The Human and Vegetable Experience

Sometimes I grasp at the fields of flowers as I run
Far and fast , I am young desperately searching for the meaning of life

Vulnerable

I can see how you could think that
But if only you knew the whats and whos that found themselves between my lips
I just want the closeness that one feels in the womb

You know there is nothing like that closeness
And this is what they call love I’ve seen it

Anyway I run trying to catch the sun but like a bridegroom it chases after the unfaithful moon
And that is religion I’ve seen it

Then after a fruitless chase I go back the way I came and from where I am there is this endless running : young, old , men and women
And this they call life I’ve seen it

-v.

I lost it.
Listening…
Careful I lost it .
To the silence:

But it wells up in me like a geyser
I am then I am not then I am again

It’s like the pictures I keep on the wall
Or the deer mounted in our living room
A deer mounted in our living room !

We’re just animals and we drive big fancy cars
It’s the hedonism
It’ll kill us all

But meet me at the diner
Remind me that our lives aren’t a sham here
Let’s talk taking the innocent victim home with us

A den of predators

But it’s a war
You know, what could I do ?
It’s a war and in war time
We well you know
It’s a war !

Me against your endless wanting wanting
What do I do
You just want everything

So lonely in this place
Where are our materialistic gods
Where are our parents
What happened to our children

Does anybody actually care
I mean it
Who actually cares?

But it must feel good in the moment
Yes it must feel like heaven
When I do my little dance

I’m your wife and that’s how you dismiss me
I’m your little love maker
I’m your last name that grew arms and legs

-v.

I feel deep down that I’m a kamikaze pilot
Or
a comet aimless and abundant in destruction
I wish the stars aligned for me
Like they do for all the strangers I’ve never been but wish I was

Oh but how they weigh in my bed
I’m the hanging man aren’t I
A fool running out of time

I hate the scabs on my knees
Can’t stand the blood in my cheeks
When I look at you smile
the compensating gap in your teeth

I should I’ve known ghosting was a graveyard
The haunting was a safeguard
Against the phantoms of my past
I should have known it wouldn’t last

I just want a sense of purpose in my life you know
A fixed point like a target I want it to be that simple

It’s grotesque how you like me
I’ll never understand it
I’m like your favourite book
Never a person always a chapter

I feel deep down this is how I am

-v.

My car is full of memories
I wish it crashed
Glass fluttering and metal crinkling
I want the endless motion to stop
I want to crash into my future self

I want to ask her is she happy
How it feels to be at the wheel
Or is it the sound of the radio

Yes it’s blocking me
Turning my questions into mantras
My accusations into convictions

I’m dormant in a body
I’m the obstinate backseat driver
Chauffeur where are we going next
Are you going to drive me off that ledge

It’s the perfect timing
I’m weak and crying and I see no light
At the end of that proverbial tunnel
What a hell of a journey lost in this labyrinth

Tell me did paradise ever look so sweet
I’ll stop hiding when you turn off the headlights
I’ll keep driving till the slippery road sends me
Right back to the start

My car is full of memories
I dream about the crash
But each time I round that curb
I see nothing but life

-v.

We are who we are
Even when we wish to be different
We lead inescapable lives
Trapped in more ways then one

We look as identical as soldiers
The funny thing is
We’re supposed to be different

I run so fast trying not to walk in your shoes
I swear I’m different maybe even kinder
I demand to be put on the sidelines

So I can breathe a little
So I can fall apart
So I can develop a fleshy heart

I’m smothered in expectations
I count this as living in your shadow
We’re always missing each other

I can tell you want the best for me
I can tell I disappoint you at every turn
Like misfire I’m the accidental bullet

Shredding through the air
It almost sounds like music
I almost land without a scratch

But your words are lethal
And I’m exposed as vulnerable as a baby
I wish you could understand this

But then again we are who we are
Cold eyes and emotionless
We are born to be a war machine

Here we are in our homes
No solace in our sleep
This our only fault: in loving we loved in measures

-v.

I don’t know the wars of womanhood
I am just a girl
I never questioned the gender politics of old
But I can tell you about the face of my mother
First it was shrouded in tears
As I left her womb
The first place where I left her behind

I called it puberty
The first time I said I hated her
I don’t know the words of womanhood
The literature and art of the Feminine Mystique
They will never intervene for or within me

I wish I knew
I wish I saw
But I am fully broken
A whole of hollow spaces
Fragmented foliage of Mother Nature
A mirage of an oasis
A breech in the creation of Eve
Eve meaning Mother of all living

Have I ever questioned my lack
When my mother combed through my hair
Unraveling the intricate coils called colonialism

Brushing and brainwashing the patriarchy
On to my skin and into my bones
Low and behold she didn’t know

When did we become islands
Separable colours and objectified Madonnas
An amalgamation of baby makers
Sole fertility goddesses

Are you not human do you not bleed
Can you not say my personal is political
My body is a Bell Hooks phenomenon
The perpetual ritual a primordial residual

The glass ceiling that shatters
Like the ashes of radical feminist premonitions
The world is not our oyster but a cosmic Omelas a room exists where injustice is rampant and I fear the child is you and the child is me

And when I unravel from the shapes of being a girl
Here is then my ode to womanhood
Bless the womb
The belly of a woman is like the garden of Eden
Where all things grow and become like the sands of the earth or as numerous as the stars in the sky

-v.

Awkward but funny
Odd but sweet
Deranged on the fringes of life’s silver linings

Kind but prey to the worldly
A wry smile and a bleak future unfolding
A neurotic anti-psychotic makes my soul glitch

Crippling anxiety (no more fondly) the anxiety
Inaugurated insomnia (yes more , more)
Fickle forensics

Take care (of who of what) the dying,dying dead
The body
Warning signs and cursed lines

But I’m the victim (you’re a shark)
I’m living proof of the danger arc
Pristine arbitrary memory

A lesser evil is still an evil within itself
Compromise I’m still good I’m still great
I’m the inner workings of Atlas in his wake

Cruel usurper I am(was) the pleasantries
Loved in the beginning
But every bubble has its pop

Crossing oceans leading revolts
A holy host of an imperial addiction
Conspire universe against me

-v.

I was always late everywhere
because I was stuck in my own world.
The best part of me hidden, shrouded in mystery

She had jarred movements jerking forward and back she never knew how to sit still
But she was lovely
Kind in unimaginable ways
She’s unhinged terribly so
Fixated on micromanaging her life

They’re crawling all over my body
Colonising me they’re using me
And I let them and I let them and I let them

It’s animosity it’s envy it’s killing me softly
Carpe diem at the graveyard
Carpe diem at the scene of the crime
Carpe diem some one cut the brakes

-v.

My favourite colour orange
Creamed and foraged
In a syrup-silken state
Carried from back to waist

Like generational wealth
You my summery visage
Are a mild fluorescent future

With your generic smile
Siamese twisted and wild
Cornered freckles in style

Chronic comical laughter
Freer then most on the isles of paradise
There is no noose on your neck

So then yes I imagine you here
Star man you’re Venus as a boy
I crave no life on Mars
If I burn from body to soul it’s because of you

-v.

It’s the beautiful things I’m sensitive about in life. It’s not curiosity, it’s the fleeting nature of it all. Living in constant uncertainty then something unsustainably beautiful takes up residence for who knows how long ,like a meteor or a supernova.

That’s how it felt like when I was singing. I wasn’t a very good singer but I had a smile as warm as Fresno, California in July to make up for it. I’d go up on stage and smile, do my little dance, I was always an entertainer.

It felt like a dream really, it was one of the reasons I got to travel Italy. Entertaining people (men) watching them light up like the 4th of July.

I thought about how easily I fell in love then with boys and places and ideas. I use to wake up with the world watching me a real Truman Show deluxe edition type of thing. But you can’t make every body happy you can’t be everything to everyone. That was the cold hard truth no matter how much I did my little dance. That messed me up a bit, turned me into a gaping hole.

I needed Tylenol , Advils all the sorts to numb the colossal pain eating me alive. It’s the pain of being actually existing in a moment, The pain I felt when my old man walked out on me.
The pain when he resurfaced like a time capsule, an open wound.
But that’s a story for another day. I was never good at coping with it in any case.

I’m not god I won’t pretend to know why life is a modern day Avernus.Except you don’t have coins for the boat man you’re stuck on the shore debating a life that has long passed away every hesitation is another wasted breath.

It’s sobering really that you can only be human for so long till you’re six feet under. Makes you go a little crazy searching for the meaning of it all. It’s tethered to the universal human need to be remembered to be a galaxy , a beacon of light burning through the ages, we want our song to be sung our words to be immortalised.

-v.