When thinking on the absurdity
the idea of guard bees watching nurse bees
inside the hive like some totalitarian regency
it makes no sense. There’s a reason they don’t do this.
no hive would ever-fucking-function like that
at work, the disruption of an otherwise mild day absolved into the pinging of the bullets as they zip past and connect into the scene.
when we realized they were not fireworks, or just gunshots in the distance, but rater gunshots aimed at us, destroying everything around us.
And yet, when asked, I am consumed in the thought of the hawk in the trees like a harbinger that took my thoughts away, for just the right amount of time, in a way that registers as extradimensional
splintering into the tailgate, each fragment of the hollow-point, lodged into the metal like some threatening flower. When assessed, I imagine it would have gone right through my back, had it not blossomed on the plate steel of my lift-gate. Had Teddy; my truck, not lived up to his reputation: “Teddy’s got my back.” in a way that’s never been said with so much weight until now.
The truth is: I never saw them.
But heard them loudly; as if speaking a language I’m familiar with, full of frustration and carnage,
But never connecting in any real way
As Some frenetic outburst from a crackhead, shrieking some obscure detail over and over again fading off into the night. Psychotic in every way.
And how I see myself in these moments, perhaps just as deranged, telling the same story like it is there to garner sympathy. In this sphere full of the needy, and their needy needs. Beggy beggars begging. pining for the monetary attention at every-single corner; strung-out on every single intersection, coming down, desperate in their need. And I hate them. I hate them to say —
in dire places where I have seen literal horrors of the human body, desecrations of soul, so foul. And in an awful and revolting twist: self-subjected.
...Self-inflicted.
As they put the sutures into my leg, and the bloodshed seems all but over, until I understand hemophilia intimately, for the next two weeks
And somewhere in their slumped-over forms, somewhere in the rafters of my soul there is this insatiable ache
something within me that is broken. As though there is something I am supposed to feel
some silhouette meant to take tangible form. Ascending from two dimensions into this 4-d hellscape of housing crisis, healthcare nightmare, corrupt government, climate catastrophe
And the fucking circumstance of it—
The fucking unfairness of it all—
The universes of rage that pass through me, for everything. For every branch broken, for every slight a seed, for every trespass; a theft.
And the world is so burdened with so much worse.
The limitations of the deer god are that they can do nothing for the humans.
Only the avoidance of loosing their head
And the shit part is; I fucking... live for it.
I am not some bystander, I’m not sure if this is a curse.
I’m not sure if this is a gift. But I saw it once, and felt it pass through my form: and it has never been the same since.
the effect I have on plants after all these years, I don’t know how to categorize it. And the act of saying that seems to diminish the power.
so much of this seems to diminish the power. As if I will only ever have it by letting go.
And I think of the other day when they all, quite suddenly, realized I was a witch.
And unabashedly I’m a powerful fucking witch. It is spooky in its way.
Its also inspiring, I realize. And I’m not ashamed of that either.
I’m not ashamed of my own name either—
As if that matters.
where that’s the trade off, isn't it?
And even within: how is any of this relevant?
How is this not another outcry in a world so full of shrieking?
as I pass them on the river estranged from themselves, stripping wire in teams like a vocation committed to methamphetamine, and heroin, and blues. That dictates every dead end in their lives. Creating and filling. as if their entire lives are dictated by the substance that owns them.
As addiction, so completely does.
And the truth is: this I know well.
Hatefully so.
And so, this is the crossroads: after so much, after so many battles, after so many people and experiences, and whatever-things
to pick up and move forth has become so heavy that I have forgotten my own strength
As though the yoke is an afterthought
As though all of it is an after-thought.
And I ruminate, in the spaces where the bugs crawl through the cracks of my soul: like an ancient cathedral that has lost all of its luster to the sand; as a monument to the desert
as if I am the desert, like an endlessness where derogatory realities go to die.
Exhausting themselves to the elements
in ways, so beyond experience, they must be felt.
