The Importance of Knowing Who You Are: Stigmata

Who are you? 

Who are you really? 

A better question to ask yourself is, "Who am I?" 

After all, we are not automatically obliged to divulge to others who we truly are, but I think it is necessary for each of us to know who we truly are for ourselves. It is one of the most important lessons to learn in life, to discover the real you for the sake of no one else but you. You can be whoever you want in public, but you should know who the real you is - honestly, completely, and confidently - and to not be ashamed of it.

People falsely believe the self is stagnant, unchanging, one, and complete. But I think it is a sign of health to have a dynamic, flexible, fluid self, changing to each of life's silly turmoils. We should actively decide on and commit to core essentials of ethical and moral absolutes that we should attempt to abide by, to establish a foundation, unshakable and secure, but flexible, for no one else but the self. Having gelatinous keystones, for lack of a more poetic expression, provides a steady grounding and a sense of immunity from tragedy, from change, from other's cruelty.

To think, the only thing each of us has from the moment we are born to the moment we pass is ourselves, and if we can't learn to live with ourselves, life will be... unlivable. We must learn to accept the discoveries we make of ourselves, even the ones we didn't expect; to take what we've amassed and what we've lost, where we've been and where we're going, and to accept them as our own and use them to make the person we've always wanted to be. You have and always will have that power.  


Stigmata

Sip blood with sick knights
fighting for a crown;
a black jeweled ornament;
a crimson shroud.
I filed my teeth down with a spoon
and bathed my blood in a storm cloud;
washed out the needles,
and liquified the dreams;
found the dust I lost long ago.
It seems
as though
the weather in my heart is snow.
When you pull back the bow and release my vision:
Twain the jury,
kill the music,
and shoot down the pigeon.
It was a lake -
a dark lake -
I dipped my feet into
and let the tentacles drag down what I thought I knew.
Tore out each hair like a petal
and made a wish,
tied a noose out of the fibers
and with the stragglers I stitched
back together all the valentines,
made a sail to fly me back to a better time.
I walk the streets at night
screaming...
Singing songs the Devil taught me while I was sleeping.
As a child,
I made a crib out of ouija boards,
tied a string to my finger
and slit my wrists with a deck of cards.
Cleft tongue,
no eyes,
no speech,
just fucked up
and out of reach;
weighed down by gravity,
trapped on my knees
and short of breath,
I believe...
Bring on the machines -
the lights and sounds that protect me!
Candles in a dim room
casting shadows that I talk to.
Third person intuition
vague view
of fuzzy memories that appear true.
Building games with no winners.
Traversing a maze with no escape.
I raped my youth when I found out I was a sinner.
Surgeon of a masked future,
cutting up the past,
tape it back together
on a reel to be reviewed;
previewed;
I knew you -
recalled and bequeathed -
a toy chest for Death,
regressed into a chicken heart
snapping wishbones and cupping eyelashes
blowing flowers apart.
A skeleton clad boy;
a glass-wrapped McCoy;
a match in a windstorm of my own ploy.
It was a white day,
a black day,
a day of deceit.
It was the day I found the holes in my hands and feet!

Uhane

The Hawaiians have a word for soul: Uhane. It also means strong spirited and is often given as a name for girls. The human heart is pretty resilient, if you think about it. It goes through a lot - falls in love, out of love; frets; skips beats - all while providing the body with its propulsion. This precious internal combustion engine of ours is like a bridge between the material and the spiritual. There's a reason why every culture, no matter how remote, revels in the symbolism of the heart. The Greeks thought it was the seat of consciousness, a notion contemporaries reserve for the mind, while the soul has stayed firmly  housed in the heart. I'm sure ancient man was aware of the heart as an organ - surgery is nothing new.

Falling in love with someone, particularly, does something to the heart. I don't think you ever really fall out of love with them. You move on, but you hold a part of them within forever. They contribute to the overall you; you are incomplete without them, as little as you would like to admit it. I kind of envision it as a graveyard, without trying to sound too macabre. Everyone we have given our heart to is buried within us, and every new love that is lost is laid to rest. The image itself got me to thinking, "If the heart really is like a graveyard... who tends to the graves?"    

Uhane

Purging the plots marked up on this heart,
Moist soil on the shovel tip, 
I brush off my overalls as I walk across the dirt 
And flush out my fangs with a toothpick.
My footprints will be washed away
Once the angel tears come flying,
But the grass will never reach far enough to overgrow these names.  
Sarcophaguses of beloved lay just below the surface, 
Tombs and relics scattered like arrows in a manmade forest. 
My feather duster serves me well
In this paradise or private hell,
My keys have kissed each lock quite well 
And I'm waiting for bones to break me.  
Built a castle of skulls 
To sit on a throne of cartilage, 
Humming oldie tunes 
And tending to my lineage. 
Prune the arteries, 
Leech the valves with these pipe cleaners; 
My knapsack is overflowing
With the artifacts that make me keener.  
Oh, what a meandering 
Atop this sullen, sunken wreck,    
Suspended in antiquity 
With no tongue or lips to peck.  
Oh, wouldn't it be grand
To band or bouquet, 
Like a barrel of whisky 
Or a bundle of Mrs. Sam McGredy 
Just one 
Of those that have come and gone? 
A smoldering ambition.
This is the intermission,
The space between the spinal chord
And the beat you wish to listen.
Listless melodies 
Pepper scattered wreaths, 
Slight of hand, erroneous 
Bathing beneath their sheaths.  
You will come to find me napping 
With my hat tucked way down low
Over my drooping brow, 
Cradled on the bridge of my nose. 
A hammock to catch the wind at dusk, 
A windmill to blow away the dust, 
A corner for the slime and rust 
To collect until they're beauteous. 
Crouching on a willow stump, 
My rake not far from reach,    
Hands folded over, twice; 
These limestones still left to bleach.   
My eyes may be closed,
But the work is never done
Surviving and utilizing 
All the strength without the sun.
Chancre carousel cadaver, 
The maliciousness of the endeavor. 
Surgical serenity, 
Beside a wilted flower.
Plant my shovel in the grass
Propel my hovel, full and fast, 
The space is perpetual and vast 
And there is much still left here to vacate. 

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Glitter And Anthrax

Reality doesn't run on reason. The cosmos doesn't know logic - logic is manmade. Fate, irony, destiny, luck, and chance are all composed of randomness. No matter the probability with which we may determine the exact location and velocity of a particle, it is never without an air of chance. With so many independent systems with their own "order" working in tandem throughout the universe (and beyond), when they're multiplied together and taken as a whole, it all just seems like one big rigmarole with no coherence whatsoever. Yet, the interplay seems undeniable. The result, strangely legible.

The iconic question: Why do bad things happen to good people? is not easy to answer for many reasons. For one, what exactly are "bad things"? How can we be certain our notions of just and right are... just and right? Once we bring into the picture the synthetic ideals of mankind - our predisposed perceptions of what should and shouldn't be - the overarching sovereignty of the cosmos (God, if one feels so inclined,) is nullified and ungraspable. No matter how abstract or cryptic our assertions may seem or how much logic tells us things are true or valid, in reality everything in no holds barred. 

I think, for that reason, all art and expression is without restraint. 

For the universe is the grandest of all works and all works have their place within it.      

Glitter And Anthrax

Choke hold!
Fork in the road to eat my words again

(Glitter and anthrax)
Breaking down
Breaking me in (inside out)
Breaking this poisoned disposal of tissue
The reaping is feeding a purging the need
Cutting and mincing, transversal disjunction
(Anthropomorphic)

Oh, humble creatures of the night
Embrace this corpse
And make me worth fighting for
Twisting and turning
Been gobbed up inside too long
Oblong
Seeping through the cracks
The egg you cage me in is starting to cave in
And I find it hard to question why
Hard to pass the time

(Antifreeze and ice cream)
Breaking down

Breaking me in (inside out) 

Breaking this spiked incomprehensible migraine 

This tumbling illusion has grown too weak 

The floodgates are meek, imprisoning Liberty's eyes 

(Legerdemain) 

Zephyr 

Humor me a while 

Capture me a gust 

And help me to turn dust from dust 

I'm finding more than milestones 

Corner stones have been laid to waste 

I'm seeing more than fireflies tonight 

The stars are in a heap 

And it's difficult to separate the stardust 

From mine 

Flapjack

Upturn the stones I've skipped away from here 

I'm catching breaths

But never finding the words you need to hear 

Euthanized

It's kind of odd to dry my bones beside this riverbed 

Where we used to spend our time and dine in summer time at picnics 

Childhood hideaways decay while I swim my way through the milky-way

Chewing off the memories of destiny I thought I saved  

No shoebox was ever able to hold all the lies you knew 

And however many trinkets survive I doubt I'll ever know the truth 

(Cyanide and sprinkles)

Breaking down

Breaking me in (inside out) 

Breaking the portioned secrets coveted  

Wrapped in plaid and decadence 

Margarine and petroleum condense transitions of the path 

Bugaboo, bucolic crave seems locked behind a crimson door 

(Soft music plays)

Dormite
Let me treat you to a cryptex:
There's a scroll I tossed away when I withdrew my Solomon ways
Frankincense was sent astray when three wise men came to save the day
But each were blind and bleeding on the inside
Carnal knowledge was to blame
You see, the things we've come to do, and set like clockwork, have passed the tide
Daylight savings came and spent, and still we couldn't catch the ride
The rise and fall, the come and gone, the now and then are nothing new
Because everything that's happened once, we still have left to do

My Hands and The Hearts Series

 Hands really fascinate me. In fact, they have inspired a poem series. Of all the gifts of nature, of all the wonders of the body, I find our hands to be the most incredible. No mechanical device or prosthetic has ever been able to achieve the elegance and fluidity of our hands. They really are miracles. The thumb alone is an incredible invention of evolution. The separation of one bone into two and suddenly the entire course of the mammalian species is forever altered. We are here because of our hands: Hands built the world around us, built our society, built our humanity. Don't take them for granted; appreciate them! Examine them, cherish them, and respect them for their grandeur.    

My Hands 

     Arranged loosely and unclenched on the desktop in front of me, as if cradling sand, my sullied hands, curled up fragilely in an elderly claw, reveal nails that have been bitten down far too low. These sweaty palms, turned upward nakedly to my tired eyes, glisten in the lamp-light with unease. I observe the gorges and valleys that crisscross them like dried and withered riverbeds, the tips of my fingers red and tingling, cuticles gray as if stained with chalk. They are bent in heavy angles, stiff and unresponsive.

     Turning them over, I find the other side bored with tunnels, blue veins twitching under the pink skin, the tendons tightening and snapping. My crimson knuckles turn white when I squeeze them into fists and listen as the bones within ground together. I look closely at the blotches and cicatrices that mark them, the brown discoloration on my little finger from where my tissue had mutated into beauty mark. The scars twinkle as I turned my digits in the light.

I wonder what my paws will look like in twenty years or so, overgrown with advancing hair and worn, callused, resembling a log of cheese. How many lacerations would they sustain, and how many blemishes will they gain?

     Sliding the juice drenched pad across the lacquered wood of the desk, recalling the feel of it, I try to reminisce about the many things I have touched in my young life, the many things I will have touched, and try to vindicate them. I bring the tender tips up to my cracking lips and taste their saltiness, wafting the scent of a long-forgotten lover. 

     With age, like wine, they will grow wiser, and neither arthritis nor amputation could claim the experiences for their own. These two dissimilar tools that God has so graciously bequeathed upon me, that I have used so thoughtfully to shape my being, move like spiders, monotone, across the surface. However shaky and unsteady, bearing witness to them conjures the life I have commanded, and I am not disappointed or overwhelmed, content and rather blissful, remembering the warmth of the many cheeks I have caressed. 

     But what story is written on yours? Do they reflect what you expect? Or are they sickly and covetous, cradling anger instead of pride; grimy, dry, and cold? Don't overlook how they have shaped you and the power they possess. The healing and Herculean clout, bestowed with such simple innovation, such dexterity and compassion. Melodically and mechanically inclined, able and strangely natural, vaiglorious synthetics of some alien building blocks. 

     Whatever map or recipe those faceless eyes read each time a new life is conceived, it is always revised, but places in the hands the will to change completed delicacy. We each have strength in numbers - ten - so keep them clean, and remember there is always time to finish what you started.        

I've included some new photos from The Hearts Series, photographs documenting hearts found in everyday places.

You can see the complete collection of them by going to the Facebook page. Feel free to Like it while you're there! Enjoy!