Brother's Blood

Kevin Devine is, in my opinion, one of the greatest songwriters of our generation. This is the title-track off of his upcoming anticipated release. I can't recommend his records to you enough. Buy them all. I know of very few artists who understand, and implement, the tango of storytelling and poetry in their songwriting like this young, Brooklyn-based artist.

Black Coffee

It's been a while since I've posted any poetry. Honestly, I haven't written much since I graduated, but it is still something that I really enjoy. While flipping through a notebook to begin writing a Bible Study today, I found this poem that I wrote a month or two ago in a coffee shop. I really appreciate how the meaning still connects with me months after I wrote it, and it has even taken on new forms of meaning that I couldn't have had in mind when I wrote it. Such is the nature and beauty of poetry.

Black Coffee

There’s a soft folk song on the radio.
The feminine melody has me wanting to fall in love.
“Sometimes I pray for you” connects deep down
and gives me hope that I’m not alone. Gives
me hope that I’m not the only one longing
to be joined—pulled out of the lonely abyss
to empathy and passion and mirrored selflessness.

I take my coffee black.
B – L – A – C – K
It is the purest color.
P – U – R – I – T – Y

It is the most pleasingly bitter taste my tongue
has ever interpreted. I cannot help but find
sweet comfort in the physical.

To Frida (on repentance)

By Jared Weatherholtz
This is a response to "To Diego (on sorrow)" which is posted in my blog history.

To Frida (on repentance)

Mi vida,
El monstruo soy yo,
¡de verdad!,
con un apetito que nunca cesa.

I have always seen myself in my murals, and shuttered.
I am pregnant with guilt, writhing under your love,
bearing flowers of peace to my smiling wife.
I am weighed down by my own lusts.
Driven down!
I cannot get up, Frida!
I cannot get up.


You were a welcome babe in an ancient world,
the innocence and vigor of my life.
You are a bloody, beating heart among sharpening stones,
a martyr at my own hands.
You cover my infidelities in a pool of red,
and I rest—
while you writhe.
El monstruo soy yo.


We are the entire history of Mexico!
The revolution flowed from our love,
the people’s passion from our very bosoms.
In La Chingada, I painted you with a look of unbelief.
The tension of my body falling powerfully on yours
as I had my way is all too real for me now.
They say we cannot escape heritage,
and I have sealed ours in disloyalty.


I find myself kneeling reverently before a bed of carnations.
My people and your love are the only gods I have ever known.
But these flowers are my shrine.
Their beauty binds, enslaves.
Their shape is my best friend,
who has torn trust and thrown it to the diseased dogs on the street.
You are the innocent victim of an imperialist regime.

The monstrosity I am!
Yo soy el monstruo.

But, mi vida, don’t forget us.

I am you,
Friday. You
are me.

How to Kill a Chicken (Mother to Daughter)

By Jared Weatherholtz

Ain’t no shame in killin’
for the sake o’ sustenance.
We gotta eat, baby,
and this here farm
is our supply.

So go out back behind the shed,
and corner Lucy at the edge of the fence.
I know she’s your favorite, baby,
but we raised her for food.
Ain’t no animal deserves life over humans.

So say your goodbyes to Lucy,
and when ya through,
pick her up gently,
just like when you pet
her to calm her nerves in thunderstorms.

Make your way to the
Bloody Stump,
stretch her neck taut
over the splintered surface,
close your eyes,

And swing. Swing hard, baby, and swift.
And turn your head, cause bloods a’gonna spurt.
But we gotta eat, baby. Remember that.
We gotta eat.

When the body falls to the ground,
Lucy’s gonna raise cane, baby.
I mean, she’s gonna run ‘round with no head on.
But don’t worry, cause Lucy’s gone then.
She don’t feel no pain.

That’s just her spirit, makin’ one final lap.
Lucy’s lived a good life, baby.
Most chicken’s don’t have half of what she has.
But a family’s gotta eat.
And you gotta learn to be a woman.

New Poems

I recently watched the movie Frida about the life of Mexican painter/feminist/politician Frida Kahlo. I can't stop thinking about the tragedy involved in this woman's dealings with life, love and art. These poems are the outcome of those thoughts. I hope you enjoy.

It was just a fuck. I've given more affection in a handshake.
–Diego Rivera

To Diego (on sorrow)

¡La cogiste!
My God, Diego,
anyone but my sister!
¡La cogiste!

I am a vessel, used and tragically tied to my loss.
Married to inconsistency.
Shackled to sorrow.
Subdued by abortion.
And there is nothing you can do now to make it all seem right.

So I will hack the blackness,
And shape feminine growth,
Into emasculated pride.
A statement of what was and what is.

It's like the accident all over again,
A steel rod is shoved through my back,
And takes my virginity.
Oh, how I wanted it to be yours!

I am a wounded deer. A running, wounded deer.
The arrows are all women that have no faces,
Only perfume that rubs off in the act of crashing.
I thought you would stop with them. With loyalty!

I am the sister of a whore.
You were you,
And she was she.
But now you are an adulterous one.

I am the sister of a goddess.
Whose very heart rushes blood through my veins.
And spurts stains on my white dress.
I could not live but for her. I could not die but for her.

I am a stark Roman column!
Who has found hope in the bodies of other men (and women)!
Who has weathered the rains of tragedy, and pain, and loss,
And refuses to shed a single hope to the disappointment of nature!

You are not I,
And I am not You,
Yet when I find me, I
Am hopelessly entangled in us.

La cogiste.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Frida Kahlo
(as played by Selma Hayek)

This corpse is still breathing.

Tragedy, pure tragedy, does not strike often.
And if it does, it runs like a demon cast out by the Lord himself,
to find the next innocent victim.
I, however, have a history of such demons.
They nest in my bones,
caress my very column with the arousing fingers of death.

This corpse is still healing.

Diego says my scar is immaculate.
It runs from the small of my back,
around the hip and into my garden.
I told the doctors that the pipe stole my virginity.
It’s not true though. I was fucking boys in my closet a year before the accident.

This corpse is still lusting.

There’s really no beauty like that of the female body.
To have breasts--big, weighty breasts--is to have honey,
That all the gods want and need.
Even the goddesses want to drink from my supply.

This corpse is still needing.

Diego is my sustenance
in a dying world--my dying world.
To be with him is to sup--
to dine with God in art and passion and sex.

This corpse is still leaving.

I painted myself in a mirror today.
I looked proud like the Romans.
My eyebrows grown together like the wings of a sparrow.
One day they’ll carry me away, away from this tragedy.

This corpse is still breathing.

An Elegy to My Best Friend

Jared Weatherholtz

It’s been almost six months since you left. The vibrant sting of newness has stranded me with a numb gap and a bent towards filling that space with something—anything. You see, you were my best friend. And, at least I hope, you still are. But when you forsook what meant so much to me and what we both thought meant so much to you, things changed. With the air of assurance and promise left life and eternity and hope.

At first, a mix of misunderstood emotions clamored for my attention. Of the more prominent and implicit feelings were anger and sadness—anger that you had left me alone and sadness that you were gone. I was mad. No, I am mad. I’m mad that you forsook what you knew and trusted in. I’m mad that I am left with no source of comfort or support, except of course the One you kissed. But here in this shell I am left to cry and flare and wonder at your death. At the pronouncement, I almost didn’t take it seriously. It was announced with such life that it seemed impossible. I wanted to laugh it off and be the same. But the only life left in you was a memory and a relic.

Did it hurt? Did it hurt to know that I would know? I hope so. I hope you dreaded the day I would know. After all, that’s the true test of friendship isn’t it—for you to care if I knew? I think you hated the day I would find out. I think caring about that day almost changed the history of your life. I think it almost made you hang on. But I’ll never know. I can only hope that I meant enough to you to almost change your mind, because, obviously, I didn’t mean enough to you to truly change your mind.

But isn’t that how life goes? Only the individual in question can really have the final say in his life—and God. As for God, the questions that used to be offered to him have now turned to pleading. On a regular basis, and I desire that it might be more frequent, I pray for you. I pray that God might bring you back to life. I want him to give you the life we thought you had before. Some may be skeptics. But isn’t that what all of the living have to be thankful for, being brought to life from the dead? I pray that God would bring you back to life. O God, bring Brandon back to life! I can’t stand the phone calls knowing that you’re gone.

Cholulandia

By Jared Weatherholtz

Metal clanks with metal as the handle turns and stops,
The door swings and the box is unleashed. I am unleashed.
The chill of a morning just born has my body hair at attention,
And I can honestly say there is nowhere I’d rather be.

Mornings in Mexico catapult a man into life,
He doesn’t need the comfort of fancy cars and big houses,
What he needs is the chill of high altitude, a horizon of ancestry,
And a street full of vibrant life that cannot be conquered.

My yellow Veloci is steel. Stainless Steel. And she’s a real beaut.
As I straddle her, I can’t help but remember how we’ve been there for each other,
When she is hurt, I mend her (or at least take her to Jorge who mends her),
And when I am hurt, she carries me through beauty that salts my wounds, and kisses.

Aztecs perform sacred rituals on Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl,
Or at least they did a thousand years ago,
But I’m pretty sure they still bury dogs over there,
To keep their children company.

But what I see this morning is a silhouette of perfection,
The chill paints a veil for the volcano, gilding the lifeless warrior,
Connected houses painted pink and yellow and blue blur past,
I have never felt so free, so free to live and to work. And to ride.

Poverty abounds. It’s not swelled-stomach-poverty,
It’s more like I-make-six-dollars-a-day-and-can-barely-feed-my-kids poverty,
Somehow the bare-foot woman selling seeds and nuts missed the message,
The look in her eyes says she’s content. Maybe it’s the morning air. Maybe it’s not.

["I like your handsome drugs. Your pleasant..."]

By Joshua Beckman

I like your handsome drugs. Your pleasant
drugs. You frozen fingernails. Your painted
fingernails. That man screamed out. "The
karate chop of love," before tackling that woman.
The breeze. Your sort of quiet happy voices.
The karate chop of love. Your handsome drugs.
If you, in all your sexiness, could just bring that
over here. A barrel of fried chicken. That girl
named Katie. A birthday party. Yeah. I go
running in, all ready to show everyone the
karate chop of love. And that girl named Katie.
A barrel of chicken. The breeze. This
birthday party is fucked without the karate
chop of love. Your handsome drugs.