Monday, November 28, 2005

turning 21

and here it is. your moment
you've been waiting for it
with bated breath
and anticipation that grows but now
here you are. did you expect
it to change you,
to radically alter the world?
you're still sitting alone
on your birthday, knees drawn
to your chest as the world sleeps,
this only means
you don't have to hide your drinking
past the arbitrary line
added another year to the garbage heap,
another fucking miserable wasted year
out of your sight at last.
what are you waiting for,
what did you expect to happen,
do you really think
this changes anything?

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

mercurial *

no mere mistress
i slip through the cracks,

pull my fingers into traps, the
“gaybistraight,”
the songs i sing in
my head, i am ill-defined, please
talk to me now tell me i am still
breathing.
i am, am i, i

am?

time seems quicksilver in these darknight hours,
stay with me now i need to talk. i need
you
to take
my pulse, my blood, give
me breathless pain and aching
until i am more closely
approximating
the woman
i appear to be.

hurt me, dull and
sharp, until i know who i am,
until the world falls
into ordered pieces around me,
until it will be easier to leave,
and i am either dead,
or stone.

my hands cover my face, and yesterday’s gashes
on my arms throb
in the chill of the air-conditioning, until
my time with you is up.
you leave
and i walk on, unattached.

i assume only that rules are for breaking,

that the ones you love the most
are always the ones wielding the knife



*senior thesis poem

Friday, November 18, 2005

sonnet in the key of swingwset

and our swings make sounds like children screaming
or sighing, i can't tell which. a longing
for you fills my chest. the park is teeming
in the day but nights you sit there fondling
your cigarette and i stare at my shoes
and we are alone. i say i love you
and you flick ash and try to make me choose
between a future with or without you.
and it all comes with conditions, you see
i am trapped. even as i walk away
from your fierce hug i know this ends with me
blinking through my tears at the vast array
of stars as i pump my swing through the air
wanting to run, but i just swing and stare.





this is probably the best sonnet i've written. it was an assignment from a teacher who knew i hated form, and so made me write in nothing but, for a semester.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

sans nom*

i cannot explain why your mothlike
fingers kept me up all night,
mentally
reaching
for your touch
but oh-so afraid to move
for fear
that you would stop moving your
hands over my body,
stop letting your fingertips

memorize my frame
and validate the melding
of our skin.
what
is this? not
overwhelming desire
but the longing
to have your arms hold me close
all night long

but
i am not made for these things.
my mind will not slow or bend to
my longings and you cannot stay awake
to talk

but oh, just
know

i desire to let you grip me
fiercely to you for the days
we may number together,

know
there is something here,
even if we have no name for it.




*B.A. senior thesis poem. a large bulk of my senior thesis was pulled from 2005/2006. which makes sense, as i graduated 2007...

Saturday, November 12, 2005

four feet

four fucking feet.
the lines of my book bend
and blur and i am cold yet
sweating. you do not speak.
i could touch you from here,
reach my body over the flimsy table
and take your cigarette, drag that
poison on down, and you would stare
in disbelief
i, too, am capable
of change.
i'll have you know
a camel's been
to my lips more often than
i care to admit
and the taste is you
and you are the reason
i do not immediately wash the taste away
bitter, acrid poisonous
in so many ways
the stress hits, now, and
i desire that poison
and long for anything
that would take away
the shaking of my hands,
the sick pit of stomach,
the flutter and twist of my heart
but a simple cigarette
accepted from your hands
will more likely only
compound it
so i'll sit silently
and try not to stare
and think,
what i wouldn't give
to put your fingers in mine.
what i would not forfeit
to cradle the base of your skull
in my palms
and inhale the smell of you
fingertips to scalp,
masking
the tears dripping down my face
that i will never show you

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

in time to come

why my eyes tear up even at the thought
of you touching me
eludes me but
i don't have the heart
to dig it any deeper
i want to say, oh
an endless fount of things,
but won't.
if i am
to stammer out anything
it will not go near
the things i most desire
to tell you - it will be trivial
things, how are things, my writing
is fine, work is good, what about
the band, fine, fine.
we're fine.
sure we are,
fidgeting in our chairs
occasionally trying to flip a page
before more awkward conversation trying
desperately
to keep from looking
into the eyes of the other
and having that desperate recognition
in the moment of silence.

Monday, November 7, 2005

the silence of a park at four a.m.

as i pump it high,
my swing creaks bittersweet
like children screaming
or sighing, i can’t tell which.

i look sideways at you.

you sit on your
swing,
scuff your converse
in the dirt, your mouth
a band
of steel,
clamped.

you sit there, fondling
your cigarette and i stare at my shoes
and we are alone.
you flick ash and try to make me choose
between a future with,
or without you.

my mind is a racing,
ticking bomb
counting down.
please,

don't go
having you here is like breathing clear

(for

the first time in years)

Saturday, November 5, 2005

six a.m. waffle house *

i plead with my
stomach to at least
keep down the coffee
as i try not to
stick
to my space at the counter.

i need the caffeine.
long night? why yes, it
was. is. nights blend
into days into
nights i cannot
remember. it matters
less and less that i
can't, or didn't sleep.

i broke us both a
week ago
and hit
the pavement trying to shake
the chasm
you left
in me

this morning i watched
first the fog come in
and then dissipate as
my car worked the
curves in the road.
i drove to remember,
or forget—
never chose.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

Friday, November 4, 2005

tell me directly

say the words i need to hear.
you do not care
how this breaks me.
it does not matter that the only thing
i was holding on to was your
broken, shattered promise
of silence.
your words are far sharper than
any blade i could ever
take to my skin.
tell me - why bother
with the lie?
how long did you wait
before you stomped your oath
into the ground,
spelling me broken, mutilated,
crying rocking with my head slammed
against a wall (you did not
touch me, or try to help my pain)
my stomach is wrecked and bleeding,
i am raging angry at you,
you promised
i want to scream at you and break
your stuff and hit you so hard
you hit me back.
the pain
should bloody well fucking show
and it shows
but never enough.
there is not blood enough
to show this sufficiently.

Tuesday, November 1, 2005

why memoirist might lie

what scares me more, i wonder -
that, in time, these scars will fade
or that their presence
will never leave?
i do not know which is worse:
self-negation, or self-erasure
will white lines haunt well
into my tired, old life,
or will they, like
the rest of my past,
leave me standing,
grasping at straws?