Querencia

In twos and threes

They arrived at their leisure,

Joining us in this smokey ring

of moldy mattresses,

bottles o’ booze

&, after a tab or two, iridescent seizures—

another weekend at the mall, outside

hidden in the trees— these

Friday afternoon rendezvous

of trailer park pixies

& dropout goblin kings, adolescent eccentrics

all fledglings in the art of fashionably dying.

Our parents were slaves t’social status & toil,

and we, undressed of our best mess,

felt we were the poetic plot twist

of Life’s farce we wished to foil—

Neurotic since the rocking cradle,

We charming bums of martyrdom

Always burning, yearning to flee

The fatal clutches of boredom

w/ our teenage hearts b’beat, beatin’in a carefree Halloween-like rage.

We gladly bathed in the river of Lethe,

longing for the warm womb plunge

of a Dionysian rebirth— a crave

t'feel again the forsaken skin of this earth,

Roots and tendrils sprouting

From toes and fingers.

One for the ground, the other for the air,

Crazed angelic eyes and leaf-ridden hair,

Pleasantly suspended in the planetary

Pulse to linger. Our imprisoned innocence

Released, erased. The flowers of the mind

T’blossom, embraced.

Fresh revelations, sensations,

a renaissance of sounds.

Metanoias where wisdom’s gardens

No longer knew bounds.

Self-scalping the ancient, gray labyrinth

like angsty electric-afro surgeons

Maddened to the allure of what fantastic

new Frankensteins we could burgeonIn our image.

O those beautiful Bohemian hemorrhages.

The iron drip. The slip

from sanctuary’s hand to the Other Side.

A reckless parricide. Childhood’s suicide.

Each one of us, hands trembling

with the bloody knife of independence,

Severing our religious voices

too long tongue-tied & whipped

To pray for an inner peace we had never recognized. 

We had to kill ourselves to feel alive.