“This poem is sort of an examination of contemporary masculinity,
exploring a conflicted desire to embrace a generation
that in the absence of positive role models
has found refuge in violence
while I found it in creativity."
I learned too early
that the circumstances of my life
were largely bullshit—
and it seasoned my reasoning
for years to come.
My mother was a monster
and my father
was a Looney Tune cartoon
paused on a sad Saturday morning,
and we just never changed the channel.
Good people were hard to come by,
especially in places like white ghetto trailer parks
in the northern shadow of Disney World,
where dreams die in turnpike retention ponds
like drunk drivers searching for eels.
Violence was everywhere,
from the Latin Kings next door
to the white supremecists down the street,
to our kitchen where my grandmother collapsed
while folding laundry at the dining table.
that the circumstances of my life
were largely bullshit—
and it seasoned my reasoning
for years to come.
My mother was a monster
and my father
was a Looney Tune cartoon
paused on a sad Saturday morning,
and we just never changed the channel.
Good people were hard to come by,
especially in places like white ghetto trailer parks
in the northern shadow of Disney World,
where dreams die in turnpike retention ponds
like drunk drivers searching for eels.
Violence was everywhere,
from the Latin Kings next door
to the white supremecists down the street,
to our kitchen where my grandmother collapsed
while folding laundry at the dining table.
Death was in the next room,
as I watched my grandmother die
of an acute heart attack
(which means she died before she hit the floor)
while doing laundry.
I watched movies and dreamed,
seamless dreams of snow and basements,
better places, happy endings, present parents,
but waking life was much more
of a poverty nightmare.
Years later, I woke up in New York City,
soaking wet from being saved along the way,
by women and words, music and food, drugs and booze,
and mistakes and regrets, love and let-downs,
all of only proving that forever is a feeling.
I was desperate for risks
now I am disparately encouraging my daughter
who is bursting with creativity
to conquer the world
without letting the landscape and the people pave the way.
I learned too late
that through sickness and hope,
fear and fun, creativity and salvation,
the beauty of sadness and the trigger of madness
are just bullshit circumstances of this little big life.