ours for a while, required cultural appropriation.

 

We grew in the oceans inside the fruits of palm trees,

Our souls became the ash that turned Tenerife's beaches black

And we laughed,

Loud as the yellow cases of Cohiba cigars.

 

And our spirits became convoluted in the eyes of our past.

So devious in our approach to life's most routine decisions,

So disposed to engage in the unusual,

The destructive, adopting the nihilistic value that there was never intrinsic worth in the ordinary.

 

We also learned that our haecceity was doomed to follow us.

 

No amount of nicotine,

No amount of bar fueled nights,

No amount of sex in the world can numb our attraction to disruption.

 

AND SO WE GRINNED AND BORE OUR BURDENS, AND WE ARE STILL LOOKING INTO A LIGHT THAT HAS SEEN EVERYTHING WE'VE DONE AND WHAT WE WILL FORGET TO DO.

 

WE BELIEVED IN THE FACES WE SAW.

WE CONTINUED TO BREAK DOWN DOORS THAT TRY TO DENY US ENTRY.

WE STILL BEAT ON CEASELESSLY INTO OUR FUTURE.

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