Strawberry Shortcake 16.06.022

All those times

he washed and cut potatoes and beets,

oven-roasted

in vintage amber glassware

(sunflower oil, salt, and thyme);

all those salads delicately prepared—

not a one

containing the despised tomato.

Every mini loaf of banana bread;

every sable, each macaron

(he used to forget and leave eggs out for too long—

days, sometimes— 

he was the first to explain to me

that one at room temperature

would whip up far better).

He never touched red meat.

Oh, there were times— too few,

too far between— when tables were turned

and I’d be the one to prepare a dish:

the tomato-based soup

(there was a lot of it)

before I knew he hated tomatoes;

the thirty coconut cupcakes

for his thirtieth birthday;

I wish I could say there was more,

that somehow I’d forgotten something;

that— though I know

my memory does not serve me—

I could say, today,

that things were eluding me

more than normal.

Too few, too far between.

It is 90 degrees in my apartment.

Mid-June.

Sweat collects

about my crown, droplets

forming dripping circlets,

dribbles trickling down my neck.

Amassing about my eyebrows;

caressing the small of my back.

The cake—

the cake is store-bought.

The whipped cream comes from a can:

a distinct aftertaste of aerosols and nitrous oxide,

though unctuous— and sweet— all the same.

I am hovering over the kitchen sink,

paring knife quartering freshly-washed strawberries,

glistening like the back of my neck.

Maybe, I think to myself:

maybe if I had done this for him,

he would have loved me.

Spell to Break a Curse of Freezingmuteness 03.02.022

To the Moon, and the nighttime sky in which She shines;
to the churring Insects, humming through summer doldrums;
to the great Prairie, lying in wait for a chance to return to its former glory;
to the Breeze, wending its way through grasses and trees;
to the great Lake, Mishigami, whose shores he would not touch;
to the Snowfall, which he hates, and the quelling Silence found therein:

I petition your aid in breaking a curse of Freezing, and of Muteness, upon a man I once loved.
I invoke your powers combined to heal him of his ailments, and to bring him enduring Peace.

With your will behind me, and guided by your wisdom, to him I speak:

for the one who cannot verbalize,
for the one with the frozen tongue and icy heart:

a fire in your belly, searing heat and choking smokes
to singe the inner thorax, heat the throat,
and goad a dead tongue into movement, new life.

Liquid salt, to quell the aches and strife
of a carbonized larynx;
to expel the demons assailing your being.
Tears to wash clean and heal wounds twining:
an absent father;
a flighty mother;
a brother who could be closer.

Deluge of water, nonstop pouring,

to shake free crushing feelings
of regret, loneliness, and loss:
water, to invigorate the pro- and eu-karyotic,
to enliven what might otherwise become
brown’d husk, crusted carapace;
fresh ozone forth from whettened loam,
rich soils in which to plant your hands,
grounding the chaos of the chemoelectric.

To remind you:
the gentle droning of summer cicadas,
the chirping of crickets, a hum

in keeping with the thrum

of your bloodmuscle;

the Breezes which carry their chorus—
wending their ways through leaves and stalks,
wafting scents of things warm and verdant—

to caress your face

as I will

no longer.

In inky, loving blackness suspended:
the gaze of our Earth’s Moon,

whose visage you have long admired.

May She solace you in your solitude,
darkly reflecting the light of Truth
too bright for a lens of protein or glass to bear.
May She, too, remind you.

And when there is no growth;
when verdancy has given itself over to the sway of the invernal;
when the fires that have been lit and stoked
begin to wither and grow cold—
the churring Insects’ songs stilled,
Breezes transformed into whipping winds,
the Lake, and your voice, once more overfrozen—

when flakes plummet from the sky;
when the Freezing returns, and with it,
the Silence:

Pressing in.
Deafening.

Drowning out the roaring

of city life,
Moonlight,
and the echoes of my fading voice— 
the voices of countless others

(clamoring over one another
like the waves on Mishigami’s shores)—

with the sound of Nothing
blanketing your head like a fuzzy childhood memory;
pressure on your eardrums;
bloodmuscle’s thrumming nigh to bursting

in your locked throat:

may you reach inward, deeper
than you ever have before,
and—

filling your lungs
with the sacred absence of Vacuum, the cacophony
of every voice forgotten—

may you hear

your own Self

speak.

Burger Fog/Memory Map (what to erase)

Surskittles

Cocksucken

Combustanut

Nicki poetry (poke it out, poke it out)

Cardi

Beyoncés Coachella performance

Bad Bhabie

Animal Collective

Phillip Glass

LCD Soundsystem— American Dream

Bright Eyes— Lime Tree

All of Cassadaga

Neko Case— Dirty Knife; City Swans

Phosphorescent— Endless pt. 1; Endless pt. 2

Sleater-Kinney— Can I Go On

Beets and potatoes

No tomatoes

No red meat

Mr. Pollo

Bird tea

Chimken

Dudley

Monstera (Deliciosa)

Echeveria

Jade

Weed

Long-stemmed pipe

Magnifier

Magnifying glass-lit weed

Big jars of water (two hands)

Salads: greens, sunflower seeds (pistachios?), beets, kalamata olives, avocado

Sables

Macarons

Mini banana bread

Eggs left out for too long

Clogged sink

Dishes washed by hand

Cat box in the pantry

Lil Peanut

Haribo— star mix, cherries, happy cola, sometimes twin snakes

Cinnamon Toast Crunch, with a miso soup spoon

“Gare-“dettos

Cheetos Paws

A crönch-chip

Kettle cooked potato

Coconut Water

Golden kiwis

Concord grapes from the

Logan Square Farmer’s Market

Lula Café

Raclette (too-messy fried egg)

Lox’d bagel

Community Days, ambling about Logan Square

Holding your hand on Milwaukee, by the Taco Bell that serves liquor

Hairy Who

The Chris Debacle, a month of silence to follow

“Oh shit, OH shit!”

Horner Park after The Infinite Wrench, June 30th, the last day of Pride

“You’re getting my load tonight”

New Year’s Eve, spent in your bed

Massaging you until you fell asleep, precious fucking angel— I had to wake you up so you could lock the door behind me

“OKAY, MAAAARY” 

*tongue pop*

“HAH! HAH!” in my face, unfair, you tease

Roping together the underside of your broken couch

Soldering your broken speakers back together

Exquisite corpses

Photographs of my boulder opals, fire agate

We never photographed my irises

Your black (GREEN) armchair

“I love you, too”

Mario Kart (your fucking rocket starts)

Jeni’s Ice Cream

Buddy Wakefield, 5/5ths, Mykele Deville

RuPaul’s Drag Race (AllStars 3)

“C’mon, trees! C’mon, nature!”

“Walking kids in nature”

Walks in nature, Belmont riverwalk

Trying to catch the same Squirtle

The fire station

The fire station mural (so homoerotic)

Cum in my eye, that first day, after your trip to the post office

Lighting my chillum with a match

“Wait for the sulfur to burn off”

You kept and remembered our Grindr messages

“M”

5’5”

125 lbs

Gram

Grandfather; name change; honoring his legacy

The silver roof

Naked sunbathing I never partook in

Jockstrap reveal, walking up the stairs

Videos for your boyfriend

Primary sexual partners

Halting speech, strained, anguish

“Minty man”

Filthy Friends— “Second Life,” “Mother”

Brand’s Park

Francisco

Kuma’s Corner

“THAT GAHDDAMN BITCH COLLEEN”

Permanent retainer

Perfect teeth

Dimples

Adjusting your glasses with one finger

Looking up and to the right (to remember, to avoid, to escape, to lie?) 

The cast copy of your grandmother’s ring, forever on your pointer finger

Conversations about the bullshit at work

Hugs

Kisses (I’m so sorry for that time you felt pressured)

Shuddering, shaking legs

Licking it up

“Pow pow powww”

I Want Your Stupid Love 09.08.021

It’s weird. Having to restrain myself from reaching out to you. Knowing that— were I to reach out— there would come nothing but a consuming silence. So many things— Stupid songs; Drag Race; Haribo— insist upon reminding me of you; it’s weird. I would say it feels strange, yet this feeling of echoing silence, of being shut out, is also too familiar. Strange things should not feel like family and old friends— like paths well-tread. Strange things are alien, and inconceivable, and novel. I have felt this before, and yet— nothing past or present can compare to the frenetic fluttering of my heartbeat (butterflies’ fragile, scaled wings) as you leant into me; nor, too, the fluttering of your own as my hand met its fleshy, hirsute cage. 

What to do, when nothing feels real? We seal off these parts of ourselves, compartmentalizing and doubling as though things have not changed. Psyches split, self-dividing in schizoid-mitosis, and we dance about like paper dolls; marionettes with one-handed puppeteers, shambling and wiggling in our best approximations of normalcy, of healthy relationship dynamics. 

I will never understand. You will never answer me. We will go on— demented and cavorting— repeating cycles of trauma responses and abuse. You will fall in love. He will be of the right and proper class; to your liking; someone you can proudly take home to the mother you hate. Someone in “the medical field”— a doctor, perhaps.

I will do my best for a man who leaves me devoid of any butterflies. I will eagerly await their return. Time will pass on— inexorable— and I will begin to doubt their very existence. I will forget the feeling of their wings beating themselves battered and scale-less against my delicate, sanguinous insides. I will assure myself that such things are to be relegated to children’s stories. No such thing exists. No chrysalid-memories. Metamorphosis in permanent suspension. Larval-stage mentality without the spark of latent potential.

Our best is all we can do. If the spark is to find us again, we can do nothing but wait— central nervous system devolving into a slurry of consciousness-goo, our carnal forms melting into imperceptible nothingness. If we are lucky enough to come out the other side, we will retain every memory despite a total obliteration and rearranging of neural pathways. We will remember the egg, the squirming infancy, the armor of second-nascence, the flourishing of our higher selves. 

Maybe I will flutter again. Who’s to say. But, God be damned— I miss you. 

Muted

Seen,

but not heard.

Ghosted? Ignored?

A wall of stones to pen me in:

you say you felt nothing—

yet your racing heartbeat sticks in my memory.

A whole different kind of heat,

I have felt the morning sun.

Whether glance, gaze, or stare:

bedside lamp’s warming glare

to deep-black quiet, hush

of your soothéd breathing:

like newness, each breath’s intaking.

Each rising,

falling, rising

of the chest,

each setting of your suns upon mine

to reverse-gloaming, deep warmth. Again.

You felt nothing? You cannot tell me that,

and yet you do. 

Your hand on my knee

the night of the Infinite Wrench,

rounding out a full month of Pride. 

(Perhaps I was just the last resort, 

the least-special Special Thing

to cap a month nonplussed.)

The way you used to meet my eye,

fuck,

that look— how could I forget?

How could you?

Seen. Not heard;

no response, only aching

and longing commingling,

tired of the endless sine waves and binary

coded language, please tell me queer stories

and connect me to my history;

zeroes and ones only,

dyad of the lonely, and I:

a placeholder now unpaired. 

You told me you loved me.

22.06.019 Letter to and from Home

On the other side of the solstice.

I am in the sky again. I don't think of you like I used to, though of course I do still think of you dearly. This time, as the false progeny of my father's (now-deceased) father, I am traveling to Reno, to visit the cousin I've told you about. I will be buying land, hopefully before July is out-- I don't know how long the process takes once I've made my official offer.

I'll be leaving Chicago "permanently" (what is true permanence) at the end of August, on or around my birthday. Do you remember when my birthday is?

For the past day, I've been seeing Chicago in a new way, with the knowledge that I will be leaving. My eyes are open and my senses piqued.

I remember with fondness my family's last trip as a family unit in December 2007 and January 2008, when my sober mother made amends with the Matriarch who raised my father. We stayed in an Earthship.

That whole trip was colored by Bright Eyes' 2007 album "Cassadaga," a lush album from the usually-sparse Conor Oberst, and the first (to my knowledge) of his forays into folksy twang.

This trip: I've just discovered Oliver Peck, and his album "Pony" is playing in my ears (as gin/tonic plays in my circulatory system and brain) as I write this. He is a wonderful color-- I wonder what this trip will look like when I have enough distance to look back on it.

I am writing this letter for the sake of balance (it seems right to write something to you again while I'm displaced in the sky), and because my last few attempts at reaching out-- over the course of a couple months-- have gone unanswered. I hope you're doing well.

-XO Mx. Protz

Placeholder 17.03.020

The day will come when he will marry his life partner,
and I will still be alone.
Yet another of my most cherished loves
will decide to cut themselves from me. I will go to the wedding,
I will show,
solo, in my best suit-and-tie
(though, really, they will not be mine--
like so much else,
they will be rented,
wearing me,
despite my expert performance
indicating to the contrary),

and I will smile, I will say
in my most polished, not-me voice,
wow, oh, you, yes you, ah and also yes you, the husband, yes I am so happy for you two, yours is truly an inspiration...

And as the whiskey grows sour on my breath
and the night begins to begin to wear on,
though for the rest the night will not have begun,
I will slip away into it, I will disappear
as I have become so good at doing,
and though it may not go unnoticed, it will not matter,

and I can have my sour heart and my acid-blood,
and they will have each other for the foreverest forever
that a venue and a planner can promise.

I cannot see me ending up with anyone but him
(and it has been this way before,

with different hims,
the same hymns,
though altogether individually differing, despite
my presence as the lowest common denominator

[and o!, how low indeed I go...]).

I will think,
as I do now,
of poetry
and solemn things
and how crisp the air is, how familiar...

I will think of this very night, sitting
and reflecting forwards as I so often do (or did),
and I will think of nothing else

but,
perhaps, my
perennial sadness, a beast and a friend and a lover
I cannot shake.

My love has been with me
through thick and thin, and

we are nigh insep'rable,
for which I am ever-grateful.