I don’t mean to be so unappealing,
healing.
Like you’re better at dealing
but you’re not, if this is the last time
you say that you’ll try-
at least I’m moving through instead of shoving down-
that’s the lie you contrive
when you conceal from yourself
the truth you can’t fucking face,
like a fogged up mirror –
it’s easier to look at –
when you don’t like your reflection.
All the work and hard effort calling you forward with intention.
That looks different than “letting it slide off your back.”
Every person I’ve heard claim that is hiding behind them a stack
of unread novels of hurt and dismissed emotions of pain and loss.
You think tossing them in your lockbox makes you a boss
not a whacked out wannabe
trying to be better than free.
You’re just like me, in need of
a witness willing willing to look
with eyes wide open into your books,
your archives of tragic humiliation
and harmful acts you acted out in frustration.
Because we all have sorrows deep
in our storehouses; dusty, we keep
piles high of dingy stories we would rather never tell,
nor have any onlooker see
that we are just as capable of extreme
violence and hate, justifying our intent so malicious.
See, it’s not just the ones who harmed you that refine
the meaning of vicious.
It’s you, too, with your chin held so high.
Like if you lifted it up to the sky
you’d lose sight of the mountains
your ungrieved losses are accumulating.
Hold your head up high on the lie
that you’re much better at letting it go
than I am,
even though here you are resisting the natural flow
and ebb of joy and sweet sorrow,
only along for the ride if the waters stay shallow.
That’s why my depth scares you so,
even though you claim it’s annoyance
that causes you to shame and blame and adopt an attitude of avoidance.
Because to feel and deal means to heal,
but you’d rather I do this over there,
far away from your vicinity,
lest you develop an affinity
for what it feels like right here
in this soft place inside me
where the empty hollow places
have begun to blooming
fluorescent and abounding,
shining bright lights that blind you and chase out
all the darkness
that once invited the dust to settle
in between pages unread and on mountains unscaled.
That echo inside you is a feeling I don’t miss.
Neither is that expression lifeless and pale.
I’ll admit, you wear it so well
and convincing, like joy
is just about chasing
the dopamine and stories to tell
on repeat about the good ol’ days.
Into that slot machine go your coins,
bet after bet that forgetting is the way
to freedom from ever having to face up to or put on display
your archives of past hurts and harms still waiting and wanting
for you to turn the key
into your own broken heart, instead of carrying on with apathy,
claiming the past is in the past when it lives right under your floorboards,
the ones that prop up your soap box about
how you diy’d your way to restore
this fixer upper you call home now.
But I see thru you like an bat with sonar.
I see the echos and hear them holler
at you to slow down long enough
to heed their warnings against becoming just another follower
of the legacy you were born into –
the one of abuse and divorce and dying with stored up hate,
while convincing yourself the cancer and body aches are just coincidence.
Don’t mistake
your denial all the while soothing, for a path to the freedom you claim to have found and live by,
when I can see you’re so consumed by pages you refuse to dust off and read,
afraid the task will hold you down, cost you time.
But it’s refusing to sit and hold tenderly
pages that need to be seen –
you tell yourself and me too that you know the secret to getting by
higher than high –
when this is the lie that shackles you to your own dungeon,
the lowest of lows.
You stay detached and defensive;
mask it with laid back and easy going shrugs,
like you’re too cool and elusive.
Your cares quietly remain in the background unhung
until you explode them internally or towards me.
This is a dance I’ve already done.
Before you when I was married
to the glitz and the glamour;
another white man in Charlotte
carried, buried by the successful clamor
of the same sauce you’re selling –
midwestern versus the South;
either way, I can tell that bbq tastes real good in your mouth.
You’re pitching hot like a door salesman,
but I stay quiet long enough to also see the outcome.
Man, you can’t tell me it didn’t hurt on the way out.
Because the lies you feed yourself are not sustainable.
Take it from me –
I nearly died before thirty,
choking on salesman bbq drool,
using me like a tool.
Fuck trophy wife! What he wanted was a doormat for life,
the kind that won’t ask you wipe off your feet or the fog off the mirror.
It’s just the way you fixed the lighting that makes you think you see clearer
than my teary eyes worn and weary
from doing the legwork to carry
my own dusty books out the door.
Read them first, felt the horror,
before actually letting go.
This! Is what brought me nearer
to you … or the next man…
I’ll be honest, it’s not looking good for you,
if your spewing at the mouth while insisting you’re past the past isn’t a clue
that you’re actually afraid to turn the key,
unlock the deadbolt and enter,
light up your own archives
and dismantle
and unravel
your own stories. Feel between the lines,
until feeling higher than high comes from sitting in the lows,
not running away from the past you already know you can’t out-go,
outrun, outsmart or out-argue.
That’s why I’m standing here asking you one last time
to stop trying to wine and dine your way into my heart or your own ending,
and instead light the candle, hold my hand
and read me something sad, long and rough,
’til you feel that impending
release of what you’ve buried and insisted you stopped carrying
so long ago, like it’s not written all over your sweet face.
Can you really loosen your grip
if you refuse to pick up the pain in the first place?
It’s relative, so stop chasing the story
coming from out there. All the vendors
trying to get you to spend your hard earned money
on their promises of success and happiness,
when the secret they won’t tell you is written on these pages.
I’m begging, pick up your own books and learn
from your own archives stored up aching
like Aladdin’s buried treasure. Stop mistaking
rubble for your own genie
waiting eager, willing
like I am to take that magic carpet ride.
The ups and downs, lefts and right –
it’ll turn your stomach upside.
Down here with you, I’ll stay,
if you need ’til the day that I die.
Promise, I’m in no hurry.
I’ll stay as long as it takes
to get it all out in the open.
This is the freedom I’ve chosen –
to be seen fully broken
but still here,
like a dog the sounds of a higher frequency.
That’s why
in this moment all I can say is fuck your complacency!
Fuck your stories of elated recency!
The drugs you use to get high don’t fool me!
You’re not better at consistency!
Fuck, there’s just no way you’ve let it go!
Because if you had, you wouldn’t still get so hot
when something in the present makes the echos from below
impossible to claim you’re not distraught
by a past that caught up
despite the molly and lsd.
You cannot hide from
the cobwebs I see, even through your thick walls
lacing beautiful patterns to safe-keep
the archives into which I beg your permission to leap!
Parker Stillwater 