Z FONDANAROSA
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Poems from Ox-Bow 2018

5/31/2023

 

Before Morning Star / Morning Star / Iron Pore
Pink Ice Cream / Fahrenheit 3000
A collection of poem's I nearly lost in a notebook from years past

Before Morning Star

So dark, 
Forced solitude is lonely
I’m so happy, but it doesn't fix my brain 
I’m not pretending to be anyone, but then why doesn't it feel okay to be sad?
Calm before the storm 
Rain rolls in and everything seems to fall to slumber 
“My favorite game is Russian roulette… why aren't you laughing?” 
“I don’t want you to die. That’s why I’m not laughing.” 
Lightning in the living room
Morning Star

Clouds make the sky the deepest black, the moon struggles to cut through. Despite the soft words I still feel wounded. I can still feel the screams, I cannot forget the storms of yesterday. I’m terrified of being alone because I know the voices will scream through the quiet and bring back the boiling blood of old trips across the river of dreams. Why can't I be fooled. Staring at an ugly demon, I’m a stranger. Are you calling me?
Iron Pore

Delicious realms made with forks.
Fluorescent lights, they are the devil.
Blind Me.
Metal beekeepers.
Tiny dragon, fire is often blue to me. 
Sculptures are often very strong. 
Iron will spark back at you through the dissonance.
So hot and yet too cold.
Warm hands set on fire. 
Bronze can fool a man into believing it is gold so why can’t I?
Set the sand on fire. 
The moon leaves in the night, only the glow keeps you warm.
Pink Ice Cream

Win $20 in poker and spend it on ice cream and laundry. Shaky hands, pink ice cream, paranoid schizophrenia. Spoiled brat, unlovable.  Sugar cough, toothache, baby bird. “Am I, dare I say it, romantic?” Life is shit but I'll always get what I want? I always get what I want, I always get what I want, bully bully bully bully bully. Masturbate to your reflection in a laundromat. Public bathroom sex, pass out, smack your head on a porcelain sink. Missing your last supper, washing smoke off your clothing. Isn't it lovely to live like this? Head-aching alcoholic waiting to pass out. I always feel like someone is behind me. It’s loud, empty eyes and empty spaces. I’m a mooch with nothing to give. I always get what I want.
Fahrenheit 3000

The sun is setting 
But the fire only now just began to burn
I’m facing west towards the ladders into heaven I have no plans to climb
I’ve already burned down to the bone
When I left I said I felt like I was dying, I could smell the kindling under my feet catching before I even stepped into the fire pit. 
This blue heat licked me up over thousands of degrees. It only takes 1800 but I put myself well deep into 3000 and turned my bones to black ash.
Blue light and white smoke swept me away in the kiln and left behind something new. Like the glaze on a pot I have transformed. 
I knew I was going to die. 
I never know how complete and total it would be. 
Little did I know what would come in the aftermath Becoming something I never saw in the mirror, becoming a stranger. Lips that burned for lust, eyes with life, skin kissed golden, hair long and dark like the moonless sky that I have been born under. 
Dusted from ashes my angel recoils from this new form. They cannot love this new body but it will be okay. I have been reborn into love. Even without their guiding passion my new body is surrounded in love.
Everyone will love me mercilessly or fall in the ash where I died. This is not my will but what I believe will be true
I’m so glad I've died.

Forever / Blood / Cicada

2/23/2023

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Forever

Lazy man working his ass off to escape a falling Rome
Working harder than any dog he has nothing to show for it

The same thing plays on loop
Different faces and different places but the world stays the same
The immortal boredom to relive the same life over and over
Just because the picture changes doesn’t mean it’s not the same story

And working this hard is getting boring
Nothing changes even with every grain of time and sand
How can an immortal find luxury in the hundredth cycle of pain?
Blood

The change was slow at first, barely noticeable, just my usual odd interests, just enjoying the familiar. It felt friendly.

I became gravely Ill that February, I acted out of maddens or perhaps desperation, but the infection had already taken hold. I began to waist, lose my grounding, I tried to take an icy plunge but ended back at my spawn point. Like a failed death in some video game. But this change did not reset.

It’s not an obsession, I don’t long to be, I AM, whether or not I want. It’s becoming more and more clear as the days go I’m changing, unable to escape this fate.

It’s a new era for us all. I did not expect us to be remolded like this. We are one and one are me. I am you and you are me and together we create something new, something terrifying.

Manifested or founded in reality. It’s not real? Then what is it you’d say to describe my truth?
Cicada

bury me in a shallow grave
in a season ill crawl out
like a cicada
and in a session ill be reborn
new wings
new things
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Unbalanced + Curtain Call

12/7/2022

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Unbalanced I

Holding much to tight, my grip begins to slip
Getting silk burns
I know you were fading a year ago
And I shot myself in the head to try to hold on to what was already gone
Now I let go
My grip ache from holding on
My grip aches from doing everything wrong
And I know there is no recovering from this fall
Because once I’m here I cannot climb back up
Let it be, let go of your slipping grip


Curtain Call II

Leave nothing, no shoes, nor memories
Anything left behind will be lost to time
Leave not your heart, nor your toys
Leave no book, no writing, nor your soul
Don’t be sore for those you miss, nor those who wronged you
Don’t feel sore for those who love you, nor don’t know you
Every insignificant familiar face should stay behind with the ill fitting suits and things you couldn’t use
Leave nothing, no attachment, nor remorse
Let it be complete, let go of your slipping grip

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I died in the summer on TV

11/30/2022

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You died before you were ever born
Get over it
The free fall has finally begun
And
Time slows when it is used

The blade thirst when mouths are hungry
Get over it
Immortality is a coward's dream
And
I can almost taste my past lives on my tongue

I hate the summer
And
This has been the longest summer of my life
Get over it
I will find you where the TV and dreams become one and meet
And
I will make out with he storms on Jupiter
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I am a tree who is scared to grow

7/29/2022

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I fear making solid connections with a community when I so desperately do not want to be tied to any one location.
They all fade, wilt, and die all the same
And as long as I’m stuck in a space where all I want to do is run
I’ll never be able to water a garden, not when I can barely take a few houseplants with me.
Everything falls apart if you don’t stay rooted.
And my roots are weak, I blow over in the storm and move on to the next space
And when I’m planted firm in the ground I wilt
And I cry for the wind despite hating the storm.
How can I be mycorrhizal with love when I cannot stay in the soil?


Life is so meaningless, and my need to find safety, my need to keep moving has barricaded me from ever building the meaningful connections I need to thrive.
I cannot put roots down, as for if I stay put the men with axes will come and chop me to the earth with deft hands
And all that I had built would be in vain either way.
And the rings of my stump would be ground down, no less painless than never letting my sapling take root to grow into the tree to be felled

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Stunted

7/22/2022

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I hate the mirror, the rude awakening no one cares enough to save me
I keep waking up someplace new, I never grow, I just fade, stunted
And even if I save myself, life will be long and hollow, stunted
And I’m a vampire now, no matter how long I look I can’t see myself in the mirror anymore
I’ve stopped aging, I’m starving for blood that’s not mine, stunted

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My Location

7/15/2022

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It’s not as effortless as it was, or maybe it was never this effortless at all
I've been ground down like an ink stone with no more to give
September turns to October and it leaves you a husk of man with a fruitless harvest
All the rain in the world doesn’t feel like the rain in New Jersey
Let me sleep in my old rib cage I’ve excavated from my once healthy flesh.
I’m a ghost on the train moving towards my location

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Old Wounds

5/8/2022

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Old wounds and something you thought you’d forgotten, stuck in a loop you keep forgetting you are repeating.

There is a pink doe sleeping in the grass and they taunt me with their crown of daisies. I can't forget their blue eyes in the golden sunlight. White Jasmine and sparkling gold wine in the springtime. Blond hair through the smoke and junkyard steaks on the paper plates. Pink roses, lavender tea, baby blue cherub, white skin, fox blood, none of them meant for me.

I can't see their face anymore, they don’t exist anymore. Even in their own time the memory of us will fade.



Golden heart locket filled with a ray of sunshine… waist of my precious time. I remember you like the lyrics of a once favorite song, every curve familiar, every lyric etched in my brain, but when I close my eyes it's all gone. Remembering a time when you cared. Oh darling don't let your roots grow out...

I'm deleting all my memories of you. All that's left now is unreadable corrupted data. I don't want to be part of strangers' alters and I'd wish you’d let up on this curse already.



Maybe they were right in the end, no better than any man, toxic and self centered, I’m still holding on to dead flowers in my fists. Lemons and teeth never pulled. Terrified of women, femme faital, and the snuff porn star.

It feels like the warm sun will never grace me again and I am haunted by this. This person I long for no longer exists, did I have a chance to save them? Did I crush these babies' breath to pure pulp? It never occurred to me that maybe you just didn’t love me all that much in the end.

Now they're just an angry dog and I'm just a ram in the field. 

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Confirmation bias

4/15/2022

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Picture
Oftentimes in my life I have found myself with the strangest feeling as if I'd just come out of a coma. To most they would say “well that's just how anxiety feels” or “oh that's just stress” but I wonder how those people would react if I told them that it was just that, the feeling going in and out of a coma. Well almost exactly that, for the amnesia that befell a comet survivor was also befalling me as I fell down through the stars. Though I black out I was never knocked out cold, I was just going about my life, and then I wasn't, and then I was again, in my memory never knowing where I stopped living my life and started back up again.

444 - home is calling
1111 - wake up call from the other, bringing light open up to new things coming in
222 - new beginning, relations, compassion, trust … keep positive keep love

I don’t listen to what I’m told because I’m so tired of the truth hurting like an ice pick in my throat.
It feels like a bomb went off but it’s never stopped exploding.
Do I love unconditionally and excessively from falling down from Saturn or did it make me learn to hate? How do you become unlovable? Being excited for another person's intimacy is just an essential part of the human experience. Nights in San Francisco are always colder than I want them to be, and I always feel like I’m a guest no matter where I lay my head.
“If you keep making that face a bad angle will fly over and make it stay that way forever.”
Survivors guilt wares the clothing of the covenant and rides on a pale white horse
“You’ve mellowed out….” Or maybe I’ve just been put out one too many times. I’m out of energy to fight Thanatos. If he won’t listen to my screaming cries I guess I just need to be quiet and wait this out.  

555 - Let’s do this again but this time I’m inside out

I'm so devoid of meaningful closure I keep having dreams where you apologize to me for all the things you’ve done and as time passes I realize how deeply I just want to mend things and be friends again. But… I know that you’ve burnt this bridge down so much I’ll never be able to cross it again. But… I miss you and I’m aloud to hurt and I wish you’d stop haunting my dreams.

333- something new

I’d like to be a stranger… always…There’s nothing quite like the fleeting moment when you're someplace new for the first time. The first time is the only time it will be the first and that unfamiliarity is electric in its experience. To discover the unknown for the first time brings more comfort than the place I can navigate with my eyes shut tight. 

11:11 - Not sad it’s over, I want to be happy with the good time even if it ends in blood.
4444 - Tired of being angry, just want to live.

I saw a dead bird on the sidewalk yesterday
I saw my name in the sidewalk yesterday
I watched the sun set over the ocean
Bitter sweet, I feel it coming

1021 -  Need to keep moving like a shark. Feel the shape of my skeleton. With firefly’s in my chest I feel like I am on the stop block waiting for the sound to go off. I can feel I’m about to be running for a while. Blood child, the room begins to spin.
555 - the tower is beneath me but I’m still struggling to justify running like this. Never wish this upon my worst enemies.
111 - trust your gut that you are right. How tiring it does get when you have been scraping at the walls screaming for help. Screaming to make a dent but never escaping that small lip inside the hourglass, that last little bit of sand that doesn't slip in to pass the time.

I need the winter in order to appreciate the summer otherwise indulgence grows dull under a sky that’s never blue. The thunderstorm feels anger and brimming with grief in the same way you do when you feel you cannot win. It's pounding rain makes you feel less alone confronting the ugly reality of life. I genuinely hate the bitter smell of rain in the spring. Confronting generational trauma and curses and truly understanding them deeply feels the same as pouring salt into an infected wound, you must confront its hollowing truth face to face and bare the pain lest you let it to fester and rot, eating away at you

1111 - I keep waking up at exactly 11:11am
333 - something is coming and I keep seeing messed up eyes. I’m worried about my eye…. my eyes…seeing
11:11 - 444 - 555 - 11:11 over and over again 11:11 they’re calling, wake up.. is it already time to fulfill my contract, to come home… close the circle, finish the loop, where you were before you will be there again but in a new flesh.
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I’m beginning to grow weary of the city

4/1/2022

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All I want is to have a little home secluded in the New England woods or something where I paint and can lay by a fire and warm my agony filled body in peace. 
Every six months I travel into a city to show my art and then dissipate into the woods again. 
I hate living in the cities and being around people and diseases and I hate being in pain. 
And I just want to be alone with just a few folks I like in a little cabin somewhere away from everyone where I’m not in pain. 
I don’t want to work, I don't want to make money, I don't want to go to movies or bars or restaurants. 
I want a cat to sleep in my chest while I relish comfort in a pile of pillows looking up at a skylight where I can see stars at night. 
I hate people, I want thunderstorms and trees, I want to live somewhere where I am content staying in my little space forever.
I want a stream I can put my aching feet in in the summer where I can look at rocks. 
I don’t want to see another car or bus or train ever again. 
I’m tired of social media, I want books, I want to write, I want to be dirty and free, I don’t want to think about skin care or makeup or what is in fashion. 
I want to be warm and safe with vegetables and fresh goat milk for breakfast. 
I hate people, I hate the city, I want to live alone in a tree far far away. 
I want to smell moss in the summer and hear birds and drink herbal tea and make my own candy and clothing and be barefoot. 
I want to paint watercolors on my porch in the sunlight and I want a big bed made of logs with fur pelts to sleep under at night. 
And I want to not think about a clock and just spend a whole day on a loom weaving or beading and eat carrots and honey and keep chickens and goats and drink spring water. 
I wanna talk to animals and make wreaths out of green spring twigs and have wild mushrooms and berries and swing on a porch swing and sing to myself. 

I need a real way out. I need to be somewhere far away where I can breathe. 
I’d move back to California if it meant I could live someplace secluded and calm with big trees and wild rabbits. 
I’d move anywhere if I could be happy. 
No cell service, just internet in one building and one land line, no expectations but to make art and make merry with the deer and like minded people and food that tastes better than anything I'll have again. 
I’m tired of sleeping on the floor and eating trash and being in pain. 
I want to take a hike alone in a rainstorm, I want to hear the trees talk to each other, I want to see the stars.  
I want to have two seconds where I’m not hearing the maddening hum of electricity. 
What I’d give to live in nowhere Michigan by the lake in the woods. 
What I’d give.
I hate people and steel and plastic and cars and trains and planes.
I hate the never ending noise and the alienation and the hatred. 
I hate city’s and sound and grime and gas and oil and processed food that makes me sick every time I eat it.

I’m afraid that the place that is miserable is not a city but in fact myself. 
And I don’t know how to live with that or what I should do. 
Everything feels like a shell of what it once was and I feel like I’m hoping for something that does not exist.
And I become disappointed when things fall apart. 
And now no matter where I go, I’m going to miss wherever I am not, because I’m hunting for a feeling and not a place and that feeling is something that is not coming to me. 
I had a fleeting moment in my life where I was content and it’s now since passed and everything I do to recreate that feeling is empty and hollow because I long for something I can’t get back. 
I fear even if I get as close to it as to taste it again it won’t be the same and I’ll be disappointed. 
It feels like the best time I’ll ever have is in the rear view mirror and it hurts because it was such a small sliver of my whole life. 
The thing is I know I was still sad during those moments of comfort and it makes me wonder too if I’ll ever be happy? 
Even if I can get back to that place of content I don’t know if I’ll be able to ever reach something better which is full happiness.

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