good morning, cruel world

by Nico!

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A selection of poems that are on and not on the album! Wallpaper cover, letterpress components, etc. This is still being made and will be sent out once it's finished.

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1.	abandonment issues feat. Nate Bookout (and Domino) 03:17	lyrics	buy track
abandonment issues “love takes you where you need to go, no exceptions.” - jim moore the day i adopted my dog i expected him to have abandonment issues. i expected him to pee on everything tear up my pillows and howl into the void of his missing trust, the same way we all handle our heartbreak. that day i expected him to look at me like life was pavlov’s experiment unfulfilled all bell and no treat -- the same way i look at people like they are a betrayal waiting to happen. but that evening he ran across my yard like my childhood on four legs until he came to a stop at my feet and hopped into my arms like he had always belonged there. i wonder what it must be like to love like that: like no one has ever given you up. to make new friends without the snarl of old ones stuck between your teeth. to sleep in a person’s bed without worrying they’ll push you out at any minute. that love follows me around the house, and i trip over him every day. he always gets under my feet and love always forgives me when i step on his paws with a wagging tail. because of him i am learning to forgive people when they accidentally kick me. i know they don’t mean it just as he knows i don’t. it’s just that i haven’t convinced myself that i do not deserve the rolled up newspaper of other people’s disappointment forgiving others isn’t half as hard as forgiving myself for all the times i drove someone’s trust to an unknown neighborhood, and let it out of the car, knowing it would never find me again. these are the bones i have buried in my backyard, and he brings them like gifts, like i might chew and digest the marrow of all the pain i’ve buried in the dirt of my shallow skin. i am learning to forgive myself, the same way he forgives me on the days my depression keeps me in my bed and I tell him “i’m sorry. we can’t go on a walk today.” but on my good days, we walk around our neighborhood and i keep watch when he pees on another dog’s pee, because honestly, that feels like a victory for both of us. and when it’s time to head back he trails after me like i am a star he can always trust to point him in the direction of home.
2.	red thread feat. Maddie Cramer 04:26	lyrics	buy track
when we were falling in love he told me that he felt we were destined that we were tied together at our little fingers by a red thread of fate. that it would never be severed no matter the distance. he was my first love. i believed him. and even across state lines, i could feel him tugging on that string and i would tug back. we would share all that we could: text messages and phone calls. the instant gratification only technology can provide to say you are loved. you are loved. you are loved. he tied more threads. he slipknotted them around each of my fingers. he told me i held his fate in my hands. i thought this was beautiful at first. one day, i realized i could no longer move without him knowing. i could no longer speak without him hearing. i could not leave without him threatening to sever every thread inside of his body. i could not set our thread on fire without it running like a fuse to his burning temper. i knew i would not escape the blast. he kept tugging but this time, it meant something new each text and phone call rang like: you are mine. you are mine. you are mine. i remember the way his panic would tighten like a crying throat when i didn’t respond in time. so i would let him guide my fingers - my nerves had worn themselves away long ago it was easier to let him move my atrophied muscles to where he wanted them. that is why i could not tell you when things changed. falling asleep is like that. and i had been asleep for a long time. one morning, i woke up with my severed fingers on the floor. 20 missed calls. 100 unread messages and voicemails that echoed every word i couldn’t have imagined in his mouth when i first fell in love with his smile. the night before after a week of studying and sleep deprivation i had fallen asleep early without telling him. he could not stand pulling on the string and feeling nothing in return. i want to tell you i didn’t call him back. abuse does not always work that way though. instead, his honeymoon phase waxed to shed light on my forgiveness - he held my hand so tenderly as he used the thread between us to sew my fingers back. that’s how he got under my skin. it felt like if i cut our thread i’d be broken again. he told me i couldn’t heal without him. i want to tell you i left him but that would be a lie. i can just tell you that i woke up one day afraid of cat’s cradle jacob’s ladder wedding rings. i can just tell you that these days, the threads i tie are loose. slip away easy when pulled. some call this ‘commitment issues.’ i call it survival.
3.	misandry feat. Mallory Everhart and the 2015 Hear, Here! Slam Team 02:27	info	buy track
4.	take back the night feat. Nate Bookout 03:36	lyrics	buy track
mid semester evaluations - the rules come down from their ivory tower into my basement and tell me i need to start failing my students - not all of them, just the ones i’ve been giving incompletes. when i ask why, they say without Fs, As are worthless other people’s success is built on the backs of failing students. i think about my failing students - two weeks into class, i finally get the courage to tell them my pronouns - a shy student asks to do the same, tells us, “my name max. i use he/him/his pronouns.” it takes the class a few weeks to catch up with the news, but they do. a few weeks later, max goes missing i get a call from his mom, she says “abby is in the hospital. she tried to hurt herself.” i am told to give max an F but isn’t that what everyones already done checked that F box on his birth certificate his student id his hospital intake form and i don’t want to add to that list when he probably already equates F for failure at being recognized in the mirror. and i think about danny danny showed up a month late out of prison, and spent his first week hiding, behind the drawers in the back of the classroom. it took a while, but he finally wrote his story down in a poem and told us he’d share it at the final show. a week before the final show danny goes missing and we all know where even though the administration won’t tell me. i am told to give my students Fs for the days they walked out for justice F is for justice and i know that’s not phonetically sound but real justice doesn’t play by the rules because the rules put a bird in a cage and the rules told me to fail that bird for not singing anymore. the thing is i’ve got a lot of missing students students i’ve never met students who never came in to class students who can’t wake up in the morning for first hour and though i don’t know them I am told to give them Fs like felonies, fears, and faults when i know an F won’t get a kid out of bed in the morning an F won’t bail a kid out of prison an F won’t make a kid want to live i give them incompletes because we all deserve to know we can try again and do better next time. i give them incompletes because they don’t deserve to have their bad days permanently recorded as failed futures. most importantly, i give them incompletes because well aren’t we all incomplete? and isn’t this fight incomplete? and isn’t this system incomplete when any one student could ever be considered a failure?
5.	church feat. Shane Lory 03:25	lyrics	buy track
every month or so my mother tries to convince me of the existence of god. it’s so predictable, i’ve considered marking it on a menstrual calendar, the way her persistent spirituality has not menopaused though her actually going to church and praying has. i’ve tried to explain the ways my imagination will not bend, that i was not born with a god muscle and she said she doesn’t need me to believe in jesus, just something. my mother believes in a lot of things like my brother and i like her husband like this hispanic hand-me-down mantra i want to believe in so badly: nothing is more important than family. the first gift abuela gave me was a rosary that shone as white as i pictured god would and i kept it hung over my door for five years – the love of god was akin to the love of a family i hardly ever saw. so i can’t blame my mother when she says church will bring us back together, but i wonder who she prays to when walking the generational tightrope between a god who loves and a god who hates. and yes, i know jesus doesn’t want me to go to hell but he’s got a hell of a fan club who wants to set us on fire. just look at this world full of queers who have fled the burning rubble of families crumbling around them. abuela doesn’t have much time left but there’s a reason i don’t visit – the sight of me would kill her quicker. i can thank the god she was taught for that. i can’t help but want her last memory of me to be all pigtails and possibility - i can’t help but want my last memory of her to be one where she still loves me in spite of the people who have loved me who have looked at me like i’m beautiful not to mention the way they have made me say “shit” and “fuck” and “jesus” all in the same breath but these are some religious experiences i don’t need to share with my grandmother. she will never know my face as it is now, but my mother knows, and loves it still for all its snarl, for all its queer, for all its metal-shine, for all of the holy! places it has been. it is with this same mouth that i asked my mom: ‘are you ever afraid? that your mom and sisters and nieces and nephews will find out about me? about what they’ll say to you about your queer child?’ she responded: ‘i didn’t get to choose my family then but i choose the family i have made. you are the family i have made.’ i call that kind of love godly so i can’t be angry at god just as i am not angry at oxygen for allowing a fire to burn. when queers are used as kindling in the burning shame of their families god, like oxygen, is both the culprit and the one thing we just hope to inhale enough of before the smoke closes in.
6.	affection infection LIVE at Slam Nuba! 03:21	lyrics	buy track
this morning, you were in my bed. wrapped up in your fluffy gray sweater and little black shorts. the shorts you wear when you’re on your period. you’re on your period and i have a yeast infection and you came over last night knowing full well that there was a negative percent chance of any sex happening but i guess this isn’t just about sex anymore because last night you watched as i stuck medicine in my most intimate places and i listend as you sniffled in your sleep because the second the weather dips under 50 degrees you turn into a perpetual snot factory and when morning came the first thing you told me was that you had to pee and empty your diva cup and i was like, woah baby you are just as gross and human as i am. it didn’t stop you from pressing your body to mine in the shower blood running down our legs and it sure it didn’t stop you from smiling at me in the way that makes me say woah baby i think you like me as much as a like you which is cool because i like you a lot not like love, but i like you enough that i’m worried the words “i love you” will slip out any day now like, i’ll be tying my shoes and i’ll catch you looking at me like i am a beam of light, wonderful in my most mundane moments, and it’ll just slip out and i’ll be like “shit...i love you” and i just want to make sure i say that when it is 100% true. but the second i do, love you, that is i won’t be afraid to say it those words will shoot out when the time is right, kind of like your menstrual blood when you sneeze. they will ooze forth the second i feel them burning inside of me much like the yeast infection burning inside of my vagina. but hopefully, my love for you will be even hotter than that.
7.	convenience stores feat. Peyton Kay Davis 02:36	lyrics	buy track
the first people to see me relapse are the people at the convenience store when the trip i’ve told myself is for milk or eggs, or a cup of coffee for a long night turns into snickers, cheddar jalapeno cheetos, slim jims, sour patch kids, and all of my shame slid across the counter to be rung up and placed in a plastic bag. sometimes i will say i am holding a party or that i have a long road ahead of me -- any narrative that is not just going home alone. i avoid the eyes of the other customers in line. i know what they must be thinking because it is what i am also thinking. i know this part of the eating disorder does not make me seem like a good fat, the type you want to feel sympathy for. the type of fat that is always only ever trying to not be fat. the type of fat who is always wittling away at themselves with the pocketknife of insecurity. that’s what the purging was for. so people could know i was trying to atone. so they might forgive me. so i might forgive myself. recently, i learned that colleges have to replace their plumbing twice as often as other institutions because of the stomach acid wearing away the pipes. i thought about writing my college a check for all of the damage i might have done inside the walls i hated myself in, and then i wondered how much would the check have to be to pay for all of the damage i might have done inside of the body i hated myself in. i don’t think i have that much money. the 7-eleven across the street my junior year felt easier to reach than my self-worth. ice cream tastes better than all of my ugly. candy bars cost less than therapy. i am learning, however, that therapy costs less than fixing the damage inside the walls of my body. i have not binged, or purged for a few months now. there are no easy fixes in my kitchen pantry. only that which must be assembled with my bare hands. i coat them with flour to hold on to the slippery resolve of a better future i am not sure of -- one that will taste better and make me feel better at the same time. i am learning to tell good eggs from bad ones and decide which ones i want to mix with. now when i say i am holding a party even when i am alone i mean it. now when i say i have a long road ahead of me that is even more true. every moment is one in which i slow down chew decide whether i want to swallow knowing that what i take into my body is no longer a decision i can so easily undo.
8.	It Gets Better (Music by David Other) 03:54	info
9.	f is for fairness feat. Shane Lory (for Crystal Spring) 03:10	lyrics	buy track
mid semester evaluations - the rules come down from their ivory tower into my basement and tell me i need to start failing my students - not all of them, just the ones i’ve been giving incompletes. when i ask why, they say without Fs, As are worthless other people’s success is built on the backs of failing students. i think about my failing students - two weeks into class, i finally get the courage to tell them my pronouns - a shy student asks to do the same, tells us, “my name max. i use he/him/his pronouns.” it takes the class a few weeks to catch up with the news, but they do. a few weeks later, max goes missing i get a call from his mom, she says “abby is in the hospital. she tried to hurt herself.” i am told to give max an F but isn’t that what everyones already done checked that F box on his birth certificate his student id his hospital intake form and i don’t want to add to that list when he probably already equates F for failure at being recognized in the mirror. and i think about danny danny showed up a month late out of prison, and spent his first week hiding, behind the drawers in the back of the classroom. it took a while, but he finally wrote his story down in a poem and told us he’d share it at the final show. a week before the final show danny goes missing and we all know where even though the administration won’t tell me. i am told to give my students Fs for the days they walked out for justice F is for justice and i know that’s not phonetically sound but real justice doesn’t play by the rules because the rules put a bird in a cage and the rules told me to fail that bird for not singing anymore. the thing is i’ve got a lot of missing students students i’ve never met students who never came in to class students who can’t wake up in the morning for first hour and though i don’t know them I am told to give them Fs like felonies, fears, and faults when i know an F won’t get a kid out of bed in the morning an F won’t bail a kid out of prison an F won’t make a kid want to live i give them incompletes because we all deserve to know we can try again and do better next time. i give them incompletes because they don’t deserve to have their bad days permanently recorded as failed futures. most importantly, i give them incompletes because well aren’t we all incomplete? and isn’t this fight incomplete? and isn’t this system incomplete when any one student could ever be considered a failure?
10.	googling it feat. Peyton Kay Davis 02:47	lyrics	buy track
during the times i can’t afford therapy google is my saving grace. i ask questions like hey google: why am i sad why can’t i sleep how can i stop wanting to die sometimes it is just the word help again and again sometimes, the word why sometimes in all caps IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURTS when i type i’m suicidal google doesn’t respond with: did you mean: sleep deprived did you mean: dehydrated did you mean: spiritually bankrupt did you mean: you haven’t tried yoga yet? instead, i find pages and pages of links, forum threads, and blog posts, many millions of people all asking the same questions. these days, i know no other way to offer condolences aside from saying me too i feel that too i’ve been there too and here i am still standing here you can too. there is nothing quite like clicking on a suicide note posted on someone’s blog months ago only to see they’ve updated recently: a selfie of their new haircut. a new favorite song. a reminder that so many things continue surviving even through the moments they think they’ve given up. i know that sometimes the suicide note is the most recent post. i know we can’t always save each other with our own sadness. but i don’t know what i’d do if i searched the world for my sadness and found that no one felt it too. i am learning not to delete those sad blog posts -- i am learning not to edit the pain out of my poems -- i am learning not to lie and say i’m fine all the time. i’m not fine all the time. for the record, i’m not fine most of the time. i am learning to wear my heart on my sleeve with all of its ticking trauma so people can look at it and tell the time they have is not, is never limited. just look for me on google look for all the people that continue to be here and our suicide notes buried beneath our futures.

about

an album of poetry and spoken word by nico wilkinson, with contributions from talented musicians and poets.
the poems within are about waking up to a world full of pain, injustice, and bad brain stuff. the poems within are about getting out of bed in the morning anyway.

credits

released August 1, 2016

Music and accompaniment from David Other, Peyton Kay Davis, Nate Bookout, Shane Lory, and Maddie Cramer. Also featuring Mallory Everhart, Andrew Ziegler, Cameron Eickmeyer, and Beas J.

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about

Nico! Colorado Springs, Colorado

i'm a genderqueer spoken word poet that lives in colorado springs. i write identity stuff, body stuff, brain stuff. i write about the things that make me get out of bed in the morning.