Lifetimes

Our bodies wrote this poem.
There’s more space between you and the edge of the bed than there is between our two skins.
Each time I lose my train of thought you finish the sentiment. Like a conductor guiding the weight of my freight back into its peaceful tracks.

I want to argue like my grandparents argued. Did we buy this shirt in Montreal or New York? Did you eat my last dinner roll? I washed the dishes last night but I’ll do it again today to save your beautiful hands the stress.
The remedies that love gives from growing older together.

I knew your baby faced late teens like I know the perfection of your mid-twenties.
The further I am from you the closer I am to empty.

It’s like my palms were made to caress the folds of your grandeur.
The entirety of God’s majesty exists in your creation.

I’m unafraid of this union unless our together looks like Together.

What would a day be without your sunrise ?
If the world ended tonight at least I knew heaven within my lifetime.

Subway tracks

Wisdom doesn't come cheap .
It comes from a body spent with damages.
And the deepest wounds covered with dollarama bandages.
And dreamimg of presence through painful absences.
This journey is a constant search to reactivate my happiness.
Would it be blasphemous to ask to see God's master planner?
I use to worry about what comes after but now im worried that you sit waiting with empty answers.
I'm at my calmest during disaster.
And start to drowing when it quiets down.
Wearing my black with pride now.
And learning quietness isn't always manners.
Cause some mfs actually need to be put in their place.

And misplaced words remind me I'm not as numb to this as I thought.
So I lie and go on brave, since that's a lighter cost.
And I hide it just because.
I have no space for heavier discourse.

My face a blank slate hiding the straining weight.
Throw my screams into the crashing waves.
And let a Black Bay sunset wash the pain away.
I keep conversation for the wordpress pages.
Writing saves me from decaying.
These posts are a freeze frame.
Small vibrant moments of captured mind states.

Wrote this om the subway home from work.

If?

I’m season one A-train. Running at full sprint away from everything I should be.

I’m too fragile to be a man. I grew up in a space that taught me men shouldn’t show emotion. Closed fists and razor sharp  tongues were the way problems were solved. Bricks flew through windows. I knew beatings before I knew tears. But ironically it has made me all too sensitive as a young adult. How can I always be one bad remark away from breaking down, but afraid to show emotion. I use to carry nonchalantness as frequent as I carried my school backpack. Now my tears are ‘on-go’ from any setback or step backwards. 

As a kid I defined manhood as a closeness to God. All the male role models I had were “men of God”. My grandfather and Bro. Vaughn and Brent. But the older I get the more I see that those so called Men of God only claimed that title to save themselves from troubled pasts. Their closeness to God was sometimes a facade. My closeness to God feels like a facade. How could it not be? I call out and hear no answer. I don’t want to be the kid that only calls on their Heavenly Father when they need something. But yet it seems like I’m stuck in a state of need, so under what other premise can I pray? I try to give thanks in all moments. I try to carry a Godly borrowed strength with me. Because I’m too far from God and too fragile to be a man.

If a man fails to live up to his boyhood definition of manliness does that make him not a man?