Sunset Canyon - Fox Warren

I want to find meaning in the suffering.

I want there to be a reason,

A lesson,

A calling.

I want this experience to transform me.

Change the entirety of my DNA.

Drop layers of old skin into the wind.

 

This constant pursuit of changing

Spins my perceptions with the Suns.

So much so

That it’s been four years

And I find that I’m still only

Changing around what you did to me.

Compacting it.

Shoving it into my own depths

And letting my form

Swallow around it.

Frantically pursuing a revolution

In light of maddening dreams

And old songs I hear in coffee shops.

 

I want to understand where the words come from.

Who is speaking through these works?

These pieces of something unspeakable?

In immediacy I say myself.

But…?

It seems like an aching I no longer remember

Chooses to guide my hands,

My feet,

My tired eyes.

How do you recall such things?

How do you name them,

When the language they speak has been lost on me?

Like the holes in the walls in older homes,

Or the thing that sneaks up and blocks my throat.

Where did my f*cking spine go?

Because it feels like it’s all but entirely gone.

​

These thoughts, too, shift in shape, 

Absorb and swallow and devour.

The wounds that exist 

Just beyond the veil

Of what I’m allowed to touch, but not feel.

The sensory overload

And little-too-numb feeling that eats at 

The skin on my lips &

Smears tears into the corner of my eye.

 

I’m trying so f*cking hard to build something right now.

But what?

These older wounds have me convinced

Entranced

With this idea that I’m everything but worthy.

Of life,

This one and the one I dream of,

And of love,

Of joy.

Keeps me unplugged & docile,

Instrumental pieces in the occasional breakdown.

 

What I think I’m trying to say is,

I want to understand what makes these things

Abstract obscenities to my mind.

Where the pieces fail to fit,

The message fails to find resonance.

“I love myself,

I love myself,

I love myself.”

“Sweet as sugar,

Sweet as sugar,

Sweet as sugar, and then some.”

 

Pour divinity down into the frame of my body,

Idolize it,

Care for it,

And visualize it flooded with light.

 

Yet, each of my steps resound with a hollow thud,

I feel porcelain thin on cloudy days,

And spiteful, old words  

Creep up through all the goodness I’ve tried to create.

Like a whirlwind I find myself back at square one.

 

I think I deprived myself of light

From a young age.

Worried that it would hurt my eyes

And bring me more aches.

Yet the entire time

My insides were caught in

An everlasting autumnal state.

What can grow from such huddled waste?

 

I’ve tried to accustom myself with the sun 

As the years have spun ‘round me.

Bathe in it like cool waters,

Let it break over my own horizons 

And cleanse out the shadows that 

Filed themselves away 

Under my bed and at the back of the closet.

And in all my years,

17,18,19,,,,,,

That continue to come in swim-storm style,

I feel as though I’m ready to live in honey light.

 

I want to understand how to say this:

For an eternity I have told myself 

That I may be little close to nothing.

And a man like you,

A love like yours,

Has touched 

The smallest and meanest parts of my soul.

You have redefined a forever 

In a new language of loving

That I had no knowledge of prior.

 

And everything that came before

This serene picture

Fades off into the summer night,

Every face I’ve ever worn

To keep me warm.

No need for them in the light.​