Poetry and Writing
Attack
It’s like
your heart is missing. In the wrong place that’s how it starts pounding at the center of you.
A beating suffered from the inside.
Your heart is missing.
Who gave it a hammer?
Why is it trying the grandest
exit possible
from the center of you.
Now your body reacts:
Your fingertips become
live-wires
your solid ground — sabotaged — you are sea-sick, sinking something between your brain
and your misplaced, phantom heart takes the wheel. Gives it some
led and lets out no warning.
Focus on the live-wires to
ground you.
plug your sinking ship if you must, The others will work double
time
Your heart’s still missing your ship’s still sinking
your legs still swaying
your heart’s escaping.
And your brain cannot believe
your here: But don’t forget
your homework and to make that call and the bad impressions
you made that day and who you dream to be and who you really are and who really likes you and you should charge your battery and you should love your mother and do you love yourself and anything else possible in that moment.
And your heart’s still missing. That’s what it’s like.
I <3 U
I’d love to be able to
Love you
Just ain’t got the bandwidth Care too much
Your hurdles become my devils
Too faithful
When you stumble I
Splinter
Want too much
Your displeasure is the ruin of Us
You see
I’d love to love you
I’d love to be able to love you Just ain’t got the bandwidth to Live with you.
Brain Broke
Brain done broke — But it’s fine
can’t read those lines But it’s fine can’t form these words But it’s fine
can’t make the tone But it’s fine forgot the songs
But it’s fine
can’t think her name But it’s fine can’t think new words fair enough
can’t think... ...
don’t think... can’t think.
I think I should see a doctor
I drink...
Can’t pay the bill
But I’m fine
I must be.
Downtown
Casual people sensible shoes corporate branding responsible habit authorized apathy
casual, sensible, corporate, responsible, authorized Deviancies
casual, sensible, corporate, responsible, authorized Desires
casual, sensible, corporate, responsible, authorized Inequity
casual, sensible, corporate, responsible, authorized Carelessness
casual, sensible, corporate, responsible, authorized Imaginlessness.
Dandelion
Some days are more delicate than most These are the days you’ll have to reach deep into your pocket and pull out a fistfull of sunshine, when you know you are at risk of the wind scattering yourself like a dandelion.
These are the days meant for songs at full throat.
A safety jacket to make you feel extraordinary, on these days you’d best
seek out your healthier addictions. One day.
Sooner than you think.
These days will come more than the other, Scatter them to the wind.
Home
The road is long unpaved unsteady. Maybe that’s why it seemed so long unsteady uncertain Without guarantee. That same road is not so long
heading back.
Heading home
You were always meant to Come Home You should have.
Change
When something must change, when it is
absolutely necessary
and nothing happens, nothing changes
Know that at least something has changed in you.
Nurture that, do not shrink. There will come a day when that thing that must change — that sorrow, that sadness that person, that addiction, that Superstructure, that virus will stare you in the face Do not shrink, and punch that thing right
in the teeth. A door will open one day.
The only way through is through.
Love/Life
Love is patient Love is kind
Love is nourishing Love is preserving Love is also Terrifying Love is demanding Love is dominating Love is cruel
Love is irrational
Love is violent
Love is a tonic for Life because Life Can be long
Can be unjust
Can be isolating
Life can be cold
This is why love must conquer All
Love should be a partnership Love should be a life-raft Love should be a comfort Love should be fearless
Not all will find love
In another person
Not all seek it there
But when love finds you However it shows itself It is your duty to Seize it
Life is disorienting Love is a quiet place Life is riddlesome Love is understanding Life is long Love is longer
Use love to conjure an aphrodisiac for Life
Hold onto your love
With this knowledge
and patience and kindness.
Artwork by @slowpokenz
Image courtesy of Justin Blane Miller; @myhumblestopinion
Too Busy
Welcome to Atlanta.
A city too busy to hate.
Too busy building affordable housing
for corporations.
Too busy evicting families
taking up valuable space.
And don’t protest in this city.
The Movement is buried and gentrified in this transplant city.
Too busy puckering a big wet kiss.
A blank check to the Blank Foundation. Google. Amazon. Police unions.
21st century
Welfare Queens.
Too busy being the first in the nation to build public housing.
Too busy being the first in the nation
in undoing.
Too busy housing the
Unhoused in jails and prisons
and vulnerability.
And I’d like to meet you
at the Fox but I’m too busy holding my spot at the warming shelter.
Too busy.
Too busy building another monument to the King of Love.
Too busy burying his meaning. Too busy tearing down schools. Too busy tearing down tent cities. Too busy tearing out the lungs of a city. Too busy building a
Cop City.
No place for Tortuguita’s in this city.
It’s far too busy.
Too busy being a cultural capital of surveillance
of black capitalism
of inequality. Funny, that.
Do you know what
beautiful and tragic history happened here?
And the players are still playing.
I’d like to meet you in the city of Buckhead, but I’m far too busy at my second job.
Are you too busy to care?
Are you too busy to relate?
Are you too busy in traffic?
Are you too busy keeping the busses away from your side of town? Are you too busy living in a city that sends its
forces across the sea to learn genocide tactics? The three evils are
alive and well in this city do you even know them?
And I am of this city
And I love this city
For the people who made
this city.
And one day life will be precious in this city.
Meet me down Boulevard. Let’s find a chicken bone in the street. Whoever breaks the larger piece should pray for Atlanta. A city too busy. Y’all ready?