This is how you said goodbye
The past nights words were feathered hermits that passed before your quill could grasp them and tonight is no different; you have not forgotten the taste of salt on fresh cuts the sound of secretive moans of a maiden still naked in her childhood sweater you only stopped documenting the miseries that remain faithful to their vow to build you a monastery. In your best days, you make eye contact with the world with your mouth but tonight, you are afraid you are afraid there is nothing healthy to say there has always been illness in your language but there were times when poetry was sickeningly beautiful too. So tonight, you only care to be honest the way Want only cares to be honest in front of I-wish-we-were-meant-to-be but too bad he’s no longer looking forward to touch you with his own despair and too bad “I’ll get over you soon” does not stand regal to be the beginning of a swan song.
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5 POEMS, RIGOROUS, VOLUME 2, ISSUE 410/27/2018 http://www.rigorous-mag.com/v2i4/geraldine-fernandez.html There are cracks all over the place
Canada ~ I smoke Columbus in the waiting area of your paradise, new found land lit up, I feel marooned untouchable as still-wet paint while the color of my guts begins to peel away. There is something something worse than cold revulsion in the way I watch my fate unfold in cinematic slow-mo through generic faces: strangers who fall in line to use the washroom, hookers who tirelessly play hunger games. So here goes the summary of my real, screwed-up life story (mark it on my gravestone): I came. I saw. I cracked. Philippines ~ My history is a mess. Amsterdam ~ There is cancer in each hot stick that burns between his fingers, chapped lips and I can't wait for it to climb my bones stage by stage. "Your birth-place breeds disease" I tease then watch him grimace at my spoken poetry. "It's not haiku, silly." Silence. Mexico ~ Estoy loco por ti aunt Emma, Nora, Maria... chants the thirst monster in number 9 all night long. He calls himself el conquistador, babysits every new comer converts them into addicts with his crack catechesis. I was thirteen when I traded virginity for wings, let his Aztec fingers seek El Dorado between my legs while I made love with Herb and Al. Big man baptized me "Raspberry", his gun washed me white as coke conditioned me like I were Pavlov's dog to drool, drool for god's bones. hijo de la chingada! Iran ~ Aryana, How do you run from yourself after you have chased the dragon? When pressing the self-destruct button has metamorphosed from a habit to a mandate of heaven, when the spoon won't bend to your will won't feed you reality, when day-dreams and streams of consciousness have turned into canal water - stagnant, contaminated as a needle that won't leave your veins alone... how, tell me how to escape the bowtrap I and my demons have set up? I confess, I discovered Rumi - only good thing a spoon of brown sugar ever did me: There is morning somewhere deep down in me, its warmth longs to run in my bloodstream again My friend, I wish you were here to tell me I'm beautiful when I shatter, turn light yellow a tad unhappier than hepatitis. But you are on a trip sky high, no longer chasing dragons but searching for diamonds in Lucy's hands. I guess we never really run away from addiction, only change brands swing from crack to crack hit back to back until we become all stars until our surface appears like a crackhouse full of sores, needle tracks, death-marks that give Ugly a proper name till what's left of our bodies - once powerful warships, are skeletons. Untitled (for We are an Unfinished Poem) I. Remember that bashful young Filipina who would flush at every compliment you could muster? A decade after puberty, she flares up every time you casually tell her 'how she's grown more beautiful.' How we turn ill-tempered as we age, proud of our flaws yet unhappy with whatever strength still left in us. II. Hearts are buried treasures, untouchable like lapis jewels in Tutankhamen's tomb. What are we but dimwit hunters who have no idea that our eyes hold the map; We search elsewhere, in someone else's face. III. Every night, I invite the moon to bury her scars on my skin, your passive lover that still keeps the secret scribbles of your feathered quills, fingers that learn to stop beating around the bush. Your middle digit becomes a forceful poet. IV. You speak sweet-nothings about yesterday, waste ink to write: 'past is an unforgettable beauty'. Save your breath for the future, darling, will you? Use that muse to turn your present into a finer poem. I'm tired of reading history in your lips. I am Today. V. You still love her the fool I was before she uncovered the truth of her imperfect curves uneven skin tone --- impurities you saw but never mentioned. VI. How much longer will I have to condone your fascination for a flame that burned your blues (but already gone ?) She's nothing now but clear-cut memory, only spoken in third person. I starve jealousy (refusing to be her prey) ; she will not eat me not now, not ever. VII. Our insides beg us to forget our beginning (too beautiful to get over with). Let us will emptiness to bury us in its embrace and maybe, (just maybe) we'll find the need to string new words to fill the spaces with lines no scribe ever scrawled yet or with laughter that crackles like fresh snow. VIII. Lawrence, if nothing else works... please pretend I am the same yesterday. To that Dude Whom My Poetry is Borrowed From You care about how summer gains weight every year, how June is browner, heavier but obliviously braver; we banter about how it hoards cold cuts from winter and overindulges in spring leftovers. The sun dimples into a smile, amused at our foolishness He remembers our overheard crankcase conversation, when I wondered why I can't stare him in the eye and you told me, soft and brutal all at once: "...because you're too hypnotic you seduce snakes, and what only makes the sun less susceptible of your charm is its refusal to have eye contact. ...now forget that hotshot don't make me wish I have yellow eyeballs." One of those declarations from your deranged tongue that rouse dormant volcanoes from their abysmal sleep almost always, after you speak eruption follows suit. I pick up your language without knowing it is poetry. We never talk about black holes when we're in bed I just pretend to be the moon and you, the first man to reach me. We muster hate towards cliché but in the spaces of these seismic seconds we're convinced that we are supernovae. When our heads are not clouded with passion, we criticize the moon: she is anemic her face is flawed with enlarged pores and pitted scars. Yet she continues to shine despite our destructive criticisms. We are molded after her. An amalgam of masculine syllables and feminine sneer lashes at some tear-stained, dimwit stars; we scold them for falling. Some days, I realize we are overused metaphors who love despite our distaste towards conformity. When your lips correctly spell e-t-e-r-n-i-t-y while they press polite kisses on my skin I know then, we are regular people. It's when in your peculiar way, you look at the sky as if it were a mother's womb and appreciate the beauty of its stretch marks I am more convinced, we are special. gods nod their agreement while the world rolls her eyes in disbelief. My guts said: don't write anything beautiful today * Kamatayan --- ikaw ay dumarating na tila buwanang dalaw itong buhay ay parausan tayo'y dumadaing ng paulit ulit ulit hanggang ang lalamunan ay maging banal sa pakikipag-ulayaw sa kawalan. ** Asya, you haven't shaved in months haven't had sex with a Westerner nor masturbated to your father's Kamasutra but you are you are YOU ARE utterly sexy when you're shitty like that when you're acting up like a cold cold cunt quite reminiscent of An American Prayer's track number 8 Y'all, some of us like to touch what we can't restore to life I am you are we are the deficit in A D H D we are manic depression we are necrophilia but hey hey hey mother-----, we are beautiful in the most unsettled fashion [we're the hard(core) copy of god only six days holier than Chaos] Asya, has any one of your bastard sons bothered reading my love-notes to illness? In April 2014, I wrote: Bitch, you are more than mental you have been instrumental in finding the me I can't stand most of the time but the me I wish to get to know better without addressing soliloquies and oprihories to the goddamn mirror ! Dear mirror: you break therefore you are. Translation of * "death --- you come like monthly bleeding this existence is a red-light district we moan over and over and over till our throats turn holy from making out with nothingness.” In an attempt to look for a mitigating circumstance, I find myself guilty of aggravating the same Note to being conditionally admitted: Do not mistake law school for a confession booth; the chairs are reserved for the logical, not emotional signs, your horoscope holds. The sun is a judge that does not hear; he will rule against your favor, you proud moon child, you winter flower, you walking dissenting opinion. Note to the most opinionated girl in the room: Stop raising your voice like an unlicensed firearm. Go back to reading cases where voluntary surrender is appreciated. Note to voluntary surrender: You might be the best answer to the question marks that form part of my inner dialogues, to the heavy fist beneath my chest that matches the weight of the night slowly settling on a semester's worth of paper sheet. The triple shots of espresso cannot help calm the closet which has developed a healthy pair of lungs and stealth hands. Self-care does not come cheap and I am sorry that my daily budget is reserved for a cigarette, 750mb of internet bandwidth, and an economy room overlooking a bus station bound for my province --- as if reminding me of the necessity to go home to the same place that taught me that in life, I cannot choose to vote myself out of the cold battlefront, but I sure can take a smoke break just to feel warm again. https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2018/10/24/and-we-both-know-everything-but-we-cant-learn-to-leave And this closeness
will all be gone in the morning and we are again cold the graveyard we tend in our chests will grow quieter than the footsteps of a breadwinner returning home. Still we share this moment if only for the sake of having something to write that’s bittersweet enough to mimic the mood of poetry. https://punchdrunkpress.com/2018/10/17/my-hatred-will-build-you-an-orphanage-by-geraldine-fernandez/ My hatred will build you an orphanage
i. I’ve met people whose smiles remind me of hospital beds asking me to ‘stay’ (stay here, sunshine) I’ve worn eyes that remind you of solicitation letters: father, lend me your name mother, do you have a moment? and I’ve read palms whose lines whisper death threats on a daily basis. ii. Mothers, don’t tell the girls they look pretty in sunday dress don’t waste time teaching them table manners or relating stories of the flower power tell them gender is a cold war and gods never play fair; Eve you will die from breast cancer, from blood loss, from woman abuse. iii. Infanta, I won’t forgive your rough roads for coaxing childhood to trade barefoot for war boots. I won’t forget how your air reeked of bad ratio: 11 pig pens is to 1 playground so I wasted sketchpads drawing slaughterhouses and never quite remembered to take a snapshot of the schoolyard. iv. Dear ego, your spine is not a fortress Fear knows you’re such an easy climb your womb is not a lotus pond you’ll bleed to death birthing a firstborn you’ll soon baptize son-of-a-gun and seventeen years later, he’ll write: mother, my hatred will build you an orphanage. A List Of Things That You Are Not
(That Mental Illness Makes You Think You Are) You are not the weight anyone thinks you ought to gain or lose only to gain or lose again and again. You are not your lack of appetite or your cravings. You are not the opinion of anyone who has no clue what keeps you wide awake at 4 am with your own breath suffocating you, or anyone who doesn’t care why you show up late at your own game. You are not your intrusive thoughts or pressured speech, not even your silence. You are not the mark you received from professors who have no idea what kind of super power it takes for some people to add “focus” on their reading list and get what the author means without overanalyzing and constantly fighting against the urge to jump from an apartment building or grab anything that bleeds mens rea. You are neither the awkward steps you take to dance around issues nor are you the issues the world deems irrelevant simply because they only happen in the mind. You are not any of the names Stigma likes to call you with, such as but not limited to: (1) Attention seeker; (2) Weakling; (3) Lazy piece of — ; (4) Crazy vicious b—; (5) Clingy; etc You are not other people’s expectations of you. You are not your own ambitions and your failures. You are not your failed tests, failed interviews, failed relationships, failed suicide attempts and anything the world considers the opposite of success. You are not the things you hate and reject about yourself. You are not your shame, not your shortcomings, not the scars you’ve inflicted upon yourself. You are not your paranoia. You are not your social anxiety. You are not your suicidal ideations. You are not your mood swings. You are not your overthinking. You are not your depression. You are not your diagnosis. You are not your prescriptions. You are not your loneliness. You are not your mask. You are not the villain of the piece that is your life. What you are is more than meets the eye: you are more than the parts of you that no one claps for, more than a medical abstract, more than your fixations and your passions, more than your appearance and intelligence, more than all the qualifications, strengths and weaknesses you list on your resume. You are more than your limitations. You are so so much more if you just let yourself be you, bravely. AuthorJuly 13. Crab. Moon-child. Mood a barrel of whiskey. Poet of color. Emerging voice. Blue and non-hypoallergenic as mother's laundry soap. Archives
April 2019
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