Slam Poem Probably

So one night I was a combination of lustful and depressed and several revisions later this is what I'm left with. Yay!

An open letter from Fatalism to Lucas

Dear Sir,
The way you see it, you have to make a choice between two schools of thought,
two spools of thread that if followed will lead you to your future:

Either
you are completely satisfied with your life at this very moment
or
you are working toward change your hope will define as improvement.
Parallel lines meeting at infinity.

They meet here,
where dissatisfaction has brought you.
Your mind is doomed, paralyzed
as uncertainty urges you on while holding you back.
Before you boast of the prowess of your intellect and how it has saved you from similar times of despair,
may I remind you of your fears, the soot in the corners of your mind that will stay there forever, despite your years of studying existentialist texts and learning confidence-boosting mantras.
suffering is inevitable
suffering is inevitable
Yet how shocked you are to find yourself here again.

The triumph of your will has only offered you a sense of self-defeat,
and because of this
the same nervous logic that stirs unease into your breath and forces your heart to pump faster every time you are faced with an impossible dilemma
offers this simple question:
if you cannot be happy now, why would you ever be content with a future based primarily on the consequences of your actions?
Hasn’t what you’ve done brought you here to the landscape of the discontented?

Despite this, you refuse to abandon the hope that your actions have meaning.
I suggest that these muscular twitches you call actions are but tiny puffs of wind that stir the world’s dust before quickly being buried in the movement of time.
You yourself have experienced this: you have fought for everything that you know, and yet have still been overwhelmed.
The shock of battle intertwined in the anxiety of dilemma.
Exactly what is it that you are fighting for?
What are you forgetting to do when you refuse to act in your own self-interest?
Or is that refusal in itself an action done in your own defense.
How you trace the outline of these Mobius strips of logic.
It reminds me of the way nuns fondle their rosaries while begging God for guidance.
I’m amazed you’ve stayed engaged in your apparent struggles for so long,
but then again, admitting that you are as happy as you’ll ever be would be kinda disappointing, wouldn’t it?

Listen,
no conclusion you draw will bring the necessary choreography to enact the purpose of the rest of your life.
And acknowledging the guilt you feel for your passivity in this matter
only adds shame to injury.

Therefore, let me give you this advice:
look at how your body hints that it was built for something.
It is filled with subtle yet defined evidence of purpose:
bones, muscles, organs
bear no accidental shapes.
Without command
the eye looks
the lungs fill
the heart beats.

So shall you, without command, move again
the grace of uncertainty
will lift up your chin.
eyes that once looked upward
will look forward,
powered by a heart that will continue to beat out the eternal question:
for what? for what?
May I remind you that some questions are rhetorical
and your silence on this matter shall not ensure your defeat.

Revision of Said Funny Excerpt

Mutualism

Something is not right,
you said, this place we call home has got to improve.
I thought of renovation,
ingenuity.
The trick that falls and covers everything anew.

Thought for redecorating:
the average adult has 5 to 6 liters of blood—
enough for a fountain,
small, in the corner of the garden near the cactus.
But such a display often leads to
feelings of inferiority or, worse, embarrassment.
It carries with it a heavy risk—
no currents flow in the sad un-use
of a broken fountain.

This history talks of revision.
I had told you
I had the desire to rip my jaw off
and feed it to you in small pieces
and have you rip off your jaw and feed....
Wait.

I see you now—
the vision of you has been tainted
with the color of copper
as mutualism replaces desire.
Its wings leave dust mites in their wake.

This talk of averages is unsettling,
yet still we collect data,
measuring and recording
our feelings of commitment.
I want these scales to fall away from my eyes,
disappear into memory.
Better yet,
let’s turn off the controls
and let the machine break down
on its own.

Be confident
there is enough time
for everything to turn into dust.

Funny Excerpt from in-class exercise

The average adult human has 5 to 6 liters of blood--
enough for a fountain.
Such displays often lead to the production of
feelings of inferiority.
I have a desire to rip my jaw off
and feed it to you in small pieces
but that only sounds good at midnight.
Not every project requires such a huge commitment
or an extensive working knowledge of pump mechanics.
Still, working with a non-profit can be rewarding.

End of the Year (new draft)

I ended up liking the first draft so much that I spent some time this week revising it. I just came back from the poetry slam and got a bunch of scores in the five and six range for it. Ha, I guess that's how it goes.

Poesy:
The university celebrated the end of the semester
by delivering dumpsters to each dormitory,
the idea being that students would be most remembered
by what they had thrown away. And when they left
they left behind all knowledge of what they had accumulated.
Off they drove into the sunset of forgetfulness
believing they will never have to return.
Jealous, the remaining students must stay one more night
in the ruins of an abandoned campus.

With nothing better to do, I decide to take a walk.
One last stroll through the campus
I wouldn’t see again until the end of the summer.
Unsurprisingly, the sights that meet me are of the apocalypse.

The remaining roommates dumpster dive together
finding food and drink in bulk,
discarded to save space and time.
One shouts this is enough food for a month
even though this is their last night together.
I want to ask them: Will you divide your spoils up?
Better yet, would you want to live on ramen noodles and propel water?

In the Starbucks the employees
are only making drinks for themselves.
It looks like an Edward Hopper Nighthawks scene
in a commercialized space conducting the energy
of the awkward, lean bodies inside.

People have parked their cars where I have never seen them before:
lawns, sidewalks, courtyards.
Without their drivers they look abandoned,
yet sitting in place without the fear of being stolen,
even on a night of disinterested pillaging.

The order in the landscape is changing, being challenged,
yet the lamp posts still shine
as polite as slaves can be.
The sprinklers know they are unsupervised.
Their malfunctions froth in the drowning grass.
The excited ones dream of being fountains,
their wild sprays stain the sidewalks,
creating dark puddles,
an inconvenience for the few pedestrians walking around.

This is the last night for lovers.
Men and women in two by twos
stand in the shadows of buildings—
It is the night before Noah.
Whether she is leaving him
or he her does not matter.
The summer is a distance that cannot be overcome.
Like mementos, they transmit their last thoughts from lip to lip.
And this is for them.