It's raining horses.

When it rains like this
newspapers slush
into pudding on the sidewalk.
When it rains like this
I have no doubt
that you would still love me
if you let your intentions run wild
like the horses they are.

Obedience to Authority or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dissent

(this needs a LOT of edits but it might be a slam piece if I reduce it some)

They did the experiments in 1961 and again in ‘74
Every time the people decided
to let their limbs and appendages be overtaken by the machine
Fear dancing violence and risk through their fingertips.
Really now,
Listen folks,
I know I am not wearing a lab coat,
a badge & sidearm,
or a dashing broadcaster’s blazer
my teeth aren’t aligned or white
& sometimes I love the wrong ones,
girls cluttered with freckles and brush-fire eyelashes.

My uniform is unloaded,
empty of emblematic shields
empty of colorless technical certainty
When you see these outfits on the street or on TV
Your gut knows that they know more than you.
that’s been the rules since you began drinking
sugar substitutes with the glowing babysitter.
Newcaster voices soothing your teeth splitting in.

And today the miracle of modern science says
get that wisdom out
rip it from burgeoning in the back of our jaw
you listen because you suspect the headaches aren’t quite wisdom
& hey, you’d do anything to make the pressure go away.

But they’ve been stuffing violence and our trust under their lab coats
beneath those shiny seals of JUSTICE
An like they’ve so graciously been taught
these uniform wearer will run from responsibility even after they have been hooked/cuaght by the truth
they will point wildly,
above their own head and shout
“I was only doing what i was told was right.”

Teenage religion lets their other hand (the one that isn’t pointing to god’s breast)
cut bruises into the souls of all they deem
unseemly though their godspectales
IN Michigan you are allowed to bully as hard as you want
as long as you say it was your religion that told you so.
Fear dancing violence and risk through their fingertips.

I am a tool for His work.
I think when they say him it’s not just god
They mean the proverbial
Man
Could it be true?
Does god live in our worst overarching cultural notions?

Last thursday our senior citizens got peppersprayed in the streets,
tonight one victim of that same seal of justice violence
lost her baby because of the toxins and the kicks to her belly.
At UC Davis this week
the officers pointed their canisters downward
sprayed fire into the eyes of citizens.

“It’s just the job.”
Their service, used as a tool for silence
Violent compliance tactics are necessary for public safety
they point above their heads, at the rules.
Obedient to authority.
Most unable to tell
we are STILL in the throws of that social experiement

So listen up folks
listen to my words and not my uniform
Being concerned about the rules
is the opposite of being concerned about your fellow human:
in 1961 65% of us are willing to follow instructions at the painful and potentially lethal cost of other
Being concerned about the rules is being concerned about yourself
and your place in society
being concerned about the rules is about self preservation
we stop living and start merely surviving
we begin stuffing our neighbors, their grandmothers, their unborn children and their hopes under the violence of the lab coat

Authority channels through our bodies
dancing risk and violence in our fingertips
and we then become terrified of our own agency.

Our limbs become echoes of the of the heierachry.
So please. Listen.
Question authority,
and laking that please
please
at least
question your obedience to it.

Your Voice, My Name, Love Letters

Your fingers find music in my ribcage
like a child meeting their very first piano
words bounce like quarters off my sternum
coinslot sighs caught in the latticework of lungs,

You say my name like rosebushes  
climbing, 

ambitious past their trellis.

Your voice is a train whistle in foreign city
Your voice is a fever comprised of equal parts mathematics, alchemy, and hearbreak
Your voice is a helicopter heartbeat 

all four parts conjoin a centrifuge of THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP
Your voice is cedar burning thin and clear.


Yesterday in the shower 

when you asked
how I’d feel if you took my name
Your voice hit my bones like a tuning fork

my body became water over riverbones.

You say my name like rosebushes
Long-stemmed words exit out the throat
Ten letters running skinny-legged in your signature.
Take it.
My grandmother told me
the root word of our name means.
Home
And I want your voice.

You say my name like doorknobs and evergiving hinges
Take my name
open all of my syllables
on dotted lines and after each expectant X
Our matched signatures will be rosebushes burning.

This is not a poem!

I am participating in Nanowrimo and making my first attempt at noveling since I was 15. Post here have been less frequent leading up to this and will remain sparse during the remainder of this month. I am still writing poems, but they have less time to be sculpted and honed for such vicious bloggery as this.