Detergent does not nicotine
β Playlists, Poetry
Detergent does not nicotine
but a boy’s hands hold soap
in our stomach’s guts, an eye
for an eye can see, it isn’t
in there with a black and blue
that’s not flirting, for pity, for age
lost and wandering into glass
where there was a open door
taste a welcome with a shame
death fills a room with enemies
who still love one another
keep blaming burning paper
squinting in the wind beams
shining off the hospital window
in your Sunday’s best
Playlist
βΎ Read more β½We All Need A Sense Of Lore Sometimes
β Playlists
Tracklist
Seed of a Seed
Haley Heynderickx – Seed of a Seed
I Don’t Know You
Mannequin Pussy – I Got Heaven – 3:45
Afterlife
Alex G – Afterlife – 3:31
Grieving
Leith Ross – Grieving – 3:17
Same Smile, Different Face (real version)
KNOWER – some thingies – 2:12
I F A Surfer
Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs – Mass Of The Fermenting Dregs – 3:39
Godspeed
Frank Ocean – Blonde – 2:58
Mary Jane
Orion Sun – Orion – 3:28
night is young
yuragi – nightlife – 5:44
Today (feat. Teo Halm)
Omar Apollo – Today – 3:14
Deus Deus
anaiis – Deus Deus – 4:04
Time Is the Enemy
Quantic – Life in the Rain – 3:44
Behind The Curtain
Dora Jar – Behind The Curtain – 2:38
american church
late night drive home – american church – 4:28
Where To Look
NilΓΌfer Yanya – Where To Look – 4:51
The Field (feat. The Durutti Column, Tariq Al-Sabir, Caroline Polachek & Daniel Caesar)
Blood Orange – The Field – 3:20
In Mindibu
Stavroz – Mindibu – 5:09
ε½ιγΉγγΌγ – Kokudouslope
Kinokoteikoku – eureka – 4:10
Mr Nobody
Lossapardo – If I Were To Paint It – 3:51
Locket
Crumb – Locket – 5:19
Go Through It
Mamas Gun – Cure The Jones – 3:06
The King (Live From The Studio)
Sarah Kinsley – The King (Live From The Studio) – 5:04
People staring at me, but I haven’t spoken yet
β Playlists, Poetry
I hate that you have no answers
but I also hate good cops looking for excuses
pour the heavy molasses of my unrequited grief
into your fillable chest
then hang up sweet iron cathartic
fist fight on our tongues
Do you call me to hear them?
in between the waves of repeating myself
a screeching cry cracks apologies
in choking sobs, there they flash,
a little girl, color on all she touched
the little boy with his wheel on the edge
You get what you’re giving yet
You keep staring, I haven’t spoken yet
I can’t unsilence until your inner child
is satisfied with my teeth
cutting your little face
enough to tell the truth from reality
uncontrollably spinning
β Playlists
music can be about beautiful, beautiful, beautiful repetition.
My Lungs Hurt but I Shouldn’t Stop Typing
β Playlists, Poetry
My lungs hurt
but I shouldn’t stop typing
shouldn’t stop asking Them what’s wrong
I couldn’t possibly stop
the “How can I be better?”
I apologize, I meant
“How can I consume every living thing in the universe?”
Many economists and spiritual leaders are now recognizing externalities to growth, such as:
– Death
In the night heat of my bedroom, I am dreaming of:
The future explorers finding a cardboard sign
encapsulated in the plastic ocean
blood of The Former Mother,
tilting it up to the phosphorescence to read,
“NOT ON DRUGS
WILL WORK FOR GOOD WATER.”
βΎ Read more β½image credit
Hsin Wang | De-Selfing
Sorry, I’m Busy
β Playlists, Poetry
Every pleasurable thing is full of
My jaw between sweat and the carpet to prove
Your peace of mind is possibly at the eye of only one
Sorry, Iβm busy, don’t we all
Beg for answers over chewing breakfast,
few know yours, like their own so
Apologize for the smoke in their noses
at 6 and 12 then 6 and 12
Laugh at the consequences of an unearned love
Open your fist for the orphaned keys
They will be the last chance
You get to get the bleeding down
before the next one
Fuck this
β Playlists, Poetry, Words
I wonder about
the knees behind the backs
of the holes in the bodies
in the ash of the wreckage
after an ad for therapy
I am reminded that
I have never left my cats in a war
to escape with what’s left of my life again
I wonder about
the inside of the skull
of a woman in yoga pants
next to a gun on a bridge near my house
The cops asked me to describe each moment
as construction workers spray painted RIP 5/4/2023
while 100 cliff swallows under the bridge
became a spinning cloud of
little did they know
I wonder about
the blood on a cowboy boot
being hosed off an hour after
having said I love you to the owner of it
His body appeared
half crushed and preserved
in a suit and a tie and a coffin
returning to the spot where he died
I met an angel named Titus
who taught me, to learn is to hope
I wonder about
the silhouette of my mother’s body
in the carpet of my childhood home
Among the piles of online deliveries
there was 1 puppy, 2 cats, and a carpet cleaner
1 lived, 2 died, and I rocked in the shower
after 3 gallons of solvent would not remove
the shame of the quiet that settled in between us
after she chose death
I’ve wondered about
taking the exit
before IΓ’ΒΒd taste the earth again
between my teeth like dentist tools
reminding me that the human right to grief
Is not allowable if the body count
does not climb high enough
to lower the price
or make the news
or kill the witnesses
or reach the deaf ears of God
before the winners become the losers
Some will delay the unknowable with certainty
instead of misunderstanding the language that
Some have not been raped for their wings repeatedly
by the hawk that combusts from thin air for the pitiless chaos of renewal alone
Some will not admit the cancer is systemic
because it was not heard in words they hear
So I propose we pretend to vote
for the human being who speaks the following words:
We either get up for work in the morning or we don’t
Fuck this
Sorry, It Took me a Year to Write This
β Playlists, Words
Dear peripheral darkness in the corner of my room, are you my mother?
Have you come to wet my eyes again with tears of ethanol or return the memories you took with you?
I’d like the ones with the sunshine through your golden hair, the healing of your food, the safest hours of our private conversations and those nighttime psalms you sang, please.
Will I cry like I cried when you called me from purgatory in my dreams? Can you explain what you meant when you said, “Our boss won’t let us talk too long”, and faded into the back of a dusty stagecoach? Its just that the panic I felt when gripping your hand woke me up and I never heard your voice again.
It reminded me of the time, your purple arms made me advise, “Love does not tolerate abuse”, but at the last minute, I asked the veterans to write “LOVE NEVER FAILS” on your headstone.
You had cried wolf so many times that without warning, me and some familiar strangers, at the time, plummeted, guts first, through the years of our future together in an hour and three minutes, clenching every inch of your body in a quiet hospital room.
They wheeled in what was left of Dad, and he grieved his oaths, for better or worse, into your thigh, since they cut his wedding ring in half to save him enough to bear the guilt of your death. You’d be proud that I cleaned the mucus from his face and forgave him before he died like you taught me to. You probably know this since he’s probably with you right now, but I’m not sure if your boss let’s you guys hang out there, so I’ll keep being specific.
If he is there, let him know, I really loved the dream where me and him played together as little boys in a field with river water. There were fewer people to help him die than you had and I felt sad that it was mostly just me and him at the end. After a year of thinking about the differences between your funerals, I think some people blamed Dad for the situation. If your boss lets you watch me, you probably know that I’ve tried to make it clear that you two were responsible 50/50 for this 30-year tragedy from the moment you met on that ditchbank. That you died just like you fell in love, two codependent teenagers with PTSD.
As I left the hospital room with your body in it, I saw your framed picture hanging in the hallway. I realized that the title of “Distinguished Nurse” likely came with an auto-immune disorder and the regret of leaving your son with the addict you married. It sucks that you carried so much responsibility with your shame. Its a pattern I’ve tried to avoid.
Anyway, you left so many things here: Your uncut wedding ring, for example, and a house with 30 years of trash and memories in it. You taught me to be clean and orderly so I had to throw 20 years of it away. Even the family that rarely talks to me showed up to help me. I wish you were there when I climbed to the top of the 18ft dumpster by myself and cried so much that I laughed at the sight of our lives in 32 cubic yards. P.S.: At least 10 years of it got stolen by the people living in my childhood neighborhood. The police told me they couldn’t help me get it back.
I watched parts of the videos in your iPad of Dad yelling at you while hitting the wall, the one documenting the parts of your body that stopped working and the one where you recorded your cat dying from heart failure in all that trash.
I read your AA journals, your letters to your three sisters and Dad, my great grandfather’s baptism certificate and scanned 100’s of Polaroids of our lives into the computer for your funeral. I played “Time in a Bottle” and Sarah McLachlan just like you asked me too. I also did your taxes, so no worries there, I think.
That wonderful doctor you love came to the funeral and apologized to me for what happened, even though none of it was anyone’s fault but yours. Is that why you were so silent with us before you left?
On the note of silence and your siblings, they’ve all become closer to me. Particularly, the ones you taught me to not trust or talk to because they were “sinners” or “toxic”. They are the ones who have listened to my cracked voice cry for hundreds of hours about what happened to us and supported me with the selflessness of saints. Can you explain why you never apologized to them? I’m trying to learn to forgive but I’m uncertain you taught me that? Now that you’re dead, what have you learned about the cost of speaking for God and not letting things go? Just send your notes in another dream, I’ll be waiting.
The boy I’m raising talks about you all the time. He’s struggling in school, but thriving in every other way and wonders why so many people have left him behind. Tell Dad that he still loves talking about cars instead of his feelings or ideas. I’m realizing while raising him, you skipped some valuable lessons raising me. Send that along too if you’ve picked anything up since then. Just send it in separate dream from the one you’ll send about you pretending to be God. Otherwise, all of that might ruin my sleep.
I can’t think of anything else to say except that I now hate you as much as I love you and this revealed every flaw in my spirit at once. I’ve become more neurotic, depressed and lonely but more insightful, resilient and artistic too. I learned that like this letter, our family legacies and my sexual relationships, I am so juxtaposed and paradoxical that I rely on substances, achievements and other people to see reality clearly. No one understands this well but us, I think. However, unlike you, I have puzzled out that you should never leave unprocessed shame for too long, otherwise, it might return to orchestrate your demise, isolate you, flip your paralyzed body face down into a pile of every shit-covered, garbage mistake you’ve ever made before erasing you, piece by piece, from mind to soul. I’d like to think that makes you proud of me, for better or worse.
Most of all, know that I will always be your precious baby but I am also the sole witness to the way the permanent shame trickles down the family trees like the tears of ethanol on a glass of cold beer that the blood of Christ seemed unable to free us from like you said it would.
Love,
Jake
Some melodrama does not change
β Playlists, Poetry, Words
You cannot sleep without wet matches
You cannot speak without candle wax
You cannot mirror without a bright flame
You cannot love me without firewalking
You allowed me to burn the past too desperately
even though I am down to coals
You removed the pans quietly and scraped me up so slowly
even though I am down to coals
You wrestled with the breath that put me out possibly
even though I am down to coals
You stoked another coven fire carefully
even though I am down to coals
You cleaned my broken skull lovingly
even though I am down to coals
You wet the ash under your eyes tearfully
even though I am down to coals
You are renewed and green beautifully
even though I am down to coals
You attempted flicker and shifting ineptly
even though you are a forest growing salaciously
and I am down to coals
I can only fall in love with wings
β Playlists, Poetry
I can only fall in love with wings
flashing between the pews of a funeral,
divorced from keepers,
testing a scab against The Ward’s lightbulbs,
call shy at a shotgun wedding,
unwelcome awe in the rafters,
I volunteer to handle them,
throbbing with fear tapping the glass casing,
what if there is not even a single poetried music in still air,
or rest from the fear of unrelenting madness?
There is wonder in preening missing feathers,
where tattoos glisten mistakes like sweater sleaves did
in bed within them,
no threat, my sweet, ghostly company
I learned the peripheral shadow kept in careful vision
pet like an animal, if I was one
my mind trained on the chestpin released,
wasting no time to leave with the breath of fear
underwing like the lamentations of the mama
preferring caged songs to grieving bodies
Can I become a thing that flies?
remove the liminal body taught to me
by survivors of survivors of survivors?
Is it resilience that comes with a map of the heart?
Or the potential memory of violence that genders us?
yet still I am more like the wind I was before I knew them well.
A wound will always seem to find you, an answer is coming.
β Playlists, Poetry
My princes,
My boyhood friends,
Do you still remember the sun sickness in the pit of our empty stomachs?
The frozen vegetables cooling our wounds,
while we watched the final summer sunsets
outline our tree house kingdoms shadowing
bruised hips with a kiss of the headache cool water
fountain bubbling across our squinting.
The crown now pulls stunning violence across my eyelids,
and the headmaster rips my palms
pouring diamonds into the orchestra pit
where a first chair violinist evaporates in the beams of the limelight.
As curtains break, as crowds sigh,
an untied burning upwards smolders
roofs of an empty home against the midnight sky
where blood stuck hair and half closed eyes
tilt and wonder why there was no warning.
A wound will always seem to find you,
an answer is coming,
like a voice calling from home,
when your feeling so far away.
in the wake of death, you swung high
β Playlists, Poetry
Wedding dress threads sewn carpet books in childrensβ shoe boxes stacked where now 83% of your practicing dissassociating is landfill photography.
Is there no drug to erase the euphoria of a 5th grade swingset where in the wake of death, you swung high and relearned every pinhole camera moment you felt small kisses on sudden cuts.
A tone of sorrow drones like a refrigerator fan that never remembers that dreamed voices are dreamed voices, numb heartache on a full moon to the next moon, grief is a cycle, hon.
Crack open the carcass of your childhood home and find the object you were trying to forget. Thatβs the price of a vacation from pity.
Please and thank you, we are so sorry for your bless you loss, merry xmas. They were so young.
Mother’s Child
β Lyrics, Playlists, Poetry
Are you ok
It must be hard on you
Pouring the ashes for two
But I am my mother’s
mother’s mother’s child
Bearing the weight is the proof
That my love goes as far as the moon
And If I’m dying I’ll die like a coon dog
Go out with style and grace
Or die from the grief of a
Loss of the trust of the master
How ya doing
When are you coming back
Just checking in on your mental health
Oh I am my mother’s
mother’s mother’s child
Hard work’s always the cure for the blues
Oh my idle hands are devil’s tools
I won’t loosen my grip on the lives we could lose if we
filled up our closets with
Uniformed skeletons who
Played by the rules of the master
peripheral darknesses; in the right corner of my eye a tear of ethanol, long distance phone calls from purgatory, the fear in your voice with my hand on your slipping pulse, you came so far just to get here. I am my mother’s mother’s mother’s child and I am witness the permanence of shame
I’ll take the house fire, please
β Playlists, Poetry
grip the leftover skin and pull, separate the tongue with doubt and bite, blood sugar in the gaps of teeth, swish with ocean brine, disrupt the despair with a careful smile, will not do anything without a drug of choice, otherwise four blank walls anticipating a house fire.
Incarcerated in a question mark
β Playlists, Poetry
Cover your corrupt voice from otherβs mouths
Define your only friend
Miss your missed opportunities
Ambiguous loss
Infinite heirarchy
nuance and explicit
Context and immediate concern
I am unhappy with who you’ve grown into
Divorce your inequities
Thumb your anxiety
Blacken your markets
Sacrilegious security
Sell your many faces
Eat your peace
Rent your feet
Inauspicious bootstraps
Consider spite in the crowβs feet of your death mask
Be silent for the unnamed graves next to your own
Incarcerated in a question mark
You apes in gilded cages, sing