to whom it may concern

Myopic

2011-10-06T08:51:00.001-07:00

Other young people have a kind of myopic sense of self.
We assume that no doors have ever been shut
that our strength of will can break any locks.
The bridges we cross may not have burned,
but some of them have rotted.
And in the moments that we realize it isn't true:
what have we really lost?
It hasn't been true in a long time.
Some of these choices were never ours
and some roads we chose intentionally.

But if I am in a canoe,
so many miles out to sea
there is no hope of me ever becoming a doctor
ever becoming the kind of settled down wife of a doctor
of ever being the unquestioning patient of a doctor
then maybe I can laugh, finally.

Maybe I can admit that the sea is worth it.
If being me with you comes at a price
Know, darling, that I'd rather be sure that I can never be
an accountant or a dentist
than not know I could be yours.

webs

2011-09-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

Lightly lilting
and you are my balance,
you are the moment I am sturdy in.
You are the time between sips of coffee
you are the spaces between the words.
I love you,
And you are what that means to me.
You make me happy when I'm alone
and I hear music in raindrops
because the rain is giving you life.
We are made of the Earth and Sky
I worship the light and dark
for giving you to me.
The water is sacred, because it is in you.
You are the love in my life.
If love then goes to rivers or stars,
to food or dance,
know this: I worship you.
My love for you changes the way I love the world.

scent

2011-05-31T09:11:00.000-07:00

I hate the smell of lavender and wet dogs
and so when I bathe this dog with lavender soap
it's not in any aromatic hope.
She smelled better before I started,
but she is a little lavender martyr.
When I lay tonight in bed
and I smell lavender in the sheets
My nose against your heart instead,
I will escape the smell of lavender.

I hate the smell of ammonia
of metal
of stale water left in the kettle.
I miss the smell of you.
I miss the smell of you.

I love the smell of sage
and the smell of your body
the sun bringing out all the parts you try to scrub away.
Scent creates a perfect cage:
The scent of sweat
stuck in your hair
held in still air.

Lavender curls into my stomach like curdled milk
like epsom salts and ipecac
like too much alcohol.
I crave the scent of burnt wood
or dirt or straw.
I want to roll in the grass
and be itchy.
I do not want to soothe my skin
and wash my dog with lavender,
then have to wash my hands of lavender.

In the heat of the summer
the sun creeps into my head
filling it with ideas and memories
filling it with ideas and desire.
The sun reminds me I'm not dead
filling me with ideas and fire.
In the low heat of the sunrise
you boil water for the french press.
In the first mornings of summer
in the visions of this mess:
in the sounds of a sunrise
in the sounds of the kettle cries
in the sounds of a grey sky.
I will light a match
will burn a stick of incense
as smudge mix for sin and sickness
A holy smoke that heals and furls
attach a prayer
a scent that uncurls.
Finally, in the sensual stir
we see ourselves:
the scented world.

how it is

2011-05-25T07:33:00.000-07:00

I think that if I could influence the world with my intentions,
I wouldn't.

I don't mean to say that I wouldn't work on poverty.
I just mean I wouldn't ask the world to bring me what I want.

I couldn't have thought of you,
couldn't have realized what I was calling for.
I didn't know that the person I was writing love poems for
was going to be exactly what I needed,
and more than I knew I wanted.
I shouldn't be surprised, though.

I've been writing you love poems for more than a year now.
And even if I had asked for some one lovely,
I wouldn't have known to ask for an angel's voice.
Even if I had imagined a friend
I couldn't have asked for some one who is a perfect little spoon.
Even if I had been looking for a soul mate,
I couldn't have imagined you.

So if I ever get a genie,
I think I'll use my wishes on disassembling the WTO or IMF or something.
I think I'll end industrial agriculture
or buy every middle school a complete set of kindles
so that every kid can afford to read.
I'll write a check so big that the "girl project"
will have trouble carrying it home.
I will fund HIV research
and a magazine about love.
I will buy the next election,
and put Winona LaDuke in office.
I will create, in one sweeping gesture,
a museum devoted entirely to jokes.

I will not wish for a better job, though.
I know that I could not imagine what I'll be doing in 10 years,
and I don't want to fuck up my chance to be doing something I'm meant to do.
I will not wish away my petty disagreements with my family,
or our shared painful history.
I don't know how we'll grow from here,
or whether I will like it,
but I know I need it.
I would not wish for clearer skin
or shinier hair.
I might be fine the way I am.

I can't imagine what our future looks like,
but I couldn't have imagined you.
When I find that magic bottle,
maybe I should learn from you.
Maybe I should say that I don't know how to fix anything
but it's more important that it's all fixed in the right way
than to be fixed in my right time.
Maybe I should give up on the idea that I know best,
and just understand that I can learn.
That wisdom is within reach
that love is always nearer than we expect.
That being with you is better than I could have known to ask the stars for,
but that throwing pennies into fountains has a certain charm.
And maybe I'll just wait a bit on all these wishes,
maybe I'll take a break from pushing the world round for a while
and maybe I won't push the sun into the sky this morning.
Maybe the sunrise will be fine with out me.
Maybe I should just sleep in a bit,
and maybe I should hold you close,
and maybe I should tell you,
"I love you more than I knew that I could."
Maybe I should throw away the magic lamp,
keep my pennies,
unfold my prayer ready hands.
Maybe I should accept that this is how it is.
And I'm with you,
so that's okay.

Dreams Are Made Of

2011-04-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

every night we curl together
dancing as we dream:
I turn and you hold me,
whisper to me all the ways we will find each other.
You move and I adjust
I fit around you, a perfect fit.
My lips brush against your shoulder,
and I know you understand me
as you travel through the surreal other world.
Every night we turn and intertwine.
Your body is never in the wrong place
as long as it's touching me.

afloat

2011-01-18T11:55:00.000-08:00

In the bustle of an afternoon
I sometimes think I might be going crazy.
Might be losing the ways I used to connect easily with words
and abstract concepts are too difficult these days.
Concentrating on a book so hard my fingers turn blue and legs fall asleep
has become some sort of disconnected memory.
I might be losing my coping mechanisms,
my defenses might be eroding,
washing away with each kiss;
and each time you hold my hand
I think I might be needing my life jacket
just a little bit less.

Ineffable

2011-01-14T11:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel like I should write down every good memory we make
so I don't ever lose the time we watched I Love Lucy
all night and you
rewound so we could watch her do the scene twice
and I laughed so hard
and you kissed me.
But maybe some memories are just for inscribing on the inside of my organs,
underneath my skin, in my tissues.
Maybe the way you feel safe is too visceral for words
and maybe the way you looked at me that night
(you know, the night you took the dog on a walk?)
maybe that feeling in the lining of my stomach
is ineffable and maybe trying to explain
the way you made me french toast for breakfast
is just me trying grasp at the holy
in a language that is mundane.

Held

2011-01-14T11:44:00.000-08:00

You hold me to you at night
and when you think I might be asleep,
might be in a different state of mind,
might need to here it:
you whisper that you love me.
And in my dream universe,
which has been nothing but storms and
surreal emptiness and fire:
I feel our warmth,
your strength pulsing around me.
Your arms hold me as I fall asleep,
your lips brushing my forehead as I adjust.
In the darkness of your bedroom,
I can only tell you in these tired words:
I love you.

Love Poems About Astronauts

2010-11-29T07:12:00.000-08:00

A rough draft:

in a moment, I have lived all of awareness:
I have seen myself as part of something greater,
and as many greater parts.
I have seen motions and patterns of the universe,
known intimately the revolutions of my atoms.

I told you all the great love poems should be
about astronauts.
about the moon
about seeing the world from the outside,
about having the option to be anywhere in the entire universe
and then...
choosing to be here, with you.

I have every life ever lived to be in,
and I love being here with you.

For Your Heart

2010-11-20T19:08:00.001-08:00

You tell me I have your heart
and I hold that carefully,
in my ears, in my throat, in my belly.
I promise to be careful with it,
I promise to be gentle and
loving and attentive.

In return, I offer you my eyes:
the way I see the world
(slowly, in moments and movements,
in colors and breaths and emotions.)

I want to give you my wrists,
my hands, my fingers,
my elbows and all the skin holding them together.
You can have both my arms,
they will hold you when you need to sleep,
keep you together when you think you'll fall apart.

Take my feet, my ankles, my toes.
For you, I will dance every day when I wake up.
For you, I will walk as far as we can go,
at what ever pace you'd like.
They will keep me with you,
by your side.
They will follow you
to the ends of our world,
to the edges of where we want to be.

Darling, you can have my kidneys.
You take my fear and make it obsolete,
turn the lights on whenever I'm afraid.
You will now be able to filter out
whatever toxins try to enter our relationship.

For your heart, I will give you my tongue:
As many kisses as you want,
any bed time stories,
and little whispers as we fall asleep.
I will give you my voice:
all the ways I know to speak,
all the ways I know to be understood.
I will give you my lips
and the best words they know.
My biggest smile is for you.

I will give you my lungs,
because you take my breath away,
and maybe you would be more responsible with them.
I will draw my first breath when I wake up for you.
I will give you my first "good morning" of the day,
and the last "good night"
before I find you in my dreams.

For your heart,
I want to give you the ways you make me.
I want to give you all my "us",
all the ways your love makes me bigger.
You can have the best parts of me:
the most important organs,
the most beautiful thoughts.

Music

2010-11-18T06:15:00.000-08:00

love songs are the only thing I can stomach so early in the morning:
songs that are allowed to be played at half volume,
songs that are about the one that got away:
No good.
This morning is only about
FULL VOLUME
REAL DEAL
ACTUALLY IN LOVE
songs.
The kind of songs that make you smile
the kind you want to sing, all day.
The kind that make you want to dance with a partner.
The kind that make me miss you less.

Limits of Love Letters

2010-11-17T17:03:00.000-08:00

I want to write you love letters that leave you feeling warm, like my kisses, like a cup of tea. I want to write things that make you smile as if I were standing behind you with my arms around your waist.

I want to connect with you in words the way I connect with you in our eyes and touch... I will write love letter forever, but I don't think I'll ever come close.

It is a poets job to point out the horrible failings of our craft: nothing Shakespeare ever wrote could ever make me feel the way your low growl does. My stomach flips for a single kiss, and I have never felt the pleasure of one of your looks in any of the Great Books.

I wonder if the great lovers knew they would some day be relegated to text? If they would laugh at our pale imitations?

I know my words will only ever offer a cloudy, imperfect reflection of the way you make my wrists and shoulders and hips and collarbone dance. If the freckles in your eyes were described by all the prose Neruda ever wrote, I would still only feel your looks in my ankles.

May Cause Drowsiness

2010-11-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

My head is swimming with painkillers
and all I can think of is your lips
your mouth against mine
you saying you love me
you calling me your baby.
Yours.
My head is floating,
maybe it is flying.
Maybe I will be able to transcend
my philosophy classes,
my boring term papers,
my ways of wasting time.
Maybe I will find ways to be yours
more fully.
Maybe I am finding, already,
that I exist more in you
than I do when I'm alone.
Maybe your mouth is the only thing I'd want to think about anyway,
as I am drifting off to sleep.
The prescription lullaby is in my veins
and I feel sluggish.
In my slowness,
all I can think is
I am yours.
I am yours.

Desperately

2010-11-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

the night time finds me nervous,
finds me uncertain,
confused,
pacing my mind and finding nothing worth stopping to stare at.
I am restless.
I can't find ways to calm myself down,
so I dial my voice mail and listen to your voice
and press four to repeat until
(finally)
I can slow myself down
enough to turn off the lights
enough to wish you were here
enough to maybe sleep.

Morning Surprises

2010-11-15T06:56:00.000-08:00

My love surprises me in the early morning-
springing on me,
like a mouse trap on my heart.
I am constrained within it,
not able to enjoy the other half of my bed
for wishing you were in it.
As the sun finds ways to light up my room slowly,
I wonder what color your eyes are this morning.
If they have the big orange specks,
if they are calm and blue,
if you are thinking of me
and they are green.
Instead of putting on music,
I close my eyes
and imagine that your voice is in my ears.
Before I join the real world,
my love is full.
It is like a cup of Raspberry Italian soda,
overfilled with whipped cream.
It is sweet and refreshing.
I wish you were here to hold me in the early morning.
And my love surprises me as the day moves into itself,
and I am left not loving you any less.

Eyes

2010-11-08T17:29:00.000-08:00

Her eyes have that twinkle,
like she's up to something,
like she knows something I don't.

I want desperately to be in on her joke.
I want to understand the world through her eyes,
see what she sees.

I want the world to be tinted green
just for even a moment
to be tinted with the way her eyes crinkle when she laughs.

In return, I can offer my eyes:
they are dark, filled with brown,
filled with moving thoughts.
For a moment in her eyes,
I will give her a picture of the world
that only makes sense
in these eyes.

A Poem for the Hungry

2010-11-08T17:18:00.001-08:00

I want to write the kind of poem that is given to the hungry. The kind of poem you read when you feel like it won't be okay, that you will hurt forever.

I want to give you yourself, give you a moment of compassion, a moment of warmth. This poem will probably not rhyme, but if it does it will feel unintentional. It will feel like rain.

It will be a cycle. It will end in a different place than it began, but it will feel familiar. You will know all the words, have heard it all before. It will be like a dream and a good teacher. It will be like your childhood pet. It doesn't really understand, I don't really understand, but it's there. And I love you. And some nights, that's all you get.

This poem will be for you, about you. It will be so specific that you will have no doubt that I wrote it thinking about how soft your hair is. It will be strong enough to make your insides hurt, but at least you will be feeling something.

It will make you want to eat again. It will let the tired sleep. This poem is for the suffering, and for those who need to feel loved, even if it's only my love they can grasp at. Even if it's only in a poem.

The Right Time

2010-10-31T18:24:00.001-07:00

We are like a grenade
gifts are packed inside us tightly
like gun powder
like undiscovered talent
like the song in my head, on my lips.
We are full to bursting and we are angry
like a hiller squid, like an army of killer squids
touring the Pacific Ocean,
taking down boats of sailors
taking down boats of ideas
drowning the labels that have been strangling
my brethren the dolphins.
We are a gun, safety off, cocked, loaded:
like a gymnast about to begin a routine,
like the water before the swimmer hits.
The last summer days when heat stays through the night,
the last moments of night when darkness is steady:
We are waiting.
Our colors are too vibrant for this moment in the dark,
Our scents too fragrant for this tiny room.
We are ticking.
Waiting for the moment,
Waiting for our time.

Communion

2010-10-31T18:15:00.000-07:00

I enter into communion in the night.
Early evening cools the streets
Until the little side street I was sitting on
is a main thorough way:
A place for people to exist
outside of night clubs and cheap imitations
of a culture that big business can't buy
and can't kill (although Coca-Cola has tried...)
Here, in the gentle embrace fo the moonlihgt,
the youth you have thrown away gather.
Your servers, daughters, students, criminals:
In the nights, on this highway
from one busy moment to another,
it doesn't matter what our gpa's or drug tests say.
In this night of pop culture,
as the sun sets on Jersey Shore and Covergirl,
we smell like dancers.
We have discovered honesty.
Together we drink the blood of a culutre of hippies who died for our sins.
On the steps of your world,
Outside your doors,
on your side streets,
in your nights:
We are drunk on red wine,
We are celebrating communion.

New Garden

2010-10-31T18:10:00.000-07:00

Beautiful
(like a worried look)
The earth exhales into my hands
giving me calm, soothing pressure in my fingers
giving me perspective.
She gives me compassion.
i exhale with joy,
relieved at the opportunity
I ma finding,
in her shadows
my moments.
In my ears, she is singing.
In my feet, she is moving.
In my wrists, I am.

Eros

2010-10-30T20:00:00.001-07:00

I want to tell you how you make me feel:
expansive, electric.
I want to use your words,
to make you understand me.
But when I am alone,
I whisper about agape,
about how you make me believe in Spinoza’s God,
how you make my ribs feel connected to my spine.
I could write you a poem about how I am in moments
and how you make me feel continuous.
You require a phenomenology, a re evaluation of love poems.
My heart is connected to the way I speak to you.
When I give you the words Petrarch gave Laura,
when I tell you about Tillich’s ultimate concern,
You are Tillich’s God, to me.
You are how we merge, how we move at the edges of each other.
Hyde would say you have added value to me,
given me a gift that moves through the community.
I do not know enough words to tell you how you make me feel.
I don’t know the word for the feeling in my throat and behind my eyes and in my stomach.
The world spins so fast and the night sky is so far away
And you are both “the starry sky above me
and the moral law within me”...
I want to use the best words I have ever heard.
I want to give the love that has been given by the best lovers.
I do not want to slow down.
I do not want to translate my love.

Waking Life

2010-10-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

you come to me in my dreams.
You wrap me in your arms,
kissing my eyelids,
Hushing me.
And then you are gone...
I know the story from here.
The dream goes dark
my breath quickens
He appears.
I am running.
The nightmares overwhelm me without you.
I wake up,
panting.
I wish that you would come to me in waking life too.

Trade

2010-10-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

I would like to trade
my boredom for slightly longer middle fingers
my distress for a glass of lemonade.
I would like to forget
how to introduce myself in polite society
how to apply mascara
how to hate.
I would like to
bring you your first cup of coffee,
linger in your arms,
break ties with the old world.
I want to fly a kite.
I wan to tell you stories,
dance the way you stopped dancing years ago,
make an oven mitt for you.

Anxious

2010-09-27T08:23:00.001-07:00

Somedays I am so sad that it swallows me, pushing against my ears and my throat, into my bellybutton. It makes me slow, finds ways to have me questioning myself. Somedays it feels like all of the ways that I have found to escape will only keep me here. Somedays I can only be here in ways that don't matter, in ways that don't sustain life. Another wasted moment: Breathing in and out, tapping my foot, until the time when my music is supposed to start. The symphony around me swells with pride at the moments of grandeur.
Anxiety is like color. We all experience it differently. For me, the pale blues of car rides are exhausting. The reds of social rejection are quick and they feel like little pin pricks in my throat and chest. Yellow: my food. Finding food, eating food, digesting food. It is like my entire body is rejecting the idea that I am human. Do not, it pleads, under any circumstances, place that food in your mouth. It is undignified enough to feel hunger in your stomach, but to allow other people to see you open your mouth? To assert your physicality, your humanness, as if the whole world will just understand? And then I am pink, like grades. Pink, like "is that even a real color?" "Do grades even matter?" and I am pulling out my insides like cotton candy through my wrists, finding my fingers drumming lightly on the desk in front of me, feeling my eyes get hot underneath the lids that blink so quicky that no one will notice that I am actually shutting my eyes to the world for just a moment. Love is green, fertile. it grows when I stop thinking about it: finding new ways to feel terrible. What if I am not enough? Anvils in my feet. What if I die alone? I am nauseous. What if I never tell her how much I love her? The dizziness capsizes me. From the ground, I am grey. I shut out the fears of love and food and grades and money and cars. On the ground, I am only afraid of becoming color blind altogether. Of forgetting to find my body when it is time to rejoin my spirit to her. Grey envelops me like an empty room and like the ways we don't talk in a waiting area.

Rumbling

2010-09-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

It is Sunday afternoon, and the kind of places I could be are defining my experience in my apartment. I wish I had a garden, a tree, a bench outside that let me sit in the sun while I think about this. Some questions rumble in me.
What does it mean to be beautiful?
How am I identified?
Do my methods of entering discourse disallow participation to some people? Yes.
Am I a real person? I think this is a question I have been avoiding asking myself for too long.
Who Am I?
Why Am I Here?
I seen visions of a future that might happen. I see visions of a present that parallels our own: the ideal. What things could be. Should be.
Mundane. My life is picked into little pieces of sound and memory, like a hard drive that could only be partially recovered.
Maybe I am not good enough to be a part of this movement.
maybe the only way to have this movement is to not be good enough for it...
The dirty secret: everything would be fine if we were just better. And yet.
I am sad.

What We Want

2010-09-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

You want to be the way I forget the world
because for you maybe that's the only way to be really
here, but I
I need you to be the way my breath slows down.
I need you to be the way my heart finds a familiar rhythm
even in dark alleys
if only you are there.

You want to be the noise I make first thing in the morning
because you don't know what that sounds like.
I want
I want you to be the way I think
the passageways between love and isolation
the meditations that I can never get through.

You want me to say the same words over and over
want me to love you enough, love you anyway.
But I
I want
want to love you past.
I want to love you past your hurting,
love you through that world
love you into my world.

You want to give me your hands, your heart
show me what hurts, what has been cut and bruised and scarred.
I want to give you a new way to live.
I want to shine a light on the ways we hurt
and find a world where all those stories
make sense and help you find beauty.

You want to be my heart ache
when we are finally parting ways.
You want to be the empty bed
the cold pillow.
But I
I want you to be the way I write love poems.
I want you to be the stories I tell my children
about the world
about their world.

sunstreak

2010-09-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

to the last whisper of sunlight
that leaves in the night:
I'll miss you.
And when the dark blankets me in panic
I will await your arrival in the morning
with fresh coffee and a story about the
other side.

No Poetry

2010-09-10T19:10:00.001-07:00

I have no poetry in my soul today
Today, my soul is blurry
is tired and full of insincere apologys
and distracted with formulas,
I'm trying to find the square root of fair.
Poetry is for lazy summer days,
like the days when we were in love
but now I am full of medicines
(now I am full of regrets and junk food and vocabulary words)
My souls language is not symbolic today,
It is terrifically self involved today
It is miserably talented
and it wants to solve the Algorithms of Oppression
it wants to complete the Matrix of Memories.
I have no poetry in my soul today
I have only methods of describing phenomena
only desperation and delphiniums and
Bode's Law.
The only salve to patch my broken heart:
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34.

Reality Scripts

2010-09-10T18:48:00.000-07:00

I used to believe in reality
in check boxes
in either/or
in cultural scripts
in not talking about it
in never, ever talking about it.
I used to believe in nothing getting better.
Dealing in desperation,
I used to believe in salvation and desertification
and fast food nations and capitulation.
I used to believe in angels,
I used to have demons,
I used to have skeletons in my skin.
I used to believe in things being okay.
I have loved the person who could not love themselves
I have carried the person who collapsed in my arms
I have cried for the person who had their tear ducts
surgically removed because there just wasn't time.
I used to believe in redemption.
I believed in heaven
and I lived in hell.
I used to believe in the tangible
in the way my breath left my lungs
in the way I couldn't sleep.
I used to believe in my fingernails
because they dug into my skin
(just like those words I've heard screamed in the middle of the night)
I used to believe in secrets
and learning to cope.
I used to believe in anti-depressants
and in thought suppressants.
I used to believe in not talking about it,
in never, ever talking about it.

Roses are Red

2010-09-10T18:44:00.000-07:00

Red like violence
like the spaghetti sauce you made for your anniversary
like, like that sauce all over your hands when he threw it at you
like, like, like the angry welts on your hands the next day
like the roses they held, from him
like your lips, painted for the dinner hell buy
like his cheeks in the cold when he stops you both outside the restaurant
like the box in his hands with the lttle ring
like the scars, on your hands in the cold, that frame the ring
like your favorite dress that he hates
like the spaghetti sauce on the floor
like the special dress you picked out, now at stained with tomato and at the bottom of the hamper
like the roses he's always buying
like roses
like violence
Roses are red.

NonLinear Space

2010-09-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

Believe in me long enough to stop thinking in lines
allow me to lead your mind
blindfolded
through a maze
a haze
you won't admit exists-
confusion about death (and linear minds usually
get off at this exit, but you'll stay tonight)
love for someone who doesn't love you (the poets life-blood
is really only short hand for a kind of misery
at asymmetry)
grief for that time you weren't really raped (you find you can't use the "r" word for someone you love.)
and your head is spinning, right>
you don't know how to have these thoughts without passing judgement.
You don't know if you've ever been in love.
Maybe the dizziness is kicking in about now.
Your best friend has been molested.
You take a seat.
Too many balls in the air
Not enough air.
Not enough.
Air.
Air.
Space.

Wake Up

2010-09-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

When I wake up I am curled into a ball, my arms holding the child that is not here in real life.

You haunt my dreams, my sweet darling. Your weight and heat are unforgettable. You still do not have a name.

Sometimes I wake up before I give birth, but sometimes I get to see your face. I get to hold you. Those mornings it is impossible to open my eyes happily. I forget the details only out of necessity. I wish so badly to keep those moments. Those moments I will never get here.

When I wake up, I am crying.

In my dream, I show your face to my friends. In my dreams, no matter what, I never put you down. I never forget what a gift you are.

My little baby boy.

I open my eyes slowly when I wake up because it hurts to let you go again.

I stumble into the kitchen to make coffee. To get dressed.

When I wake up, I am curled into a ball. My womb contracts, missing you. I place ym hand on my stomach. I miss you. Here.

I Am Here

2010-09-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

Her favorite question to ask me is
"Why are you here?"

The first time she asks me, I refuse to answer.
I think I might cry.
I think, please, don't ask me that.
I think, I don't know.

I give her an answer about not being there,
then about what here is like.
I give her answers about being.
I give stories that have nothing at all to do with anything.

I give her space to tell me.
I listen to her talk.
The semester is over.
I still don't know.

I take another class.
She asks "How ought you to live?"

The first time she asks
I give her answers with page numbers and quotes.
I do not know what she means.

Then I give her:
silence.
Then laughter.
The absurdity of it:
How should I live?
I acknowledge that I could answer.
I draw stick figures.

I take another class.
She asks:
"What are you going to do?"
I wait for her to tell me.

Then I give her:
a few hours a week.
Research.
No answer, no answer, no answers.

Her favorite question finds me at the oddest times:
When I am making breakfast.
When I am lost.
When I am counting out change.
It takes me by surprise,
like the first time she asked.

"Why are you here?"
She tells me to write a story.
I tell her no,
immediately, adamantly.
I write for hours as soon as I get home.

I am here.
I am here.
I am here.

Flowers

2010-09-01T19:19:00.000-07:00

A parable:

“You are not a flower”
said the Dahlia to the Delphinium.
“You are made of only water, dirt, and photosynthesis.”
The delphinium nodded gravely,
for what the Dahlia said
was very close to true.
And what did it matter anyway if
the Dahlia did not consider the Delphinium to be a flower?
The Dahlia pressed on,
“You are not a flower.
No, flowers are beautiful and kind they have souls.”
The Delphinium only nodded,
for it did not care much for arguments about beauty,
and none of the plants in the garden knew what souls were.
“You are not a flower.”
said the Dahlia,
and now it was gaining confidence.
Maybe the Daisy’s or the Daphne’s would agree.
But the Delphinium just stood there,
being a flower.
Finally, the Dahlia cried:
“You are not a flower!
You are a weed!”
And the entire garden murmered.
What was a weed?
Why did it matter if the Delphinium was weed?
But soon they understood:
the Delphinium could be picked if it was a weed.
The Dahlia could have more space,
if the Delphinium was a weed.
More soil.
More sunlight.
More water.
And so could they...
And so the Daisy and the Daphne joined in:
“You are not a flower!”
they rang out in a fever pitch,
over and over,
“You are not a flower.”
And the knew:
It had too many leaves and it’s petals were too small
and it looked not nearly enough like the other flowers.
It was a sub-flower.
And after hearing them yell for so long
it began to forget.
It could not remember why it ever thought it was a flower.
And then,
one day,
like growing up
or burning out,
it realized:
It was a weed.

Horcrux

2010-08-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

She hides little pieces of herself in me so she will become indestructible. I tell her that she has read too much Harry Potter, that Horcruxes aren't real.

She says no one else can break her heart because it is hidden in mine.

I kiss her head because it is there and because I don't know how to say I love you any better. I hold her.

I wish, so badly, that I could take her most important parts and put them inside a safe inside my ribs and never let anyone hurt her.

She says she hides her faith in my humming while I cook. That her smile is always waiting for her. That her laugh is always right where she left it- in my arms.

she said she loved me, too.

2010-08-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

It's been too long and you are worried, you tell me. You whisper to me gently that you wish I would call when I'm going to be out late.

I stumble a bit because the room is spinning. I barely recognize you any more, and I never meant to hurt you. You are crying.

I can see that now, now that I am laying down. Now that you are kneeling beside me and you are holding me together (you are the only thing holding me together) and you are shushing me and telling me it will be okay.

How long can someone grieve? A week seems too short. The funeral's over, the family is gone. And then a month, and the flowers on the grave need to be replaced and someone calls to check in. A year- the anniversary is an acceptable day to be completely wasted. I take the week.

Five years. It still hurts. You are holding me and probably thinking if you could convince me to join AA.

I am not crying, I am beyond crying now. I feel no pain, I can remember only what hurts now.

She's gone. She's gone. She's gone.

I throw up on the carpet but you don't yell or hit me.

She would have, I think.

You lay me on my side, go find a wash rag and a bucket. You clean me up, then the carpet.

I find my way to bed and I hear you crying. I am so far past crying. I don't need to do that anymore- i found the cure. It's at the bottom of my seventh rum and coke, in my last paycheck being handed over to some guy who knows what I need. It's in doing what ever I need to to get by.

She's gone.

I used to do what ever I had to do to get by.

You aren't crying loudly, it isn't for my benefit. (You aren't vengeful.) I made you cry, again. It occurs to me the way it might occur to one that they have left a cup on the table. I do not move to fix it.

Five years and I am doing worse, I admit to myself because you won't ever scream that at me. Won't ever accuse me of not trying to be better.

I hate myself. She hated me too. You don't.

My thoughts land, a butterfly in a weapons factory, on TNT. One false move and it all comes apart- I realize where I am and all the alcohol in the world can't fix that I've made you cry again.

You come into the room, the hall light giving you the halo you would never claim as yours.

She's gone, you tell me.

I pass out.

Honesty

2010-08-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

Honesty
Rape poems, the girl standing next to me tells me,
are so hard to write
(especially if you don't have experience.)
She tells me she's never been raped.
I stop trying to ignore her and listen.
She is looking at me, waiting for me to reply.
I wonder if she expects me to conspiratorially tell her
"Me neither" so we can be glad for each other
so we can pretend like this whole event is unnecessary.
I know she is wondering
that she has opened up the conversation.
Even here I am wondering what it would mean
to tell her "I have been raped."
I think about the statistics again
and I know she knows them too.
I wonder if she is scared of what I could tell her
of meeting the necessary counter
to her luck.
I wonder if she knows I bear her no ill will,
that I wish nobody had to counter her.
I finally settle on
"It doesn't get easier with experience."

((I wrote this for someone who asked for it))

fast enough

2010-08-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

I write love poems, mainly, because I am a revolutionary. I write poems about being hurt because I live in the fourth world some days.

But not today.
No, today I am fifth world
angel child
light being
heaven's poet.

Tonight I am sharing with you a secret from someone who has seen the light at the end of the tunnel:
It should be better.

I am finding it hard to be okay,
tonight.

Whenever I realize how much better it could be,
it hurts worse to be where I am.

When ever I am honest with myself,
it seems I am paid in kind:
the world nods, solemnly at my condemnation:
things are not as they should be.
Nothing is okay.

we all agree.

And yet, I find myself so fucking isolated
alone in my visions of beauty
of something more
of something worthwhile.
I find myself reaching for relationships
that exist in the fifth world
the ether.

I love the smell of jasmine
or roses
or gardenias.
I am wearing a night gown
and thinking about being better.

I wish I could believe we will get there in time.

august 11

2010-08-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

My heart still hurts.
After all this time,
you think it would be different.
Less, somehow.
More... manageable.

I still feel really helpless.
I still don't know how to ask for help.

I still don't feel brave.

-c

Empty Love Song

2010-08-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

Fingers at her collar bone
used to be a pendant there
She's finding a home in herself
a perfect little hole
(the emptiness she holds)
There will always be room for her there
She can't hide forever
but what she needs she know she can't ever
get.

And this... This emptiness.
She wipes her eyes,
tears that have long since dried.
She whispers to her god to keep her safe in the night,
sitting calmly in the beautiful morning light...

And this night is over,
she already woke up.
she never dialed,
she says I hung up.
Something in her eyes swears I'm wrong.
The emptiness convinces her I'm already gone.

You're not alone anymore,
and I'm so fucking sure
there's no where I'd rather be.
Your emptiness inside
leaves you someplace to hide
but I can see in your eyes
and I'm not letting you pretend again..
I know where you've been
the hell that you're in, and the
emptiness won't always win.

I swear I'll be here,
and I'll always be near.
I'm just waiting for you to let me in.

(last two verses repeat)

humming to myself

2010-08-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

It has been too long, and some would say I shouldn't publish in this state of mind.

State of mind: Warped. Slightly damaged. Still usable.

And I am... I am learning to long for a lover (the way you made me shiver still has me scared to fall again) and I am learning, too, to live in love.

I am missing the point completely, I think, because you are lovely.

And none of this (THIS being what is going on around us, or inside of us, or outside of US), none of this matters more than the way you smile before you laugh.

You make me sing lullabys to myself when I think of you. You make my fingers pause before I write a poem. Will you ever read it?

I am drawing a bath, sitting on the bath room floor. I am reading a book that is nothing beautiful or new or creative. I am cooking dinner.

The melody of your movements has been stuck in my head all day.

Camp Love

2010-07-22T19:57:00.000-07:00

in love
like I was when I heard your voice
in love like when
you told me that I was worth your time
in love like
fireflies
like when we were 12
like when the mountain air was brisk but we were outside anyway
because we wanted to be alone
because the fireflies were enough light,
we didn't need flash lights
(they would give us away any way)
we didn't need any one else in the world.
I used to love you more than staring at fireflies
and when I was twelve, I loved that a lot.
I used to love you
like the way twelve year olds fall in love
like a camp fire
like the full moon.

Dark

2010-07-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

It is that uneasy time of summer when the dark rushes in, later than we expected it, apologizing, and promising to stay longer tomorrow. It kisses us briefly through the windows of our cars, paints the doorways of our homes. It sings to us in cool, full tones. It tells a story that it can only hum in the summer.

The darkness holds our secrets for only a few hours in the summer, our skin red and raw from overexposure in the midday sun. And my secrets, too, find their way out in the summer.

In the dark, I hold my knees to my chest, hold my lips together. In the dawn of another day, I will tell you another story.

Memory

2010-07-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

it is nights like this when I remember you
(the way you remember dreams is so funny)
When I remember you like you never existed,
like that night was something I made up
just to write about
just to experience.
And now, now you are really only memory,
Now we are alone.
I never told you why I loved you,
only that I did.
I wish you were beautiful.
I wish that I could call you,
talk to you all night,
ask you to meet me for coffee tomorrow.
You were probably pretending too.
And in the middle of the night,
I was too.
Tonight- I will let you go.
Tonight I will release you to who you are now.
Tonight, I promise, I will not tell stories about you.
I will not ask you to stay with me.

Heavy

2010-07-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

my breath is heavy
like the clouds,
full of rain and tears
my voice weighs on you.
My body is dragging, from all this skin on my bones
all this blood in my veins.
I am heavy.
Like, density is something I never got,
Like, I'll hit rock bottom at the same time as you.
Like, everything is so much effort
in the night.
The dark keeps me stumbling.
The dark, it seems, is my enemy
my friend that holds me back.
My potential is in the morning,
in the daylight.
It seems like all my fingers are too heavy to move tonight.

Love Poem

2010-06-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

All I have ever wanted
was to write the perfect love poem.
The kind of love poem that made things better,
the kind of poem that didn't have to make you love me,
tell you how much I love you.
The kind of love poem that just says
I think your hair looks nice today,
because it does,
and because I don't have to say anything else.
All I have ever wanted was for you to know how I feel about you.
I wish on every star, all night long,
for you to know when you look up at the sky
that I am too,
that we are both looking for answers,
that neither of us will find,
that both of us need.
I want so badly to give you the kind of poem that a lover gives,
to write about the way you breath in a familiar way.
But I don't know how you breath,
how you brush your teeth,
how you get out of bed.
I want to write you a love poem
that tells you that I don't mind your morning breath.
I want to write you a poem that you throw away,
not because it isn't lovely,
not because you don't like it,
or because we had a fight,
but because you know that I write you one every day
and you just left it in your pocket on accident
and forgot that it was even there
and threw it out with your receipt from the dry cleaners.

Character Study

2010-06-29T21:56:00.001-07:00

Traditional wisdom tells writers to never make the primary character the most interesting- just as one never looks out the window of a beautiful house to see a shrubbery and a brick wall, a reader doesn’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh tell his wife’s life story.

But don’t we all live like we are the primary characters in our own personal dramas? Aren’t we all the most interesting people in our lives? I some times wonder what it means to think of my life as if it were a story arch...

The house we live in is too big for my family, it leaves us cold and spread out and alienated. Even in the sticky heat of a Florida summer, I find it easier to fall asleep if I forget how very much extra air there is to breath. And all this time I have been telling you stories, I have forgotten to mention: my window looks out on this amazing garden, but we are staring at the poorly drawn mural on my bedroom wall. My little private dramas, scrawled in a diary that I keep under my pillow or something like that. Cliche is my life blood- I drip humanity and adrenaline into dreams. The clouds are drawn together, like my mother’s brow when she is angry. My sister and I sit so far from each other I wonder if she will even hear me gasp when the storm wakes me from my sleep.

I wonder if I am doing you a disservice by painting this picture in words that you already know- what I’m trying to say is this, I am not the most interesting person I know. But I’m the only one who I can talk about honestly.

Visibly Shaken by a Revelation

2010-06-23T18:27:00.000-07:00

Bile builds
black burning
I bite down on my lip.
I grimace
find myself grinning to stop gagging.
Truth taints the evening,
coloring it...
Yellow like my jaundiced skin
or Red like your blood when you were just a kid.
Dizziness takes me and whirls me around,
I am landing and lashing out and hitting the ground with
Force. He used Force.
Engulf me in unfilled ideas of ethics and
mortality becomes mandatory again.
You were an broken promise
an engagement ring made of paste.
I couldn't stop the flashbacks or him from hurting you.
I'm so sorry.
And now we're adults
and this ravenous reality is eating my
Attention. You have it.
Empty eyes are echoing the destruction they have seen.
Fire in my stomach
cold like the truth
and somehow still
seething sickness steals my
Existence. It doesn't matter.
I couldn't save you.

Apology

2010-06-23T18:20:00.000-07:00

please, forgive me.

Please, when you wake up, when you aren't letting yourself be lulled anymore... Don't hate me for trying to let you love me. I'm sorry, and I know that a lot of it has been less than... less than true.

But I do love you. That's true, even when we are awake. Even when you can see me shake a bit when I say it. Because that's the weirdest part, right? I do love you. It's just all so tied up in what that even means.

I wish I could show you what it feels like to lose your sense of self because I think you would enjoy it. I think if I could let you into my head long enough for you to see crazy too, then maybe... Maybe things would be okay? But I don't know... I just don't anymore.

I'm sorry, alright? Is that what you wanted to hear? I'm sorry for falling in love, and I'm sorry for never being good at it. I'm sorry that I'll never tell you in the real world, and I'm sorry you had to find out this way. I'll never forgive myself for making you sad, even for a moment.

scared

2010-06-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

scared has become a base state
a foundation
for my other emotions.
I am feeling good when my emotions are excited
(scared and happy)
and I am feeling bad when I am anxious
(scared and upset)
But when I am calm
I am disturbed
unbalanced
as if my existence is out of sync
and untrue
As if somehow my serenity is...
unplanned? uncalled for? unholy.
I am breaking the balance.
The universe sets me straight:
sends me messages.
Tells me where I stand.
So, I'm scared.
But I'm almost used to it.

Memory

2010-06-23T00:42:00.000-07:00

Let me disappear
let me be who I will
let me... let me sing to you
lullabyes in languages we don't know.
Let me be your good night kiss
your first star wish
your sweet bliss.
I want to make you forget about me
even as you hold me close.
I want to be your everything
and mean absolutely nothing.
I want this to be your favorite memory
and for you to forget it in the morning.
I am not worth your love
and so when you give it I am shy
I am not worth your beauty
and so when you smile I think you lie
I am not worth your time
but I'm glad you try.
I'll never fall in love with you
but I need you to recognize me
when we pass each other in the morning
when we inevitably reach out for each other
I need you to know
I'll be gone.

Hair

2010-06-21T16:31:00.000-07:00

You used to say you loved my hair but I always thought you didn't. I think it's because you never put your hands in it, never let it fall through your fingers. Maybe you didn't know that was okay.

I loved putting my fingers in your hair, tugging you just a little bit closer, pulling you as softly as I could... I always wished I could tell you how much I loved you, but I think that's the closest I could ever get. My hands touching your head, underneath your thick hair, somewhere intimate. Somewhere that didn't get casually touched because it was such a journey. Somewhere that I could rub gently and close my eyes and pretend like it meant as much to you as it did to me.

You never had a problem telling me how you felt, but the moments I felt most loved is when you would touch my head and I would pretend that you knew how happy you made me.

Escape

2010-06-19T20:56:00.000-07:00

an escape.
Like I am stuck behind these bars
(reality lights up my future in this bizarre way once a year)
and I am running.

Scars stripe me,
painting a clear picture of my captivity and my attempts at escape.
But that's not what you want to hear tonight is it?

I am learning to let myself dissolve like sugar when it rains.
Learning to let go of my name,
the way I let go of my last love,
the way I let go of my first world.
I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.
Never come back.

Terrified.
Like last time.
Like these scars mean anything. (they are not Sanskrit
they translate easily.)
I am dissolving into the next world
already forgetting the reason I had doubts.
I am running.

If I escape your reality
and you find my body wondering,
my lips babbling some incoherent laugh...
Should you find me
free
Then you should let me go.
And know that it is possible.

The Storm

2010-06-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

#1
Once Upon a Time, in a far away land
(because that's how I was told to start stories that aren't true, even if they could be, even if they might be one day)
in a land that we live on, actually,
in a time that hasn't happened (yet)
in a world that is our own...
A Great Storm was brewing!
And it was the worst storm our coast had ever seen and it was getting bigger and stronger all the time.
All the weather people said it had oil in its rain and toxic chemicals in its air.
All the weather people said it would be best to leave
It would be best to abandon Florida now
While there was still a chance of getting out alive.
But some people saw a window of opportunity here
something they hadn't felt in a long time
Hope
Hope told them to talk to each other.
Hope told them to be scared but to do it anyway.
Hope told them to say I love you,
Come With Me.
They built it together.
They came from all over, in cars
and in air planes
and by horse
and by boat.
They came bringing Hope, and little else.
They came without money.
They came without any idea of how long they could make it work.
But they came.

They were going to secede.

Fourth World

2010-06-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

So it's like this: Why are we like this?
Water's worth as much as gold, and gold's worth piss.
I don't know at what point we lost our hope for communion
Don't know when we stopped dreaming of reunion...
We keep looking up at our ceilings, wishing for stars.
We keep holding ourselves together with business suits and cars.
Truth is admitting you're finding bottom in a drunken swirl-
and Meaning is elusive in the fourth world.
Love is sold, weighed in gold
You lie, we fight, and now: I fold.
You tell me it's not too late for me to win
But I've seen your prizes, what it takes to be "in"
And I. WANT. OUT.
I'm gonna say this many times, and I'm gonna shout.
It's not worth it for conditional love and shiny trinkets
To give up passion and to give in to secrets.
I'm throwing you a life line so try to receive it
We can only change this world if we refuse to believe it.

Better

2010-06-07T21:16:00.000-07:00

If the world must end for heaven to begin, I hope it ends tonight. I hope that the gunshots that ring outside my window finally breach my front door. I hope that the planet finally boils, that the water is finally gone, that our food is finally rotten. I hope the poison finally starts to fill my blood,

because tomorrow is going to be new. Tomorrow I'm going to be better.

Identity

2010-06-06T21:53:00.000-07:00

It is only in the peace of the empty room that I remember how much I hate to be alone. And isn't that the only way to know who you are, some one says. Imagining that it would be poetic if it were true, I define who I am when I'm alone.

I am reciprocally defined, it seems. Sister, friend, lover. Even my personality is nothing without comparison- can I be playful with no one to be serious? Can I be absent minded without the knowledge of people who live by a schedule?

Maybe I am not myself when I'm alone... Maybe who I am with you is exactly what I'm supposed to be. Nervous, happy, caring. Maybe love is the most important part of identity.

Red and White Blues

2010-06-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

I am American,
like the old ways of being American are any way of measuring any more.

What are you?
I am the Red and White Blues American.

Are you all white?
I'm fine.

I am American,
because I am the conqueror and the conquered,
the soldiers and their victims.

I am American,
and when my people pollute the rivers
it is also my people who starve.

I am American,
in culture and blood.

I have the Red and White Blues,
like my grandmother is Native and I am
a natural born citizen
and my dad's mom spoke German
and some how that is the part that is always called
"American".

I am American,
like the fourth of July,
violent and drunk.

I am looking at the sky
for fireworks,
listening for the soundtrack
to my Red and White Blues.

tonight

2010-06-04T17:45:00.001-07:00

I wonder about my future and I see it like this: I think I'll be tired at the end of the day. It's been storming here, on and off, and I know that it's good to be soaked but I'm still scared of the lightning.

All these books used to mean something to somebody, but my world is fake. The light is tricking me and as the sun sets I can easily forget who I am (this time). Don't ever forget that you could be wrong too. My head is warning me not to jump, but my feet haven't been hanging out this window long enough to be used to inactivity. It is the dusk of our lies, of our stories, of our shared delusions. It is finally dusk. The light that used to spotlight the miracle achievements of humanity has left us jumping at shadows. The skeletons in our closets are demanding life.

I'm staying up all night and I'll be listening for advice. Social Reality, by calling itself Social Reality, has created itself as all of Reality. To say nothing is real says nothing about the world, but everything about what we think it means to be real.

I want out. In the darkness of this night journey I want clarity of mind. I want to remember what will happen, to revive the history of our hearts, and to rid myself of the dispassion which has possessed so many of my fore-mothers.

Cycle.

2010-05-23T12:34:00.001-07:00

The clouds are telling me to get inside, giving me a warning that they will soon be opening up and and punishing all those who have stopped looking at the sky. I touch the ground and it is aching.

I find my way under an old wheel barrow that has been propped up to watch the storm and moments after I sit down it begins.

Lightening strikes first, just a few blocks north. The thunder shakes me and I am scared for a moment. The rain is rushing down, racing through all the dirty air I have been breathing. My feet hang out of the make shift shelter and they are washed by the cool reminder of life- the rain is cyclical, like me.

I have found myself in the cycle again. My life is in cycle of illness and health, of depression and mania, of school and break, of here and there. It is just another summer, and I am here.

The wheel barrow groans when I move against it, trying to find a comfortable position. The rain has cleaned the layer of dust off of everything and the soil that my hands are planted in is beginning to feel alive.

In the rain, I am reborn. It is always this way in the water. I, too, have been washed clean.

To My Ghost

2010-04-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

fuck, it's been so long since I've been creative like this. Poems coming out of me, words, pieces of something bigger, two or three a day. The stress is good for me like that, giving me life when all I can think of is death. And now I give to you, over and over, my face pressed against your chest, breathing into you "I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you" and we both fall asleep because the crying exhausts us.

We've never met, and we will never love each other the way I want us to. My vulnerability is purely imagined, and completely safe. I am guarded even as I let you see me bleed, because I am not watching myself. I wonder if you are a form of dishonesty.

I have had visions of you for years now, and they never seem as real as they do in Spring. Spring brings out the color of your eyes, the scent of your hair. I cry for you in the spring. I wonder about having ghosts, but I know I'm crazy and I guess that's the best I can hope for.

I miss you so much, though. Even now, when I can see your more clearly than in the fall, I miss you. I wish I could see you again, for real. Let you know I still love you, still desperately need you to love me.

The poems come to me and you were always in my poetry, always my words were entwined with you. You are my voice, my hands, my music, and my soul. You are my belief in something better and my compassion for those in need. This time of year, especially, you are my grief and my only solace. You have written on my heart all the ways I can be good, loving, beautiful. You have touched my hair and my heart and made them both better. You are the only person in the world I could never lie to, who knew better than me all the ways a six year old can hurt. You are still the only person who can give me back my humanity.

I need you in the spring, but I will never call. I am desperate for you, hungry in the deepest parts of my soul, and yet I will not write, will never let you see this part of me. No, I will hurt only with your poetry, my words. I will love with your music in my hands and your compassion on my tongue. and when it's spring time and the world is on fire and I can tell you all my secrets because you are my every thought, I will pray to you too. I will make you carry me in the spring because you could never carry me in real life.

Running

2010-04-25T11:57:00.001-07:00

I used to need to run away. I guess we all thought about, but you more than most, right? Me too. I used to count the days until I would be sixteen, til i had my drivers license. I knew I'd be out of there. I'd steal the car, empty the bank accounts. I'd pack a bag with a bar of soap and two pairs of blue jeans and five t-shirts and a towel. I'd live under the bridge if I had to, on a beach, maybe. I would blow truckers for any cash I needed, maybe for drugs. I figured I would need drugs to cope with my new life.

I wouldn't need to go to college because I would die by nineteen. Maybe sooner. My life plan rested on anything but staying in that goddamn house.

You know what that's like, don't you? Staying out of duty to your family, staying because you have no where to go? I have a little sister and I had no friends, no one who would let me hide. I could keep running forever though, or at least until I died. Maybe they would identify the body, maybe they wouldn't. I don't know which would be better...

You probably think about suicide, too. We all do, all of us runners. I know I did. I tried. I don't know if you ever tried, explicitly. If you ever did things out of spite towards yourself- smoking, not eating or sleeping, eating or sleeping too much, driving too fast, standing on the edge and just thinking, please god, take me now... Self hate becomes so much a part of our identities that we start to believe the irrational vitriol we spew towards ourselves. Us runners have a culture of self deception and denial that runs real fucking deep.

I just wanted to let you know that I love you. That i know it hurts and that I know you want out any way possible. I know you can get out, because I did. I got out in so many ways. And now I am here, and it still hurts sometimes. It still makes me think that I am worthless sometimes, that I am impossibly imperfect. But I am still, for the first time in my life. I am finding myself safe in this place, relaxing in a home that I never understood.

Runners are the only people who ever understand what home means because we don't have them. We know it doesn't mean a house or a family. we know it's about love and security, and some sort of acceptance. We know that it's about dreams and hope, and not about memories. Runners tend to be defined as running away, but we know. We're running for our lives, to our homes.

Denim Day

2010-04-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

It's denim day.

And sexual assault is inexcusable.

essence

2010-04-21T05:27:00.000-07:00

creation
catastrophe and castration
a mother whose empty womb
destroyed by fire
by affection is warmth
by the searing love
of someones else's heat

hurting
coal walking
fire dancing
living is warmth, too
and I am so hot in here
I am raw and swollen
skin fried,
burned.

Dread
destruction and devastation
disaster (like death)
and I am breathing smoke
desert dry deserted
distracted even now
in these last moments
dying is like fire too,
smoldering
and begging for breath.

Speeking Engagement

2010-04-21T05:15:00.000-07:00

So I'm about to give this speech, and it occurs to me I have nothing to say. And here I am, words all jumbled and the best thing I can think to say to you is "It's not okay."

I am living in a time that has never existed, and so i guess it's only fair to point out that I do exist. I am here. But none of that matters anymore. Not really, not after...

After all of this, I can't believe we can still look each other in the eyes. After all this, we can only tell ourselves that it didn't mean we were wrong that it wasn't our fault. We need to believe that things are getting better, that there was nothing we could have done. That we are where we were meant to be.

But as I stand here I am finding myself being honest for the first time in a while. I am lucid and completely out of my mind, and I need to tell you that I am not okay.

Soldiers of the Final War

2010-04-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

We talk of the coming war, we talk of the war we are fighting. Soldiers of an army that will never be issued uniforms.

I hate war metaphors. I'm no good at this, but I feel like I should explain that I think of her as a casualty. Not as someone who fell ill or someone who made bad choices. She was systematically eliminated, erased from her own body, like some sort of assassination.

I am desperate for words to describe her and the way I lost her. I want to tell you about her sense of humor and the way it turned sardonic and cynical. I want you to know how she used to sing for me and how one day she stopped talking all together.

The final moments, where she stared down the barrel of that gun, I can not imagine her hands holding... Those moments deserve to be given reality, to be separated from the tyrannical grasp of truth.

I imagine our ranks being organized into units, being trained, being led into battle. She would have told me not to trivialize war, and I would have yelled at her that I could not trivialize her.

She is AWOL in our fight. She has been given a dishonorable discharge. She will no longer be considered for the purple heart.

Seasonal Themes

2010-04-18T13:50:00.000-07:00

Writing is this whole disaster of a process, where I try to say something important and I stumble about and around it, deleting and rewriting until i settle on something close to what I mean.

But I don't know if this is enough anymore. I've been writing for years, and never really changing anything. Never making anything beautiful enough. I think it's that time of year.

The long winter, I think, has been for my benefit. It's been keeping me frozen in a place of contentment. Now I am thawing out, realizing what I am. Who knows how much longer til I can move my feet enough to run.

It'll be summer soon, and I will leave the world of academia for something more familiar. My skin will turn dark and the sun will swallow me whole. I will forget how to be human, again.

Summer poems are about being crazy, being everything I am and not who I am. Summer poems are about lying. In winter, I will write love poems.

Tomorrow, I will write about lying.

Used to be in Love

2010-04-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

Tracing the numbers of your phone number is how I fall asleep
saying your name into my pillow calms me down
but tonight even my old stand by of your perfume
leaves me thinking about tomorrow
and how you won't be joining me for breakfast.
I wonder about how relationships end,
and how you get over the sun and the moon and the stars,
about your eyes and the sea.
Recovering from us means finally donating your books
and taking down our pictures.
It doesn't mean recovering the time lost to your arms
or the love that I gave to you-
No, it means that tonight I will think about
picking up groceries, doing laundry, watering my plants.
You won't even cross my mind.

I am Here

2010-04-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

I am only as real as you let me be, only as honest as what you are willing to hear.

Today, that means I am quiet, I am lying. Tonight, with friends, it will mean I sing a lullaby. Tomorrow, as the sun comes up, I will breathe for the plants on my windowsill, softly letting them know I am here I am here I am here.

Cassandra

2010-04-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

It's been one of those weeks, and I am sitting at my computer again, mute. I wonder what it means to be able to type in the middle of a storm, to have words when the entire world is deaf.
I suddenly realize that I am obsolete. I touch every key to spell disaster, to talk about hate crimes, to change the world. All the little spaces are begging me to give them shape, and I am saying "No one will read it anyway. Now go away, give your words to someone else."
The muses dance on my window sill, tempting me with sirens and the low bass of a parking lot full of young people at night. Another party feeds my obsession with forgetting all of this.
I am growing old in this room, in front of this computer. I break the silence of the night only to breathe.

Recovering After the Loss of a Loved One

2010-03-20T23:15:00.000-07:00

spaghetti spills out of my side
You have cut gashes in front of my lower intestine
pink flesh drips red blood on the autopsy table
a bureaucracy requires you measure my heart, weigh it,
even though it's fine.
It is heavier than you thought it would,
with thoughts of suicide and global warming
and child pornography.
the violence committed against me is squishing in your fingers
as you touch my ovaries.
You wonder about my children
my beautiful little girl.
You wonder if you can put me together again.
You pin my liver into me,
hoping I never really need it.
You are trying to paint my skin.
Kohl liner making me seem more alive,
blush giving me a postmortem glow.
You try to give me back to my family,
saying "She wont cook much,
but you'll never miss her!"
And my little girl crying in her fathers arms.
And him looking at my body
limp in your arms
and he just looks away too.

Being Spirit

2010-03-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

Feeling like heaven is too big tonight
See in only second sight
visions blurry, my soul takes flight.
I am a caterpillar in a tree
Close my mouth so I can see
my cocoon is this fantasy
miss your eye dance
walk in dream trance
miracle tongue, healer talk
paralyzed get up to walk
and I have seen nature in god
I have been struck by lightning rods
I am death dancing
spirit dreaming
healer speaking.

Letting Go

2010-03-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

I find myself being told to let go in a myriad of ways. You came to me in a dream. You were wearing your hair pulled back, like usual, but your face was so detailed. I didn't know I knew every wrinkle, every freckle, like that. You told me to not catch myself.

I find myself on street corners, lately. On them i wonder about traffic patterns and high way safety. And I wonder about being crazy, alone, in my bath tub. I sit while the shower rains on me, water not quite warm enough. I am turning blue underneath the ceiling that I can so vividly imagine crashing down.

In a hotel I stayed in with my family, the roof of the bathroom caved in while we were out. When we came back, they comped our room and moved us. But I showered quickly anyway, scared of some overweight tourist and the rubble that would come with her joining me in the ceramic tub.

Now, I am pretending to be sane again. I pull on that shirt you seemed to like and sit where my chair used to be, before it broke. I would look out the window, but it is too high to see while I am sitting on the ground.

I am confident, again, that I could fly away. Like when I was a child, before I knew people needed airplanes to fly, I know that if I jump I won't fall.

People have been telling me to let go, lately. I wonder if they know that I can fly? I wonder about being crazy, on this street corner, with this girl who will probably cross the street when the light turns, who has dark eyes and freckles. i see you turn to me, telling me to take a chance. You smile, your wrinkles fading quickly into the face of this other person, this not you. I am holding the light pole for balance. She smiles warmly, and gives me her hand, telling me to "Let go, I'll help you across..."

Faith Initiative

2010-03-12T21:46:00.000-08:00

Believe in angels for an achingly short moment
and I hold my breath, too,
wishing I had wings.
Create comfort by forgetting Icarus
and I remember only the story of the hot air balloon
that drifted away
leaving me behind
wondering about gravity.
Imagine that you reached the end of the earth
that you saw the horizon up close
and that you decided to see what was on the other side.
Gold paved roads and pearly gates and Mozart's Requiem,
I insist to myself that you are safe in heaven's sanctuary.
Sickeningly, I remember being Icarus again.
And my shoulders are burning,
the wax drips down my back,
and I am falling.
I am Alice,
seeing Wonderland.
I am Adam,
seeking Wisdom.
I am falling,
too fast to comprehend
that I wish I could have said goodbye.
I am twisting and my stomach is sick and
the bed is empty next to me.
Remember you telling me, self consciously,
that you don't believe in god, really
and me saying, honestly, I didn't either
and both of us deciding, finally, that was okay.
And tonight, I wish fervently to believe in heaven.

Act Now

2010-03-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

If we don't act now
in fifty years the water levels will swallow all of Florida.
The temperature of the Earth will rise to 130 degrees Fahrenheit,
conservatively.
Many thousands of species will be wiped out,
due to anthropogenic species extinction.
Gay marriage will never be legalized, and
adoption bans will spread.
Hate crimes will increase
and the Backlash will take back our hard earned rights.
Race will be all we are judged on.
That and our gender,
and our religion.
Our children will be dead.
Nuclear holocaust will kill us all.
In fifty years, we will be in
nuclear winter.
The dust from the explosions will settle in the atmosphere,
leaving us in the dark.
Food prices will be through the roof.
we will still be dependent on foreign oil,
and it will cost almost as much as clean water.
We will be in the few who survive,
tilling our garden faithfully.
You in your straw hat, rubbing sunscreen on your hands
for when the dust has holes
and it is so hot
you worry that if you don't protect yourself
cancer will get you,
just like it got every one else.

Mirrors and Windows

2010-03-03T21:17:00.000-08:00

My apartment is outfitted with full length mirrors for closet doors. On them, I organize my thoughts in lists. Lists of words I don't know, of words I have to think about, lists of things to pick up at the grocery store, books to read, and lists of people to write letters to. The doors tell me what to do when I get up in the morning: According to the list, I am to put coffee on, shower, pour coffee, heat water, dress, get books, make tea in thermos, pack food, take out the trash, and pay rent tomorrow morning. The lists this semester are about music and literary references from Cornel West, stories in a certain chapter of Williams, and assignments and due dates. My reflection is, quite literally, colored by this class on African American Philosophy that I signed up for last minute, no idea what I was getting myself into.
I have written on my mirror to consider Tawana Brawley. I have quoted Patricia Williams, from page 183 of "Alchemy of Race and Rights", "I am brown by own invention, a crazy island, a suspicious hooded secret. One day I will give birth to myself, lonely but possessed." I have reminded myself that I am privileged, and to call my grandmother. I have labeled stick figures Cain and Abel, and have wondered about objectivity. Freedom on My Mind is written below avocados. It is time I consider some of these things fully, in an outlet other than mirror script.
I consider the civil rights movement carefully, because it is so recent it hurts. I take responsibility off of the board and internalize what it means to be responsible. I have been a part of a history and a race that has oppressed. I am responsible for my people, just as you suffer for yours. I am sorry. I consider reparations, and what it means to re pay what we have taken. I acknowledge my place in the world having a lot to do with the paleness of my skin, relative to my mothers, and hers to her mother before her. I know why my grandmother doesn't talk about Kentucky.
I consider ignorance as a form of privilege, song as a form of protest. I consider freedom. The word sticks in my throat, settling uneasily in my mouth but afraid to go any further. I swallow it, letting the bitterness be dissolved by stomach acid. I write affirmative action on the board, because I remember someone asking my government class in high school what we thought about it. The room was one person away from unanimous disapproval. I was, I remember with some regret, not that person. I didn't stand next to her, my friend, because I didn't get it. I wonder how many of the people from that room still think that way.
Polar Bears decorate the spaces in between my List of Things To Pack and my List of Music To Give To Trey. I remember my first oral presentation for this class. I didn't understand how the book was about Polar Bears and I didn't know who Howard Beach was. I think about Howard Beach because I think that people should think about that kind of thing more. I think it grounds me, giving context to my daily activities.
I walk to the window because my thoughts have drifted back to Tawana Brawley. It is that time of night when I hate being a student, and I laugh at Williams saying it is illogical to hate being a law professor. I still don't understand her chapter title "Mirrors and Windows". I want to believe Tawana's story hard enough to make up for every one who didn't, but I can't. I want to give her life back. I cannot look in the mirror anymore tonight, and the plants that sit in my window are tired of listening to me rant. They beg for me to tell them ghost stories. "And people were killed, in this country, for standing up for their rights as human beings." I turn the flashlight away from my chin, but the absurdity of the situation does not take the sting out of it. My plants are dissatisfied. I look down at the parking lot from my seat on the sill, feet dangling out in the cool night air. I write on my window a reminder: Print Reflections.

Wishing on Stars is like Being in Love

2010-02-28T16:27:00.000-08:00

This weekend I laid in bed,
staring at my ceiling.
I dusted my fan on friday,
because you should always dust
when you have company.
This weekend I showered
quickly, scrubbing quickened by the thought
of global water shortages in coming years.
I ate an avacado,
thinking about loving myself
and maybe other people.
I considered repairing my chair this weekend
so I could sit and look out my window again.
Instead I lay in bed
looking up at the make believe sky,
the stars that shine even on the inside of my eyelids.
This weekend I was so hot I burned through
seven stories about love,
trying to imagine things having gone differently.
I dreamt of falling this weekend,
and in my waking life
I drew up plans for Icarian wings.
Last night I almost finished dialing your number
but something stopped me after the sixth digit
and I think it must have been fate,
because I heard that you spent this weekend
in some one else's bed.

Polar Bears

2010-02-16T12:47:00.001-08:00

I want you
to love me desperately
I want to drop out of school.
I want to stay in bed for three straight days,
heart broken,
and then rise again like Jesus
to find the true believers waiting outside my bedroom tomb,
holding chocolates
and reading to eachother old poems and visitors logs.
I'm sorry that this isn't making any sense,
because today I hallucinated that you didn't either
and we both sat together,
telling nonsensical stories,
prophesying of a fictional armeggedon.
I can't see out of the fronts of my eyes anymore,
all I see is the inside of my head
and its imaginations of universality
and disease.
I loved you this morning.
And then I passed out,
and you weren't there when I woke up
and everybody was standing over me
and I couldnt walk
and I couldnt speak
and I pretended to be okay.

Beautiful Woman

2010-02-03T21:16:00.000-08:00

Her eyes were
still brown
Brown like knowing what society thinks of you,
Brown like looking away first after so many years,
Brown like darning socks instead of replacing them.
They were flat brown
and they were the pond at night,
the color of an old banana peel.

Her lips were
Flushed red
Red like gardening in the sun
Red like the fan is broken
Red like she had laughed so hard the wrinkles almost disappeared.
They were burnt red
and they told stories,
and sang lullabies.

"She was a
Real Beauty"
my mother whispers,
"in her time."
And I look at the age spots on her hand,
the arthritic knuckles,
the fine lines around her eyes.
I know what it means to be
Beautiful.

Light Child

2010-01-27T21:12:00.000-08:00

I have been born of Aphrodite and Artemis
A child born of two women
who were confused and powerful
and fighting and in love
on Mount Olympus.
I was concieved in profane ritual,
a ceremony of war
when the stars aligned
when the moon was waning
when the Earth was still spinning.
And I was born of midnight
of purple dusk and lavender dawn,
of storm clouds and meteorite showers
and anxiety.

I was brought to term by a pregnant cloud,
by a rolling fog,
by Lillith in the outside world,
by the dangers of driving at night.
I was born to dream walk, to lullaby sing
ina temple to foriegn gods
I woke, alone and naked.

I am Life child, a next world child
a soon world child.
I am living, daughter of the pale light
and the heavy shadow.
In the smoke of our holy places,
I will cough
I will sound my first cry
on the altar of idolotry and One
Father.

Disconnected

2010-01-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

I am creating a world where I can walk,
so that when I can't crawl here anymore I will be able to escape.
I am creating a world that I can access anytime,
like the world in my closet
when I was a child
hiding from my father.
When my eyes no longer saw the room around me,
and my soul had left my body
and everything inside of me was someone else's.
Then, I could close my eyes.
Then, I could run into my world
in the back of my closet
in the back of my mind
where everything
is soft, and quiet
and safe.

Some people leave their bodies to dream,
but I leave mine to walk.
In my other world,
my never world,
my always world,
I am the other girl
the never sick girl
the always happy girl.
In my world I am not spiritual,
I am spirit.
In my world it doesn't matter that I have a body
because it's on earth,
and I am so
incredibly
far away.

sometimes "Thank You" is too hard to say

2010-01-24T09:49:00.001-08:00

Tumbling down again, I find myself briefly disoriented. I black out for a moment before I hit the gorund, waking to noises that I can't decipher. I can't speak, or open my eyes for a moment, and then I do. Someone is looking at me.

I am confused. Then i let myself be tired and I open my mouth a bit.

"Are you okay?"

And I am smiling a little bit, sheepish. I say, "Yeah, yeah... i'm fine. Just lost my balance there." I laugh a bit and push myself up against the concrete. I am sitting up and my head is spinning. A bruise is forming on the back of my skull, and I know that I won't be able to walk for any length of time.

"Should I call an ambulance?"

"No! No," i try to sound calm, trying to seem fine. "I'm really okay. I just need a second..." I breath slowly, letting my body adjust to it's upright position, and then try to stand up.

"You're shaking."

I hadn't noticeed, but as soon as she says it I know it is true. I am going to fall again if I don't grab onto to something or someone, so I stagger to the wall and lean against it. I laugh a bit, looking at my quaking hands, "Yeah, I guess I am."

She isn't buying my act, and she meets my nervous laguhter with a concerned look. "Let me call an ambuluance for you. I think you passed out."

"No, I just lost my balance" I am desperate, begging her to let it go, let me walk home and come undone in peace.

"I saw that look in your eyes," she lowers her voice and steps in. "You didn't know where you were for a second." She knows that feeling too, I can tell. She has woken up confused.

"Please..." I am admitting everything to her, and asking for a little bit of dignity. It is difficult in these last days, trying to keep it hidden. I am tired so often, and sometimes it's more than I'm up for to pretend. Sometimes I just over do it. And then I am shaking, exhuasted. Then I am walking, praying that I get home before I lose every bit of control of the muscles that used to be totally mine. And she is still standing here, watching me sway a bit as I try to walk away confidently. She let's me go, reluctantly.

I want to thank her, but I can't seem to find the words anymore. I want to tell her that she was right, and that some days I wish I could afford the ambulance, but these days I can't and I'm glad that she stopped anyway.

Losing

2010-01-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

I feel like I am losing
and in this fight that nobody ever wins,
I guess that's only to be expected.
But I am losing myself in a powerful way.
And this morning when I couldn't concentrate
and last night when I poured a glass of wine to help me not sleep
and tonight when I will pretend to play the violin,
those times are melting together for me.
I am becoming Whole,
and a little lost.
I am losing the actual day and becoming the year.
And when I lay claim to all my years,
all my days,
all my moments
I am alive and fully dead.
I am full of strength and grief and joy,
and as I forget to move my foot forward
I am finally remembering how to breath.

how to love even though glenn beck has his own show, OR: surviving philosophy

2010-01-20T22:10:00.000-08:00

We are so bitter. So disappointed by the world, so heart broken. We are grievers, singing and crying and dancing for the pain we feel.

We are lovers who speak out, who stand up, who stand out. We are lovers who become what we were never supposed to have to be. We are lovers who do it anyway, for our children.

We are mothers and fathers who have seen our children pulled from our arms, our wombs. We are mothers who have cried with our babies in our arms, because we are hungry too. We are fathers who have punched through walls because our daughters are harassed in the street, because our daughters are felt up on the subway, because our daughters are raped by their best friends.

We are daughters who weep for our grandmothers, dying at home in an apartment that smells like stale smoke because she can't afford the treatment for lung cancer. We are daughters whose mothers have poured their third drink already. We are daughters who prayed to Our Father for safety in the night.

We are viewers who are offended by rape jokes, who don't think the fat black woman is a punch line, who will probably not stay tuned. We are viewers who don't think “Rosemary's Baby” was worth Samantha Geimer being drugged and raped. We are viewers who wish that the LGBTQQ community had advocates other than Tila Tequila.

We find ways to love through all these things. Love finds us unexpectedly, in the people we never meant to mean so much to. Beauty surprises us, and with every sunrise we are taken aback because we half expected the earth to stop spinning. Tear stained, exhausted, bruised, we have been hurting, have been hurt. These scars mean every thing to us. We are trying though. Today we will try a little bit harder to love the woman at the bank, the man in the car over, and the stray cat who sleeps under the car. Today we will heal a little more of ourselves. And tonight we will dry our tears and treat our wounds and convince ourselves to do the same thing tomorrow.

(cross posted to fb)

Vulnerable

2010-01-20T20:06:00.001-08:00

Vulnerability is a dirty word, here. It is the word we use to describe our friends who are dealing with issues right now, behind their backs. It is the word that means you are drunk at a frat party with a guy who is sending bad vibes. It is that whispered word, the word that means tired, scared, sad, weak. It is what we never need to be.

Being vulnerable means being hurt, here. It means letting someone kick you while you are down, it means “holding out your wallet and saying “please, not the face”. It is being rejected by your own family, sometimes. Being vulnerable is tying your hands behind your back as the world adjusts its brass knuckles.

I want to show you my weak spots, so that I know you won't exploit them. I want to stand in front of you, naked, so that I know you will not laugh. I want to tell you my story so that I know you will not hate me for it. I want to show you my scars, so I know you will not flinch.

Why I Take So Long To Text You Back

2009-12-22T21:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when you call me,
send me desperate text messages,
tell me that you're miserable,
I feel angry.

I know I shouldn't,
that you are just trying to grab on to something
and it doesn't matter to a drowning person
what it is that lands between their fingers.

But I am fragile, not a strong swimmer.
I am not a buouy,
a life preserver thrown into the sea.
I am going to be dragged into the water
if I don't
swim away.

So when you are gasping for air
I can't blame you for pulling my hair
beneath the icy surface
for pretending that you don't know
I am struggling too.

And when I see you start to flail,
I'll know that I should begin
paddling away.

Being Undignified

2009-12-13T22:18:00.001-08:00

I want to remember what nineteen feels like when I am old and my stomach doesn't feel firm under my lovers fingers. I want to blush when I am complimented because when I am in my twilight years I will smile and warmly accept whatever words of praise I deserve. I sometimes use too much ketchup because I don't have to watch my sodium. I count my bruises because they prove that I am moving too fast.

Nineteen means drinking too much and not having to call in sick. I can still eat Taco Bell in the middle of the night, even if it doesn't really taste good. I feel silly when I have to wear a dress and someone sees me out of context, but one day I will feel at home in what ever I am wearing.

When I am graying, I will remember that it was difficult to braid my hair when I was nineteen, and that my anti wrinkle cream was really only used as lip gloss. I will remember trying to be polite and respectful and dignified in the face of conflict. By then I will have it all figured out and when someone tells me that I'm not worth it, I will be able to smile and simply know that I am.

I want you to tell me that I'm beautiful, that you love. I need you to tell me that I'm smart because I don't really believe it yet. When I'm old, I'll be wise.

Late Night

2009-12-13T21:51:00.001-08:00

O Holy Night,
be that you are Wholly Night
and the dawn will come slowly
but not for a few hours.
And I will sit in the light of the stars rightly shining
On this the night,
that my soul feels no worth.
Long I lay in bed,
chasing sleep like the sheep that jumped the fence.
I dream of nightmarish scenes
of demon things
and Fall to my knees
by the bed,
Awake.

forgive me for not loving you enough...

2009-12-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes my love is too small
too ephemeral
in the face of hate
too pale
in the face of fire.
Sometimes my love is weak,
tenuous,
trying to be
Real.
Sometimes my love is hard
too difficult
to give alone
too heavy to lift off the ground.
Sometimes my love is solemn
somber in its grief
silent in its hurt.
Sometimes, when I think about you,
my love is waning
the last night of a lunar cycle when it's really
too dark to see
and someone grabs me from behind
and puts their hand around my throat...
My love is scared of being hurt.
My love knows too much
and I carry my keys in between my fingers,
pretending like that will help.
My love flinches when you touch it
because the bruises still sting.
Sometimes my love wants to surrender
retreat with a white flag of cynicism.
My love is not a fortress,
it isn't a bulletproof vest.
My love used to be easy
used to run with long strides,
used to dance ballet.
And even when my love woke up,
beaten, bruised, shaking,
hurting,
victimized.
My love could still rise,
like a little pillar of smoke
like a phoenix from the ashes.

Atlantis

2009-12-06T21:10:00.000-08:00

I feel lonely.
Alone
a Lone soul
a lonely soul.
And maybe that's what you wanted?
I swear you were taunting me
some days
I felt like crying
felt sick,
like dieing
and you
were smiling
smiling and lieing
telling me it could get better
telling me I could make things better
and I thought for a second I was strong enough to take on the world
to declare war on...
on what?
What was it again that I felt so sure about not needing?
I was done, I was In.
I was ready to drop it all for your
Utopia.
Your
Never land
where it was Never wrong
and nothing could ever hurt as much as I did before I came to you.
So when you told me to make a difference
I thought you made sense
I thought I could give one hundred and ten percent
and maybe someone would understand what I meant
But I couldn't give up what I left behind,
couldn't work past my life as it is
My Life as it was six months ago
My Life As It Was before...
you.
You all made me think that I was strong.
That I could right the wrongs.
And when I heard your siren song,
I jumped like a sailor swimming
towards love or what ever you could offer.
And as I sank deeper into the cold water, you kept telling me
that I would love Atlantis.

Dark

2009-11-29T10:14:00.001-08:00

This world, it is too Dark. The darkness is overwhelming and only on rare occasions can I see specks of light. But the path to those options is treacherous and winding, and completely Dark.

I speak of the Dark and the feeling of dread in your stomach is normal. You are remembering your struggle, how you made it out of your own personal Dark. How you hurt so bad and how it meant everything to you, until one day it didn't anymore and then you were Safe. But the Dark isn't gone, it's just waiting in a corner of your soul for the day when you are tired and hungry and maybe a little fed up with work, and all the sudden nothing is okay anymore and you are drowning and it seems incredible to you that your heart keeps beating even as you so desperately want it to stop.

I know you are struggling to swim. You have seen the lights too and you know that they are miles away but they are the only way to go, and so you swim. I know that the light is the only way out, and so we thrash our arms towards the sparks. I know we have nowhere else to go. But like you, I also know that the light is flickering and it moves and sometimes when you are halfway there you realize you were swimming in the wrong direction the whole time and you wonder for a second whether it was even worth learning how to swim.

These are childish metaphors, the kind that write themselves in a blushing tone, apologizing for the lack of creativity. They are cold without detail because the detail has been written in every seventh graders poetry about heart break and dead beat parents and parents that beat you until you wish you were dead. The water in my prose is tread by every reporter who realizes that awareness isn't enough and every person who has cried in the bath tub, letting soapy water fill their lungs until they thought for sure it was all over, only to wake up and realize that they had thrashed themselves out of the tub before blacking out. And you, you too have tried to pull yourself up, into the lifeboat of a friend who cared or into the kind words of the woman who volunteers at 1-800-SUICIDE because her son shot himself in the head and she doesn't ever want another mother to have to go through that. These Creative Writing 101 mistakes are so clichéd that they are hardly even rhetorical at this point. I'm sorry.

I shouldn't write like that anymore. I will be straight forward: I cannot stand pretending to be straight. And also, I hate myself sometimes out of habit. You lapse sometimes too, forget that you are trying to be accepting, of yourself and the world, and for just a moment the bitterness washes over you. I am grieving for the world and what we have lost- the soil, the water, the fish, the birds, the pigs, and the people. I will grieve for you too, for that moment when you realized that you couldn't trust the people you are supposed to be able to trust, and how it was too early. I am crying for you, too. I am upset.

If I am being straight forward, I should tell you that I am tired of these kinds of things. I am tired of torture being debated as if there are two equally valid sides. The conflict in Darfur has a death toll that is too high for me to imagine in people. And also, McDonalds is still in business. War is toxic and we are facing ecological issues that should make us quake. Sometimes I think it might be too late anyway, even as I chide myself for using this as an excuse for inactivity.

I don't know what to do. The world is hurting and I am too.

Resolution

2009-11-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

WHEREAS I am alive, and

WHEREAS I am obligated to stay that way.

WHEREAS the world is broken, and war is useless, and

WHEREAS sexual assault is excusable and torture is acceptable during war and hate crimes make me sick, and

WHEREAS people aren't listening, and

WHEREAS nobody cares to know what's going on in the world because that wouldn't make them HAPPY, and

WHEREAS I am not happy, and

WHEREAS I have been given power in my privelege, and

WHEREAS I am implicitly allowing the wrongs in the world to happen by not acting,

THEREFORE LET IT BE RESOLVED that I have declared war on the old world.

Sand Castles, attempt one.

2009-11-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

we build sand castles the way we live:
with complete disregard to what will happen to it
in "the FUTURE"
the future being so many hours away that it is almost unfathomable
well, nothing lasts forever.
And nothing matters forever.
So if our castles come crashing down
at high tide or at global climate destabilization
what does it matter at all?
we'll be moving on by then anyway
and nobody really cares about this
beach.

The Way I Do

2009-10-25T16:55:00.000-07:00

fuck you
i hate you
I want you to suffer the way i did
sometimes
and I think you probably want that too
I hate that you never had to feel like i do
dirty and broken
insane
empty
I HATE you
I want you to feel like you are drowning
I want you know that nobody cares
has ever cared
I want you to know that if someone got to know you
they'd hate you
because you hate yourself
the way i hate myself.

(sorry for falling back into the old hate poetry. rough week?)

Control Issues

2009-10-25T16:30:00.000-07:00

I am
strong, today.
I am
powerful, able.
I can run away.
I can push so that you don't want to stay.
I can
break your heart.
I can
hurt your feelings.
I can
make you smile when you want to cry.
I am
capable of telling you what you want to hear
or telling you that you are not good enough
and making you believe it.
I've spent so much time
knowing what I need to do
what I can do
to make you
angry
scared
docile.
I'm trying to let you
see me.
I'm trying to
be me.
I am trying
not to push.

Planned

2009-10-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Planned obsolescence. That's the term for making things that are supposed to break. We create things that we want to break.

I think maybe we make people like that. Kids are so resilient, but adults are fragile. How do we get there? I think it's an effort being made. They tell us we have to be happy all the time, that it's unhealthy to think about bad things. But we are surrounded by horrible things. So when we see everything crumbling, every thing being so wrong it hurts, we question ourselves. We think we must be broken, must be crazy. But it's not us. We are supposed to grieve. When we don't let ourselves have that, then we break. We die slowly, in ourselves. Our spirits are taken and broken down. Our lives become a tribute to a system of planned obsolescence.

Intellectual Masturbation

2009-10-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

The sun is dying, and I think we're already dead. The earth is dead, she is still beneath us. She used to be crying, but now we hear nothing.
We are too lost in our own little grids, our cartoon stills. We are powerless to change the format of our lives. Meaning eludes us because we have no way of living outside of this three panel strip. Our 3D forms are crushed into caricatures of real people. Stripped of thought and other people, we grasp desperately at anything that reminds us that we are alive.
Food will never give us the nutrients we need, and the fruit from this barren garden is the only thing we will ever eat. The books we swallow whole, the numbers, the letters, the music: they leave us breathing heavily, on the edge of fulfillment.
This life leaves us with nothing but ourselves. And we are not enough.
We have never been enough. We have only taken, only destroyed. And now we are left with this dead thing under us, and we can smell her rotting.
The earth is still, and the sun is dying. And we lay in bed, hands down our pants, eyes shut tight lest we catch a glimpse of what's outside the window.

Close Your Eyes

2009-10-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

Instantaneous absolution-
just look away. Your sins
can't haunt you if you refuse to call them sins.
Redemption is for those who have
lost everything. Those who are
humbled. Those who are finally seeing
the truth. But you are stubbornly watching the sunrise
believing in good
trusting in god.
And the the truth is irrelevant
because you deserve
to be happy.

Pry

2009-10-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Escape was necessary then. The nights were unbearable, the days dragging forever. Every step was just marking time til I could get out. The days seemed hollow and meaningless. Motionless,breathless, I stood.

Admission was a relief. I smiled because I was supposed to, but it wasn't exciting. It was relieving. My time was almost over. Like a prisoner, I counted my days. I paced, twisted my hands, said what was supposed to be said. I played my part as a sycophant to the small town culture. And when the time came, I packed my bags.

College became a refuge, a holy land. I lived in constant awe of the freedom available. I would walk for hours, finding new places and people. The absolute anonymity was thrilling. I refused to let anyone too close, treasuring my identity too much to share it.

I have lost my name, my family, my god, and my home. All of these things have been stripped from my body, and I am supposed to trust? If I seem distant, if I don't talk the way you want me to, let it go. Don't pry into me, taking my life story, my thoughts and feelings from my head. Don't disect every word I say for hidden meaning. My brain is an oyster shell, being pried open and consumed.

Window Seat

2009-10-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

Exhaustion overwhelms me
as I hear the noise of traffic
through an open window.
I am considering philosophy,
and wondering what it means
to study life.
I am considering leaving.
Considering finding a place
to go when I feel like this.
I remember that my friends are
few and far between,
that my family is dysfunctional,
that I am alone.
So I turn off the lights
and crawl into bed
and feel the air from the night
caress me as I fall asleep.