april means open

i ask of those carrying rocks up a hill-

go to the church and pretend to pray,

go to a school where whatever you say

goes through steaming elephant ear pastries, sing

a song that is dizzy with complacency for the life it has grown comfortable with,

that the song feels entitlement for,

or

indulge in the scent of blood under your fingernails (i have not the kind of history to have grown tired of it)

or sink into clothes with a fit like a shedded lizard skin.

if the world is ending, you might as well wear your comfortable clothes-

because it’s gonna be a long ride, isn’t it?

that’s what i say to the people on the plane,

but their plane of existence is merely subsistence and

they cannot hear colors, or electric wires, or caves for they have not

peered into ravines, wiggling their toes at the edge,

eager to feel the thrill of falling but halting;

killing oneself is cowardly

but killing for others is encouraged, a social donation, i

relive the feel of lotus mud in my hands. i

slather it across my face and it burns like sulfur,

this must be what it feels like to atone for the time spent stuttering-

i rip my tongue out each time i swear, and the still water of an

abandoned reflection tastes like medicine,

bitter but necessary, my

blunders and the destruction of spiders under my pointer finger,

the beatles under my boot, who am i to decree what lives and what does not?

i am not a governor. i am not rolling erratic boulders.

i am not an iron fist. i am not an electric brain. i am merely a

void

of a

person,

hoping in a time where hope does not belong that you live within the lines, inside the box, be the rabbit and not the fox for the fox has more trouble than it knows what to do with. it shakes in its sleep, and only when it’s tired it weeps, for it has nothing important enough to shed tears for other than its health.

i ask of you, on the planes,

i ask of you, under my feet,

i ask all of you, all of you who are watching the wars from your living room,

because we’re so different, because we can be different,

because a lung blackened by coal dust can never be clean again,

because of all that goes into solidifying the gray lines of a population’s morality

can never be changed

(and do not be mistaken-it does not err),

helpless to help myself,

i urge you..

to forget.