Lust & Detriment
a few poems - a new book
I’ve been working on a full collection. I’m not sure when it’ll get released, but i’m thinking sometime in 2023. I usually have a narrative I work through on my poetry books, but I can’t say I have one that’s cohesive enough to follow. But that’s kind of how life has been lately. A lack of cohesion. A constant barrage of shit to do and no time to think and connect. I guess chaos can be a narrative in itself. My brain hasn’t been focused lately. It’s like a conspiracy chart, lines connecting to dots that don’t really have connections but still trying to keep it all together.
I just finished Aaron Smith’s book, The Book of Daniel, and it’s a chaotic mess of queer rage. I love it, and recommend it to anyone, especially queer poets needing something on their to read list.
I’m traveling soon. For the furries, I’ll be in Chicago for MFF next weekend. I work as a dealer for Furry Daki at cons so I can always be found in the dealer’s room.
I’m thrilled to share that shortly after, I’ll be going to Japan with my partner. Because of the pandemic we never were able to take our honeymoon, and now we are. I’m so excited. I don’t know an ounce of Japanese, but I’m studying (whether I retain it is another matter).
Along with this post, I’m sharing a few poems from the upcoming book along with the cover. Enjoy!
somewhere between a whore & demisexual i drove an hour for a hookup that flaked the moment i arrived an hour is a short distance in houston, i sometimes wonder what happened to him, but traffic allows for the smallest thoughts to emerge my first hook up was in the woods out in the country of alvin we hid the car before diving naked into a row of trees he wanted another round after losing the glow of swallowing a load we talk scarcely i picked another guy up in my car we fucked in the dungeon beneath my home then shared the awkward ride to his apartment he said he was hungry after eating so much ass & i thought of what i would make for dinner he stopped talking to me after i quit vaping --- cherry blossoms & suicide i stole that line from halloween ends it was the only edgy line worth taking & theft is a crime that ain't beneath me laurie strode really tried to sell it speaking between the two factions of evil but all it told me was that it's easy to sell bullshit to anyone who'll listen people tell me i'm dark enough to get picked up by ice when i was eighteen i sold bootleg dvds at a flea market off the interstate in a town south of houston i was cheap, paying tuition because all that was offered to me was lifelong debt & unreachable payments the palm reader in the booth next to me said i should go into business he was picked up by ice the next day i was named after my father because anything else would sound too ethnic i would never grow into the man they dreamt i should become instead i grew into a genderless queer stripped an absent father from my body & plummeted hard into poetry they still don't know i'm no longer a man or that i have never felt like a man or that i never knew what the word man meant when i could not apply it to my body secrets grow like cherry blossoms loud & colorful & hard to ignore even when the family bubble is too thick to burst -- i am a bull learning how to sit with my anger heavy metal taught me to be comfortable in rage that the seeds are not the problem it's how you toss destruction from your body some days i want to break plates over my skull and watch glass fall around me but there is dam i've built to keep all the dishes in my sink safe & though it's tough to keep the bricks from crumbling it starts to ease the second the guitars rage from my speakers a singer's growling helps move adrenaline stuck in my blood helps distance myself from the punching bag my fists want me to become helps me relearn how to pray to st. anger even though his record sucked it gave me horns & threw me into the pit to use them --- & the preachers are all preparing for war the pastor talks about putting on the armor of god she says, strip desire from your bodies & give yourself to the only blood that can save you it is our protection the queer community talks about arming ourselves after 5 died in a shooting at club q 6 years after the pulse nightclub shooting what peace do we have when god sends his soldiers to burn our shelters we do not wear the same armor only pieces of flesh from those fallen before us that becomes our rope binding us together because the only ones who can protect us are ourselves my friends pass information through chats & tweets how to own a gun how to stay alert self-defense pepper spray vs tasers if you can't own a gun pick up a first aid kit we are only mice to the pastors but even fear can make a mouse resourceful