fear

light

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I hold my heart in the same places
His belt strikes the narrow space between my voice and disappearing
He assures me, serious, (not yet)
Smash them under
Get caught
Control yourself
You are shaking
Are they angry feelings?

I wonder how I say nothing
I press the air out of my chest till I mumble it’s ok, don’t worry
They pressure, finger, clarify in this space that it isn’t
Why do you look so badly
It’s so fucked up here
On any given day
You are hurt
Are they sad feelings?

I use the cool concrete to firm my resolve
Stoke the wet center of my anxiety
They push their upper body and say, voice disappearing
Can you trust yourself
Come in
I want to
You are hiding
Are they fear feelings?

You want to hurt me while I’m quiet
I know what I can muster is wrong in the spaces between what is/n’t
They tell me I’m ok with that (for the future)
I’m trying with you
I start you to keep pushing
Pooling brightness
You are softening
Are they joy feelings?

harder

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

kick myself for me, brightly coming, releasing his eyes
sometimes I sit completely still
barely breathing while you start the next

Lately you’d been gone and you’d asked for a good boy. I can be asked for it.

“I think you should try harder”

I sit in your chair, refusing to pout, inserting lines between us. I decide I do.

You start in one moment not to miss me or feel better,
saying softly, as if you are me,

“We have you, whatever is left”

Your facade falls as you push your own needs, follow my hair down my face. I can be disciplined.

“Do you know what I’ve asked you for?”

You bark defensively.
You’ve been softer,
warmer with a bit in your gaze. You think I’m unruly.

I spit his domination and desire
My ears burn and pound
Wrap my body in a shield
Before he unzips his bulge

I don’t miss you
I don’t want you close
I don’t want you so warm while looking away

You get up behind me, make me walk in front of you, all hard inside
He opens his fear, standing, towering over, relentless, angry, jealous

“I…I… I t…tried my eyes, inserting them for your eyes that wander to make you look at…”

“What are you looking at?”

“No.. nothing…”

I stutter. I can obey him. He is terribly confusing, and I’d do what was never heard before. He keeps me to work on himself, but the sight of him turns me staring.

“What did you do?”

His mouth drops if I look at him. He pushed hard earlier when I hadn’t put the possibility on the table. He taught me how to be ashamed of admiration in the corners of my knees.

I want to be as you want to be, so provocative I almost lose focus
I’m not a door for you to break open
a pool for you emotionless eyes

He complies with his desire and immediately regrets it, jerking, red with shame.

“Do you need to tell me that what you did was wrong?”

You got all hard inside me and I let you
You have a way to make it about me
I am just playing along
to keep you from warning me
about looking up

I wish I had answered the voice of confusion
I wish I could be an easy friend
I wish I could feel better

I’m trying to tell you that when I obey him his eyes start to work
and it’s for my own good
only I can take it by drawing it out with his pen

afternoon

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

You should just find yourself drifting from the afternoon. I needed you. Its not me. I hear you like someone else said it. I only imagined saying it. She will frighten me again deeply.

My vision has dropped into long cries under the ground. I only imagined saying she’s sorry. I think it was fated that you would push us together, or it’s just your mouth. I stumble backward in a lie.

When I think of aggression, I mask it in my own mumbling, naked from the rest of the energy that is sweat. You say “look up here” and pull me up on her arms. You have no idea why I want to laugh quietly, nervously just before I feel a twinge of energy — that or tears.

The top of my tongue is precious on your face, close to see down into your hands. You grab your own jealousy when you look at my hips. I still have no idea how much you understand.

“Maybe she is resting on the last time you want?” You come into her breathless, wanting body.

Maybe she knows how much longer you’ve felt a deeper pain from the shape of energy that is in my sweat. Tell me if you’ve told her with your boots on her lips and my eyes. I feel your lives. I touch you. I want to be there. When she comes she’s telling of fear in the pitch of jealousy at all so soft and somewhat awkwardly, and open. She is part of him.

I see that brings tears to come back. So I do you through me.

I resist the afternoon. It’s completely absurd.

bomb

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

i see the fear in your eyes
you know i could go off
at any fucking minute

my head is filled with the knowledge
of what you cannot admit to yourself

my body is filled with the damage
of what you cannot bear within yourself

hide away
lock the door
look through me
pretend I’m not here

you can’t just place your pain in me
then send me off
and wish me well

i used to believe you
i was unlovable
a wreck
a damage
everything vile

i saw myself in your eyes
i was danger
a bomb
a shame
everything evil

fuck you
i will speak
but never against you
and never against my own heart

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

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

turning

~ jacobalden ~ 1 Comment

The air outside is vulnerable. I consume myself for wanting to turn you inside and hold you there. My throat has been contracted for signs of these things that I’ll never speak.

I wrote a poem while looking at you at a symbolic remove, intense in the damaged shreds of us. I close my focus when it narrows to find me ugly. I have the fantasy of you. You were looking at me too. I want to ask you inside. I was afraid of sleeping beside you, of right and shame. I want to ask you about sensuality. You say yes to symbolize my conscious control, but then I just want to feel taken by you.

And maybe in this place I think about, you are always talking and wrong. I don’t quite know what is what. I close up so much when I try to kiss the rules. In that place with you I block myself from thinking as a child. But I want to get lost in your mouth. I want to be close. I want to be wrong.

If you are watching you still don’t quite know how awful it is if anyone saw what I’ve thought through my eyes? I hate what I was, afraid of you. So many layers of guilt if anyone saw what he wanted. He put his mouth for a thousand lashes of me without leaving my mouth for as long as I could. Pretend like about making out. I’m repeating old lines, flicking my words into your ear. But I can’t even talk about being held.

I’m thinking about what I’ve noticed when you are inside. These things are too embarrassing to write, even while alone. My friend said that you say I could make your lips. I can love things that are too direct. What if anyone saw I want the possibility to soothe the pain.

I notice when you are on the edge over shame and I can’t say yes or no. Maybe if I thought of you, really asleep, slack jawed. It inhibits my desire. I could. Pretend like it turns you but you only want to be cool. What if I imagine conversations in my own friendly mouth. I think you were looking clever and it’s too difficult, too real.

I get caught. It so directly seems like it turns you, sitting softly in the side of guilt and shame. I’m still here, even if I thought these things I’ll never speak. I intended to be with you through that small window and needed. I know how to incite and write about how awful it is. So many layers of skin around your softness is open to my fingers.

I chose you when you caught me, but then again, you inside. I would take any of its indirectness. Comfortable. Not literal. Verbal sparring. A man who consumed himself because he wanted. He put his mouth, feeling stupid passion of skin and it suits me too. I want to say it shouldn’t. What if I think so hard to say yes, to say yes, to want to write the things that are close. I can’t because it’s with you inside. Softly in its indirectness. Comfortable. Not literal.

My friend said I was afraid to be a better writer. It’s too direct and I imagine saying it kills something. But I also hoped it could turn you inside. I can love things about being in the air outside.

I’m fine

~ jacobalden ~ Leave a comment

I’m fine but I couldn’t follow you, especially when I feel worthless. That twists your concerns. You say it wasn’t possible. I hate the part of you that thinks I could hurt. I want to disappear. But it grows when moments trap us into anger. I let my empathy hurt you? I am motivated by it? You just took the part of me that was happy and cut a hole in it. Call me if you find yourself in the reality where I am. We can laugh about all the things that are getting to our hearts.

The things I distrust are made more explicit. You don’t see me into submission, but I do. I lost the chance to bring the monsters into our inauthentic interactions. Its terrifying. You were talking about sex, so I wasn’t listening. I will hold you. But he will find you at ease and bring the kill.

I’m motivated by our friendship; when it’s cut off it’s the most important. I am motivated by ideas when I can associate all of their meanings beforehand. Its the why of it all; why you think I’m drawn to cause harm.

You said its about projection. In the subtle ways I shut you out. I enliven the muck that motivates you to cross me out. That part is not unusual for myself when I’m alone. Intuitively I won’t speak my desire; blame me if I can’t know my desire. My approach can be provocative.

I understand I have your conditional support and I’d rather pack it up and shut down. I have this funny thing. I lose trust. I feel strongly that you think you’re worthless. That you will softly project my fear of how fragile we are, what I want with you, and how trapped I am in assumptions.

Sometimes our feelings are intertwined and that’s when we are at risk of conflict. I become invested in each millimeter between us. I don’t want you. It’s not possible. It’s generative.

I blame you for being magnetic. It’s intensely physical and will take some time. Its too much and I couldn’t express my sense of it, of synchronicity and expansive love. That’s what I…just don’t call me out. Direct conversation cuts too close to my other layers. It’s not intentional that I open myself to that.

I’m ok. I can work with you.