moseswilhelm

[moseswilhelm]

I just wish all people were the same, souls in parallel lines careening through particles of light without ever touching - exasperations of the evidence of being known like stripes of white on black paper shot through a pinhole.  I just wish all people were as they seem, slowly cooking meat and accidental electronic patterns of guidance throwing errors when interacting with most other things - a quick sigh in some incidental mistake of self-aggrandizing clumps of matter.  I just wish death was just as the prayers make it seem, a transcendental journey through the meaning of existence with the possibility of judgement at the end and the promise of knowledge - a scream of affirmation after a lifetime of being told no. I just wish love was the same every time, a chemical and spiritual cataclysm that is felt through the bones as suddenly as if the earth cracked open - a surprised gasp that steals the air you no longer are forced to breath. 

[moseswilhelm]

God of Hearts

I think we can all relate to an earthquake That cracks in our hearts as loudly As if it were the first time Undoing years of all the love we tried to make Being racked by the tremors of aftershock Feeling a victim of the god in your heart As it shakes the pain free Bleeding love to the beat of a metronome tock And we all, at least once Took the puddle of what we lost Swore we’d never again be soft Molded clay in the love we lost Built a new god in our heart Swore we’d never again Fall apart Some of us churn like a weather pattern Walking eco disasters of crumbling forever afters Losing blood at a terrible rate Building castles of clay, built to stay Swearing a stronger wall, for the god in us all When will it end, “I want to see the end I don’t want to break, I don’t want to bend.” Stop We are not the sum of all the parts we lost We were born wielding our hearts like gods The opposite of an earthquake isn’t silence It’s beautiful castles standing proud on mountains of clay Defying a pain that may be inevitable, but loving anyway And we all, at least once Took the puddle of what we lost Swore we’d never again be soft Molded clay in the love we lost Built a new god in our heart Swore we’d never again Fall apart Are we not terribly brave To stare down destruction in that way? Daring the inevitable seismic horror Of heartbreak and sorrow To fucking try harder next time “I’ve got more in me to kill Than you can even feel I am not the sum of all the parts I’ve lost I will wield my heart like a god And in the end, they will forget The crack you left in me, For I built a river, built a castle on the rocks And I’ll do it again better The next time you send your shocks”

[moseswilhelm]

All That is Not

You know, it was the lights. My memory is full of them, Streelights, stars, christmas decorations Raving colors in nightclubs Snow wistfully peppering industrial lamps In the earliest mornings of dawn. It was the quiet noises made loud by silence The crunching of leaves on a forest trail Post torrent drips percussing from trees Whispers darkly spoken in a room lit by screens. But all I wrote about was the dark The unknown void yawning on midnight walks Scratches in the paint, claw marks on the skin The spaces between the stars And how badly I’ve sinned. I wrote about the unending quiet Of things I wish I said The talents I never tried hard enough to master Love you might’ve shared with me Or how it feels like the room echoes rage After we tired ourselves from screaming. The worst parts of our lives, Are sometimes just the spaces between The lights and the sounds that make us happy Even though it can feel like its all just holding us together Like the dark matter of the universe, there and not there Stretching infinite until the light is insignificant But the truth is that its nothing. Just nothing. I hope I can be forgiven for trying to make it something Even if something just means it was seen for a change. For I thought if I could make the monstrous nothingness Into something you could see, it would make me whole The secrets of my universe, a cold expanse of space But I don’t think I matter because of that darkness I’m a galaxy of tiny stars and little noises and a little love A collector of the world’s little sparks of gifts. It isn’t much, but please see me among all that is not.

[moseswilhelm]

Colossus

“You’ve got to let it go” I don’t think its too much to ask For an evolution of personal task To take all my foibles and mistakes My pain, scars, trauma, and breaks And mold it into an icon, a great statue The Colossus for all to pass through Bronze and glittering with light In the sun and in the night A wonder of the world That will never grow old I never ask if my blood should ever be mortar I sling it on my skin like bricks set to be lain Why give me a mountain of mud for bones If God didn’t want me to part heaven with it? Life has been cruel and random I’m not alone in this kingdom, Infinite prayers for less blood in the soil Begging for the rain to bring meaning to toil Just pick up the tools, dig the trenches I know heaven is full of empty benches A hallway of vacant pews and silent stained glass The pain we feel here has to be the last I never ask if my blood should ever be mortar I sling it on my skin like bricks set to be lain Why give me a mountain of mud for bones If God didn’t want me to part heaven with it? If we keep drying our tears before heading into port How will we know the treachery of the water from whence we came? I’ll let it go when the ocean dries to sand And all that we have lost will make any Colossus tiny Bronze and glittering with light In the sun and in the night The things that hurt us deserve no quarter I never ask if my blood should ever be mortar Why should we beg forgiveness for our pain? I sling it on my skin like bricks set to be lain I am the Colossus of our scar’s gravestones Why give me a mountain of mud for bones If I can’t build the steps to name Him hypocrite If God didn’t want me to part heaven with it?

[moseswilhelm]

The dazzles of fireflies begin their dance At the crest of the slumbering sun For both know that neither one Can compete for whom darkness will run. It was a moment, half a second As stars begin to open their eyes And frogs crested their nightly cries I saw shooting stars, not fireflies They dove and twinkled and disappeared Stardust turned carbon turned lampyridae To me a sped up mirror of the Milky Way But fireflies are just history at play Upon my fingers I was visited by a star And my skin absorbed its light In a moment, half a second, all was bright And this tiny bug shone brighter than the night So I was too, elevated to a galaxy A lonely planet to this zipping star The personal lamplight, a human bell jar A moon who will carry this light far I had forgotten, in half a second, Stardust turned carbon turned homosapien That I was the shooting star’s reflection The firefly and I differed only in vibration.

[moseswilhelm]

Even Darkness

I lost my sense of beauty in the hunt for honesty As if describing the inertia of the stars was inadequate To capture the fluttering heartbeats of reverie.  I thought, maybe, if a flower blooms and nobody saw It should have never existed or should have been prettier As if the foundation of art itself wasn’t beautiful and raw Four eyes were better than two, and I felt alone. My audience was an applause of me and you, And I crushed myself beneath a self-imposed unknown. I still think like a simple and untalented poet Searching for liminal spaces to find forgotten noises And let myself slip into misery just to remember it. I thought that if I described the morning’s wet grass The fluttering feathers in the wind of an owl launching To make it seem like misery was beautiful in contrast, That I’d be lying. That I was covering my ugly bits. So I quit. I left the words alone. I didn’t want to lie. I wanted to be like the people who said to the world, “Some days I just wish I would die And its not okay, I am not fine But I will survive, I have survived I am alive I exist” But I was just a ghost in between shining stars Shouting misery in as many words as I can Slowly giving up on my voice traveling far I was the silence breaking the silence Pretending and lying That I was all just made of ugly parts A gagged creature of false starts Muffled screams and hacking fits Wanting to be torn down, bit by bit. The truth is in between. A delicate balance between demanding I be seen And wiggling between blades of grass Unseen in the glory of the ant’s march Beneath the moon’s boot. Some days I just wish I would die I am the wingless dragonfly And its not okay, I am not fine The rotting roots in a forest of pine But I will survive, I have survived An ashen glow of a star who just arrived I am alive I am a bird in full dive I exist Even darkness can’t bury me in silence.

[moseswilhelm]

We are told its a shame to share your name That your skin is only yours,  All those beats of your heart were the same 7 billion times your heart did its best Hundreds of healed sores They were only yours. Yet, when you said my name it became yours When I’m gone, the resonance of my name Will not be mine, it will not be alone before Being heard again and my skin is not mine It was borrowed, loved, and discovered Lent, carried, caressed, and held close.  And I held the lines in your palm as well Every life line given to me like borrowed time Your name chasing the maps of my veins  And when I gave you my heart you gave me yours We are not only our own.  When you are gone, the resonance of your name Will not be yours, anymore. It will not be alone Before being heard again. I’m grateful. I am not just my own. I am all that have loved me, no matter how precious few I am the names which passed the lips of those I loved I am not just my own, and you are not alone.  Heaven can not be up there Its here In our skin In our names In our hearts 7 billion times it beats Hundreds of healed sores I am yours.

[moseswilhelm]

My body creaks like a broken machine Inaudibly, like a whisper deep within A story my bones are telling me For no one else to see, And its a long haul to the kitchen To the dirty dishes, the vacuum The pile of laundry in the living room. The gears crank and whistle and whine What if I simply don’t make it this time My body machine, comfortably idle Telling me stories, inaudible. I can feel the rust growing in the joints I can feel all the pain sticking and poking Idleness won’t save me the mileage It won’t save my soul, it won’t fade. And its a long haul to the kitchen To the dirty dishes, the vacuum The pile of laundry in the living room.  I am a mortal mistaken machina Displacing air pressure in icognita terra A thinking, feeling, miracle of biology Expected to find joy in living’s frivolity. Can I be grateful for not belonging? Can I find joy in this terrible mistake? I’m supposed to find my soul Happiness, production, freedom Mine to make. But its a long haul to the kitchen To the dirty dishes, the cavuum The pile of laundry in the living room. You, all of you, wonderful and smooth Gifts of the earth, emotional monsoons Rains of your unintentional wonder  Seed the earth and make it splendor. I want to see this in my reflection, Not staring over the shoulder of some fleshy automaton Who can not find space to be idle And the kitchen is a long haul To the dirty dishes, the vacuum, The pile of laundry in the living room All too long a haul

[moseswilhelm]

Cold Man

[moseswilhelm]

Things I remember about you: Spinning on linoleum floors The smell of vegan cooking A gentle fear of excitement Pencil dust A room lit by hallway lights A boot about a boat Things I forgot about: Being dumped over email, about 4 times Hearing I was half of the reason you wanted to die My inferiority complex Hiding your wounds Trying to explain how you were hurting me Guilt Guilt  Guilt Guilt Panic. Being a kid and making mistakes.  Being a kid who wanted to die Things I remind myself about you: You are the entire reason I talk in so many metaphors You couldn’t have given two shits about me Regardless, you wanted to love me I abused you. You abused me. We were traumatized children You killed yourself and would have no matter what I did You made me a better person in the end, even if I could not return the favor You were the wind passing I was the leaves grasping For sunlight.

[moseswilhelm]

Today I forgot how it felt to be awake Because I spent all last week baked So I OD’d on caffeine pills on the way to work Regretting all the sleep I’ve managed to shirk In favor of drifting in and out of internet media Spending hours trying to escape the tedium In between bouts of self reflective self harm Wondering why I am here, how much is a firearm? All that “work” just to show up jittery to a job That I was plenty awake to take on But hated so viciously that I’ve had to lie And say I can only work sometimes “I’ve got something else going on” “Don’t call me, I’ll be long gone” On the days I sit quietly in a cell I made for myself I pretend I’m biding my time until I can fix myself As if I ever knew how and I’m not wildly swinging For answers and I’m so tired. It’s not working. I’m traumatized, Non-capitalized, terrified Weak, selfish, a liar, alone, pitied Aware fully that to scrutinize myself for self pity Isn’t going to help anything anyways So sadness follows through a medium I don’t understand A medium I never mastered nor fully grasped, Poetry with broken rhymes and metaphors That months later even I don’t understand. Sure, I mean yeah I know The intrinsic value of life comes from being born However, do you feel this is how it should be Or how it is? I have no value. I offer no spiritual sustenance I can not help, I can not create, I am a fleshy rock In a very poor state. Writing creates the gap between how awful I feel And who I really am. So bouncing out a stanza, to a rhythm in my head Built the wall I’m now looking in. I tittered out lies in a feat of social hyperactivity Complaining in my head of how much I despise this place Its lights, its employees, its customers, its workflow. Ego slams its fists against impulsivity “I can do it better. I have done it better.” With no intention Of figuring out how I can do it better. I have made an enclosure for myself. The exhibit of intentionally wasted potential Or perhaps not even at all, I never learned to read the plaque Nobody comes to press their face on the walls Not for longer than a minute For I’ve only got energy for just a minute After all, I’m tired after plastering these cement walls The glass was even harder It costs money to be here It cost money to make this here I’ve none left I’ve no energy to make more We can cry about the sanctity of a human life But what does it mean to you behind that glass? How many solutions will you assume I have access to? How much money is in your pocket? How much money did you leave at home? It costs money being alive. I’m broke.

[moseswilhelm]

My skin is stained with coffee while the morning birds sing, “Go outside and witness the sun shining” I wave away the thoughts with more about vitamin D How depression thrives on making you lonely My hair falls out in clumps because I’ve never had it cut I cycle between thinking I’m dying or simply anything but I look for words through a computer screen to tell me I’m wrong And I count the days before I gather the strength, it won’t be long And all the days go by, ticking carelessly away “I’d fix all this if I had a good reason to stay” Said to the birds that morning as they safely enjoy the day Don’t worry though, I’ll be weak forever anyway.

[moseswilhelm]

Is there any way to steal stars from the sky? I know they are meant to catch the wishes passing by Painting darkest nights with connect the dot hieroglyphs Enchanting our history with heaven-bound heroes and myths But I find a longing in their scattered and twinkling scene Static beauty so we can ignore all the space between Soft and endless darkness between what we so idealize I wish I could pluck them from the night just so they’d have a home In your eyes.

[moseswilhelm]

Never will I gather flowers or seeds for the earth around me I will rest in pocks of small stones and dead roots Dreaming of a future where I shake off the grave dust Without knowing my body poisons the last of a dead tree In the thick of a forest where plenty of sun shines. In fact, the world around me blossoms and dances Grass shoots peek from soft soil to taste the sun Critters dance and nest and congregate on tree vines. Life cajoles around a grave I have dug, demonstrating Exactly the expectation of my pumping blood Yet I remain frozen to the ground in defiance of the sun Deciding how to stand, when I will stand, decomposing. 

[moseswilhelm]

Who are we, just interpretations of signals Trying to find the truth, carrying the burden Of being real, while not perceiving what is real So to those of us either especially astute Or especially broken We are not real. Time pulls and pushes apart in asymmetric waves Electric signals displaying electric signals Distorted in some mental highway interchange Until all you see is fog, All we see is fog We are not real. If the soul had hands we would be grasping at clouds Swimming in an ocean’s pressure of reality Breathing in all the brine when all we hoped is for sky The surface won’t really break Swimming in shimmering light We are not real. Is it you, or me, or we when I etch whatever I can Into an ever changing and rapidly evolving soil If I am not real then who am I to say what is real Who are we, Who are you? We are not real. So blessed are we to be victim of however we were made To seek the brand new ripples of those drowning around us Watching electric signals rebound off of our skin Lightning we didn’t make A truth we cant fake We are not real. Time ticks in measured obedience, but matter betrays us All this motion, all this friction, and we can’t remember The lightning, the sound, the feeling. All of it sounds All of it just feelings All of it lightning We are not real. Our gift to ourselves could be finally to breathe in the sky Or to compress time until it stops, clear all of the fog But that isn’t real, electric signals can not be gifts Or wrapped up in a bow Carried to you gently We are not real. Our gift is to become me. I can be a gift and you could be mine Dashing ripples and pushing shapes into the mist, hands outstretched Lighting crackling between the seconds and it coils and it finds Finds you and makes you real Finds me and makes me real We are not real. All we are is light reflecting into a system designed to determine safety Pattern recognition from our parents and theirs But you are the force that proves I am real At least for now, right now In this second of electrical breach We are not real.

But you are. I am.

[moseswilhelm]

Now that you’re all gone, I’ve got a few squishy bits to air out. I don’t feel normal. Whether that means quirky or broken or eccentric depends on the day or hour or seconds between the particular anxiety of waiting on someone to respond to a long string of text. Internally, I’ve cycled between deciding if I am alien, demon, mutated evolution, a plaything of God, a challenge, or just plain old mentally ill. We can guess the healthier option, but there isn’t much use or fun using that.

Knowing you’ve lacked socialization in your youth doesn’t really mean much in trying to solve that problem in the same way that knowing you were just shot won’t help close the wound. What I am trying to say is I wasn’t socialized when I was young and that consistent distant feeling from your peers comes from that.  Hearing that you think differently, or have an interesting brain is a nice little compliment albeit a little condescending. Unfortunately, you can’t really monetize excellent explanatory metaphors without the true meat and potatoes of capitalist society: focus. Arguably, effort and hard work and all that, but the measurement of how much you’ve put into something gets a bit blurred when you’ve somehow acquired detail knowledge of the economic turmoil that initiated the Pontic Wars. Someone please give me money for that. Easily an entire week got a bit lost in trying to understand centralized economies in the classical era and not one person paid me. Outrageous. I think writing was my way of trying to accomplish that level of usefulness that we are all trying to achieve. I knew that whatever I went through as a kid helped me develop an approach to understanding things in a unique way, but this is arguably not even useful to myself let alone the world as a whole. Unfortunately this hobby/career is top tier ADD nightmares and require a level of focus and drive comparable to Stephen King just ripped on coke. I neither have the proclivity for weird child orgies and dog monsters or coke.  Well thats a lie, coke suits me just fine but my scantron has enough bubbles filled out and I’m already late turning in my “how much of a trainwreck are you” buzzfeed quiz.  I see you, red squiggly telling me that “thats” needs an apostrophe. Fuck off, this is art and I refuse to change. Hey, what do you think happens when you’re told that confidence has to come before... y’know... actually being proud of yourself? Arrogance and self-absorption, obviously. You learn very quick that empty confidence is just as meaningless as no confidence, so to kind of fake it you have to really inflate things you have no right inflating and they are inflated on a scale comparable to those around you. Which is arrogant! Its awful! People can do different things at different levels and still be valid! Confidence is valued at an extremely high level to the point where the confidence to present yourself is a bit more important than the character you are supposedly proud of... evidenced plenty by the folks in the public eye known specifically for their charisma and yet somehow failing to actually be a person worth being around. That said, it can get tangled up in actually being proud of yourself. Shocking, I know, but you can’t really lump people who have characters worth being proud of to those just decent at faking it.  Faking it. I know imposter syndrome is a thing. I am certainly not really alone in the concept of “oh god I’m faking it” so I won’t really pretend I have some magic insight on the concept (I’m lying I’m absolutely going to present myself as someone with Answers welcome to the fucking show) but when does “holding it together” and “how you present yourself” become imposter syndrome.  “Hi this is me who has to be this way in order to balance between seeming different enough to stand out but not so different that you feel disgusted at the concept of change, nice to meet you” I mean what the fuck is a person anyways. Thats not a question. Not even a rhetorical one so if you answered aloud in your head I’m sorry but my psyche is not emotionally prepared for audience participation right now so clam up. Finding yourself is always a precarious as hell phrase because that often means one of two things: 1. Learning not to care about how others feel about who you are, despite all evidence of existence point out that this is the absolute most important aspect of your life 2. Presenting the parts that you were afraid to present to people.  Look, I get it, you can’t please everyone and I’m not really here to talk about how to please anyone. In fact, I’m not even here. This is a lucid dream you’re having in your chair and shortly you’ll wake up and not remember if you were sleeping at all. Its fine, you’re fine.  You have to please someone though. I think we underestimate the value of the tutorial level of life regarding this. You are given a set amount of people who are, usually, just going to be pleased by your existence. This always sets up your expectations of how that looks, how it feels, and how important it is. I mean imagine if right now I decided to criticize the immense value society puts on children. You’d hate my fucking guts! “Look at this asshole, kids deserve to be cared for” To be clear I don’t disagree with that. I think a lot of the current “you are valid” rhetoric is based on the concept that adults deserve to be cared for as well. This sorta rounds off my point that attention and reassurance is an important part of being cared for. In my opinion, this gets overlooked very often in favor cheap performative actions like hitting a heart button and oh my god I’m like a baby boomer writing for the new york times okay hold on I promise this isn’t a cynical criticism of millennials.  People want to be heard. Importantly, people want to be understood. Spicy hot fucking take. Its a bit more than “this person knows who I am” although thats precisely how its framed. People want to be cared for, and this means knowing the... other person knows who they are caring for. Ah holy shit this is why I use metaphors.  You have a snickers bar and you are hungry. Congration, you done it. Its the middle of the day and you never had any breakfast and frankly your bank account could use a break from pleasuring Starbuck’s atm reader so you somehow found the last snickers bar in a box you bought off of impulse bought off of Amazon and immediately regretted because it was gone two days later. Or so you thought. As you threw away the cardboard you hear the tell-tale tumble of a forgotten rod of peanuts and caramel that must have gotten jammed in the back of this thing. It was, however, 7am and you had to get to work and maybe having bubbleguts while dealing with people is not your recipe for a good day so you throw it into your purse or bag or whatever the fuck and move on.  “Lunchtime” rolls around and as you do the mental gymnastics required to find the conclusion that food=energy in between bouts of fury over why your workday insists on starting at 8am and how you can’t seem to cope with falling asleep early enough for that not to matter, you remember your snickers bar. Reaching into whatever bag you put it and coming to the horrifying dread of realization that you left this bag in your car in fucking July, you find the sweet sugared respite in a corner. Squeezing it a bit just to test, you are surprised to not find it in the horrible (and yet delicious) state of melted confectionary. Your stomach grumbles a bit as you fidget with the perforated candy wrapper, vaguely thinking to yourself that it might be interesting to read the ingredients as you eat this thing like that isn’t going to fill you with inexplicable Eldritch dread. Nobody needs to know they are ingesting something that might have been made in a facility that also processes every other nut you can think of, delightfully shortened into “tree nuts”. I wonder if anyone has cross referenced all the allergen warnings to deduce which candies are made in the same factory, or if that information is just freely available. What if we kissed in the snickers production facility??? haha jk but...? Anyways, as your mind cycles through a list of stale memes you manage to unsheath this uncut chocolate delight from its wax(???) plastic prison and proceed to take your first, and arguably best, bite into this lunch.  Your teeth sink softly into it, as you would expect. In fact, expectations haven’t really filtered into your skull soup you call a brain, so all manner of things can just slip through your recognition. Not this, however. Instead, fireworks of electric signals screaming “BITTER POISON” shock your brain from its previous state of vaguely functioning. Now you truly see the color of light, feel the air cocooning your skin, the squirm of your organs in your belly. Full panic ensues. You are not human, you are animal, and you have taken in a poison thing.  You spit it out right there on your lap.  You stare at the sad and ruined chocolate mutant nestled grossly in between your legs as your brain high fives itself for saving your life before frantically scouring your subconscious for whatever Vine gives it enough dopamine to not just fucking kill yourself right here. What happened? The fugue of panic washes your perceptions with a mixture of justifications for this travesty. It probably just went bad, but that didn’t taste spoiled (you consider yourself a mild expert having scraped clean many an old collection of halloween candy collections in August the year after the fact) so maybe it melted and rehardened? Baking stuff is weird so maybe that broke down some of its components. You pick it up (holy shit that is slimy. Of course its slimy, just touch it) and its insides look fine. I mean, how often do you examine the insides of a partially chewed bite of snickers? No weird colors. The remaining chocolate lasagna brick also looks exactly what you’d thought it be.  You jokingly think to yourself that maybe you had a stroke but despite the apparent hilarity of that possibility you do the smile thing in the selfie camera of your phone. Everything seems fine, but now you’re getting mad that some turn of events has just ruined your perfectly good slab of sugar and fat that surely would have made the rest of the day bearable (and full of indigestion) Now that is a metaphor. 

[moseswilhelm]

Your hair was not as soft as I expected It was dyed a few times too many But it smelled a bit like cloves and skin And it was hard to concentrate Laid together so closely What I didn’t know is that you didn’t know That my hands were not really meant to wander That I was sad, I was afraid, and I loved you But each trail of fingertips enjoyed their time While my mind avoided what I might find I have no clue, even now, exactly what you thought. All I can guess is you bought it Whatever trick I managed to pull That what you wanted was my soul But I still felt shame for it My fingertips still found their way, And it was the best I had Even if I wasn’t proud of it. You let me inside, still a mystery But maybe all I wanted was a little company In hindsight, probably just a little intimacy I did not know then that I was angry When I should have been sad That you were there, all that I had, Did you want that side of me Or did you just want me to be happy