Souvenir/To Remember

Je me souviens innocence, but not what it feels like anymore.
Just that first french kiss, enough to do my childhood in.

Tu te souviens buying your first bra.
Unsure of whether to wear it or not.
Confused about the clasp and all its pregnant meaning.

Il se souvient collecting kisses blown from his mother.
Storing them in mason jars covered in stickers.

Elle se souvient picking watermelon from her daddy's garden.
Rolling them inside when they weighed more than her.

Nous nous souvenons keeping secrets from our loved ones.
Waiting for God to punish us.
Living with the guilt that followed.

Vous vous souvenez a time when the appendix was not just vestigial.
Remember a time when you did more than med school.

Ils se souviennent the night they met.
On a segregated 8th grade dance floor.
Their cheeks red from all that not asking.

Confusion leads to negative thoughts,
and yet my heart will never stray,
many battles I have fought,
to live with you in this day.

My mind continues to wonder,
conjugating a mess inside,
causes actions of blunder,
wishing that I would soon die.

My heart begins to decipher,
asking "what's truly going on?"
am I really that crazy?
why am I in the wrong?

How don't you understand me?
it's simpler than you think,
when will I be free?
where's the connection, the link?

Your confusion frustrates me,
have you even tried?
I just want to be understood,
I don't want to hide.

I am over this "happiness is a mindset"-"find a love that makes you forget you were ever depressed"-"medication changes your personality"-"just think happy thoughts"-"have you tried yoga?" *******.
Nowadays, everyone has self diagnosed depression- and won't shut up about it.
And now when I say "I've had manic-depression and was diagnosed with it when I was 9." what most people think I mean was "I need attention, and I have to be like everybody else."- tumblr is my life- *******.
Happiness is a mindset that I was never wired to have, and I am not in control of changing the programming from the inside. I cannot forget that I was ever depressed, when I have known depression since I took my first breath of fresh air out of the womb- as if it's woven into the very fabric of my skin- and I know my skin about as well as I know myself and I've been stuck with both my entire life- an invisible twin that I never ******* asked for. Sure, medication changes my personality-. It makes me function like a normal human being, instead of one that wants to swallow all of those pills and stop breathing- for no reason other than a lack of the same chemicals you can find in that pill that I take into my mouth and swallow every day as if it is my soul that I am swallowing, and not a chalky, white tablet. I cannot think happy thoughts when that it a language that I do not speak and no matter how I have tried to learn, I just can't seem to get the grammatical structure correct- don't even get me started about conjugating verbs because my depression prevents me from doing a ******* thing anyways. I cannot just do some ******* yoga, because all that does is make my body stronger- it cannot alter and rewire my brain to suddenly do something it's never done, and I cannot begin to tell you all of the ways my therapist and I have tried to figure out a way to wave a magical ******* wand and suddenly I'm cured, and how my therapist definitely is not a ******* fairy, and my psychiatrist is really just my potions master, how I've been on **** near every kind of pill, how those pills have kept me alive, how if I miss even one dose, suddenly I imagine how jumping off of a building is the exact way that I want to end this agony- but with no reason to jump, nothing pushing me. Except maybe the fact that having manic depression, gives me more depression- like a never ending plant that just is.. always in ******* season, and boy do I have some ******* allergies.
I cannot begin to tell you how it felt to be 9 years old when my father sat me down and asked me point blank "Honey- you look sad, all the time. Why are you sad?" and bursting into tears like a water fountain bursting a pipe and saying "Daddy, I don't know. I just am. I always am."

in spanish we were
conjugating verbs-
hablar=halbo
(if you want it to
mean 'I talk')
hablas if you
want it to mean
He/She/It talks.
and so on.

by the third infinitve,
my mind completely
d     r     i f     t   e           d
by then.

at that time,
i thought of your eyes
and how they light
up the room.
i thought of your smile,
and how you make
me swoon.
i thought of
the words youve
said and
how many countless
times ive fell
for you.

and yet,
i come running back.
it seems like its the
only thing i
know how to
do.

I walk through a valley of discontent.
You walk a road paved in gold and silver,
conjugating words to say but let slip nothing you meant.
My road is filled with demons that make titans quiver.
Your's is nothing more than trees trapped in a gilded age,
laid out to subdue the weak of mind and heart
You blindly walk as if entranced by the sage.
You taste the fruit but it is **** ,
you touch flower to nose but smell absence,
you gaze upon the sun but your eyes do not burn.
My road smells of blood, sweat and devotion such a sweet fragrance.
And if our roads are ever to intertwine, stop and listen to the world turn.
Only then will you see this road for what it is truly,
so wise up and smell the roses, or the weight of deceit you'll feel heavily

While you're romanticizing the setting sun,
And conjugating all the figures of speech
Such a metaphorical red orb produces,
Allow your eyes to wander over
To the duck,
Waddling westward.

Observe his tail feathers.
Notice how preened and coiffed they are,
With a tinge of midas gold.
See how the breeze gently whips
The wispy wafting plumes,
Swaying right to left,
Exposing its avian chute.

Look,
All you who gaze upon the re-minted
El Presidente,
Donaldo, Don Come Mierda,
Who does indeed have the uncanny resemblance of
The East End of a Duck Walking West.

The morning woke
The world woke
The sun woke
He, she, they
We all woke
Conjugating the morning
Even the shapeshifters woke
Are we all not shapeshifters?
In the legacy of time
Spiraling ever faster
Destinations unknown
Extinction or resurrection
No one knew
Maybe a prescient few
They weren’t saying

I remember mama
Those were the days
Do you remember mama
The days before
Gloves and masks and social distancing
A coronation of germs
Belied a nation of fears
Staying at home
Masking the tears

Do not come near
Printed on the masked faces
A grocery cart
Wiped clean of degradation
Marking the space
Keeping us
Seemingly safe
An aisle of suspicion
Grabbing a tissue
To weep
Or
Wipe away yesterday’s
Issue
The goofy man
Standing at the gate
With newfound authority
Barking out orders
The new rules of late
Exchanging amused glances
With the shopper behind me
Has it come down to this
Somethings amiss.

The kind got kinder
The mean got meaner

Do you remember, mama?
Those were the days
How I wish I could say
good old days

Every generation
Had its trials and tribulations
A fight for liberation
From all the masks
That shaped  
Inspiration.

I didn’t understand yours
Do you understand mine?

I’m staying at home, Mama
It’s where you wanted me to be
To allay all the fears
You never discussed with me.

Are we all not shapeshifters
Of the third kind?
Masking the wounds
Of another time?
Looking for liberation
In all the wrong places
Where all you had to do
Was look inside of you
If you dared

I remember Mama
And I think I understand  
Now.

Wittgenstein's ladder wavered in the wind,
as he set out to scale the great garden wall
of language. His ladder, hand crafted for many
years in Vienna and Cambridge, came up short.
He could not climb the moss-dappled wall --
his intellectual paramour since
he started building a new metaphysic of the word,
with his Tractatus.

Suddenly, he hit a stalemate. Not able to scoot over
the wall, he washed his hands of trying to analyze the
black hole of predicates, conjugating verbs and slippery
allusions ******* up each particle of proper speech.
He splashed his face in mystic water. then offered
a gnomic pronouncement over his failure. A type of
recipe for missing the mark:

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent.

A proposition of the limits of language; it turns out we
cannot say everything about everything, after all. So we
must embrace silence in its coarse cloak of humility.
We must stare down our limits.

Jacques Derrida thinks we must write what cannot be
said on the other side of our mystic sputtering.
The written word has an immediate, imperative tone
of authority, he implies, an authority that renders
silence a respectful remnant of our former backward ways.

But silence butts up against the scruffy gray wall
of meaning. And echoes off it precisely as what
has been said. Pointing by writing opens up another
avenue of speech. Writing speech only codifies it
as a once living thing. You must read the written
text then still point to be understood.

As Wittgenstein knew, silence proves less reductive;
writing simply cripples the living word.