I used to believe in love never leaving,

It'd stay through the season, endure any treason, 

Persist through all reason and always be pleasing.

But love is not that, at least not always

It can be pretty yes, but brutal in all ways,

it can burn the rest of you out, like acid in your veins.

It can be a balm for some pains,

but also like salt in an unhealed wound. 

I don't know the origin of that classic idiom;

'It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all'

I am relatively sure, that its originator had not in fact loved and lost after all.

Because who would take the pain of certainty over unknowing serenity?

I would rather have a hopeful bliss of ignorance of the futures eternity. 

I wonder is their anything more hopeless than surety? 

 As a child, I would often proudly proclaim I would never smoke.

I would say "The body is a temple, and shouldn't be stained by THC and nicotine."

As though priest and shaman alike have not reverence for the sacred power of smoke stained air. 

Nowadays, I'd say the oxygen that was once sweet in my mouth has soured.

I'd say I see a little too clearly, and could use the grace of obfuscation. 

I could weep rain and craft clouds with little more than breath and intention. 

Yet the holy wind within me remains undiminished,

I can cleave it, as sharp as a knife if need be,

I smother it with lip and lung,

I shape it with tooth and tongue.

Yet it ever trembles in my chest demanding release,

Sometimes it escapes in squeaking stuttering struggle

Sometimes it seems to only return in anguish. 

But this cycle of repeated release

Vibrato born of storm shaken passion,

Could be called singing.

Or weeping.

or both. 

  To the pastors, preachers and Christians who fucked up my Christian identity 

1. God damnit, I needed that.

2. I hope that the cuss made you cringe

3. My mama did it better anyways

4. My dad told me never to get cute when someone selling you something 

5. I won't let you take it. 

6. I'm still working out how this works, where to put faith with works, helping bodies off of crosses, rolling rocks away from tombs, resurrecting every day, getting played anyway, getting payed doesn't pay and I still have things to say.

7. You made sanctuaries unsafe, altars ready to take my blood, poison community and artificial communion, I'm calling habeus Corpus Christi, show me the body of Christ , I can't hear the hymn through Caesars sound system, I drink unholy amounts of wine, I don't trust men of God, holy words hold a lot of hot air, show me some holy legs and dirty feet. Walk on my street. See how many Jesuses you meet.

8. I don't trust other people to tell me about God anymore. They don't know what she looks like.

9. I'm still worried I disappoint God most of the time. 

10. I spent four years and too much money trying to find the mustard seeds in the horse shit you handed me, left school with a story and a voice and I know of one book that holds a lot of other books that are filled with stories of people with voices who told truth when no one wanted to hear it so I guess you can call my critique a pathetic  prophetic witness.

11. Because 10 points wasn't enough to get right after the seven years you took from me.

12. Because I met more than a dozen disciples who have convinced me there is something here.

13. How dare you take that I hold most precious turn it rotten round the edges, make me wanna cut cancer crosses out of my ideology, give me a faith biopsy, find malignant mustard seeds growing in my chest and I'm to scared to pluck them cause what if nothing ever grows back?

14. Jesus forgive me for every time I skipped church on Sunday to pray with smoke signals tryna get high enough to reach heaven from my basement. 

15. I still believe in God, even if it hurts sometimes. 

16. I still freeze up when I hear worship music.

17. I've been lied to so often by people I trusted that pulpits have lost the benefit of the doubt.

18. You made me hate myself, cut out parts of my personhood, you stopped me from putting razors to my arms and took your incisions to my identity.

19. I don't know who I am without God, I don't who God is when other people are around, and I read the Holy Spirit comes when as few as two of God's followers stop to pray, and I'm no math wiz but there's got to be a reason our prayers echoed like mourners in an empty tomb.

20. I'm jealous of your zealotry, I lost that with my dignity, I never wanted to carry this much enmity, I'm all about safety. Put safeties on red letter guns, cause a man with a book of books can do terrible things with an untrained eye, which ain't the same as unstained eye. Plus I heard we all had wood in our shit anyway, but you got a couple folks who would spend everyday, checking pupils for splinters, knocking on folks doors in both summers in winters trying to sell us slivers insurance for the cost of a tiny tithe every Sunday, we'll get the log out of your eye so you can see it our way. 

21. I tutored folks in how best to really read the Bible, ask questions at every turn, when Ma talks you listen, don't get cute with salesmen, check your sources, takes some courses, hold your horses, don't let them carry you away. I told them all the things I ever parroted all the hate that I inherited so that if you came for them they could at least see you coming, get out of your way quicker than I did. 

An Honest Accounting

 Yesterday, I vaulted over mountains, skipped over rivers and found myself on the other side.

Immediately I was lost, for the horizon's framing was no longer my home.

No setting sun to flee from, no moonrise to rescue me,

All the stars were stolen, all the lights were golden, and none of them could touch me. 

I imagined myself a void, and was shocked to become empty.

With no one to avoid there was also no one to envy.

With only me myself and I, I was able to sift through the memory,

I found that the edges of that time were not held up by mountains of lies, 

but instead were bound by twin rivers of grief that streamed from my own eyes. 

Eventually my weeping cleared the scales, I adjusted the moral of my own tales.

Soaring through cycles and the ducking both the scythe and the sickle.

I imagine that is how rivers start, first as an icicle-- 

then warmed by an ever returning sun that melts ice and promises freedom.

A promise even the son can't deliver from the demons. 

Our chains are our choices, our liberation leaps from our voices.

So we must scream and make demands of not only heaven, 

but of each other. Break the chains, then break ourselves

find that the bread of the body is not indivisible 

Set hurriedly into repair but find the shattered pieces

never fit together like they did when they were unsevered.

And if all that remains is broken, 

and cannot be fixed with simple words spoken

then we have found ourselves past point of hoping.

Aspirations become delusions when untethered from the earth,

but if the torn parts within our hearts still have worth,

then maybe we can knit them together.

share my pitted mind with your broken heart

create a new kind of art.

A tapestry of of sophistry where every lie contains a truth,

a love that is reminiscent of our youth

where we could believe in things that were less than whole,

I mean after all isn't that the goal?

Find the best part of myself is inside of you,

find the strength you lost in me 

drink it down like lukewarm tea,

where the heat of fire is little more than memory. 

find some things remain bitter in spite of honey,

and some folks remain broke in spite of money,

but nobody's perfect so why bother the rejects

let people live in the imperfection of their flaws

let people be free despite the intention of laws. 

Bottoms Up

A madman inside me rages, I am so alone

The madman succeeds and so I must atone.

The child in me whimpers, he just wants to help,

the mother in me doesn't recognize the child as her whelp.

Love yourself as though you were my child

Love yourself in green and gold and good and wood and wild

Love yourself in magic spells, that maybe could be true,

love yourself in secret messages in your least favorite hue.

Love yourself in stories that you edited for fun

love yourself in broken streets that are no less fun to run. 

Love yourself with safety for you and all the other yous

love yourself like you would love you if you met you in passing

Love yourself without remorse and don't let the past sting

love yourself in letters written on someone else's behalf

Love yourself in wisdom and know you're not the chaff 

I have loved and could always love anyone this way

except of course for me myself, at least not for today

I'm seeking transcripts from a mind that wont take notes

See if we were real or what was our deal 

cause codependent's such a small word

And if it is a diagnosis, is this a life long affliction my critical addiction?

It seems my hole was never full, and yet since I left its feels more empty.

If art can only come from abundance, why does every song draw blood?

Who am I to say who is and is not a stud. or a dud. or a bud, but probably not with bubbly. 

I talk backwards to myself sometimes because my brain doesn't like doing what its told

sometimes my fingers need to grab my conscious from my soul, and smoke a bowl knock the me out of me so I can see what I could be if hated myself a little less took the hit and had a guest at my own personal me fest. Or me feast, sometimes everyone's eyes look hungry. I'm sure mine are starving. 

When I try to write prose

 I am always too long winded, every sentence is run on. Sometimes my words dont rhyme, sometimes my heart can't keep time. Sometimes I write with my breath held within me. Like I could lose the thought by breathing it out. This is a stream of consciousness that flows like a river, or rolls in like the tide, whats the worth of time and why can't I abide? Have your thoughts ever been so heavy that they could no longer be carried, that you would say to anyone "what if we married? maybe you have some space on your back for the yoke of my problems?" This is why I don't date. To quote my favorite Fiona Apple song, I thought I was a man, but I'm just a little boy. Everyone is smarter than me, everyone has twice struggle and they carry it without trouble, so I must be the troubled. Everyone else has popped their bubble, so together they might together huddle, but the inside of my thoughts smells like beer stains and dope. It smells like I lost my hope. But I do hope, and pray, every day. I send smoke signals to lovers and old friends, dont you want to see how this one ends? Sometimes I think moms are the only ones patient enough for me. Maybe something about the indescribable pain and relief of giving birth connects them to this earth. Fathers don't occur naturally, they are beings of choice, but I doubt I'll ever choose myself. I lack the wealth to care for humans how they deserve to be cared for, and so do so many, but they choose to bring that life anyway. I never want to hurt anyone, so why does my mom cry at my words, why does she always choose birds. Is it cause before me she could fly, maybe when she's alone she still can, but locked herself to three men whose feet are frozen to the ground. Who better to raise a bastard that grows like a dastardly weed. Some of the best people I know are bastards, such that the word has never been an insult. I couldn't comprehend why someone would choose not to love someone for an accident of birth, we just don't have enough time on this earth, to let the barriers we made on our own divide us. I came out to my grandmother and she asked me what bi meant, and I told her the truth and she sent me a gift of memories, her own way of telling me she sees and still believes. If magical thinking doesn't work, how is it that I've tricked me into loving myself again, or wait is that conceited, I'm sorry I thought that was what I needed, but maybe I'm the type that always needs more, an emotional whore, selling my feelings for pennies and nickels, never worried about the reaper's sickle. I'd love to be more than what I am, but want to believe that what I am is enough, I promise I'm not tripping over green stuff, unless I'm running through the woods, but I rarely run anymore, most often I walk, I've got time enough to talk, I whine enough to write, and if my meds were right I'd sleep at night, dreaming of you instead of staring at the ceiling yearning for you. I tried to count the ways in which I was right today, not correct but morally erect. If someone told me there day and had done what I had done, I'd convince them they were one of the best, so why do I feel guilty every time my body rests. How am I condemned by my own pride, yet feel as though no one's on my side. It's so much easier to hide. When you're capable of loving everyone, everyone fears what the love you offer means, is it a door into my castle, or just a peak behind the scenes. I flinch when love is offered, but ask for it all the time, I know I can't drink this away, but I'd love to try with wine.

Frozen Nights

Tonight it’s so cold that the clock has frozen over                                                                             I keep waiting for the second hand trick

My breath abated 

my brain sedated 

and yet I guess my soul is lit

Like lights left on to stave off a barely dark night

Like long trusted street lamps obscured by encroaching snow

I shut my eyes tight and try to listen the world breathe, 

and when she does my house shakes from the passage of her sigh

Flurries spin in fury but only grow colder for it, 

wasn’t air in motion supposed to be warmer

Have the physicists lied or was I simply blind 

I have on occasion wondered if I fell could a strong enough wind catch me

If I went and dived today is it my last or first dog that would fetch me

Guide me through the end of my life to whatever lies beyond

Maybe I’ll meet god, 

and if she’s disappointed in my works 

than I guess that’ll make two of us,

And maybe she’ll send me back, or maybe she won’t 

“I gave you thirty years and you’ve spent them on the phone”

My own self doubt lingers like a bruise upon a bone 

Sometimes my feet hurt just from looking down

Sometimes my back hurts looking at the weight of my own frown 

So I avoid mirrors, I’m starving myself for enlightenment I’ve already found

Everyone loves someone or something more than they love themselves

That’s not a super power it’s a sign that you’re in hell

But I’ve never met a devil who didn’t want to dance, 

Or a song that doesn’t switch if given half a chance 

Sometimes I fall asleep to words, 

some nights I need a screen,

Shower shadows on the wall so I don’t vent my spleen,

Took a pill to fall asleep but I’m awake as shadows creep

Is it possible to be broken beyond repair 

cause if so how many of us are simply cracked all the time?

I used to joke about where the sun don’t shine,

Now I wonder if the sun itself is running out of time

It’s colder every year except for when it’s hotter 

How’d you send my mom some sons 

when you knew she wanted daughters

True Colors

You once told me that you dont think in words,
you think in colors.
The concept was so alien to me,
I stopped talking for almost a full minute.
But now I am feeling in colors,
Like when I feel
Orange
Orange like leaves at the end of September
Orange like a fire down to its embers
Orange is what I'm feeling when your words get tender
Orange and nervous and excited and jumpy and scared
Orange like every caution sign that I blew past running towards you
Orange like the color of the sun rising behind me when I visit you
Orange is when my hands are sweaty and my heart is racing
Orange is when I'm excited to see you but have no idea what to say
Orange is behind every nervous twitch when I hold you, underneath every message I send you
Orange is the sound of ringing when I wait for you to pick up
Orange was on my lips the first time we kissed
Orange was in my boots telling me to run after you the last time we said good bye

Or when I feel blue
Not sad,
unlike every crappy country song,
When I've got the blues there is nothing to cry about.
For me blue is the color of your eyes,
And open skies,
And possibilities.
Blue is every reason to see you
Blue is everything that could go right
Blue when it comes to you is always bright
When I'm with you and I feel blue I feel so light
That I could drift into air
That there isn't anything we couldn't do
There is nowhere we couldn't go
There's not a word that could stop our flow
When I'm with you I get so high of forget about the low
When I'm with you the edges of the world seem to glow
Daring me to visit them and to bring you along,

You can also make me green
Not with jealously or envy but with life
The green you grow in me is like the grass the second week in July
That green is thick and strong
That green is always long,
No matter when you mow it,
And wouldn't you know it,
You make me green like summer in the middle of winter
I am a palm tree standing next to pines in December
Swearing by my scarf and mittens
Like dress code is all that is between me and survival
You make me green like a cactus in the desert
I am alive where I have no reason to be
You are oasis and jungle
You are unrepentant existence in the face of oblivion,
You plant seeds that cannot help but grow
You are a flower that flourishes in snow
You are vitality and impulsivity
When I'm with you Im all reflex and instinct
Far too busy living to waste time thinking

Our red is damned hilarious.
Our red is the same shade as our faces in the middle of laughter
Our red is sarcastic and suffers no fools
Our red is highly unconcerned with rules
Our red fills awkward silences
Our red is waiting in the wings for easy smiles
When we cry, red is there
Red waits just below the surface
Our red has poor timing at the best of times
Our red is more contagious than the common cold
Our red forgets to look outside and see that it is time for sleeping
Our red never  really sleeps
Our red sometimes moves faster than the rest of us
Leaving our mouths before we have a chance to check it
Our red speaks a language that not everyone can comprehend
Sometimes our red is secret
Sometimes our red sits at the bottom of mugs of wine
Usually our red is loud
I really like our red.

When we work, I feel purple

Purple like a bruise that's sore enough to remind me what I work for

Purple like a house in Hartford 

Purple like hurts that don't fade quickly

Purple that breeds empathy 

This shade of purple dreams of being Walker's lavender

This kind of purple is always inspired

This kind of purple will not burn out 

This kind of purple is royal,

A royal pain in the ass

of any administrator, law maker or anyone

Who thinks that justice is blind,

She is not,

Justice sees our world and weeps purple tears

And sometimes so do we.

Most often you make me feel yellow,

Yellow like the sun at high noon

Yellow like a toddlers balloon 

Yellow like a day that is coming soon.

When I'm with you,

Yellow magic markers retain their hue

Dandelions ask me to save my breath because you are a wish come true

When we come up with new ideas your yellow shines through 

You bring smiles enough for sharing

The thing you do better than everyone else is caring

And you may have to excuse me for staring

But you're bright and you've caught my eye, my ear and my heart 

And before we start

To get carried away with this part

Let me remind you 

That yellow can be brighter

That yellow can be a fighter 

That yellow is lighter

Than air

And when I'm with you I'm filled with enough yellow I could fly 

Since I met you,

I have dreamed in brighter color, 

And sometimes I start to wonder,

If I will ever understand the tie dyed kaleidoscope of colors that is you. 

You burn with fires all across the spectrum,

You smile with a rainbows brilliance,

You are orange blue green red purple yellow and more

I know I will never understand you. 

But, I have watched your colors bleed into me,

And I am better for it.

(poets note: had this one sitting in the draft folder, seems a shame to leave it unpublished, even if the initial muse has moved on)

An Old Flame in the Night

In the morning it is often winter,
though sometimes it is indeed still summer.
In the later nights as the moon climbs into the sky
to peer down at fools searching for stars,
I wonder if that means she is watching me.

So I threw a snowball at the moon,
but I threw it softly and it shattered on the ground.

Then I sent a smoke signal,
but she didn't catch the drift

So then I carried a bag with literally all of my feelings for her to her house
and there were better looking dudes than me,
and I assumed meant my dumb ass had been tricked



I returned to my hole to hide from the world,
One woman broke my heart,
Who would be interested in the shattered remains?

I forget that some women spend their whole lives cleaning up the messes of stupid young men.
I forget that often, they watch little boys age into morons,
and die old and alone with no one to argue with.



Hiding from the world will not cover up my own stupidity and shame
Shame rides my back like it has a saddle on it,
meaning I can only ever be looking down
and I'd love to be looking up for a change of pace.

I'd love a sun in the middle of the night.
But I guess that would just be a second moon.
My voice cracks, but my breath can carry a tune,

A not quite prayer, to a not quite goddess.
a dandelion in the wind, her daddy's wistful whistlin'

A mother's prayer with a wish within.


A flower so beautiful it haunted my dreams for a decade,
made me steal from gardens hoping to know the scent of spice and sugar
so I could have the words to tell her.
"Please, could I drink from your cup?
My throat is parched."

Going for Broke

My depression tastes like honey wine gone sour

My anxiety manifests and tells my hopes bonsoir

Do I yearn for a sunrise or is that just misogynoir?

Do I expect a surprise or is letting that go the real prize?

Am I one of the real guys? does she realize? Did I idealize?

I mean that a fair deal right? My shame for your eyes,

your lies for my mind, I swear to God I tried.

No one gonna see me cry, not again at least. 

I'm the dumbest fuck in the east

Leave myself for the last time so maybe I'll find peace

That's all I can do to tame the belly of my beast.

Compost, Carver and Charlottesville

They say that composting, the alchemy of turning dead plants to rich soil, came to America at Montecello.
They say that Thomas Jefferson was one of the first people in the country to use compost,
but let's be real, not once in that mans life did he personally dig into a pile of rotten vegetables to nurture the earth.
Thomas Jefferson had slaves to do it for him.
And so it would be more accurate to say that the men and women who were stolen from their homes and brought here against their will introduced compost to America.

So it makes sense that Dr. George Washington-Carver,
A man who was born into slavery,
Would be the true king of compost. 
Dr. Carver traveled across the country using plant cadavers to resurrect soil,
where cotton had left only dust.
The art of taking the old and the rotten and burying it so that new life can grow is one that I wish to grow more proficient in,
beginning with bringing every confederate statue steeped in the wrong side of history to the ground.

These rotten reminders that at one time men murdered men for the right to own people would surely decompose quickly and provide a dazzling array nutrients to any plants that managed to grow underneath the feet to those of us dancing on their shallow graves.

Then, we would move on to the non-confederate statues and memorials because believe it or not,
our history is filled with leaders who owned slaves,
denied humans the freedom about which they wrote so eloquently,
Washington, Jefferson, and others,
Men who we have deified and deemed beyond reproach will be approached and then encroached and eventually they too will lie underneath earth packed tight by dancing,

But we wont be done there.
Because even then when every symbol of hatred has been pulled from its pedestal,
We will look out upon an American landscape reduced to dust by racism,
and on that day we will remember the peanut growing scientist,
 we will follow in his footsteps through fallow lands,
and with the work of many hands,
maybe we will make America great for the very first time.

The Angled Mirror

 Every time I look at my reflection, 

I can swear the mirror's lying.

Sometimes it is the glass bent, 

making a funhouse of my smile,

Sometimes it is the way the mirror hangs,

tilted forward, so that when I look at it,

my reflection glowers down in disapproval.

On occasion the mirror is angled such,

that my reflection looks up to me.

I imagine this is how a child might see me, 

formidable, strong and tall.

If only I could see myself with my child's eyes,

If only I could see at all.

Talking

I just wanted you to know
That if ever you want to talk to me about your problems,
I'm here in whatever capacity you'd like

See my ma told me that the issue with men,
Is that we always want to fix things,
So I try not to focus on that,
Unless that's what you're looking for,
In which case I will be a rusted tool box,
And a a handful of hammered thumbs.
I will be blue prints and best laid plans,
I will be all the ambition of black coffee and early mornings,
I will be well worn work gloves, and muddy boots
I will be winters on the roof and summers in the yard
damnit I will show you that I can work hard,
As we work on repairing something.

But on the days where solutions aren't the goal,
When feelings simply need to be given a voice
Well I'm good there too.
I will be a night sky to yell into,
I will be trees waving in the wind of your voice
I will be cave where dark things that need no names can be left
I will be a well without bottom for secrets to be dropped into
I will be a back pocket that holds stuff,
Just so that your hands can clench into fists
And then open like flowers
I will be all ears and closed lips,
because you're feelings matter,
and I want to hear about them


And in those moments when you breathe hot anger
In those moments, with all of your words smoking,
When you have a mouthful of matchstick madness,
I will not be water.
I am a piss poor fire extinguisher,
When you spit sparks,
I will be gasoline and dynamite
I will be tinder and kindling
I will be a wind that whips up flames
In the face of our anger,
Problems will paint themselves in ashes
and call themselves solved.
ain't nobody trying to be in the way,
when our tempers get to flaring
when our eyes get to glaring
when our hands get to tearing
when our souls get to baring
because nobody wants to be burnt by that heat.


And on rare occasion,
When I think you're in the wrong,
I will call you on it.
I will go to the mat on behalf
of every idealistic bone in your body,
because sometimes people like us,
let our mouths run,
and sometimes passion
is just a little bit faster than compassion,
but you're usually good at that
So on the even more rare occasion,
When I am wrong,
I know you will show me how
And why
And maybe bring it up all the time
And that's fine
Because as long as we are talking,
I know that we are building something better,
as long as we are talking,
we can wear our hearts on our sleeves
we can whisper like the rustle of orange leaves
we can laugh like the kid who believes
in all the good things the world hasnt taken away yet.

To all the people I tried to love before learning to love myself.

 First of all, sorry, I'm clumsy at the best of times

and unbalanceed, more often than not

I may have fallen for you, fallen towards you

fallen on you, or even fallen in front of you

I fall down often, and land hard. 

Eventually, I stopped getting back up.

I was content to sit and lean against the legs of my betters,

for who could fall for that which has already stumbled tumbled and become broken?

Certainly not me. 

But there are places on the ground here,

 as soft as chamomile and warm with the light of an absent sun

I yearn for the early days of love, where I felt more loved than hurt

I yearn for a time when I was ready to swim with strangers and come up

gasping for air and finding none amidst my own laughter.

GOD

 Throw snowballs at the mf some times

youll never hit him

but 

you might wake him up

Jesus is at the door again.

Jesus is at the door again,

And he’s ringing on the phone.

He’s pulling on my heart strings,

Like an old dog with a bone. 

Today he says he’s hungry,

Hasn’t eaten in a week.

But there’s henny on his breath 

And his knees are looking weak. 

I don't know what I’ve got,

But I know it’s not enough,

Hope and peanut butter,

Tuna cans and other stuff.

Jesus is at the door again,

And he’s ringing on the phone.

He’s pulling on my heart strings,

And I do not like his tone

He’s indignant. 

He says I oughtta know 

How much I owe 

to the blood he spilled,

and bodies he buried, 

And resurrected 

Before he goes, he lays me low,

“Ain't you never had a debt befo’?”

Jesus is at the door again,

And he’s ringing on the phone.

She’s pulling on my heart strings,

Demanding I atone.

Today blood drips from her hands.

She’s got toilet paper bandages,

Held with rubber bands.

I didn’t see and let her wait at first,

I hope she understands.

What I could do was not enough,

But that is often how it stands.

Jesus is at the door again,

And he’s ringing on the phone.

He says “Just hang in there,

I swear you’re not alone”

Always

Always, I will love you.
In fact I will always love you more
But not just more,
I will love you more than most,
I will love you the most often,
And more often than not,
You will love me back,
Except when you hate me,
In those cases I will love you even more
than I loved you the day before,
I will love you like the moon loves the sun,
and I will love you when you run,
but I should probably walk,
and you should probably talk,
But all this is just to say,
I will never love you anything less,
than every day.

Kaepernick Wont Stand for the National Anthem, and Neither Will I

For as long as I have remembered the most difficult thing about going to sporting events, participating about sports in high school and even just listening to the Red Sox on the radio has been the Star Spangled Banner. In fact, I would say my relationship to that little piece of civil religion has followed me my whole life. When I was a very young child, I was getting ready for nap time when an announcement came over the intercom at our school saying that we should all stand for the national anthem, and I did. Then when the song ended, we were told to put our hands over our heart as the whole school did the pledge of allegiance, which I did not know, my parents had never taught me. After telling my father about this he sat me down and talked to me about what those things meant. He told me in no uncertain terms that I should not stand, nor put my hand on my heart and that I most certainly should not pledge my allegiance to a flag. He told me that he and my mother wanted our family’s allegiance to be to God, to our fellow humans and not to a force which actively warred against both. I asked him what allegiance was, and he told me that in essence my allegiance was my soul, to pledge my allegiance was to pledge how would I would spend my life, what I would support and what I would allow to give me direction. God seemed like a decent thing to give my allegiance to if for no other reason that God had never to that point told me to do anything and I am awful at following directions. So I carried on as my father had told me, not standing when we went to Wolfpack hockey games, nor at Rock Cat games, not when I was yelled at by my fourth grade teacher and physically dragged out of the classroom, not when I was sent to the principal’s office by my eighth grade social studies teacher and spent the remainder of the year sitting outside the classroom during the announcements, not when I got into an argument with my sophomore year history teacher over 1st amendment rights and was sent from the classroom yet again, not when my wrestling coach gave me extra laps and push ups for making the team look bad, not even when my baseball coach told me that if I wanted to play America’s pastime I better love America. I have been called everything from traitor to terrorist by my peers, my friends, my fellow church members, my coaches, my teachers and even my relatives. These experiences made choosing my college very easy, the college I ended up attending had sparked national controversy the year before by declaring it would no longer play the national anthem before sporting events, and for the first time I could attend soccer games without getting awkward stares and angry glares for being the only one seated while the star spangled banner was sung.


It was while studying religion at this college that i began to research civil religion and the more I learned, the more I came to understand not only my position but the position of those who had hated me, argued with me and been hurt by me for my non-compliance. In America (and in many countries) we worship our country. We lay down our lives for this country, we take lives for this country, we see our country as a light in the dark world, we believe our country is beyond reproach, everywhere around us is the message of how important our country is, how it represents freedom and justice and equality, and in that light of course I seem like a malcontent for not pledging myself to that. However the more I learned about civil religion the more I became scared of it. The yawning void between what America is, and what we are told it is, is where I have grown up, and is all I have known. I grew up in the North End of Hartford, experiencing the segregation that while not enforced by laws is none the less present. Hartford is so segregated that even though I was “as Irish as Paddy's pig” as my dad liked to say, and had the skin and complexion to match, I was frequently asked by folks in the neighborhood who didn’t know me if I was Puerto Rican. This is because a Puerto Rican person looking like me, made more sense than a white kid growing up in the North End. Everytime I hear the words “Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave,O'er the land of the free, And the home of the brave?” I cannot help but scoff because in my experience the American flag does not wave over a land that fits that description. Is this really the land of the free when we have more incarcerated citizens than China, than anyone? Are we the home of the brave when we have been cowering before narratives of hatred and racism so deep that on any given weekday around 5 PM you can watch as hundreds if not thousands of white workers flee from Hartford to return home to gated communities and suburbs? That my best friend will have people cross the street when they see him, follow him around in stores and generally fear him with no knowledge about him based on the color of his skin? That we callously accept that any male over the age of 18 in the Middle East can and will be categorized as an enemy combatant to be killed by drone attacks. We live very far from such a land.


The national anthem we know is part of our civil religion it is the hymn with which we worship the idea of our country, and the values it extols are indeed noble, however they paint an incomplete picture. The country being sung about when this song was written, did not include black and brown people amongst those who could call the nation home. In fact the only time that the song does refer to black/brown people is in the often unheard third verse: “And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, A home and a Country should leave us no more?Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave. O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” According to Jason Johnson a writer for The Root who wrote on the racism of our national anthem this past summer, the verse is about the attacking the slaves who fought on the side of the British. A couple centuries ago when this song was written, racism was being built up as a cornerstone of American culture, and the evidence is here in the lyrics, these men would not free, not in the land that is being described here.


All of this brings me to this morning, when I picked up the Hartford Courant hoping to read about the Red Sox and instead found an article by Jeff Jacobs called “Kaepernick's Act Heartfelt, But Divisive.” Kaepernick’s decision to not stand for the anthem during NFL games has created a lot of op ed sports pieces about the role of nationalism in sports and vice versa, and Jacobs claims that Kaepernick is essentially, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, that what the song symbolizes is more powerful as a unifying force, and that Kaepernick’s decision is selfish and wrong footed. Luckily, Jacobs doesn’t assume he is the be all end all of the discussion and says “Maybe I'm missing something here, but Kaepernick missed that point. He went after the American symbol. He had to know he would alienate a huge segment of our society and create an instant backlash. In my mind, he went selfish, not selfless. Hey, look, at me! I'm not standing for "The Star-Spangled Banner." Right off the bat, that will inflame millions of Americans.” You’re right Jeff, you missed something. You missed the fact that this song was written at the same time that racist systems were being created that would destroy black and brown bodies and souls for centuries to come. Far from missing the point, Kaepernick is acknowledging that the anthem describes an America that is largely unavailable to black and brown Americans. The systems that enslaved Africans hundreds of years ago are not somehow separated from the systems that are allowing police to murder and assault black and brown Americans today. The narratives that white people created and recreated to perpetuate the destruction and enslavement black people are the same ones that white people are using to fight back a movement whose only point is to simply convince the country that the lives of innocent people should matter regardless of skin color. What Kaepernick is doing is simply saying that he can no longer worship at the altar of America, not while it soaked in the blood of black and brown bodies. I understand how awful this piece will sound to folks who are patriotic, folks who have put their lives on the line for the ideals of this country, who have made it part of their identity. Folks who have incorporated patriotism into their soul, as I have with my religion. My religion is also corrupted by power and wealth, my religion also has a long and terrible legacy of violence and destruction, and yet I live and pray by the ideals of my religion, and I know people who live and pray by the ideals of America. Those ideals however, should not and cannot prevent us from criticizing the legacies of our institutions, the violence of our institutions and work at repairing them.If we cannot examine them critically how will they ever live up to our ideals? Or maybe a better question: if we cannot examine ourselves critically, examine how our own biases and prejudices have helped perpetuate the violence in our institutions, how will we ever live up to our ideals?





Jason Johnson: "Star-Spangled Bigotry: The Hidden Racist History of the National Anthem"
http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2016/07/star-spangled-bigotry-the-hidden-racist-history-of-the-national-anthem/





Jeff Jacobs: “Kaepernick's Act Heartfelt, But Divisive.”
http://www.courant.com/sports/hc-jacobs-column-0828-20160827-story.html

Icarus

Today, I heard the story of Icarus in a whole new way,

Today, his wings didn't break beneath the sun,

There was no heat melting wax, no feathers gently falling away,

There was nothing slow about the abrupt end of ascension.

This Icarus crashed against the barbed wire ceiling that hangs over this city,

his wings were torn to shreds, his fall reached a terminal velocity.

We are taught to blame Icarus,

We are taught to see Icarus as filled with braggadocio and  lacking in self control,

we refuse to see that he was only born with a buoyant soul,

Souls such as these long to scratch the sky,

To look down on the world with God at their shoulder, clouds at their toes

and heaven laid out before them.

And of course we fail them.

Barbwire ceilings do not occur naturally,

Our cities aren't meant to be inescapable, inhospitable 

they arent meant to put so many in the hospital,

in the ground,

and if you hear the faint sound,

sneakers scraping against celestial chain link,

stop for a moment and just think,

did you see him today?

did he just start to sink?

did he do a loop the loop,

start from his front stoop,

touch the sky with Kanye,

then hit the green house to hoop?

He wont get a filibuster, he's a forgone conclusion, 

and we pretend not to see his wounds and contusions,

Black's dont crack, dont bleed, dont feel pain,

will always be blamed, always be shamed 

and excuse me if this sounds like a refrain,

but if all lives matter,

why wont we talk about him?

Is it cause when Icarus has ebony wings,

that don't melt in the sun, but shine beneath the moon,

it's that much easier to close your eyes?

fall asleep as we whisper gentle lies,

it'd be harder if you could hear is brother cry,

his mother cry, my mother cried,\

I pray to God that an angels wings are made from more than wax,

That they can transcend barbed wire,

that they might carry Icarus higher,

than our world was ever going to let him fly. 

Task Manager

With the emergence of the personal computer,

many of us have forgotten our savior,

the task manager. 

Three quick buttons to open up a program,

that shows you everything your computer is doing,

the things that are responding and those that arent,

and you are given the option 

to end the tasks.

End those parts that arent working right now

End those parts so that others can still function,

It was a fairly useful thing. 

Leaps in technology mean that nowadays it is fairly rare for your page to freeze

and if it does freeze, 

Google Chrome will kindly offer to kill it for you.

The following pages are unresponsive:

The lesson today

The notes you should be taking

The test in front of you

would you like to kill these pages?

No Google I cant kill the lesson,

I cannot kill the classes I am in

I cannot kill the way the color of the sky is particularly blue today,

I cannot kill the way that tree outside looks really good for climbing

I cannot kill the red jelly bean that somehow made its way to the middle of the freaking carpet.

I mean I guess I could go pick it up. 

but that might disrupt class.

Shit class, are we still taking an exam?

Some days I wish I had a task manager.

Some days I wish I could control alter and delete my disorder,

Some days I fantasize about having a brain that isnt made from loose yarn, and bad ideas

Some days I would trade every creative bone in my body to just sit through a class.

Some days I wish my mind would calm down

Some nights I wish sleep came easily

Sounds like insomnia,

Some nights I wish I could worry about one thing and not everything,

Sounds like anxiety,

Some nights I wish I could simply sit,

Without being besieged by a thousand obligations

Sounds like OCD

Sounds like things a lot worse than ADD

The disorder we made up to excuse bad behavior

See I have been called everything from sped to stupid

And while I know next to nothing about brain chemistry

I know the inside of my own skull well enough 

to see loose wiring and insufficient insulation

And sometimes the wires connect,

and a bunch of buzzfeed articles will tell you,

that the ADD brain is uniquely creative,

Sounds almost sincere,

just like every professor who said,

You're brain isn't quite right

Have you tried adderall

Have you tried adderall 

Have you tried adderall

Fine.

I'll try it.

Throw back a little bit of self control,

Swallow small blue responsibility,

and wait...

Pages loading...

Pages loading...

The page "personality" is unresponsive,

The page "friendly" is unresponsive

The page "extrovert"is unresponsive 

Would you like to kill these pages?

Too late you already have.