Maya

Our bodies are temporary, let it be known:

from the start, we start to lose them.

Depreciating vehicles stuck under snow,

shoveled out without illusion.

Try to breathe like you breathed

on your very first try,

like you’re filling you up

with an ample supply for goodbye...

Our bodies are temporary, let it be shown

thru summer evening fading daylight:

violet tissue, into flesh,

into bone, into dust,

into brightest, blackest midnight.

Try to see like you’ll see

at your very last light,

like you’re watching a flood

from a comfortable height for goodnight...

Try to breathe like you breathed

on your very first try,

like you’re filling you up

with an ample supply for goodbye...

Ahimsa

Time is all we have.

I hope I have enough,

enough to show you love

before my time is up.

Before you wake the dead,

take a pause,

instead of deafening nonsense, share silence.

No violence today.

No violence,

no violence,

no violence today.

Like driving with the window down,

all of this will disappear.

I only have you now, you only have me here.

And we can’t count on tomorrow night,

or wait for brighter light.

I can hear you thru my eyelids,

chère Silence.

No violence today...

No violence,

no violence,

no violence today.

Surrender

Well I hope, when you can't hear what I am thinking,

you know I can’t always talk

but I’m always listening

in an absence, where you hate to feel uncared for,

pretending there's nothing that you're not prepared for.

Who are you lapping when you’re running from surrender

if life is a fatal race for all contenders?

To find the peace within the combat where we’re standing,

we have to make our history less commanding.

Our mercy is a boundary we’ ll surrender

when love is a safer place we both remember,

like an old estate that stands in no location

at the edge of an age of endless renovation.

And while all that noise competes for our attention,

we’ ll meet on a quiet field in our own dimension.

We'll step inside a world far less demanding

when we allow for something less commanding...

Refuge

When you lift me out of me

will I know when I’ve changed?

And when you bring me back to me,

will you bring me back to me, un-estranged?

Man, you're already home and you don't even know it.

You have a room you can return to and you'll never outgrow it.

See, you're already home when you don't know where to find it.

It's not our house that we remember,

it’s a feeling outside it,

when everyone's gone but we leave all the lights on anyway.

Parade

Right when the blizzard ends, they throw a fucking huge parade—

A great excuse for celebration of the mess they've made.

But then when the streets get flooded, we know what proximity’s worth,

‘cause we're already here, in the same place when our phones don't work.

So then we lie down in our field and just do nothing at all,

and I’m getting ready for when everything is wonderful

for just a couple pairs of broken bones with broken feathers in blood,

in a meadow, uncut and understood.

We can be an island apart from a ceaseless war on our heart,

harbored in a fortress insurmountable,

taller than affliction, safe wherever we are.

Erasing horror and disgust,

Rewinding the sorrow and the rust.

Before our suffering’s suffering,

hadn’t we suffered enough?

On the morning that we're both 19 and newly on our own

and all we know is “each other” and invisible homes,

we find two empty seats in the back of a car in an empty parking lot,

where all our bridges are abandoned and the cops have forgot

and I can feel the difference when the day begins,

like all I know is, "This year will be the year we win."

We smoke the paper from the banner from our past parades

and start again, before the memory of the mess we've made.

Revisited

When some unfamiliar faces came to shop in our old house,

I didn't bother trying to stop them until they emptied it out.

I was standing by the front door,

stuffing cash in a jar,

taking payment for our failures...

...I only wanted to alarm you.

So when they asked me for directions,

I sold them our map.

I sold our shovels and our flashlights.

They took our duffel bag with a ton of room, but a broken strap,

The hungry patrons hit the graveyard,

I lit a joint in the house,

where there was nothing but our mattress

and the same soft shelter of sheets,

where nobody found us...

I let them strip your mausoleum so nothing was left,

but they forgot to close the casket...

They sent you shivering to my doorstep,

gently clawing at my window when I was less than awake,

I slid it up for you to slither through.

I heard you howling,

"Just take me! 

Just take me to the rusty city we perfected, 

that holy summer we first found.”

The place you’re stubbornly protecting

is the only pretty thing that we own now,

and we can stay here to wither in your garden of eden.

but your fantasy’s a prison

and you’re serving a sentence you can't stop repeating.

Can you see the secret exit?

The false wall in Obsession?

You’ll only fit through the doorway

when you relinquish your possessions.

Leave everything you've stolen that you can't give back,

and don't replace what you've been missing

until you know what you're lacking.

Leave everything you've borrowed and kept for yourself-

You can’t unbreak our broken leases

holding on to broken pieces, so return them.

No guilt, no sorry speeches.

Director

From a stage in your heart,

I can tell that you're far from yourself

when you barter your lust for your health.

And when you claim it's all a play,

and you just don't care

I only stare

I’m a director watching you rehearse.

You say,

"Lend me your eyes to evolve

from that actor I fight in the dark,

where I'm two twins I can't tell apart.”

But you remember which is which when the wrong man wins-

You will hate who you are til you overthrow who you've been.

How’d you expect your soul to send a whole patrol

if you were too far gone for me to know where to find you?

I’ve wandered out alone into your cold unknown to try to bring you home.

So you forgot your way? Well I’m trying to remind you.

Intruders

Maybe when I’m older, I’ll be clearer,

more attuned and understanding.

Well, I’m ready.

I wrote a list of my demands and then I burned an older version.

So to start with, I’ll start over.

I’ll cut my hair and cut the power.

So who am I without weapons?

Without defense to arm my guards against intruders?

Now this is my house,

so fuck your doubts and your cute battalion,

‘cause I’m steady,

and when my double scales the wall,

I’ll know exactly where he’s landing and I’ll surprise him.

And then when he’s captured, with his hands bound,

I beg for answers to all my questions, like, “What happened?

Why’d you let me let you in when I was younger?

And why’d I need to?”