I spent Halloween night writing and singing songs with my friends. It was the very definition of living my best life. This is for them.
My heart is so full Of mismatched stickers on computers Fantastic bouts of laughter Cigarette breaks in the coldest darkest night Plush leaf sheep petted, coddled, traded from hand to hand Dark secrets of Google searches revealed Our fearless leaders: Pink hair, clear eyes, green tail Construct elaborate militant theories About giant monsters, savior robots, Humans crushed under their heel A twin by my side Enthusiast romantic chemist Pilot of twenty one vessels Trash collector king: My serendipitous brother This community of dedicated warriors: The quiet pitter-patter of their typing fingers Spinning into being, heart-shaped, hard-edged, Untold worlds, luminescent on a dusty keyboard Through obscure challenges and inside jokes This drivel we’ve written This dream of ours An unpalatable house of cards Crumbling under the weight of our critical minds We exchange stamps, cards, notebooks Enough food and coffee to feed a small army Of relentless storytellers Diligent wordsmiths Stumbling, half-awake, through the hurdles of adulthood Hopeful, toward a bowl of hummus The sun crests high windows Ornate ceilings A guitar, five voices Exhausted, heartfelt, elated Drag half-forgotten lyrics from their deepest teenage angst (Even Thom Yorke wouldn’t Take this from us) Melodies warm up my icy fingers, my black-striped soul Until they remember how to sing Down on the ground, up through the roof We drown our weary bodies In pancakes and syrup My daydream empire for an inviting bed But the warmth of your smiles Keeps me awake Humming Climbing All the way up to my ivory tower I feel alive when I’m surrounded with Talented driven compassionate silly Rainbow-colored FriendsWriting
Flagey
I do not count the songs we sung
As wasted breath
Sitting with you
Lost in a crowded square
Icy splashes dampen your heavy jacket
Whoever thought it was a good idea
To have fountains running in November
Can come talk to me
My numb fingers close on yours
You make these moments
Some kind of magic
Brux-hell
Nightmares are made of your thick grey smoke and your gridlocked streets
Stinking of bloated rotting money
Paralyzed by white hypocrisy
Tarp-covered holes where windows roofs walls should be
Your genocidal kings adorn
Dark tunnels and deserted squares
Flickering flames honor
Forgotten men slaughtered for the crown
Under the stinging rain
The shivering rain
The beating rain
The heavy wind drowns out the memory
Of the flesh that haunts you
Grease running down the pavement
Old as sin
Fresh as the beer flooding your veins
Loud
Tongues and lips biting out guttural harmonies
Accented cries falling on tone-deaf ears
Ugly and scarred from a sprawling concrete cancer
Rising from the ashes of your splendid past
Poor like the dirt
Poor like a shriveled heart
Poor like a homeless man writing poems on scraps of paper
In the neon alleys of your swarming underbelly
Brux-hell
I fought with all the life left in my body to come back to you
Lost in a country that would never call itself mine
I balled up my last shreds of hope and hurled it at your swelling putrid heart
You took it, let me sink into you like molten copper
Lonely town
I took my first free breath in the middle of your labyrinth and was reborn
You are the strength in my limbs the breath in my lungs the sun in my smiles the despair in my soul
Brux-hell
I have missed you like I missed my skin
Brux-hell
Incomparable mess horrible hateful impossible city
I love you
Thaw
You’ve got to trust the burgeoning trees
To weather the storms
Take strength in the earth
And grow
Flowers are stronger than you think
They will still be there tomorrow
Do not be afraid
There’s probably a lesson there for you to grasp
But spring is barely born
And you have barely started to thaw
Trust the trees, the plants, the earth and the sky
To take you where you need to go
Hope is at the tip of your tongue
There is no black or white
No sweltering heat to blistering cold
It’s a scale made of notes you’ve come to know
Winter diaries
It feels like the tail end of winter, like the hard part is over. It feels. But it’s not true. Time is a circle and it’s barely mid-February. But two days of sun feel like more hope than I’ve got since the beginning of the year. People in parks, streets, squares, terraces. Making music, drinking, hanging. It’s like the outside’s in color again, like music is made of sounds. Polarize has meaning, infused directly into my bones. Brussels is my oyster.
Villo and Lime don’t want me but my legs will push me through. I sit cross-legged at the Vismet and drown my home-made pistolet au salami in unintelligible Flemish. Still in Vismet, I find a forceful bout of sunshine to help me draw Miles Morales. Brussels lives around me.
I rock out to my phone and walk and walk and walk and barely stop for coffee. It is gross how much I am one with this city. Lonely fucking town, I love your tourists and your hills and your hard edges and waiting eight minutes for a metro. The moon is out over the Cinquantenaire. Nothing scares me.