poems

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

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

will

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I want to be in the autoerotic
I will not touch you in order to set off some cascade of fireworks and minefields
I will touch you slowly, gently, with love
I want to know my own skin
I will not isolate myself into fantasies
I will find pleasures I haven’t been able to access
Never again will I endure your touch
Never again will I hope that you can know what I need
Never again will I cross your lines and leave you for dead
And one day we will touch
I will know your skin with a tenderness reserved for my own
I will listen to what brings your pleasure
I will ask for what I need
Our lines will meet with trust and honesty
And the friction between us will give off sparks of life not death
We will no longer grope around half awake in the darkness
We will live and laugh in the light

sight

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

There was once a beautiful boy in here. His wrists are bound and bleeding from the rope. He’s naked and hiding in a corner underground, not quite aware of how to stand straight. The light hurts his eyes. Insects have started to eat his flesh. He’s muttering, “I will love, I will grow, I will live. I will love, I will grow, I will live.”

I am so naked.

Wake up!

Look at me goddamnit!