My people

You know they are your people

When they refuse to engage 

That blackened story crafted in youth

Actively carried on each morning 

Told to gather pats

You, my people, instead

Hold my head in your hands 

Collect my eyes 

Even feeble, fearful 

maintain 

You show me my brightness

Dingy reflection 

But still, light 

You will know them 

When they resist the urge to look away 

As your voice cracks

Shameful

They hold that gaze 

As long as it takes 

To rewrite the lines told 

With a bold ending worth believing in

Together

When I pull that thread as hard as I can 

Only to come undone 

My people do not wrap me up 

Sheets stay folded 

They wait

They sit with me 

All gawky 

And we laugh

Heaving laughter

We are ridiculous together

You are my people 

A tribe

Tiny gang 

And I return, kindred 

Believing each of you worth the effort 

To bare all with 

To story tell with 

To pioneer and burrow with

Here’s What Our Parents Never Taught Us, Shinji Moon

Posting this seemed important to me today, maybe because I am molting.  

The poetry of Shinji Moon is all kinds innocent while at the same time breathless... And I love that. 

Here’s What Our Parents Never Taught Us, Shinji Moon

Here's what our parents never taught us:

You will stay up on your rooftop until sunlight peels away the husk of the moon,
chain smoking cigarettes and reading Baudelaire, and
you will learn that you only ever want to fall in love with someone
who will stay up to watch the sun rise with you.

You will fall in love with train rides, and sooner or later you will
realize that nowhere seems like home anymore.

A woman will kiss you and you'll think her lips are two petals
rubbing against your mouth.

You will not tell anyone that you liked it.
It's okay.
It is beautiful to love humans in a world where love is a metaphor for lust.

You can leave if you want, with only your skin as a carry-on.

All you need is a twenty in your pocket and a bus ticket.
All you need is someone on the other end of the map, thinking about the supple
curves of your body, to guide you to a home that stretches out for miles
and miles on end.

You will lie to everyone you love.
They will love you anyways.

One day you’ll wake up and realize that you are too big for your own skin.

Molt.
Don't be afraid.

Your body is a house where the shutters blow in and out
against the windowpane.

You are a hurricane-prone area.
The glass will break through often.

But it's okay. I promise.

Remember,
a stranger once told you that the breeze
here is something worth writing poems about.

Courageously Move Towards Others

"It's this simple, we need each other. I wish I could open your eyes to the interdependent web of all existence. You're an integral part of it! We weren't meant to travel alone, and yet we do just that - we go to our separate corners and suffer in silence. We carry our burdens and wounds alone, we wrestle through our fears, hurts, insecurities and confusion on our own. I have a request that's going to require something big of you. Come out of hiding! Risk being vulnerable. Open up yourself to another human being, and show up and be this for others. Our lives are an hourglass and our days are slipping away like grains of sand. Knowing this is so, don't retreat to your corner any longer! Courageously move towards others - be there for others and let them be there for you. Be that strand in the web that makes it stronger."

- Hebrews 10:25, Religion-Free Bible

Ink In The Room

it stayed in the room 

like octopuses ink

it wouldn't let either of us 

dismiss it 

avoid it

even as it quickly disguised 

itself with autotomy

your words 

slipped

all blackish

foot in mouth 

you are always so careful with words

truth makes fools of us

both of us knew what it revealed

it made us uncomfortable 

stretching over the top

it lingered in the room 

a melanin cloud 

growing

others saw it 

not knowing  

it disoriented 

serving as shield

stinging their eyes

causing them to look away

I've done the same thing

wrapped up conversation 

to stop it from going further

made myself believe what I wanted 

distorted words to sqeeze inside my belief box 

cutting them off to fit properly 

I have made myself comfortable 

at other's expense

and now to see it 

so clearly 

in you

I look up to you