Posts tagged Two Shits

The human back is made for breaking. Bone is entirely too fragile a material from which to craft the spine that holds us up but somehow our Fathers never learned to mine iron from infinite possibility or temper steel in the forges of our hearts. We are not made for breaking apart.

Life’s an experiement in making puzzle pieces of us all when we began it stitched together with our hands and heartstrings. We’re inventing a geology with scopes obscurred enough to make it okay to look at one another’s eyes again. Let’s hug strangers in the dark, we can’t look our shame in the eyes anymore; these lights are out. There was never an Edison in the emotion of existence.

We are not lonely mountains thrust up to hold the sky over each other’s heads. These valleys between us are not half so deep as our burdens are heavy and there are shoulders enough for all of us in these peaks. Promise you’ll never be too proud to ask for help. Let us not be bowed by anything less than the tectonic plates shifting beneath our feet, not in our arms or on our shoulders, one cannot carry these worlds alone.

We’re never alone. We mountains have roots; let’s trace them. We can find excuses to be brothers and sisters so we don’t have to suffer under the yoke of a solitary survival any longer, Bind up the splinters of our brittle backs with lent hands and kind words. Cast down the walls We all build around our hearts, they’re full of holes that we don’t notice till it’s dark, until they’re blowing us apart.

The enduring power of the human spirit has been straining beneath the continental drift twenty hours a day since the invention of time and we still can’t afford the lease on contentment. Let’s not treat eachother like molehills in the hour of our mountain; keep cool, glaciers, let’s range together.

We are not lonely mountains thrust up to hold the sky over each other’s heads. These valleys between us are not half so deep as our burdens are heavy and the human back is made for breaking. We’ll forge tomorrows with the bellows of our earthen hearts, we are not made for breaking apart

The Listener told me we only have what we remember. We only have what we remember. We only have… But I was always the speaker. The sins of my fathers paid dividends in silver tongues, not ears, I’ve got a shoulder to cry on but it’s cold as a frozen lake, and beneathe that water for walking on, there’s a loss like a river- it just keeps flowing.

I continue to reach for things that aren’t there, Like if some prankster replaced all the things in a blind man’s house with razorblades, I’ve cut each of these fingers to the bone grasping for my memories like they were astro-glide kite strings, Time taught me that letting go means giving up and those things you drop may just never come back to you.

We only have what we remember. But my memory has been like clear glass behind a waterfall-

Obvious as the all-needles haystack I jumped out the barn loft on to when I learned what it meant to bleed for the first time.

I’m learning so much for the first time, I can no longer ride a bicycle and I had smile lines when I learned to walk, but I’d still give my knees to recall what it was like to love someone.

Ive got 15 keys on my keyring. Because every house I’ve lived in becomes a home, and even though fate has changed the locks themselves, These chips of brass remind me there has always been a place to lay my head. If I ever forget that, well, trumpets, too, are made of brass, and I’ll give you all these shadows of homesteads and hope you can craft me a clarion call.

The wizard made the Tinman a heart, can’t I make my stoneheart a brain? I can build it better. I can build it better, I can… Build it from ‘your’ broken guitar strings. Glue it together with ‘your’ tears of grief, Cover it with ‘your’ picked scabs and scar tissue, Paint it with all the blood anyone ever bled on purpose, and when I’ve got all these pieces of everyone hung up in my thrift shop skull casing their compassion roots will grow over my sawbones survival marks and I will finally know what a yesterday feels like.

I believed in that moment that my great grandmother’s father was messiah. 

We don’t know what we have until it is gone and suddenly I’m sure that his practiced fingers carved Dover from alabaster on a sleepy Sunday afternoon while angels came calling on him to play. 
How could I have known, on those hot summer days, that those hands, stained blue from hours picking berries, had once played cat’s cradle with the roots of mountains?
I had watched, with infant eyes, the evolution of his wrinkles, which flowed from every frown and smile, irrigating large tracts of his face in a way that the Tigris and the Euphrates would envy.
I would never have guessed, could not have fathomed, that the granite of his tabletop had not been granted, but hewed with sweat and sinew from the scabby knees of the earth and carried by arms that caused the swoon of a hundred hundred ladies who would die still remembering how he smelled. 
I closed his casket, nervous and suspicious that the diamonds might be stolen from his eyes, or his silver tongue taken to ease some hunger. 
Starve, then.
These final rites are mine.  

Hello, I’m Griffin.

And I have a problem. I need to tell you that there ARE NO ROCKS AT THE BOTTOM.

Stop saying that.

Down here it’s just crushed up cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and the cracked pieces of the pride of every person who didn’t quite make it to the toilet.

We puked all over ourselves.

You can’t imagine the faces down here. A theater buff might tell ya that before big screen and tiered seating actors wore masks so that the audience could properly identify the emotion they were portraying. big ol’ grin or droopy frown.

Life’s only that black and white on a stage, though, there’s no mask for “Jesus Christ I really shouldn’t have another /beer please, barkeep.”

But there is a mask for “everything’s fine.”

It’s called bravado.

You’ve seen it on me.

I wore it for months while I soaked my whole existence in spiced rum kerosene and burned down all the “could have had,” should have done,” and “would if I had another chance.” Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune

But the masks are up here, too.

Your canary diamond masquerade faces are no different. They just look a whole lot prettier. When you’re not neck deep in a wine bottle you have the time to get the details right. I’m especially fond of your mask that says “I’m winning.” Shit looks like it was carved by Michelangelo

I can’t blame you for hiding, though; it’s hard to be human sometimes. Do you see what people are putting out? My sidewalk is all hellpit eyes glaring out of knifeblade scowls like I owe them something. It’s horrifying.

That’s the world we live in. We’re out to get one another. Like maybe if we get our bootpoint into some down and out ribcage the bills will go away, Like if we get a harsh word into someone’s kidneys our heartbreak will roll up and disappear. We got nasty. No wonder we apologize for going near one another in a hallway. Who knows what we could do! Relax; let’s be human together;

Eye contact avoidance helmets, personal space riot shields and glassmeek bulwarks of “I’m sorry,” “Excuse me,” and “My Bad,”

We’re all Just… sundust, just, thornless roses, just, paperskin over filigree veins armored in thinweave linen.

Do we have to be this scary? Do we have to be this scared? We’re ALL fragile. So let’s not fight; We could be in this together. Take the guise off, guys. Let me see your faces.

This last year was not to have been. How will I repay the days? I have nothing to give death in reparation for my bluff. I know, I know I laid there skullshattered and let you court me. All those skinstaples, boneshards and puss drains were an awful, tease, I know, Like getting naught but a kiss goodnight from a topless girl on a thirddate doorstep

You have whole brains so you musta been confused, When my potatomashed grey matter rolled out the door all slate cleaned and hope gleaned But death becomes us, so you must be us, somehow, so I’m sure you’re just angry like I’d be. Some god knows that life left me and that my head, all wrapped in bloodscarf was riper for reaping than a summer melon. But these stonegrip fingers aren’t through grasping at the straws of existence These unscarred wrists are nailless yet but I swear you can have this skinsuit when I find a cause to be martyred for. When death’s creaking rustscythe does dust to dust to me, revel in my ashes.

I wheelchaired away from a trauma, So the lights are on and someone’s home but the hearth’s cold and the door is bolted with fear. I’m trying to light a fire. The tinder is dry, but No flint will spark when the air is frozen. The chill of the grave has married the halls of this heart.

But you know how to burn, all dawnbeat and joywashed, Your smile scratches on the portcullis of my insides with an insistence understood only by our buried. But we don’t deal with the dead in the beauracracy of my being.

These scartone ears are deaf to your pleading. Relax, immolator. Close your eyes up, Shut your mouth off and turn the sun down. My soul is trying to sleep.