Author: jujubiest

Author, editor, artist.

Valentine’s Day

I’ve written so many love songs
For people who didn’t deserve them.
A girl who lived in Adelaide,
A boy who should have loved me more.
A girl who thought my love a burden,
A boy who hurt the things he loved.
A boy I found again too late
When there was too much damage done.

Gallons of spilled ink,
Callouses on the sides of fingers,
Forearm smudges from left-hand writing,
Pages and pages and pages and pages.
Notebooks, filled with all this love.
Laden lines I’d like to burn.
Light them up beneath the moon,
Fan the flames into a fury,
Watch them turn to smoky shadows,
Ghosts released to the pre-dawn air.

Forgiveness

You made forgiveness a luxury
I could not afford. A weakness
I could not abide in myself.
A danger to my fragile health.
I worship a vengeful god these days,
The kind that visits plagues on children
To punish their intractable parents.
The kind that understands, approves
When I pluck your eyes from their staring sockets,
This is only what you did to me,
Nothing more. It’s only fair.
Am I a monster? Probably.
But a monster that only kills to live.
The kind of sin vengeful gods forgive.

To the pleas for caution and moderation

We are being too harsh, it seems.
To extreme. Too quick
To judge;
Judge Aquilina was too mean.
What about forgiveness,
The worried men on every screen
Wring their hands and ask of us:
“When can we expect redemption?
Asking for a friend.”

Honestly?
You tell me.

What do you think is a fitting sentence
For a grown man’s dick shoved in my face
When I was barely three years old?
What is the price justice demands
For a teenage girl behind a dumpster,
Torn, unconscious, tossed like trash?

How many years will make up for it
When girls are murdered for saying no
And everyone says we’re asking for it?
What penance would you say “paid in full!” to?
What is the right amount of time?

What will it take to balance the sheets,
Wipe out the red,
Settle the score?

A hundred years for each of your victim’s tears.
More.

When do you think I’ll feel less raped?
I say let the punishment fit the crime.

If I never get to turn back the clocks,
If I live my life as another #MeToo,
If I don’t get to forget what you did,
Then neither do you. Neither do you.

I exist in a basic state of rage
Now, most days,
And I sleep the fitful,
Dreamless sleep of those
With many miles to go,
Miles and miles and
Miles to go before
We dig our heels in deep
In snow,
Or dirt,
Or desperation,
Against the future we
Are facing, not a storm,
A darkened wood,
Not a cage with bars and locks,
But, where all our promise stood,
A concrete wall, a monument,
A fifteen-story stone full-stop.

Just something for the
kids to climb until
The world runs out of time
And we lay drying in the sun.
The war is over,
But who won?

My rage, because it’s all that’s left.
My rage, because it won’t burn out.
It’s fueled like Wyatt’s fucking Torch
Misplaced within a better book.
It burns when no one’s left
To look.

Fucking Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas.
Fucking Dylan Thomas.
Who did he think he was?
Stringing words together
Into brooding surrealities,
So seductive to the ears of this naive girl
When read by the boy with the
Beautiful eyes,
Meeting hers over the musty pages,
Faux-shy smile,
Eyebrow raised in a question
Met with a single half-aborted nod.
Then, lips parting, arms reaching,
Hands touching,
Dumb kids doing quiet things Nevertheless
Not meant for libraries.

Resolve

This time last year
I told myself I was going
to finish something
do something important.
And I did,
at least one of those things,
I did.

But the world has gotten
so dark, so fraught
so unbearably ugly.
And I look back
on 365 days and think,
“what did I do to stop it?”
What could I have done?

The answer is more.
I could have done more.

So this time next year
when I look back again
on goals reached,
milestones,
memories made in spite
of the ugliness…

I want to be able to say
with absolute certainty
that there was nothing more
I could have done
than what I did.
Nothing more to give
than what I gave.

So I can walk forward
with no regrets.

And finally, everything worked out just fine!
Christmas was saved, though there wasn’t much time.
But after that night things were never the same;
Each holiday now knew the other one’s name!
And though that one Christmas things got out of hand,
I’m still rather fond of that skeleton man.
So, many years later, I thought I’d drop in!
And there was old Jack, still looking quite thin,
With four or five skeleton children at hand
Playing strange little tunes in their xylophone band.
And I asked old Jack: “Do you remember the night
When the sky was so dark, and the moon shone so bright,
When a million small children pretending to sleep
Nearly didn’t have Christmas at all, so to speak?
And would, if you could turn that mighty clock back
To that long, fateful night–now think carefully, Jack!–
Would you do the whole thing all over again,
Knowing what you know now, knowing what you knew then?”
Then he smiled, like the old Pumpkin King that I knew,
Then turned, and asked softly of me: “Wouldn’t you?”

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

‘Twas a long time ago, longer now than it seems,
In a place that perhaps you’ve seen in your dreams,
For the story that you are about to be told
Began with the holiday worlds of old.
Now, you’ve probably wondered where holidays come from.
If you haven’t, I’d say it’s time you’ve begun,
For the holidays are the result of much fuss
And hard work for the worlds that create them for us.
Well you see now, quite simply, that’s all that they do!
Making one unique holiday especially for you.
But once a calamity ever so great
Occurred when two holidays met by mistake.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)