Never say to reverse me, just sitting there kicking it in the mirror, ‘Your eyebrows are fucking swords, mocking mawkishness; but they make panties do the Harlem Shake, boxer briefs murmur minor moans in the spaces between hips. It’s beauty. You got some, yo.’ No big head here. Not some model-man, will never be Marc Jacobs‘ muse or even his man-meat for the night. Could lie to myself, sometimes. Know we don’t have to make truth out of all the ways we self-fellate. I see those compliments waving on the other side of my mind-road, macking on microwave popcorn and hangin’ with Mr. Cooper. See, Mr. Cooper lives in the mind-moments of mini-Kavi when the putty-patrollers and end-of-episode megalomaniac menaces on Power Rangers made my top 10 list of villains I’d seen.

Sometimes I wish I was blind
To see the obvious beauty

______________________

I, my world, was small. Really, I wasn’t a mouth breath in the expanse of the whole fucking world. My mind’s eye only really saw marshmallows and fuck all. Still, never missed a chance to pounce on a pick-me-up lying about. Put it in my pocket for later like it was a prize. Or even better, one of those pizza rolls I could never have because pork. Pick-me-ups were how I pulled myself together. Even before puberty. Figured out at 7 what nice words and non bitch-slappy collocations were. Because they were foreign to me. They weren’t dollar words. Just all the ways we say English to stare down screams and shove a smile in our throats when life is really one big bowl of sour suck and celery. My mom said those were things only movie families said to each other. Stopped believing in her then. Started carrying around a mini-notebook. Wrote a sentence every ten minutes. Told myself how I was cooler than all the Marvel superheroes mashed into one bowl of mint ice cream. Saw myself. Only for a short time.

______________________

Fucking crazy, deja-vu
Finding ways to justify
Things we do

Needed them. All those marvelous lies in that book. Cos I made my way through life on the miles of sidewalk around me that my parent’s ok’d as stretches of sanctuary. Some places murderers wouldn’t suddenly get the idea to sautee you. This was like any kid. Most parents cared if you died. But I did it without legs. Lost them without a bit of mercy at 7, too. Cut them off right at the bone with the iciness of my home life’s cold stares. Chewed on any tendons that hung down. Beat them with a nerf bat—no matter the time it took for felt to change human tissue–to break off any leftover pieces. Duck. Cover. And if that’s too fucking difficult just stay the fuck down. Don’t be seen. heard. to have cried. known to have swallowed juice in the vicinity of the 3 metres of hallway between the living room and my bedroom. Nicknamed that space wherever America was at war with, all growing up. Fuck Dahmer and all the sidewalks he could snatch me from. Was warned my organs would become his dessert. Go ahead. Make my stomach into a sorbet. The scariest place in the world were the first steps I sleepily stumbled on in Superman pajamas.

Each morning at 6am, it was Sarajevo.

______________________

______________________

Stolen from another life
You appeared in mine
It doesn’t feel the same as it did before

______________________

I do see those compliments shouting for me. Just cold as fuck to them. So won’t cripple-mosey my way on these stumps. All I have to do is go 5 metres of road. They’re right in front of me, like a reflection. Give them the cold shoulder, always. Even if the wind shifts them my way. Gonna be seen. If I reach for something good. Jesus, who cares. All those mean words in the mini-me days, like morpheme missiles shot at me from the strength of Superman’s larynx. Superhuman in the soundwaves, cos soul.

See now that my stepfather couldn’t deep-throat anything. Not words. feelings. himself. So he settled on vomiting violence when things got too real (by breathing); and awkward as fuck silence in the serenity. All when a steady rhythm and breathing would do wonders at basic blowjobbing your way through life. Not even skilled, or even a human. That takes talent. Just enough to make people happy, show them you care those extra millimeters about them.

Jaws jammed with jaundice of the heart notwithstanding. Those words. Impact, every time. Made so many craters in the way I think. My frontal lobe gives the moon a running. Hurt until my skin grew thick like Luke Cage’s. Then there was just silence in me. Couldn’t see because they blew up all my mirrors. They, those words, his fists. Better not to show one’s spirit through a string of sounds. Wasn’t using the mirror the right way, anyways. Gun shy, to look up. Always fucking up my hairstyle, brushing my eye with my toothbrush.

______________________

You can’t take the shadow back
Still so far from good
On edge of the hell
But we were still standing
Losing our senses
Be gone with storm
This last arrival, may be my best

______________________

______________________
Could be seven seconds, all this time in front of the mirror. Could see myself, have a little mind-shoot the shit and sangria and then go live. No, I’m stuck here. For sixteen minutes thinking ‘why do people fuck me?’. Shouldn’t, but can’t stop siding with the part of myself that’s like: all you literal fucks got the raw deal. Multitudes have made a small meal on my mouth, kissing me on the way to my bed. Multitudes, yo. Like Jesus on Lake Gennesaret size, 5000. Not just because I’m slutty. True, not a miniscule impact, that part of me and how many legs imprint themselves in my sheets for [x minutes] of sometimes-heaven. Want to say it’s because I make a mean 1, 2 punch in the middle of the conversation and then your mind’s mine. Or cos my moxy is a mix of maddening, majesty and many moments of fuck.we need to check him into Bellevue, maybe yesterday.
_______________________

I’m seeing right through you
It won’t take much
To shatter one or two
Of the lies you told
When you built me

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Stop it. No grand reason to see here. It’s just because it is. Get sexed up because all those people’s pupils saw me and said grab the lube. Parsing it useless, wasn’t even the issue. Mirrors have no soul. No synapses to whispers secret plans to shiv your carotid. They just are. Shouldn’t take seven hundred words to non-say ‘hey, your shirt sits nice on your shoulders. Your ears are clean. You look sexy today, Kavi. Go you.’ Glad you can parse yourself to death, K But shit, dude, make yourself smile. Look up, say what you see. See the obvious beauty. See the obvious. Second grade self-confidence mastered.

I’m building speed
Can’t slow down

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