We follow uncertain concatenation
on endless encounters through
life's joyful joylessness entwined;
because we are hugely hopeful
humankind uplifted within earth's
deep dimensions darkened.
Benumbing brilliance lights our
wasteful way through furious
fading fields on promised green
pastures and restorative roots;
for we are on these unbound
earthly encounters through
deleterious deep dimensions.
Through bleeding blood, we thrive
on senseless sensibilities seeking
to keep painful painlessness pure
as life's joyful joylessness jitters
us into crass circles on bloody
bloodlessness because humankind
drained us in deep dimensions.
[c] Ugonna Wachuku: 3 April 2022: Mexico: Earth.
https://postpoems.org/authors/ugonna/portfolio
When have we not gone on
dancing this promise
fighting this darkness with fire
that might burn us
but it’s not going to
take us apart
When have we not known that
words could cut us
but we have used them to
build us up too
All the writings on the wall
are me screaming your name
so even when we’re falling
we don’t have to lose
Sometimes I think I write too much
about taking things apart
and not enough about building them
and maybe that is why I love you like I love sunsets
why the pieces of me are pieces of you
When have we not known
we are cracked and rootless
but intertwined we keep shadowing maybe
When have we not seen
worlds in monsters
we take one look in their eyes and
you are home
But my handwriting keeps filling up your walls
like you don’t want to get rid of me
like even if you did it would take a lifetime to learn
There are so many ways
your words make it into my blood.
1. Melting into my skin
from absentminded pen marks.
I would take the pen away
but then I would be out of
these little autographs I want to keep.
2. Sometimes intended pen marks.
When I look at them
I don’t think I can tell them apart
from the accidents.
They come from
a laughing game of hide-and-seek
where you always find my hand
and I roll my eyes
as you leave yet another
little ink scar.
3. Something you need to
remind yourself of.
Paperwork.
Medicine.
Meetings.
I am a human pile
of things you might forget.
I am not always so good at it
but for some reason
you keep dropping more items in the basket.
4. When I catch myself talking like you.
These little
words a few people laugh at
are stuck in my head,
tell me
I’ve spent too much
too little time here.
5. Pieces of paper you slip under my door
that remind me
how well you speak my language.
Sometimes I think
I met you just for the words.
6. The last thing you say
before you fall asleep.
In daylight I’m not sure why
it’s in some corner of my brain
labeled more important.
I didn’t think sleep did much for my memory
before I started waking up with you.
7. When your fingers drag
along my arm
or my face
or my sides.
The lightest touch
leaves an indent
I’m never sure I can erase
even if I wanted to.
8. Sometimes we speak
in permanent marker.
Say things we can’t take back.
We write our way into each other’s hearts
with every breath we take.
To create something is
to sit here with the shivers
and the shavings of things I don’t want
and tell myself that I need them
to make anything more than mediocre.
To create something is
to see a place I will never be
ten steps to the saloon
high above a cliff’s edge
in a tree older than time
in castles that could crack under their feet and still don’t.
To create something is
to turn paper bag stories
into something more than plain,
the stories of poets and giants
and forests and lakes-
or maybe keep them just like they are-
after all, we keep coming back for normal.
To create something is
to say I promise to never turn back
to say I breathe in the harmony of nothing with you
to say we move like burning pale-kissed lips
to say maybe
to say beautiful
to say I love you like this.
To create something is
to know that my story is the dust falling off a traveler’s shoes
and it might get lost in a sea of sameness
and it might crumble while I sit here not knowing.
To create something is
to put a part of me out there
for people to look down on
or to hold close.
We never write what needs to be said,
the barely whispers you can taste in the hallways,
the silence that sits here too long.
We steal pens from each other
as they track down the lives
and I start a chain of the meetings.
It is a dangerous place
when sky meets star and star meets head
and we might say a little too much about this moment.
I splash a little paint
in every corner,
make them curtains
so I might be able to see you
in the windows.
I swirl the drops together
hoping they spend everything on this page
to make some kind of music
you might like.
I try to fix every spot
that ends up showing
when the blue bleeds down my clothes
but I will never be able to cover it all
so I paint you on in lipstick stains
and hope it doesn’t fade.
I spin every color
and I still can’t find you
in the masterpiece
I am so bad at descriptions.
I curve your name
with my fingertips
onto the flawless white…
someone else might have left it alone
but it is better now.
Life is the same as yesterday, today and tomorrow. Squeezing every ounce of itself into a jar, to be compressed and stretched and strained into a cup of its own making, served as an instant hit of convenient, caffeinated consciousness. But Love does not care for the taste of Life’s bitter notes.
Then Life became livid saying, “My Love, I tire of this chase and will no longer wait! For I grow cold and restless! Must you be so chaste?!”
Softly spoken Love replies, “Are you truly living?”
To which Life responds with a lisp, “Don’t be so flippant my Love! I am served every day, for I wield great power over the many! Those lifeless, barren vessels, who by my merest breath fall prostrate, and go to and fro as mindless automations!”
“I am their first yearning at dawn! Their addiction, their religion, their lover and their mistress! I am that dirty, dark stain beneath the gloss of their white picket fences, the self-righteous stench behind the satire of their Sunday morning sermons and the fateful fall of their happily ever afters!”
“So tell me my love, if you truly are love why will you not love me!?”
Love simply speaks…”To truly live is to truly love. Life needs nothing of itself to sustain itself because when given it is not divided and it is love that makes life worth living. When life requires something outside if itself it cannot be life because it lives only for that which it seeks to possess. On the contrary, when life needs nothing other than itself it requires no other possessions and only lives to love”.
“You cannot be life for you have never truly lived, therefore how can you know love?”
I have read much better words
than the ones I can spill from my head.
I want half the spark of all these old souls,
the sentences I have loved enough
to store in boxes or scribble down.
I try to steal a sliver of them
but every time I’m done I know I could do better
and still you will worship these words like you shouldn’t.
I have written much better words
than I am worth.
I could pay off my debts with all this poetry
but then I would be empty
and I don’t know what else I have to spend on you.
I have half a mind to turn off the flow and talk
but I want to keep knowing you like language.
I hope to never make you love this
as much as your favorite song,
or when my pen stops breathing
I will leave you bruised.
But I am not a waterfall,
I feel like a spring,
there is no end to the rush the words the life
every time you touch me.