Author: jacobalden

necessary

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t know anyone could hear me
write a riddle
design a game
study, advance, retreat

I didn’t know I could speak
learn a language
you speak me

I’m digging it up
crack weeds at the root
be taboo, say it provocative

I’m tending to my wounds
open yours
break me apart at the seams

My guts are spilling out around you
its ok
i’m fine

give me violence, give me sex
Let me feel you

I’m silent and you’re listening
your tender fingers trace the surface of my walls
your cheek is pressing against my glass heart

I’m digging to loosen all the ground
my spade could split you in two
my sex would penetrate your heart

tend to me, hold me
please
Please

my first reader

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

your face is a familiar danger
twin
mirror of what I would not see
you frighten me (i frighten you)

you stoke a fire
in my gut
your hands
thaw my heart
your arms hold
my lifeless body

near you I feel alive for the first time
since I was killed as a child

with you I can walk into the darkness
slice through it with /
/ words, concepts, empathy, generosity
poetry as flashlight

I fumble around blindly next to you
(afraid to leave your side)

I see only my.your eyes
color
burn
energy

I feel your.my every movement
dream
touch
sound

too fast for input

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

notes morph &
fade

a thought is a poem is a memory is a frustration is a grocery is love is pain

speak to me
i need to hear you

I dreamtI could (re)solve it
running over it again to let it out of my mind
run it out of my body
dip my fingers into your brain

heart racing
anti-
cipation
in-
capacitation

my will or yours
will I live or die
and which of us decides?

spit it out!
but …
its too fast for input!

I want you
because …

meaning just moves away
(you always move away)

milk, honey
this is just to say
I didn’t know
how could you
salad
move the car

Run 4 miles
lift!
why were you so angry?

he jerked off beneath the stars
you were there too
i knew it

erase it

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

before someone sees

she’s erasing me
like a mistake
an ugly thing that shouldn’t have

no sooner do i disappear
and then she constructs a shrine
a memorial to my untimely death

remove every trace of hir
broom and dust pan
burn the poems for my pedophile
trash my phalic paintings

will you want to keep these love letters?
no.
you might wish you had
no.

sweep me up into the attic
away into the closet
where i hid from him
with my stuffed animals

stuffed animals into trash bags
they have bugs,
dirty

keep it under the bed
before it gets put into yard sales
and give aways

i cannot be erased
when i was never there to
begin with

you could find me in my writing
my drawings
hiding inside my father’s tattered clothes

craft a memory of what i could never be
you will sleep there sometimes
i never could

listen

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

Take me to a place to meditate on my pain
A place of desolation, where I can be my own alienation
Be harsh and I won’t break
Be hot and I won’t feel burned

Walk on the moon at the bottom of a dried up sea
Hot snow in an illusion of winter

Will you put your ear to the ground with me and count every footstep?
Can you still your mind amidst the chatter of the tourists who live there?

Three notes will sound out of an ocarina at an infinite distance
Take pictures at angles you cannot see
Type into the glare of the sun
Auto-correct your words into whatever

remember it

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

Children can love it shrieking,
recklessly racing up the dunes without the fear of falling
I fear children
they remind me of how her life was stolen, of her unheard cries of terror
Children make me sad
they remind me of how he never got to grow up doing the things boys do

Ignore the children
and the father’s laughter will spike a chill up the neck
a punch to the gut
the smiling family portrait will turn demonic
uncanny eyes

The sand is a pit and I’m sinking
He can soothe the anxiety of his control by making your sex
(it’s the way it’s always been)
Forget it
But I miss it

make a scene

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

Threads of the past tied a knot in my side
 afraid to weave them,
 cannot allow them them unfurl

I keep my nightmares in my pocket,
you know, the kind that go on without end
you’re never sure you are getting anywhere
you move too slowly, like you’ve been drugged
    you’re either in trouble,
     late,
    or just plain vulnerable

Mine is a crime scene
 floral wallpaper
 the smell of him in the laundry
 residue of piss blamed on former residents
 lint and hair in the bathtub drain

     I don’t want to touch it
     I want to know
     I don’t want to know
     I want to touch it

Don’t disturb the debris
 hang up the wet towel on the shower rod
 keep the fuzzy toilet seat cover neatly in place
 but you left your underwear on the floor
     sloppy

I smell 409 and antibacterial soap
 you clean that shit up
Don’t let anyone see the dirt
My body is dirty
 you clean that shit up

Hide your eyes
Hide the inside of your head

Coming here now I thought to have it out with you
 but it’s empty, just as you left me

I won’t touch it
I will go about my own business
Take a shower, run a bath
Take a shit, wash my hands
Lather, rinse, repeat

I kept me

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I lost my gender in white lies. That’s the hardest thing about who I am and what you are to me. I write with anger and gratefulness as you read my words nearby. I have been afraid you will address the affection I project onto us, that I might lose you. I will bind my tears to it, with gratefulness, open to thinking love is unknowable.

I need to be interpreted in our relationship. I remember that aspect of each letter, where the other person takes all of my heart. The times I was going through sacrifice were when I felt your most desperate moments. I could receive your presence through my own difficulties and become more thoughtful each time.

Your presence, your touch that I wanted. Everything you are. But my attraction plays outside of your perspective, predictable as non-attachment and antagonism.

What about you in this conversation? I leave so much unexplained and just try to figure out whether it can be said. I do it in action, but not giving anything through my body. I want to lead and feel your desire as if we are normal human beings.

I knew myself in you and I kept me.

inside

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I had to focus just to say
are you there?
I read dreams and visions to find my reality
become more poetically erotic
shed our skin to find clarity

I was sweating nervously in his subjectivity
What if it was something about what he did?

Safely twisted I reside inside a fantasy
but when I enter him I meet his virility
he is afraid to be seen, drunk, without will
I rape myself with my own subjectivity

Just take some notes make observations
construct a man
Let him out for a few days where he can be playful
clever

I’m in the men’s room gagging on his hard edges and my lived experience
write my own anger in his energy

I do
it is the difference between us