Alvie Alive

Religion seeps in my poems

So easily, as naturally as blood

Flowing through veins.

I have never spent Sundays

Praying, wearing my best,

Worshipping something

Bigger than myself.

Crosses and bibles,

They bear into me with

Watchful eyes when I pass,

People saying grace

Before dinner felt

Intimidating, wrong

In the sense that

They are so right.

But even still, I write

About prayers and gods

And plagues, heavens and hells.

Maybe it is a way to describe

Something indescribable.

I have always been jealous

Of people with so much faith,

So much hope that

Kindness still exists,

But churches and bibles

Always smell just like

My grandmother’s double wide,

Sweltering humid heat

Weighing my body down

Along with my love,

My head, my heart.

Maybe it is a way

To feel belonging

In places I never could,

Or maybe it is something

To throw rage towards.

The concepts of holiness,

Good and bad and sin,

They are real and tangible

And yet cannot be described

Did you know that you can grow wings?

If you listen to the choir sing

And feel the novocaine numbing,

Plant your feet into pavement,

Feel empty air and start running

With the new wings you've built

Out of so much nothing.

The skies so cold and thin

Against the skin you're retouching,

No weight on that old heart

That you've been snuffing.

You shed all your something

To the ground miles down;

You love the deducting

When the choir sings,

Love the praise of earning

In your novocaine brain.

You are so cunning,

Hanging light on your wings

With the crown you're clutching.

If the choir sings loud

And you sing along stunning,

Would you feel the words

You insist on humming?

When you sit on sidelines

Behind gates you're shutting,

Does the fall of wings

Still feel so crushing?

Do you laugh at water

When wings meet flooding?

Of course I'd laugh, you think,

When those wings are bluffing!

After all, those wings up high

Feel no praise or plunging

When they've taken flight

Things are weird.

What else can I call it?

In truth, there are

Several words here,

But I swallow them

Like hot tar

And feel as it

Burns me from

The inside out.

Things are weird

When you spend

Your days with

Painted doors and

Crooked grins.

Things are weird

When they grind

Against your teeth

Until they shave

Into animal fangs.

Have you ever

Broken a line

Of poetry into

Tiny slivers of

Swallowed tar?

Have you ever

Steamrolled

Your way through

Life and yet

Couldn't turn

The ignition

Of your own car?

I vomit pretty

Words from behind

My animal fangs

And nothing

Matters now.

The world is

An angry thing,

Such a weird

Thing here.

The core flows

Slowly under

The life like

Tar, cracking

Mantel and

Erupting hot,

Spewing such

Weird things.

Can you imagine

A cold earth?

Painted

Doors and

Haunted

Dolls in

My closet.

They never

See the

Daylight

Anymore,

But the

Earth has

To weep

Sometime.

Have you ever felt your own skin

Like a costume? Ran your hands

Over the prison cell of your image

And held the key so tight it might as well

Melt back into steel in your palms?

Playground kids used to try and

Dig a hole to the other side of the world.

It always felt dramatic, unrealistic

In the same way you learn to trust,

But I would sell my sick soul

To shovel my way to the core and

Lather myself in burning magma

Because if I am melting from the

Inside out, I might as well burn from

The outside in, too, and nobody has

Ever seen Earth's core and maybe

There is something there to find.

The earth feels awfully empty

Beneath my feet some days,

Cold like caves and

Hot like empty

Skies in summer

As Earth chokes

On her magma

And swallows

I have been watching and hiding

Behind glass walls forever;

The barrier between men's and women's,

Between wants and expectations

And the way things are normal.

I have stared through these walls

And glanced out of the corner of my eye

At the world beyond and between,

Thought about taking a hammer

And breaking my way through

With brute force, with gentle curiosity,

But instead I stared.

It was easier to lie my hand on the glass

And feel the pulse of a true life

Beneath my palm, it was easier

To let it be something faded,

Left to sit backstage at the show

While I painted myself each morning.

It was easier, until it wasn't.

If there is one thing I've learned

From this beautiful, beaten life,

It's that glass walls are not worth

The absence of being.

There is so much hate, so much fear,

So many things to be afraid of

That sometimes I can't choose.

But the joy--oh, the joy--

That's where things begin.

There are enough bullets flying,

Enough reasons to be afraid.

I take hate like pills,

Drink disgust like wine

And laugh at jokes that were

Never meant to be funny.

Like what, you obsessed?

You stare enough to insult it,

Stare enough to notice?

Do you think about me

When I'm gone, after it's over?

Do I matter enough to you

To make you want to hurt?

You have to care to hurt, you know,

So you must care too much

And lucky for me, I care too little—

About what you'd like me to do,

What you'd like me to be.

Instead, tell me what you hate

So I know what I am;

Tell me exactly where I cross the line

So I know where to walk;

Tell me the dress code

So I can create my own;

Tell me what not to do

So I have a plan.

Hate me so hard you love me,

Despise me so much you supply,

I am still reminding myself 

That I am not dead.

Still relearning how to say hello

And how to feel kindness,

How to feel human, how to feel at all.

I swear to God that He drained

Every drop of color from Earth

And replaced it with blue water

That crashed down into my lungs.

I swear to God that I will have words

When I break my way through the gates,

Because no love was in those waves

And I have nothing holy left to lose.

I cannot feel my hands or feet or chest

And I think they've been replaced

By some awful spark of fate,

Filling with locusts and bruised by hail.

Even after the doors slam

I still hear them mixing with mine;

Hers in the hall and mine in my mind,

Handles swarmed by gnats.

I have seen a gun up close for the first time.

It’s nothing like the shotguns

And BBs I’d seen in the sunlight—

It looks awfully similar to her,

Sounds awfully like our doors.

I am still learning how to talk about it,

How to write about it, feel about it.

I am still reminding myself

Shaking in my bones,

Shifting on my feet;

Maybe I laugh too easy,

Maybe I leave too early

And arrive too late.

Buzzing beneath my skin,

Blurring in my brain;

Maybe I talk too fast,

Maybe I wake too early

And sleep too late.

Am I nervous or nostalgic,

Noxious or noble?

Am I conscious or caving,

Cheerful or choking?

Either way I am frantic,

In my dreams, my body is a coffin.

Delicate angled ridges for arms

And beautiful mahogany in place of a mouth,

Only moved if it's toward the grave.

And yet, I'm still alive.

There's something inside and that thing

Is the furthest from alive you'd ever see,

But the wood beats with the pulse

Of someone you'd still want to hug.

Others will visit the front of the crowd,

Leaning down as if to say their goodbyes

Before the dead really becomes dead,

But they only sit, kick their feet up

On the door of my coffin where my poetry sits,

And they tell me about the morning traffic

And gas prices and the shitty vodka

That the reception is giving out.

Though the voice I hear struggles its way

Through the box of my body,

It's comforting to hear something alive.

Sleepless nights and shapeless fears

Beg for your attention

From the black void you bear,

Biting your tongue until it bleeds

And you still cannot clamp it shut

Even with the lips you sew

Against the swarm of seas;

Oh, to restart all of the retreats,

To shake and sweat through your shirt

And befriend the bugs crawling

Behind your broken ribs,

To make away with the mask

You melt into your maker;

Oh, to black out on benzos

And to come back again,

To experience destruction

It's pulling your fingernails off one by one,

Cracking your teeth tripping on cement,

Choking on your spit in the morning

And vomiting up everything your mind has made.

There is nothing pretty about this.

You cannot starve your way out of torture,

Cannot hope your way out of home.

In the basement she sits;

Imprisoned, a dirty thing

With knots in her hair

And wrinkles in her clothes.

She lives in her single chair

In the corner of a cold concrete room

Created with the hands of denial,

Locked in with all of this ugly.

In the basement she beats on my ribcage

Day by day, begging for freedom,

Pleading for her voice to be heard

Through the stark white of her cell.

Those doors are never meant to be opened,

Never meant to be known,

And so she stays locked there

With all the cracked teeth and missing nails.

She chokes on her words in the evening

And tastes nothing from them in the morning.

It's loud.

Loud, loud, loud from the beating on my ribs,

Loud from her rage that grows through the

Loud, loud, loud of my life;

All the fires I have started burning it all down

And all the eardrums I have burst when her

Loud, loud, loud threatens to crack my bones

And puncture my bruised lungs.

I need this to be pretty, need this life to be

Almost pornographic--dirty, disgusting, degrading,

And yet still something for those so inclined to watch

As the camera buffers the film.

I need this to be storybook, with words so beautiful

In fantasies so captivating that you can't help

But admire--a story so distant, characters so disconnected

That their deaths are plot advancement,

That when they are left on the ground in rapture

It's nothing more than a twist.

She is beating on my chest from her cold basement cell

Along with all the ugly things clawing up my throat.

In her rage, she chews up my storybook pages

And pornographic buffers with bare teeth;

Kicks in my ribs like rotten logs,

Letting all the bugs and termites crawl out

From where they were meant to stay.

There is nothing pretty about this;

I never stop dying.

The sun explodes in reds and oranges

And the soil floats up

Into the sky filled with smoke

That coats my lungs,

And I feel my last breaths

Slip past my lips as easily

As the waves melt back to the sea,

And I die.

Then I wake.

It's a horrible sort of rattle

In my chest, like my soul has been

Shoved back into the cage of my ribs.

It's not a relief, or bittersweet, or hopeful;

I have felt the quiet acceptance

Pass my lips over and over again,

Let the void pull me in,

And then I'm back

To no fault of my own.

Again and again I die,

There are holes in my soul

Wider than any world can close.

I have fallen and the only thing

That swallows around me is rope

Which whispers around my throat.

My skin burns with coal

As the room becomes so cold

That the words freeze

Somewhere between control

And a fucked up toll.

Pieces of myself sold

Like auctions with goals

To raise you above

And say Behold!

Watch as she unfolds.

Wouldn't you revolt?

Against the day they stole?

Revolt against the way

Their broken greed withholds,

Like their stories were foretold?

I see myself in camera roles

While invisible directors scold,

Creep the paths of shadows

That have lamplight patrolled

As I hide in the potholes.

My hands find the rope

That grazes my throat;

Burn the coal and brace myself,

Gasp a cold breath and grab ahold

I used to want to donate my brain to science.

If they want to study my brain so bad, take it.

Pick it apart with your tweezers and scalpels,

Watch the blood spill out

And find the center like bad fruit,

Wear gloves so your hands stay clean,

Tear it up with your knives and scissors

When you dissect and find your own heart

Shrunken to fit inside.

Pick out the shards from the wreck you've made

And leave yourself with a bloody brain

And a shrunken heart decimated in pieces

On your cold metallic table,

And make your scientific observation

That this is just a brain, this is just a heart.

Mourn the loss of something alive