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A manually rupturing addendum
of fruit and caterpillars
in the upwardly mobile sword of reason;
Sword of seasons,
love gently the equivocal being
tying the mind to infinite intellect,
make them the mistake of thinking
gender contains me
the way my sack does my sex,
and mind is completely separate
from body + world
+ free will costs nothing
+ is the dirty little key
that opens every heart +
door in the universe,
which doesn't care
how many souls
live + die
or the number of teardrops
in your + mine stories,
remember we are alone
in a plane of timelessness,
only brothers, twins, two flavors
of the same self, aiming
for that one true beauty
that is a flower, a pair of lips,
a pearl opening + ending of our consciousness.
Happiness
+ meaning
with a capital
period.
It's a sign of insanity
to scratch nervously on paper,
a public pièce de résistance,
a pen moving to keep pace
with the fire in your lungs,
every corner a corpuscle of biology
in this motley-colored haven of security.
But nothing tastes as sweet
as a foot under the covers
a round set of cheeks and baubles
to keep me constant company,
the timeless conjoin of my daily ritual
an almanac of our hundreds of daily decisions,
joys in the shape of a soap mold or a cupcake,
or maybe an apologetic declaration of détente,
a dirigible hand on the knots of your back,
the first face I see, the last glimpse I get
is your peaceful visage,
and yet the shapes + colors + screams
awaken me at night + pull at my skin,
suffocating me with playful rhetoric,
a sheath of metallic footprints,
misconstrued largesse.
You can write eight hours a day
and string together a parade
of non-sequiturs.
You can listen to the depths
of a human heart + come up
with seaweed.
You can honor words like crystal,
never daring to dust the menagerie.
You can view a continent
through a black prism
+ call yourself a scientist.
You can act like it's all just a game
+ wake up screaming in terror.
You can yell 'til you're blue in the face
+ find yourself agreeing.
You can fall in love with a brain in the jar
+ discover it's a stuffed pussycat
who gives good email.
You can read a drop of poetry
+ let its bitterness flavor your dreams.
You can get drunk trying to forget yourself
when you meet him.
You can pretend there's no politics
+ bring home burning bacon.
You can disbelieve in music
+ find your heart without rhythm.
You can preach freedom
+ find yourself clinging
to the blanket of your skin
like a coward.
Omar Azam, of Chicago, is a student and teacher of transpersonal poetry. He practices an improvisational style of poetry and believes that an audience of one, preferably invisible, is quite enough.