there's nothing wrong with just a little fun

What I meant to say was,
grab me by the wrist, lets drive until
the only lights come from your dashboard,
honey what I mean is
take me away, I want to rest my chin
on your chest and laugh, I want
to throw my head back into the drizzle
of three in the morning,
What I meant to say was
I am unsteady
but I am ready.

Wednesday

Today I decided that
You treated me wrong
And that
Maybe,
If I nestled my head deep enough into
The early December morning,
You would never find me.

Porcelain

Sometimes she felt
Like a porcelain doll in his arms,
The hollowness consumed her.

Blues

I stepped
outside today, the iced-over world
frozen hard,
and cried for a moment or two
on the shivering wooden boards of the front porch.
And I spoke to you,
my breath mist and my voice watery,
I asked you what you thought you were doing,
and if you were mean or just
scared.
I asked you so many questions and
you didn't answer.
Not a sound, only
the dripping roof and the dripping eyes and
somewhere, far away, a silent sigh.

When the lights went down

When the lights went down in the city,
I sat on the cold window ledge in my sweatpants
and tried to find the moon,
somewhere above, my neck stretching,
but all I could see was blackness.
And then I cried,
thinking of you all alone in your big dark house,
stretching your dark eyes to find the moon.

Lone

In the darkness of December mornings
when uncertainty ate at her
and hot showers weren't enough,
she wished for him.
But he never came.

Stain

And honey,
sometimes bleach just won't do it.
You were always
stubborn as Thursdays,
now baby,
won't you let Friday come?

Lullabye

In order to sleep,
last night,
I counted the freckles
on the bridge of your nose,
your eyelids moved with silent adventures.

Cake

My mother baked a cake
one day, the other day,
and the house was heavenly
ad the kitchen was warm.
I spread the frosting thick and sweet
cut through the layers
took a bite
and thought of you.

Prince Charming

The afternoon he told her it was over,
she wandered through a Christmas tree farm.
Smelling of the season, the cold gnawed at her
exposed nose, stabbed at the ends of her fingers.
She lost count of the rows and
ended up playing hide-and-seek:
he hid while she searched.

101

What she learned in school was
it’s all about the lighting.
Sometimes he saved her and
sometimes she stayed up late at night,
sewing the splinters
back together by candlelight.
Some days it was macaroni for lunch and
she cried, under the spotlight
there was only black and white.

Art

Some days she had control issues.
she wanted to create him, she wanted
to sculpt his eyebrows and touch his lips with
pastels and rearrange the wild windiness of his hair.

for Amanda

On the day of your mother’s funeral
I sat staring at the ribs of the church,
arching wooden grace that spoke of things
higher than us.
Some days you cannot get warm.
The tears freeze on your cheeks, your lips
tremble blue, your toes are white.
Looking up and away from you
I found hallelujah in the curve of the ceiling,
the space, the air and her heart
contained in smooth wood.

In the Fiction Aisle

One day browsing in the bookstore
I came across your heart,
misplaced, slightly squashed but still
fully intact.

Story

Once upon a time there was a face
In the clouds, I saw it there, Picasso lips
And eyes like dinner plates, newly washed.

Drain

Drain me like a bathtub,
dirty water and suds, wash the stench from
my hair, I don’t care,
scrub me raw.
Shocking, isn’t it? Like broken eggs on the floor,
when they begin to sizzle,
When your grandmother gives you a cigarette,
When some kid spits in your face.
Check your messages, its all there,
meandering tape, scramble the voices,
Lavender soap from your mother’s shower,
pick up the dry cleaning.
Come back here young man,
I’m talking to you.

ChinaPond (july)

You there, across the lake
Can you see?
Are you looking out your gigantic picture window?
Do you see her, a pinpoint,
There on the end of the dock
Standing next to the yellow banana
Of an overturned kayak, the girl
In a black bikini, red popsicle
Dripping down her right elbow.
The light is eerie, the rain sweet and soft
The sky rolls syllables around in his mouth,
Trying to decide what to say
To the east, the sky flashes occasionally with far-off lightning.
When she was little, the girl
Used to think of metaphors for these storms,
God is angry, angels are crying.
Now she does not care about the emotions
of celestial beings,
she is merely enjoying the overlapping ringlets
on the pewter surface of the water,
the surprised “o”s that the droplets
make when they land in the water.
She is slightly sunburned,
freckles dot her nose and cheeks.
She is letting the rain roll down her back,
Bead up on her calves

Pringles

In the back of the station wagon
they ate Sour Cream and Onion Pringles.
The salt burned the corners
of their smiles.

Soulmate

Sometimes, late at night,
she would whisper stories to the star-shaped pillow
beneath her head
by the glow of a lone streetlight.
She thought that she would be an ideal person
to share a bed with:
quiet, still, warm.
And good at telling stories.

Strip My Mind

When all that was left
were the tiny tack-holes in the wall,
he smiled her and said
Now we can begin.

Tainted Love

That night she dreamt
of a man of water, transparent and moving,
impossibly tall
And she loved him powerfully
And when she woke she found herself
frightened of the day,
grasping at nothing.

Lost

When Little Bo Peep
dialed 9-1-1
she felt a little silly.
But honestly-
who else will help her?

Hunger

He would always smell to her
Of the floury hunger that seemed to hover in the air
Of the pizza restaurant.

I Still Fail to Understand

She was polka dots and iced cinnamon buns,
She was red silk bras and silver high top sneakers.
And every morning when she woke, the world was hers to take
and all the kings horses and all the kings men
fell every night madly in love with her again.

syrup

I've been meditating
over skim milk
and hershey's chocolate syrup.
And I think I've figured it out-
when he said, "Don't worry baby. I won't fall in love with you"
what I should have said was
"Stay away from my windows."

Milk and Cheerios

you know how it goes.
the patterns, the circles,
the soggy bits at the bottom
of my heart, of my lungs,
you seem to me oversaturated,
red eyed and white teeth, its all sort of
garish and i'm not sure i like it.
further down the assembly line
droopy-eyed girls pick out your eyes,
one by one,
each of you is prepared.

Run

I ran home from your house that night,
salt-frizzed hair swinging behind me,
worn flip-flops slapping softly, a rhythm in the dark.
The dark trees cut me a wide strip of pale
grey sky, stars hanging big and close.
No headlights, no streetlights, just me
and the crickets, deafening.
I ran home from your house that night,
face to the sky, breathing coming fast now,
the cool sweetness of early September
in my lungs,
the yellow line led me all the way home.

Listen to Your Heart

She is sweating, she is slick.
There is darkness, there is flowery perfume,
there are endless thoughts she is making an effort
to toss forcefully out the proverbial window.
Set the scene to a racing techno beat,
set it to crushed grass, set it to sandy jeans,
set her straight, she is wandering,
dripping curls parted lips she needs to know,
she needs to decide its coming fast now
and here comes the chorus of the song
he is waiting eyes asking
set the scene she is listening for you.

Have You Ever Been Low?

Crushed in a way that
makes moving impossible, sticky drips on the
sidewalk, aching eyes staring into the darkness
of two in the morning, sleepless, watchful.
You are the last petal to fall from the flower,
the lone robin left north in November,
there is no one to lead you to warmth.
It is August and you are slimy with heat and
yet somehow deeply cold in the marrow of your bones.
You regret nothing,
Instead somehow you are the one regretted,
you could not escape it, you spun on your heels and
dove, a perfect subconscious swan dive into
this forever, this early-morning oblivion of lonely tangled brains.

BreastStroke

I went swimming this afternoon,
jumped off the old dock straight into the afternoon’s saltiness,
swam far, a beeline to the horizon,
white arms in green water,
Hands taut, scooping,
feet flexed, thighs molding the water into motion
The rhythm was mesmerizing:
inhale, look forward, see the horizon
stretched out before you in endless shades of the same color,
Exhale, face to the ocean floor,
eyes closed against the fearful depths,
blow the air out as if to mock what lies below.
Its all about defiance:
defy the monsters of the deep with closed eyes,
Defy with the very act of moving forward
the monsters you left behind on land
Defy the endlessness before you
by swimming until you find the end.

Mermaid

Her soul was salt, her eyes
lit from deep within.
Her hair curled like shells,
stars crusted her ears.

One night the city boy drank
his fill of life, he was hungry
he was swollen with pain,
the ocean would heal him the ocean
would fill him.

He drove to Venice Beach
and ran beyond the sugar
lights of the boardwalk,
the black silk water
welcomed him.

She saw him from below,
a silhouette of boyish
desperation, saw his hunger
like an open wound.

Smooth skin on the wet sand,
her hair on his face,
salt drips in his mouth, she
left him gasping for more, and yet
satisfied.

Astronaut School

He got a scholarship to astronaut school
and learned to cloak himself in stars,
to wear the clear darkness of eternity.
He learned to fall into nothingness,
to unexist, to roll
in the waters of time
like a spinning planet,
to sleep with the stars.
His girlfriend wondered vaguely
during a Tuesday evening phone
conversation what was so dissatisfying
about rolling hills of corn,
sugary city lights,
and macaroni sticking to the pot
that he needed so desperately
to lose himself in deep darkness.
She wondered if maybe it was really
all about dying.
Why bother with bottled oxygen
and fishbowl faces?
There is no need to eat
freeze-dried ice cream.
If you want nothingness,
she told him mentally,
if what you are searching for
is a cosmos of dark clarity,
do not seek it within
the fiery machinery of a spaceship.
you will never find it there.

It Takes Two to Tango

so she tried foxtrot
bellydancing too, though it
wasn't quite her style.


(haikus galore!)

Cinderella

1.
She thought of herself as clay,
the neon colored kind you mould
into something exciting and carefully
wrap into plastic so that it stays soft.
He could mould her into whatever neon shape he chose,
she was malleable, she was putty in his hands.
She smiled every day at the colors
he mixed, the shapes he made.
Her happiness was tangible like powdered sugar,
light on the surface of tarts, breakfast delicacies
Soft and sweet and always there.
He gave her roses, she gave him kisses as the
sun set softly over the parking lot.

2.
He called her from a golf course in Florida,
she sat on her bed and looked out the window at rain.
The rotting leafy world seemed to
echo with things fallen, things lost.
She wondered where all the leaves had gone,
when everything had become so grey and moldy.
He said that he missed her, and she wondered
what it was that he missed.
He had become the voice in her head, she
collected stories to tell him, she
predicted his reactions to her everyday ups and downs,
the screaming child in the grocery store, the comment
her mother made while cooking.

3.
Try on as many Cinderella shoes as you want,
he told her,
there will be no fit,
no happiness in the ending.
After he left she sat alone at the table;
red linen cloth, white candle in a glass bowl.
The jazz singer crooned,
making love with the piano music.
Smoke rose lazily in the air over the bar,
slow thick spirals in the yellow candlelight.
She dropped sugar packets
one by one into the flame
and watched them burn.

On Death

Along the path Red Riding Hood stopped to see
crimson on her hands, congealed blood.
She must have fallen somewhere along the way,
daydreaming, careless.

At the door of the cookie scented cottage her grandmother smiled gratefully
and welcomed Him in.

the old black beamer

Sticking to the cracked beige leather seats,
faded like a desert landscape in the backseat of my
father’s old black BMW.
I remember the music,
Talking Heads and the Beatles,
his speakers buzzed and snapped like angry hornets.
I never told him that I had spilled
my cranberry juice into them one afternoon,
sticky redness slipping deep into the sound.
He taught us songs from “My Fair Lady”
and “the Sound of Music”
patiently, line by line,
a chorus of three, my little brother
next to me. We sang Christmas carols
too, loudly and off tune as soon
as the cold began to chew on our noses,
our exposed fingers and delicate ears.
His faded turquoise tennis bag lay
at my feet, canisters of neon balls
like exotic candies, fascinating.
When he drove to pick us up from preschool
we hid from the car,
shrieking with delight when he was
consistently unable to find us.
One afternoon I ran too far, I could hear
his anger, the roar of the engine.
Walking home that day, I watched
the Beamer reduced to dust ahead of me.

Blue Nude (Picasso)

what do you see with your newly mixed paints,
blue like hurricane waters,
touches of white and yellow?
in her back lines of pain, solid,
you carve them from sight,
but you cannot capture her fear.
you cannot get the tremble, the
twitching muscle in her shoulder.
you lay down the curve of her leg, protective,
folded arms concealing what?
pale yellow kisses her shoulder blades,
runs lightly down her back.
she turns from you, your
layers of oily pigment, attempting to
capture her, to keep her here with you in the paint,
when- can you not see?- all she wants
is to run away from
everything she knows.

Fisherman (haiku, woo!)

he caught the sunrise
in his net one morning, all
it took was patience.

Fairy Godmother

the story you live, narrated-
a pixie poet in the dark.

Because You've Never Been Fond of Gingerbread

For you a house of glass
trimmed with ribbon candy,
sand and sugar alike-
translucent sheets under my blowtorch.
For you an empty house,
filled with light and nothing more,
a safe space, a homeland
brittle and sweet.
But be careful no one knocks
at your door,
for (however small her fists may be)
the shards are sharp.
It would be quite a mess.

Cinderella

After he left she sat alone at the table,
red linen cloth, white candle in a glass bowl.
The jazz singer crooned,
making love with the piano music.
Smoke rose lazily in the air over the bar,
slow thick spirals in the yellow candlelight.
She dropped sugar packets
one by one into the flame
and watched them burn.

12:16 am

This is my late night poem,
written after the dusky pink clouds have faded,
after the half-drunk boy has stopped calling,
after the parents are asleep,
after sense and nonsense are separate entities.
In the haze of a summer night come
epiphanies,
one after another like
jumping fish or
headlights that crash by your eyes.
In the leftover heat of the pavement and
the wet grass and the
twisted sheets
the meaning of life is discovered.
Love is clear and simple,
ripples on the black water,
animal rustlings in the night,
mascara on the pillow.

paper

Sometimes
she thinks about the paper dolls she used to play with.
Even then they were old fashioned,
she bought them from bizarre stores full of dust and
necklaces of shells and wooden beads
and painstakingly cut
trench coats and
headscarves and
trendy heels
out of shiny paper
and dressed the dolls.
Once all was cut and dressed, there was always
a moment of loss. What more was there to do?
Redress? Rearrange?
Though she had a wild imagination
the paper dolls never were animated,
merely surrogates,
a shiny colored world of time worn glamour,
paper hearts, paper eyes that do not tear.
Paper smiles that do not fade, paper ears that never
ever have to hear.

Resolution

I am going to
write a poem every morning.
This is my morning poem, written at two
in the afternoon.
The dust of time coats my throat.
My life is reduced to knickknacks, doodads,
useless bits that fill empty cardboard boxes
from the liquor store.
My mother sits broken and teary in the livingroom,
I am helpless.
Disorientation, reorientation,
life in boxes, life in dust, life in mold growing under the bed.
Resolution: I will redefine, I will make it
worth more than the sum of the parts,
the broken necklaces and old PEZ dispensers,
used lightbulbs and empty pens, decks of cards missing
the king of hearts.
Not that he is worth finding anyways,
he always seemed to win the game and leave me
lost.

PMS

Flopped in my flimsy black
computer chair, spinning in slow circles.
Tears close to the surface, dashed hopes.
All I wanted was some mint chocolate chip
ice cream. That’s all I wanted.
Damn you for eating it all.
Damn you.

on why i love treadmills

Its something about
running without actually running.
It seems all so effortless, and yet forced. There is no
slow down option,
I watch the numbers grow in front of me and feel
Victorious.
The black band forces me onward,
techno nothingness runs on in my ears,
and the time slips with my sneakers on the
endless forward whirr of blackness.
Something about
running forever, a sort of dancing in my brain,
Something about
the sweat running down my back.
A constancy, a rhythm I cannot find by myself.
A dance, a race against the machine
which is my driving force- artificial because I have none of my own.
It’s something like
proving myself, a competitive urge, I am saying “Hah!” in the face
of something invisible that did not believe I could make it
another mile.
Something like a race with reality:
sometimes my destination
and sometimes my opponent.

This Familiar Sense of Nonsense

It’s kind of like how
when I was little I could fall asleep to my
mother banging around in the kitchen,
making dinner for my father when he got home.
Not a lullaby, but a sort of lulling, crashing noise.
This nonsense, an aching sort of clattering in my brain,
meaningless meaning, alphabet soup,
scattered possibilities. I know that if I tried
I could make words out of it all, but why bother?
You’d just eat it anyways.
Familiar in an eerie, déjà vu kindof way,
the sense that there was at some point sense,
but now there is only non, nonsense, non-meaning,
non- importance, non-words.
You’re talking, but all I hear is blah blah blah.
Its so familiar it puts me to sleep, in my dreams
I solve the world’s problems all while feeding you
alphabet soup, the words seem to spell themselves
into your mouth without any effort.

a passing thought by the train tracks

These days that roll on,
an express train from D.C. to Boston
passing through late on a hot June night.
Seemingly endless-
but when it ends, oh how quickly we forget.

Entropy (the better chemistry poem)

Entropy: a measure of disorder in a system

Tropical starburst, seltzer water.
Headlights in the darkness,
tears that turn your eyesight into bursts of color.
Dried flowers, ancient paper crown.
Duct tape, thumping base.
Screams released into the depths of a pillow,
hairspray, milk left out on the counter.
Books scattered, an attempt at
productivity.
Sunburned lips, salty tongue,
acoustic guitar, sleeping girl with running mascara.
Je ne veux pas travailler.
Her parents are hippies, they collect
egg shells and banana peels to recycle-
over the year they will become soft dark earth.
The banana peels, not her parents.
A crown of dandelions, a third grade skill never forgotten.
Lists written of things to do, places to go
people to call and to see.
Lost somewhere in the wild cartwheel of it all,
the memory of what it was she came here to do.
She is a loosely bound molecule,
her electrons bounce between energy levels.
Her potential is minimal,
her disorder immeasurable.

This is how it works.

This is how it works
You try until you don’t
You work until you won’t
You dream and dream and dream
You walk into yourself
Until the day you know
There is no more to know
That this is all you need,
The past will always bleed
The cage will always close
Its up to you to sit
Or force It all to grow


(inspired by lyrics from a Regina Spektor song)

Equilibrium Systems

Entropy: a measurement of disorder,
the degree to which I am held together,
loosely bound, zooming particles.
A measurement for everything,
even love and darkness,
the kinds of things you carry deep inside.
I daydream of equilibrium systems,
the double arrows implying balance, stasis.
Le Chatelier came up with the idea
of these systems adjusting-
no matter what you do to them
they return eventually to equilibrium.
Their flexibility blows my mind,
like a navy brat who moves to a
new town every year, always changing,
always returning to equilibrium, stability.
My system is imbalanced,
headlights in the dark, tears that scatter your
sight into starbursts of color.
I have no stasis, no equilibrium to return to.
My disorder is immeasurable.

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright.

So long honeybabe,
where i'm bound, i can't tell.
But goodbye's too good a word, babe
so i'll just say fare thee well.
I ain't saying you treated me unkind
you could've done better but i don't mind
you just kinda wasted my precious time
but don't think twice, its all right.

-bob dylan

to do list

I went to the dentist today.
Sterilize me,
bleach, scrape, poke.
I am raw and helpless before you,
whirring whiteness all around.
I give you pleading eyes:
please save me from this mess.
Swish and spit, you tell me. Swish and spit.
I went to the car wash today.
Massive mops attacked us,
they couldn’t seem to reach as far as they had hoped.
Hot wax and three rinses,
blind me with soap and then clean me,
I am quiet and excited in the dark.
The radio plays steadily on.
Go, you tell me. It’s time to go.
I showed up at your house today.
Colonial and clean,
dark green couches and a glowing TV.
Silence me, offer me a drink,
You stood there at a loss.
Swish and spit, I told you.
It’s time to go.

Loved the Way I Deserve

How quickly it all rots away,
old milk, apple slices browning on the counter.
What is deserved? Death penalty, chocolate cake with a candle,
$100 dollar fine for going too damn fast.
On my day off I baked you peanut butter cookies
I pressed the back of a fork into them,
crossing lines, artistic flourish.
In the end when you soured it all
I ate them myself.
Not because I deserved them,
but because you didn’t.
In the end we all get what we had coming:
mine is the soapy floor, browning apples,
fine for going too damn fast.

beasts have it better

Lend me your tears and I’ll lend you my heart,
between the two of us there is spine enough to stand,
eyes enough to face the day.
Lead me to the water and I’ll carry you through,
its all weightless anyway.
You with the brittle face, so easy to break.
You with the mask that slips
only when you are already hidden.
Give it all to me and I’ll swallow it whole,
you’ll never see it again.
Tear it all off and naked we’ll run,
the moonlight will pass
easily through our emptiness.

fresh out

Sit back and try to make sense of it all,
you out there crashing into things
and me here chewing my nails,
flakes of old polish like red bloody gashes on my lips.
How did I go from “stay, baby stay” to crushed, lonely, so tired of it all?
How did you go from “I’ll always love you and be there for you, no matter what”
to this endless silence?
You even said that you’d be there even if we didn’t stay together-
I knew, like a guilty little kid, that we wouldn’t.
Did you really believe it?
Forever like a marzipan palace, like a Disney movie.
I wish I could ask you these things.
Instead I repeat them to the blank page on my computer screen,
Looking at your screen name that is “available”
I know that you aren’t available for me. That door got shut quickly,
And I’m trying to believe I wasn’t the one who shut it.
No amount of small talk will bring it back,
but that won’t stop me from trying.

Zut, zut et zut!
I thought I was through with all this.
I thought I was strong, moved on,
hardheaded woman of heart and mind,
beautiful and independent.
Turns out I’m not even close-
I’ve just gotten good at avoiding you.
I’m really just small and bruised,
in need of a hug and good long vacation from your memory.
There is no backbone here. Independence? Fresh out.

....

someday
i hope to be loved the way he loves her.

passe

these poems make me cry for who i was
this is me without legs to stand. i think i am past this..?

Wish (september)

I wish.

There was a time when I had a relapse of kindergarten, when life was simple and fun and everything was in primary colors... thats how it was with you

There was no tension, only our lazy bodies strewn around your room like forgotten sweatshirts, conversation that was hardly ever important, and yet it was essential: it was us.

“I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me- without them I would have nothing to say, I would be a cardboard cutout.”

Thats what I am: rough, brown, and paperlike, I stand alone in a world of dark swirling colors, a world difficult to understand, a world I dont want to understand, one I dont want to live in or fit in.

And so Im here wishing, on stars and rainbow sprinkles and memories of what was, what could be but isnt

There is a mound of textbooks on either side of me, empty mailbox on the screen, a phone that will not ring.

I am surrounded by future, possibilities and potential and all I want to do is turn around and run, pumping my arms and breathing hard, burning calories like a madman and hopefully someday running headlong into something more real than what is with me now.
Something solid and rainbow, something endlessly important that I can safely care about, something that wont leave me like you are about to

...I need a hug.

Wish me safe, wish me warm and happy, wish me loved like you would love me if only you could be there. Wish that I could deal, move on and remember but not lose reality in remembering, wish me conscious, wish me real. Wish me luck.




Hey Love (october)

This is just me writing you a note to tell you how much I love you and miss you every day. I am probably supposed to be doing some homework as a write this, but I’m just having lots of trouble these days believing any of that’s important.
I miss the past. I miss security and love.
I need a hug, I need to fall asleep next to you with a smile on my face, I need to bury my face in your flannel sheets and smile at another day.
I miss those days.
I wonder if I will ever feel that again, I wonder if it was even real or if my nostalgic imagination has invented these possibilities gone past.
I think of you when I bake cookies.
I think of you when I cry. I think of you when I laugh.

The truth is I’m not sure if what I’m writing is true. Its possible I’ve moved on.
But in this moment of time it is truer than anything else in the world.
I feel very very alone. I feel very very consumed, like something is eating me from inside, an animal that wants very much to be out, something sucking all the meaning from my life.

I am hurting. I am hurting in a way that is so subtle and painless I did not realize it until I sat down to write and all this came out.

The mask has slipped, the rational, happy, hardworking half of my scitsophrenic being has split, hit the road, blown this popsicle joint. I am left with the reclusive half, the stay up all night and cry half, the binge-and-puke then run half.
The soul-sucking half, or maybe the soulful half.

I wish you were here, then instead of trying to put this into words id be dancing, kicking it all into a corner and letting you hold me and tell me its all my silly imagination.

You’re not. You’ve left me and my life and I’m trying to be OK with that like you are.
I will be someday, I promise.

My love, my support, my dearest friend, my heart and soul, what do I have left once you have taken the best parts of me with you?

it hurts

A dusky silence
nothing more.
Your hair was sunlit,
I was lying on the floor.
As I looked up at you,
your beauty hurt me deeply.
I knew it wouldn’t last.
Then the sun set, and in the dark I was lost.
Your bare legs were crossed,
eyes closed against the sun.
Your beauty hurts me deeply.
The shortest dusky silence,
nothing more.

reality (a november poem)

If I just lie here
pressing myself into the mattress, wanting to be swallowed
in fluffy white linen,
then I can believe you are here.
I can believe that all is right with the world.

Reality is the dropping temperature: it won’t leave me alone, won’t let me be comfortable, comforted, happy.
Reality is the angry woman: she smolders and stabs you in the back, she is quietly treacherous.
Reality is the knife in my heart, the pins in my eyes, the ache in my head.

In the middle of the night with my face in the pillow I can convince myself that reality itself isn’t real. That’s what I need to believe.

The reality, the real reality is that I’m here without you,
without anyone
and I miss who I used to be, I have somehow lost connection with that happy girl.
The reality is that I have a massive headache
and a chemistry test to study for and
I have lost all will to continue.

If I just lay here maybe they’ll forget me,
what I am supposed to do, who I am supposed to be.
Maybe the world will leave me be, pass me by,
and I can sink forever into feathered whiteness and dream dreams of a happier tomorrow.

cartoon

Like a cartoon character
who sprints off the cliff
runs a few yards before realizing
suddenly
that there is nothing holding him up.
I am caught in this gruesom limbo
lost in that second of realization.
I am unsupported
I am going to fall.
and there is nothing i can do,
nothing to stop me, break my fall.
just a cartoon character
invented, imaginary.
created for the sole purpose
of being laughed at
and then destroyed.
The anvil falls,
the dynamite explodes.
The coyote is smoking
and the roadrunner is long gone.
still i hang
caught in my moment of hilarious despair
waiting for the drop.

i tried.

I tried, but
the eggshells you set out for me,
a challenge for my careful feet-
I broke them.
I tried, but
even when I used
the French soap my mother bought me-
I couldn’t get clean.
I tried, but
the plane ticket I spent all my money on
just couldn’t take me far enough.
I tried, but
your water would not stay cupped in my hands,
and fell instead
pearlescent on the undeserving floor.
I tried, but
no amount of sunlight will make me open my eyes
I just don’t want to see.

shot in the dark

Aller tous ensemble.
En haut (hot black roof, burning feet)
En bas (a couch in the basement, tiles on the floor)
A gauche (her mother is making tomato soup)
A droite (out in the garden dusk falls quickly, stale in her mouth)
Rever tous ensemble
A dream of basil-scented evenings
Tous ensemble
A cartwheel in the dark
Ensemble
Making parentheses, imprints in the sand, faces in the stars.

running poem

Push.
Rhythmic pounding, rhythmic breathing.
She loses it all in the rhythm, pores pushing
all the fear out of her body.
Push beyond the pain, the twitching
muscle in her left ankle screaming in protest.
Pain is beauty, beauty is pain
Run for peace, run for security
She can’t decide if she is running away from the present
or running to the future
Maybe running to cleanse,
the rain begins in tiny droplets and soon
the t-shirt sticks and her ponytail
slaps her back and her nose drips.
She licks her lips and tastes salt.
She screams with her burning muscles, she cries with the sky.
Pain is real. Rain is real. She is not real, she is an echo of what was.
She is slippery, she is slick, she is nothingness.
She is producing carbon dioxide and sweat and pain,
so much pain.

certain defeat

She thinks maybe she has
Finally
Moved on.
Maybe it’s the way the grass welcomes her into its arms,
Maybe it’s the way milk tastes good again
Maybe it’s the
Railroad tracks she balances on,
Pink shoes gripping cool steel
As she waves her arms in a pinwheel of certain defeat.

stories

A dried flower
delicate dustiness in a forgotten book.
Close it all away to disintegrate slowly.
Time goes on,
relics of past love long lost
lie pressed between the pages of what had been and what is now.
Remember it,
the flower that crumbles into blackness
dreaming of the sun.

It’s the story I read in your face,
The smoke in your voice, the pain in your lips.
You have waiting eyes,
Waiting for god knows what but left waiting far too long.
It’s the smile I see which sometimes is very real,
The hope for humanity is contained in your kiss.

lost

Lost, so much lost.
How did you go and lose all that I gave you?
Holes in your pockets, leak in your heart?
How did you stab me as I lay down in front of you, a place for you to walk?
Spikes in your heels, lost love?
How did you lose it?
Great quantities floating somewhere in a forgotten corner
of the vastest of oceans.. like an oil spill,
coating the birds, killing the fish,
an overdose of passion.
How did I carry you? Weightless in the water,
wading through it all, a destination disappearing into a fogged horizon line.
A straight spine like toothpicks, lasting only so long.
Its not like I need the extra weight.

how?

1.
She thought of herself as clay,
the neon colored kind you mould into something exciting and carefully
wrap into plastic so that it stays soft.
She had always hated the softness, gathering on her stomach,
the pale fleshiness of her thighs and upper arms.
He could mould her into whatever neon shape he chose,
she was malleable, she was putty in his hands.
She smiled on every day, the colors he mixed, the shapes he chose.
Her happiness was tangible like powdered sugar,
light on the surface of tarts, breakfast delicacies
soft and sweet but always there.
He gave her roses, he gave her kisses as the
sun set softly over the parking lot.
She gave him neon shapes: dinosaurs,
hearts, polka dotted and swirled with color.

2.
He called her from a golf course in Florida,
she sat on her bed and looked at the rain falling out her window.
The wet rotting leafy world seemed to echo with
things fallen, things lost, the moment
when you look around and wonder where the leaves have gone,
when everything turned so grey and moldy.
He said that he missed her, and she wondered
what it was that he missed.
He had become the voice in her head, she
collected stories to tell him, she
predicted his reactions to her everyday ups and downs,
the screaming child in the grocery store, the comment
her mother made while cooking.