Poor God

Poor limited God
Know all that will ever be
Doesn't have free will

Fly Into the Now

Time flows first gently, then raging
And we float in it as we can
And we try to keep our heads above water
And we peer over the banks
And we catch glimpses
Little bits and pieces of life
Bits and pieces of understanding

And if we're lucky the whorls and eddies
Bring us near enough, long enough to see
To build our own deep silence
Our own pool of understanding

And then,
Maybe,
All of the illusions drop away
And we fly into the now.

A Poem to Myself

Grief
Loss
Pain
Fear
Betrayal

This is what I was taught
This is my world, my truth

Taught no joy
Taught no compassion
No contact, no love

I feel, blindly
Through desperate landscape
Pushing through billows of pain
To save myself

I will find you
I will save you
I will give you love

Generosity

I said that I wish
I could live by creating
So she said I could

This haiku inspired by +H.N. James

I love this city

Two men, sweet and pretty
Sitting on a couch
Philz is jamming this afternoon
Raising coffee to my mouth

I notice one has painted nails
Purple and pretty green
They both have beards, those curly ones
And they cuddle, human beings

Not worrying about the people all around
No one's giving dirty looks,
It's 2014 and San Francisco
And believe me honey, we wrote the book

About accepting people just as they are
And making it safe to be queer
And I am so glad I live here instead of a place
Where people live in fear.

Yay San Francisco!

Consumed

The alcohol consumption of my father was
Not understood by my younger self
I thought his sudden anger
Due to my failings -
My inability to be what I should be
My inability to do what I should do
My inability to not suck

I didn't know what drunk was and
Truthfully he didn't show many signs
Irish descent means can drink a lot
We're proud of that.
Irish descent means high risk of alcoholism
Are we proud of that?
Think so.
Lots of drinkers in our family.

How he used to rage
It always hurt him more than me
It always hurt him more than me
Poor guy.

I felt such shame for that
Such - shame - for -that

I made my father have to beat me
I made him beat me with a belt
I made him beat my bare bottom
I made him put welts on my ass and legs
Sometimes blood.  Oops!

I was so horrible to make him go through that
I wanted to die in shame
No, really, five years old -
I already wanted to die in shame
I wanted to not exist.
Still do, I just have plenty of reasons now
Catholic boy going to hell

How could I have been so horrible as to
Put some of the stuff under the bed
When I was supposed to be cleaning my room?
I was useless and worse than useless
I was a scourge on the world.
Why did I have to be me
Why did I have to exist

Eventually the alcohol consumed
Enough that he calmed down
Turned him from violent to maudlin drunk.
Later it consumed enough that he died
Bye bye dad I hardly knew you

All these years later I
Am still being consumed.
I am still so angry at me
I am filled with rage at me
That's why I cut.

Isn't victimization lovely