You wouldn’t listen to me if I tried,
Never tried and now it’s all I’m trying to do,
To prove to you that I should’ve done something then,
Trying to show you I’d do something now, but –
‘Now,’ now,
not the now of the other day,
The day I let you go, and I don’t know where you’ll go,
But I’m hoping it’s a place some day I’ll be,
could it be some place I’ll be,
Try to let it be a place I’ll be,
this is me trying to beg, I want you hearing that,
The fear in my tremble, I always say being scared is pussy shit, but –
The thought
– Comes
– up.
Should I surrender myself,
Cut myself off from myself, and concede,
To you?
No longer trying, but doing like an exhale into your arms knowing you’d carry me,
Allowing you to insert the way you do,
Giving my ears to the words you choose,
Given you my pain;
Trusting you, your hue of blue,
– instead of this stupid shit I’ve done?
This knee-jerk crap with the little red button,
‘Nuclear option,’ blow it up,
Trying there, I did,
Succeeding there, I do;
That efficient self-destruction shit.
There I did and often as I do.
– I cut it off when I fear what I’d become once it ended.
– I’ve seen what happens when something like us does.
So selfish of me to assume you don’t,
Selfish of me to have believed you’d understand.
You wouldn’t listen if I did,
But would you listen to me if I tried?
So selfish of me to ask as I’ve evaded your patience,
Your fucking touch of grace,
– But,
Would you take me back if you did?
Tag: poetry
-
icarus
I cut a limb to feel my heart
To fix myself, at least to think I could
Dragged feet to soaring wings
I thought from the bounds of Earth
But the depths of Hell.
I cost a love to feel my pulse
To heal a thing, at least I’ve tried
Confused remorse, just missed the grief
Realised flight not from the coldness of flames,
But the abyss of self.
I left a life to feel some soul
To feel some thing, some thing to feel,
Blinded pupil of the approaching Sun,
I sought flight from my throat to the Universe
And still found no way to go. -
mountain time
Science is boring but there’s a thing to the sky, the wind, the mountain time,
the height and the light and the way these clouds just glow under the cuff, pillows
billowing
cirrus and stratus knowing no form, aside from maybe those taffy puffs that stretch across the sky (like heartstrings, stinging like they’re plucked when you come back to mind).Due west, (how’s your hair, and how’s the dog?), there’s this
return
to a wonder-less basin, most days,
but here,
most times,
box winds closer to the ground throw themselves East as the ones above (I suppose I’m fine), Westward.West of honest smiles (and roadrunners), Natives pumping gas too slow and seasons called ‘monsoon.’
There’s the violins of the pines right now, their needles quivering in some sedated symphony (they’ve been doing it for years), with the blows we never see but always strike familiar (desert dust like jasmine white, you never thought it special).
All of it heading for you as the magmatic moon grows smaller the more we turn away and move in revolutions (the ache sizzles just the same, always less the more I stay away from you), and,
The thoughts of you, the longing, and the dreams of showing you what’s up Central, the bliss and kitsch, the Runaway’s hideaway, the Sun burning over some shared horizon (you’ve seen everything I’m talking about with those private IG accounts you use to stalk me), and the heat,
Good God,
as it mirrors off the bottoms of whatever label we’ve decided to give these,
mountainous,
floating,Carbonations, of everything that remains constant and yet so ever lovingly promises,
I dunno,
‘Inconsistency?’
Or the promise of demise? The end of things but the continuation afterward, that old, fabled telling of time, forever fading, although moving, dissipated, like sugar in Colorado blue, these thoughts of you, again, sorry (don’t hate me) –
They’ve grown so weak. The longing once and for all replaced with grief,
and some day soon, some time after tonight, like the light and the wind and the clouds of no form, I suspect,
And I hypothesise (I don’t mean to sound excited),
The grief will turn towards the unknown, born again, like continuation, for some other winds, for some other boy, for some type of adoration.
The sky for now, due without the labels (but I think you’re finally out of here).
-
so,
There’s this
paralyzing stiffness
of a red-hot poker
with the head-shaped heart of a bull
that pulsates with a pumping gravity
up and in until it’s through,
busting through,
the trachea and coming out the mouth,
that’s,
that’s what’s pinned me
into the ground.
What was once the silence of agony
now
but a
gaping hole in the refractory.After the I Love You’s bust
the load’s for you but no, none for me, our hands began to slip.Cold feet,
the cold sweats
the
terminology for whenever the body stops shaking but the soul is still rumble-ing, the uh –
Catatonic
save the dread.
The euphoria of your skin,
pressed-pasted into mine
now shrouded
by the knowingness of one day growing,
going,
ultimately limp.That the fires dwindle into ember,
as the air we breathe begins to freeze,
the sun you used to shine on me, turns its back for good.And not for nothing,
but the yearning desire to mourn for the moon,
to dream again of what was had, what’s needed now,
needing to knead your presence into absence
into something now forgotten, all of it my fault,
with thatstupid
fucking
paralyzing stiffness.That comes from having you.
Of
having you.
Of knowing you, you knowing me,
not knowing what to do, knowing that you’re knowing me,
the
matter of time
before someone goes for good.For fear of what you desire, I can’t give to you
my
my moving deeper-closer into you,
it was never something I could be.Fuck man
that pulsating agony,
the impotence,Of never knowing who to be.
-
inside in spite of what we knew was best for us
we took our hands into the pines and
pined
for the view we knew we knew,
and begged it to be new, at least renewed,
setting Sun, speckled, caught
in the pools like tears we sought
looking down the hill at Cedar Grove.
Mistaken mounds for mountains climbed,
ascended once again
for that view of Oz on Bunker Hill, the one I showed you once
the one you promised was ours at last.
Asking how it’s been, insisting nothing’s wrong,
there’s nothing wrong, but something’s wrong
and sometimes people are simply wrong,
the placation in omission,
the appeasement of a view.
Cross-wired fires, deathscrolls inspired,
everything’s fine with talk of wine
and where to go once we’re down at our cars
that are parked by the Greek.
Keys in the ignition, there’s the thoughts of our position
do we flee or drive into a tree, fucking
tired of the rhyme and reason.
Our
pathologies in treason, inside in spite of what we knew
was best for us,
that view we knew we knew
renewed.
Until the inevitable flames of Indian summer come around
and the mistaken mounds of mountains climbed
are once again scorched
by the cross-wired flashes of all things hot
and we incinerate into phoenix ash with the promised blossom,
or unfurled crimson wings
and blinded flight towards our setting
Settling Sun.
Asking how it’s been, insisting nothing’s wrong,
there’s nothing wrong, but something’s wrong
and sometimes people
we’re simply wrong.
Some things don’t know what’s best for them
it’s why they don’t know what’s wrong with them. -
dad chair II
In my dad chair and at the beach,
just south of Incubator Isle
I found a parking spot on West Channel Road.
Crotch-forward watching presence of boys with their volleyballs and lambskin speedos,
dancing for pose the lot of them, though not one in particular,
intimidated by the dude alone, ‘we will never be like him.’
All the while,
The sand’s ahead of me,
the overlook from my balcony on Dumaine.
I wonder, thirst,
to swim in the bath of Sun and drown in each other’s moonlight,
our names forgotten and tomorrow’s ‘You Said Something’s’
before longing for the promised view, those parched dreams of you,
in my dad chair and at the beach. -
dad chair I
The way speckled dust soars
like flocks of gulls behind the closed curtain of eyelids
the beating Sun lights them from behind.
In my dad chair and at the beach
I only dream of desert,
and not because it’s colder here than I thought it would be.
The pier’s to the left of you.
Tide rising,
at Five the dolphins break the surface of the horizon as they return from feeding.
At Six,
the gulls line up behind you to bathe in amber wind,
and the boys in speedos pack up as the molly returns them from Oz.
To know these things, the knowing waves to ride,
bucket basket of fried chicken plucked from Ralph’s,
the goodness in knowing the familiarity
that’s company of the most completed variety. It’s presence.
But who gives a shit about that.
Dig your feet into the sand,
they’ll keep cool and white.
Bulge pointed towards the sea the completed man and all alone,
legs crusted, sea salt, hell White Sands,
Truth or Consequences is a name of a town I know,
the Pacific brings you to New Mexico if you let it,
the wonder, rippling flesh of canyon land,
Far away from sissies sipping slurpees, skipping stones,
while kelp forests swerve and sway just under our surface.
Beasts and dominion,
the certainty of soil and sacred rock preferred.
Yes, crashing tides approaching
and
yes,
waves likes mountains seen off of Blueberry Ridge,
the dad bods of Winter, abso-fucking-lutely,
fawning thoughts of running into the ex who ridicules the sea of gratitude coursing through the veins,
it’s all here all of it if you let it,
But
There is some place, some place with
an exactness,
the decisiveness of the Earth,
where the moon rises above Albuquerque and I see it in your eyes,
With promise of a rising Sun as mine begins to dwindle beneath the sea.
At least in about an hour. -
ego
I don’t read as much as I should.
The thoughts of people busy me. -
on meditation
It’s boring to me, it isn’t necessary.
Not if you’re already looking,
listening,
fucking all around you.
The forcefulness of it all feels obligatory,
immediately offensive to the worlds
breathing around you
All of it combined into a singular
throbbing
pulsation that ignites
brilliantly
like soaking in the mirror of the Sun,
the breeze of the Pacific hitting the back and front of you, but like it does back East and South,
Bahia Honda,
the electrifying cool and warmth that hugs us so desperately,
yearning for eternity for us
to
Worship it like it were a God.
Like cock,
it wishes for us to worship it for the God that it is,
powerless, all powerful and grateful,
the submission to the world meditation only dares to dominate. -
this one time in the pacific theaters lobby at the grove
An old lady with a hunched back had just left the Bar @ Pacific Theaters (at The Grove)
and was headed for the door.She was pulling a parking voucher out of her purse to get it stamped.
And she had just finished her beer,I want to say after watching ‘Overboard.’
Voucher in hand she slowly lurches off her stool and with a crane cranks herself towards the
revolving doors that would lead her out of the Pacific Theaters at The Grove towards the fountains that dance for Sinatra and always Sinatra even during Christmas
Outside the Pacific Theaters at the Grove.
Some dude on a date with a guy nudges his newfound boy-toy’s shoulder,
Points at the lady as she tries to push herself out and through the doorway.
And like,
She’s caught in some sort of kinetic vortex,
battling at the handles for the cycle to go her speed as an eager couple late for their movie tries to barrel on through,
Leftover quesadilla in their Cheesecake Factory plastic bag with the emblazoned cursive red print that allows them to assume they’d just dined and died in Vienna,
But with quesadillas.
Meanwhile this dude with the baby-trick’s just getting a kick out of the shit,
Nudging on and pressing it onto his bought-out ass piece wearing Penguin and some
Florsheim’s,
You know,
dressed to impress in LA (he should’ve worn a graphic tee),
And he knows it with his hands in his pockets
You can see his upset from his being asked to look at what makes his ride-home feel vindicated and immune to the amorphous curse of time,
As him and his other buddies crack yes now,
Something about WD-40 on the bitch.
The young man does nothing to help the lady
As she hobbles onward and into the night light off dancing fountains and 20 dollar salads without salmon at La Piazza.
Quesadilla couple makes it to their movie.
I think the boys with their boys were headed for the same auditorium.
I would’ve done something but I was a next in line for a beer,
at the Bar @ Pacific Theaters,
This one time in the Pacific Theaters lobby at The Grove.
thomasdanielvalls.com 