Concerning Christianity

Is this disrespectful? Maybe I've just gotten way too used to a world where I can simultaneously feel like the largest being on the earth (while looking down on the ants) and the smallest being in the universe (while looking up at the stars). Maybe I just poured way too much of myself into sleeping within the folds of her sighs. How can heaven reproduce this feeling? Or even surpass it? How can any mystically foreign place pretend to be better than what I have right now? Being ecstatic and enlightened and fucking happy can only be recognized next to the sucky, awful times in between. And so the land of milk and honey only sounds appealing to me when it is interwoven with the land of broccoli and cough medicine.

I don't know what God looks like, the way I can recognize the creases by my father's eyes. I don't know what God sounds like, the way I know the sound of wind moving by my car windows in summer. I would feel out of place meeting Him, but I feel absolutely at home in the basements of my friends' houses. This life is all I know, so how can an idea as alien as death (or rebirth) become my eternity?

Maybe it's the lack of progression. Heaven has no evolution. Life does not change up there, because there is no life. Only continuity. It's a kind of stagnant, manufactured happiness. So practiced and detached, it has no need of emotion or rebellion. Disgusting. Monday does not gust into Tuesday (or Wednesday or Thursday); it's just one ceaseless day of the week. What is the goddamn difference. I already feel eternal. I already feel infinite. I don't need a promised land.

Contest

Half-formed, half-bearded, half-dressed and yelling. Three, four, five, cascading into the backyard. Fists up, challenging and dismissing each other's aggression. Unwarranted tackling, tumbling, grabbing.  Competition running deep as the cuts on his knee. Puppy dog tails had nothing to do with it. He was living on a steady diet of summer grass and Gatorade. Question him and he will promptly reply, devoid of all doubt, that he is waiting for Superman. How long you ask yourself.

He never elaborates, never dreams anyone could be confused by his words. He stumbles out of bed, off to war, every day, and returns as the moon does. His instincts are all he has. Guarded, distracted. His barrel chest puffs out so his words don't have to. He keeps them in his pocket, next to his Swiss Army Knife. Always scratching the spot between his shoulder blades.

The only quantifiable sign of life is how much sweat pours off of him onto the pavement.

The Nicest of Atmospheres

My evenings with you were decked with connective tissue. This was refreshing, considering I spent my years mostly pretending I was starring in  music videos and other quasi-realities of life. That's how graceless I was. Lost in the sea of conformity or death, all the time my cerebral cortex hollering at me in confusion.

I always felt like a secret game was being played and no one would tell me the rules. But the rules you came up with were explained to me by your comforting, animalistic presence so simply that the confusion finally ceased.

This idea seemed Newtonian in its novelty, simplicity, and ability to instantly solve any and all problems. It was a giant red OFF button. Anxiety paused.

And now you're in the place I was in and I can't do a damn thing about it. You, curled up into yourself, like a can of soup on a shelf, your depression swirling around inside you like broth. You're as distant to me as a fictional character. What the hell does your face look like? I rake my mind for it like dragging a river for a body. I usually find it difficult to relate to someone reduced to such a memory of a memory of a memory, but with you it's the opposite. I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of neurons you occupy.

So stop it. I have other things to focus on, and simply cannot be bothered by the tightening of my chest muscles as my mind wanders toward you. I wanna storm into the woods angrily, and drag you out of them by your wrist like an irritated parent. Be happier and leave me alone. Choirs of angels sing in harmony. End scene.

This is How I Frame My Future

This is how I frame my past:
With gardens of learning to read and forced school pictures,
Infusing teaspoons of courage with Band-aids after bike wounds,
Looking into the yellow eyes of
The demands of the day and of the indignant people,
Unphased by the waves of the wide ocean as they play with my legs.
This is how I frame my past.

This is how I frame my present:
On the pinpoint of a human mind,
Feeling the fear in the word "decade",
Speeding through puddles on street corners
filled with sweet rain,
Struggling through the politics of hot suburban summer air.
This is how I frame my present.

This is how I frame my future:
Through the loops of tied shoes ready to move forward,
Eyes fixed on the golden trophy of campus
Every goose bump filled with anticipation,
Gaps and corners and edges making room for possibilities,
Stapling my inhibitions to the wall before I sprint through the door.
This is how I frame my future.

In the Morning

Hunger cuts your tongue and singes your stride. Hear the rumble of hunger when it suits you least; when it can strangle you most. Wear hunger like a shawl, with its many holes. Let it fall from your fingertips and pick it up a minute later as a forgotten but often necessary object. Accept its sneers. Keep it as one does a secret, most times with impunity. It changes only your color, not your character. Paint it on as such. The function of hunger is only to inform you of what to provide, it has nothing to offer in itself. Hunger is reliable in its torment. Fall asleep and hunger will be there in morning.

On Boredom

Small talk is evil. It is two people who just stop loving each other, which is devastatingly worse than having a legitimate reason. Listless and bored, the invisible hand of intrepidity strangles and suffocates me until I have to shove the conversation into something about which I care. If I wanted to hear about the weather I would have consulted Frost or Thoreau. If I wanted to talk about my clothing I would have discussed the beauty of the human anatomy with da Vinci. But the infinite abyss of unwanted pauses leaves me in a coma void of thought and action. And it's blatant dishonesty. These dusty topics do not interest me.

I would much rather my words be laced with regret. Words erupting as if off of springboards, dead with the mold of too many moments buried inside me. Clipped short with anticipation and curt cynicism. They were frozen and sunken inside my stomach and have been hurled out by my tongue. As soon as they enter the warm air I want them back, but at least I have someone to bounce my ideas off of before they are edited and absorbed.Speaking on top of drawing boards is lovely when it is with you. Our conversations are surgical procedures and I'm scalpel-happy.

Prune Hands

I want to go swimming. I don't want summer. I don't want the beach with its dissonant waves and its cranky mothers with veiny legs. I don't want a party. I don't want toys and bikinis and prayers against the storms. I want a dank, damp, pool in a building that pleaded with its constructors not to add shitty tile floor, but whose cries went unheard. I want to feel that tile underfoot as I pad to the edge of the concrete. Fluorescent lights hum down on me as the water - a sickly cerulean - churns below. I don't want to dive in, full of escalated joy. I want to slide in, to slink in; the way a criminal or an ill mutt does around street corners. I want the four feet of ugly 84 degree water to swallow me whole, one second at a time. I want to dread putting my head under, but can't stand to be half wet. I crave that splice. And then the rhythmic, infinite laps of back and forth. Every time I approach the far wall, I have a panicked vision of slamming my lower lip into the cold slab of stone and bleeding into the water as my tooth goes through. I yearn for that feeling. I want to go swimming. I really do.