Freedom?

I am an unholy mess of unholiness
And the stink of it is overwhelming
I am whelmed overly

I want to choke on every follicle
Of your glorious mane
And every inch of your pewter frame
Inch by inch
By inch.

I want to be your colonel mustard
And you be my miss peacock
Without the pea.

You told me inaudibly and unwritten
That you’d be my orgy
An orgasmic, triumphant cacophony
Of light and wet delight

I thought to myself that
If I were a tree
I would stick you with all my branches
And soak your blood through the earth
With my roots

Call me over these electric lines
So I can feel your electric delights
Even if it’s just with my wrinkled palm
And what’s left is a flushed face

That’s gross but it’s my mess
And I can’t clean it by myself.

I want to glue your clue
With my dice and my cardboard chart
Until the light in these five candles
Is a corkboard of all that is childish and wildly radiant

The way our dreams became a reality
But only in our minds
That’s how I think of you and about you
In fictional retelling of our facts
But in verse. And not paragraphed very well

Because I don’t know how.
I don’t know how to cross these borders
With their rebel machetes
And glassy eyes
Staring at my arms deals and my
Array of purple blood diamonds

I am the god of war in our melting world
And you are my liberating force.
Here in controversy and against popular opinion
So feed me a grain of rice
Which is all my swollen belly can take right now.
And I will cry out for more
More, though its taste will kill me.

You will kill me with two grains of rice
And the blinking gaze of your carbine
But it will be a slow and swelling death
And I’ll rejoice in its beauty
As my innards burst and the hole
In my chest bleeds slowly
Because my pulse is low and slow
Like the dying dog my mom hit with her car
As I watched from the backseat

Even if its not your rifle or your well-intentioned feeding,
Its you in the backseat watching
With a morbid curiosity and a touch of sorrow
Because I have curly hair and sad eyes
As I gaze at the fender and the parts of me
That are stuck to it still.

These are my inner feelings taking shape as I breath
and watch my fingers coming together.
Over me. Over me.
I roller coaster with an early warning
Even though I don’t know what that means.

I walk through a desert of clichés,
Searching for your drink of water
And its your puddle that leads me
To the darkly paved road where your mother
Where you are driving.

I’m trying to turn this spasm in two
Something beautiful but its just not coming to me
You are, though only halfway because your mind,
It’s else where. Where else?
But maybe its you bleeding into
The puddle.
And my tire tracks over your torso
Who knows but the owl watching from the gnarled
Spiny arms of that desert tree
With its biblical shape and its biblical name.
It’s violent shape and its violent name
But the beauty that sits amidst those spines
Is a beautiful cacophony
Of feathers and soft hooting.

I wish I could take its place
With the crows and the carrion
Birds that seek out
The smell
Of decay
Maybe it could be me that eats your carcass
Instead of the opposite.
Maybe your bones in my scat
Instead of the opposite.
And I could walk away full
With satiating death
In my gut
Instead of that grain of rice

So shake your head
Until it spins around
I’ll wave my arms
Until I float away.
Either way,
We’re both still stuck here
With each other’s blood mixing with
our roots and our rain water.

Untitled

A string of lights in the sky outside
this boy's window.
Some ordered migration to heaven.
Are you waiting
like I am?
or are you already there?
If so
what becomes of me?

I wished for a light at night,
a beacon
to where you laid your head.
I wished to follow its glow
no matter how far.

Sibelius said of his sixth,
"this reminds me of the smell
of winter,
the first snow."
How it glittered and shone
and chilled his nose but
awakened something as well,
when all else slept.
Something slumbering too most of the year
but
out of hibernation
spoke beautiful notes
and the harmony of the world
would flow through his creased fingers.

I wish you to be
the smell of the first snow
to me.
That light in the sky
that purposes my wanderings.

Contemplation...

Who am I in you?
Who are you in me?
I am the seed,
you are the shell,
but we are both also the other.
I am the fruit,
you are the tree,
but we are both also the other.
I am the branches,
you are the vine,
but we are both also the other.
I am the question.
You are the answer.
But you are both in me
and I am both in you.
I am the words,
You are the whispers,
and together we are the voice.

I seek you in contemplation because I forget you elsewhere. In solitude and silence I pretend to hear you and try to speak some phrase to call your presence to me, when all I really need to do, must do, is be content in the silence because your whispers are quiet and still and spoken to my innermost parts rather than my ears. But that is where the greatest movement is, the greatest change. In my true self that only you know and I catch seldom glances of.

untitled

I touched the untouchable,
I kissed the unkissable,
and her hair swallowed the night,
the moon's light,
and shone it through her eyes,
perfect and bright,
and i watched, illuminated,
until I could no longer see
and she took my hand
and led me through life,
to peace and rest
and warmth and breath.

cold thoughts about warm dreams

I sat cold,
watching her approach with a smile
like a dreamless sleep.
Beautiful and pure.
The lightest touch on the knee
and me in my best shirt.
Her, a nativity scene
and my hibernating soul
awoke to discover its host,
merging to completion.
Solitude is a blessing
when you are not alone.
When there are two souls,
one with a darkly framed face,
soft hair begging a soft hand,
and the other waiting to discover
who he is.

What if...

"I hear the divine"
August 2004

I hear the divine.
His raspy cough.
Emphysema, leukemia, and who knows what else.
I touch the divine.
His wrinkles and stretched skin.
Oily hair.
I see the divine.
The stains on the knees of his trousers.
The big toe poking out his torn sneakers.
The lice infested hair.
I smell the divine.
Piss and wine and rotting teeth.
The perfume of countless dumpsters.
I taste the divine.
The warm saliva that seeps out the glands in my mouth.
I breathe deeply off to the side.
I swallow the lump in my throat.
Not the threat of tears but the threat of vomit.

"Life Passes"

"Life Passes"
September 2004

If you turn your head fast enough
the passing cars seem to
hold still for a moment
in suspended movement.
A boy discovers this and plays games;
traces the outlines of passing hills
with his fingertip,
left eye closed.
The world is outlines and images.
Shapes.
Movements frozen between periods
of thoughtless involvement in things not understood.
Not needing to be.
His father drives;
watches the lane dividers,
road signs, brake lights.
Life passes one mile marker at a time
and he wonders into the rearview mirror
when life stopped carrying him,
as he watches his son
squint out the window,
his finger slowly rising and falling.

Train rides....

"Trains and Memories"
March 2004

Long train rides through new countries
with rivers and fields and gothic cathedrals
I fall asleep to the low metallic rumble
and awake to a sharp hiss as we
go through a tunnel and I look up
smiling silenty at the girl I think
I now love this red haired girl
with those sharp blue beautiful eyes and
that smooth and sensitive soft white skin I
think I'm still so childish but with her
I'm so much more and feel so much
more like I'm changing but I don't know
how completely but it's good and it's permanent
her friend and mind be default is still sleeping
so we're alone in this crowded train just
staring at eachother smiling until she looks away
and I knew when I loved her
in Ireland in that Irish rain
that I thought should be green
but wasn't as I smoked alone
on a bench while she slept inside and
I wonder what will happen when we get back
and we've had this great new experience
together as I talk and try to remember
this trip with other friends a month later
in a crowded room later with pictures
and laughs and drinks and stories
and I find her and she smiles at me
trying but all I remember is that
Irish rain and how her red hair
looked wet and felt beautiful as I
brushed it back to see once again
those sharp blue eyes
and we smile at eachother
alone in this crowded train.

-Pieter

....interesting how things change so much in a year....but i guess poetry is sometimes a record of a life, the good and the bad...and that makes it beautiful.

Another poem...

My favorite season...

"She is Autumn"
August 2004

In the last days of Autumn
my heart would swell
with a song, a shape
a laugh or a dance.
In the leaves like rain
the rain like leaves
in the sky I viewed
so happily gray.
Gray with the rain that washed
away so happily the world's dirt,
the world's sweat,
the world's hurt...
About what's to come,
what's been done
and I laughed.
I sat.
I walked in the rain.
Through the woods
the gardens, the roads,
because they were beautiful
and she was and she is.
Autumn...
her kiss is the flutter of leaves.
Autumn and her sharp
crisp change.
With her coming sister
she begins the end
of a year, an age,
a life and it's song.

Not sure about this one anymore....too cheezy?

"A devouring"

Here is a poem I have been working on. I would appreciate feedback from anyone who reads it. Posting it here is a lot easier than emailing to various friends and family members.

"A Devouring"
October 2004

1.
Is there a word
in this language we share
that I could speak and express in full
my desire for you?
'Inhale' comes to mind.
For the way I want to inhale
each and every one of your exhales
simply because
there is a part of you
in each of them.
'Drink,' perhaps,
for the way I want to drink
every idea or passion of yours.
Every single thought
about life or love
or eternity.

2.
I could spend and entire day
drawing you.
Every curve and pore and hair,
and my charcoal lines
would give shape to your thighs,
your shoulders, your collarbone.
I would trace your lips to your hips
with my pencil
or my fingertips.
And if I finished the portrait
I would set it on fire
and watch your entire body,
from your toes
to the hair framing your face,
turn to ash and dust.
And I would smile because
the picture,
no matter how beautiful,
would always exist
more perfectly in my mind.

3.
There was that time
on the pier one evening,
when I almost touched your hair.
Orange light stretched our shadows,
soaked into our skin,
and I imagined
that this was how i wanted you.
Soaking into my skin.
Seeping into my pores.
I wanted every word
that poured from your throat
like crisp liquid,
and the ponderings behind them,
to pour into mine.
Into me.
Become mine and become me.

4.
My history with you
has been a history of hunger.
A desire to consume
but not destroy.
A sort of merging
or intersecting maybe.
The way I would breathe you,
The way I would paint you,
Or swallow or swim
in you or with you,
is a type of devouring.
And love, I guess,
is a devouring.

-Pieter Lars