What Is My Name

They named me after a navy soldier.
I taste a dead body carried into currents.
I guess this heart feels as a tombstone
for innocent bystanders bearing witness
within thickets of blood stained rifles.
My papa used to be in the navy, tatted anchors on his
bandaged biceps and mastered a tough guy glare.
His softness exposes inside survival songs,
and he made sure my father remembered every lyric,
but I can’t say I was taught these songs myself.

I am nick-named crybaby;
a storm nobody will want to weather,
a mistake left crying in a taxi ride home
so I give myself to the arms of a boy I seldom love
for he’s the only love I haven’t fucked up yet.
I turn on the living room lights; lose myself inside romantic sights,
yet it’s so hard to meet people’s demands, a lone flickering beat
through apartment windows emit a sighing slow dance
between my arms, and his hollow heart,
but all a stranger would witness
is a single boy swaying by himself with midnight’s part.

Truth be told I am a bruise that refuses to heal.
I have seen children with sweet blood pour glasses of wine
I had no choice but to refuse a sip from.
These children are choirs of redemption inside
broken church walls and they carry more back bone
singing verses filled with their names and oceans of history,
yet I can’t even bring myself to regurgitate honesty.

My name is another body for depression:
a name I always lose myself to. I will forever
swim against the current inside my mind,
but every day I refuse to practice a dead man’s float
is a day my smile will burn snowflakes, and make the sun jealous.
Because when someone asks me, “You good, bro?”
I will always say yes to those who can’t bear witness,
and I will only shake my head and reply, “I don’t know”
because I don’t know when I will bear witness
to sounds of dancing feet and rhythmic joy.

My father has never sung survival songs in front of me,
but he’s a lone drummer so this drummer boy
continues crescendo marching to sounds of a hollow heart beat
because my first name is Gerhardus; named after
a weapon so I could be more powerful
with these hands mistaken as blood tinted spears,
but my mother always called me Lucas behind closed doors �"
always leaving the door hinges unlocked.
This is how I learn to open
every scar, wear war wounds
like the handkerchief hanging out of my back pocket
trailing ashes from a fire my own hands started,
carry more femininity within burning desire.
This wasn’t the brazen light mama expected from the name Lucas.

Even if you don’t understand contours
of erupted volcanoes and molten ash
drying like slits on this damaged skin,
that doesn’t mean my bones will never
receive blessings of a wind carrying ashes.
With squinted eyes and a mouthful of rain,
I succumb to the taste of hunger
as mama continuously warned me,
“if you always eat 7 meals a day,
eventually you’ll puke.”

What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
I stick my middle finger down a sore throat;
one for a f**k me, and another for a woe is me.
A sad song is another meaning to Gerhardus.
An envelope sealed with bitter blood is an image of Lucas.
The drifting lone stretch of sunlight immersed
with midnight’s lone sky is my collapsing mania.

Forgive these sinful laments,
scorched skin seemingly
stains serenading serendipity.

I am hopeless
to disappearing
into the sun.
You’re going to
watch me disappear
inside the sun.

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