march 2020

Jonathan Humanoid

Jonathan Humanoid has been writing since 2012. He never intended to become a poet. It's still a bit odd to him that he gets to something he loves and people get something from it. He started putting words on paper to help cope with the feeling of being alone and silenced that he felt in dealing with his mental illness. He writes to better understand himself. He shares his work because that feeling of being alone is real and too common. His work has appeared in a number of places both online and in print. Most recently Jonathan has had poems in Fight Evil With Poetry's first anthology, he put out a DIY chapbook called I Was Never Going to be Normal and his first full-length collection of poetry Decomposition of the Living will be released in April through Silver Star Labs.

I'M JUST HERE: STARLIGHT

I’m wandering around campus when I run into a friend. He asks me if I even have class that day. I don’t. It’s a Tuesday and I dropped my Tuesday classes a few weeks ago. I’m just here, I respond. And I realize this phrase could replace my answer to most questions right now.

Are you dating? Have you met anyone?

What are you doing with your life?

When are you graduating?

How is your writing going?

Are you happy? I’m just here

There are over 100 billion stars in our galaxy. There are over 100 billion galaxies—estimated. When I was younger I was fascinated by the idea that the light we see from a star would still be visible to us on earth after the star had died. This aphorism applies to a small handful of stars. Two or three stars will go supernova every century. Because the lifespan of a star is really fucking long. But the idea that distance and the time it takes for the light of a dead star to reach us had me questioning every twinkle.

I woke up wondering if I was still alive

for the past few months/ more days than not

this has been my very first thought in the morning

I’m just here/ and for now it’s nothing and everything

and all that I have to simply be

Some days I’m grateful and some days it just feels like work

So, what are you doing here? my friend asks, and I’m searching the sky. I don’t know how to tell him that I didn’t want to be alone at home. Honestly, I don’t really know. He asks me if I’ll be in class tomorrow but I think he knows the answer before the question hangs in the air. He tells me he knows things have been tough and he believes in me. What he says is, you’ll figure things out. You’re smart and I know you’ll find something that is worth investing in.

What I hear is, you aren’t dead yet.

I can still see your light/ despite this distance

I still see you/ and you have time to figure things out

I am no longer just here

my focus returns

I recognize the stars surrounding me

I am not alone; I come from a galaxy

We are all shining so brightly

For the first time in a long time

the idea of longevity

doesn’t make me cringe

I am here/ shit/ might as well do something with that

PROMISCUOUS

I have dated women that I met

in group therapy or psych wards

for a lot of reasons, it was a bad idea

but people would joke about sex

with a “crazy chic being wild”

as if I wasn’t. Crazy. But here’s the thing

When you feel broken you are a ghost

this is almost literal. Barely metaphor

You are ghost. Aching. To Be seen

To be heard. To be touched. And how can

longing for affection and feeling deserving of love

be gendered? But this says a lot

about how we treat gender in how we view

sex and mental illness. Your emptiness

is a field. Be it ever so desolate. Be it ever

in need of care. You fuck like there are wild

horses running through the parts of you that feel dead

You fuck like she’ll overlook the dead field because

look at how majestic the horses are. So wild. Powerful

and graceful. And wild. She likes the wild. You fuck

like you don’t long for domestication. Like you have

nothing more to offer than this. Like maybe someone

will find value in you. All this running. Does it ever end?

Are you running because you’re afraid or because you’re free?

You have no idea if there even is a difference

between love and sex and feeling worth loving

but look how pretty the horses are

isn’t there something to their wild