Into the woods

5/2/2024 (annual creatives retreat and head straightening week(s))

Feeling a bit under-prepared for the first return to camp since my hospitalization

Always the same

Already Dead
Con/Jur/d, 5/2/2024

All your heroes will die
or never existed or are
already dead, and that's
okay -- we embody the heroic 
free, without gender or sex
an idea doesn’t have skin on skin
or the slow deliberate breath 
from the inside, the long, long
boring bits, forgotten
or edited, what remains
appears to be the storied
real-life us

We saw this desire
to ascend, to become virtual, long
ago, those anime T-shirts, cartoon logos 
a want not just of belonging, the fictions
of fandom, to be part of a story, greater than
this, years before we realized the couch
just so, halfway between the television
and the universe, our idea of the hero
seated with or ever-increasing bulk in the
gravitational well, somehow foregoing 
necessary and obvious lessons

Antihero, is still an unclaimed projection
a claim to greater existence, anywhere
but here, it’s not you, we’re trying to convince-
convince ourselves, heroics only exist here
in us, not in the service

of murderers and madness 
if we said yes to our complicity
they would abide in our skin
we could stop haunting ourselves
with other peoples ideas
these swashbuckling, over achieving
badass, ghosts, finally free

to claim whatever seat in Valhalla
or Huitzilopochtli, or reject the
blood myths, for a deeper 
brave, like food to feed
the table.

Not the best poem written in the last month — but every year we hope to cultivate the habit

Not sure why we are so charmed by this image

BEWARE OF DOG/PRIVATE PROPERTY/WELCOME

Much love,

Con/Jur/d, 5/2/2024