Pressed down shaken together
And running over; return sought to be a
parade, a
celebration of life but rather a
sour roiling wound in a base so deep, the
sheer avoiding nature the
self-centered take on my emotions
Makes the
wound spill harder, just seeking a
herringbone gold chain
An ascot and a waist watch.
For ‘a’ (lipogram)
ash
Valhalla paths
ash
an amaranth lass
ash
amass a charlatan’s grafts
ash
a bacchanal past
ash
acts as ass
ash
a man’s charm bank
ash
vagrant’s caravan
ash
balm
ash
play
ash
a champ harsh
ash
gag gallant acts
ash
a watchman’s karma back
magician’s case
trapped sealed contracting glass
no layout blueprint
triggered seizing flash pulses
panics air chokes the trapdoor.
It’s like trying to extinguish
A fire with rum and vodka and gin
To achieve a healed self or in the very least,
Numbing-amnesia;
It’s like trying to fly with one chewed up
Wing knowing you once were host to
A convention of clouds;
It’s being trapped beneath the surface of a
Frozen lake running your hands across its
Jagged chest for a fishing hole;
It’s the admiration of a fuchsia pedal trapped on the
Wet concrete against that grey face but a voice telling
You in fact it’s navy blue because it’s you lie, the perception
untrue, you omit facts for self-preservation,
like this is who are and will always be;
It’s a word or an action like a light switch
in a dark room being thrusted into
a bad trip at light speed, cutting lights,
blinding noises, loud mouths with sharp teeth,
A rush in blood pressure, cool beads of
sweet on brow and palms,
Faint knees.
Like the knot in those
doubled-laced L.A. Gears
fused needed strength of jaw,
sharp edge K-9 to begin the
unraveling processes;
Like the scorched dusty throat earth
cracked puckered lips
pressing in and praying
for a fix;
Like the first thing seen
in face of alarm clock
stone but to desperately be
gold bullion;
Like the last joint saved for rainy day
mouth vibrates seethes saliva
makes dick hard
betrays logic
as a yellow flame whips
around the heart.
simple glass tea pot
in the curled transparent handle
holds the equivalent static
energy from a 60-year-old
family quilt;
no one really dies.
Garish sunlight &
Pall of smoke
Country flag like blindfold
A bygone hymnal
The pen wrote the machine
The machine molds the pen
Bottom lines holy ghost &
Jesus gears
Behind the veil us
Now see
Stymied roots &
New names for slavery
Bright orange magnesium
Teeth hollow out an AC transit bus
drags black cloth
over factory lamps
Its poppy season again #itslit,
look at US, we are all poppies here
ain’t we beautiful?
Yeah but look at them over there tho’, those
them half-breed poppies, Cali-prickly poppies
with that prickly poppy privilege, they think they
better than us, or them quarter ones too,
they ain’t real poppies! They got that soft skin,
they wilt super easy in the sun, they get bought
up real quick repotted in the house,
they don’t know the struggle.
–
It’s poppy season again, #itslit,
We are all poppies here, look at
US ain’t we beautiful?
But we mixed, half prickly poppy of
Northern Europe. I can pass man.
No one knows what I am, I can blend in, I can ignore
All that shit around me. I got more access man.
When I look at myself I don’t see color. They don’t like
us anyways. I’m better
Thanna ol’ regular Cali poppy.
–
But did you see how farmer-john last week ripped one of
US out the ground for no damn reason, it was brutal, rolled his roots
Around his index finger and yanked him out of his socket,
stepped on him, dragged him around, then used a scythe
to cut his stamens off, man that poppy was mixed—naw!
he was regular Cali poppy. He don’t count. He count. Farmer-
john didn’t know the difference, didn’t matter to him at the
end of the day. To him we all look the same.
I view a rose
everyday same rose
I scroll the length of it’s body
its wide spread and reaching pedals
one day it stripteases
it grows teeth builds a soapbox
and demands something controversial
it is between the nationalist and progressive but also
the atheist and messiah
I was the only viewer a twitch later
one million it whispered silent poems
about abuse and trauma,
it showed me its
a friend’s child’s birth, then a funeral,
Indica strains, travels around the world,
Afterschool brawls, violence, opulence,
fantasy, beauty and horror gushing down
its sepal to round of Adam’s apple
sometimes it solicits erotic encounters via webcam
in direct messages, it is the glass ceiling it exploits
the weak but in the same beat empowers it
all colors and genders but also reflects
self-hate and xenophobia
the rapper becoming irrelevant
hangs on for relevancy like a cobweb caught on a thorn
the seekers of self-worth make businesses here
my eyes backflip in place, the surveyor of dreams
realized, the purveyor of feuding families,
light
it scratches my corneas I want to quit the rose,
avoid it’s fire but I am so drawn to it, it fulfills the will
of my addictive personality caught in swings of an 8
it shimmy-skips in my subconscious
stirs up lust but also passages of inspiration, thankfully
I know I have choices still in this world where
choice is becoming either a revolutionary act
or a dying pastime. The mystery of life
is dead; a browned apple core
rolls against the wind.
After Baldwin
I crave a secure mooring post
because freedom is too damn unbearable
life defined by emotional attachés
I’m not afraid of losing people
as much, being afraid of not being tied to
someone or an idea even is another thing entirely
the parent-child co-dependency,
lover to therapist-parent,
friend to bank account, like a solid wooden post
dug several feet into subsurface, its surety,
it’s a controlled environment yet I knew
as a child constant flux
traffic of parent’s lovers, tide in tide out
one post to the next freedom is fear is
the horror of loneliness
being out at sea too long without that
sure without that grounded,
but it’s so necessary now
not to play it safe, to let go, to uproot
and burn, to dismantle it all, to not inventing
something because someone says its right
I woke up with my mind
evolution on
slip of mooring line’s knot,
that slow drift from dock
open blue waters
the diamond dance of sunlight
a soft bell will play
a Yes to life
Charles Snyder 