fork

spoon with me,
either
side is fine
i just want you all
hot body pressed
to mine, i want
warm naked skin
next to me all night

goosebumps though i'm sweating,
i want
small lithe frame
wildly escaping hair
come on, lie
next to me all night

let our bodies ballet
in the slow languor of sleep
or we'll stay awake laughing,
and kissing, together
close
all night

do not deny *

the message
gets mangled in the afterglow.

the glint of white, iris, pupil
that flicks to your eyes, arms,
staringintospace,
[guiltily into] eyes

cannot become the cure,
or the substitute
for the blade
you’ve taken to your crying veins.

nothing can be.

you have
tasted a poison sweetly sinister
it settles into you
nothing else
will do.

let the red
run. coping systems die hard, or
seldom do. the virus goes under-
ground, unchecked,
unnoticed for
years

until you find yourself again
crouching down, spilling your blood.

how, then, do you
learn to let it go?
the
vividly visual wristual evidence
that screams out no, i
am not okay.
(thank you
for noticing)


how do you live
without it?
the familiar
burning ritual,
the nod
to the fuckup inside?


stand straight,
tall, proud.

bear your scars.




*senior thesis poem

choka

sometimes i wish as
you walk to your car i would
move to your side and
tell you how lovely you are.
you do not know that
i stare at you in class and
imagine you were
willing to agree on how
lovely we could be.
beauty like yours should not be
wasted on a man like that.

places of power

in my mind this building
pulses, it holds the revered -
the powers that make certain places
sing the spiritual.
energy abides here, the thousands
of yearnings of centuries of reverence3
to deities has gifted this place
a hum that's bittersweet
and attracts those searching
for more.
days ago we discussed the meaning
i said there wasn't one,
because in all the chaos
i have found the patterns, but
even these do not have answers,
only order.
i pick up the resonance,
but this, too holds no answers,
just energy that i
cannot hold,
only the knowledge
that the supernatural exists.
so
i let it touch me

waiting for fall

the wind
gusts sideways and back,
raining leaves down
on the concrete
and dragging them in circles
and patterns
and their dry scuttle,
like a dance devoid of choreography,
their minuet with the spirits
fitful and hesitant until
they fall from the breeze, stick
in between the crevices of benches
and the cracks of sidewalks,
dry and crunching beneath her feet.
she stands on the sidewalk
looking down,
but she is seeing something
so far away from this place.

blind and numb

yeah and these days
i'm waiting for something
that has value and heft
but i end up grasping nothing and
staring at my blank
computer screen.
i am seeing and not
finding, if you know
what i mean.
yeah and these days
i rarely see beyond
the end of my pipe; its haze
is familiar and far
more comforting
than the tableau that greet
my unveiled eyes.
so i walk in a cloud,
that is fine. i am lost
in the inner recesses of my mind.
no doubt the calm exterior
is a welcome change.
but even after all this time i find
i still rasp the wrong way,
stubble against delicate skin,
leaving bruises and blotches in
my path.
i never meant to become
this hard, or
off-putting
or mean. yeah and these days
i don't set my purpose
to making others flees;
their impulses must be
auto-pilot, knee-jerk, save-our-souls
reflex - a survival mechanism
they are perhaps right to heed.
why muck down with my messes? why
see past a surface armored and
weapon-filled, to the naked,
cowering creature behind?
these questions are useless
yeah and these days
i can see it scatter right in front
of my eyes
and i don't know anymore
and maybe i never did
but i keep looking for something
with weight and,
every time
falling short.

come full circle

how many years
did i long
for you to bend your body
to mine and take
my lips in yours?
how many times
did i play the scene?
of course, as life
often plays out, it
was nothing as i had imagined.
it was me,
who brought you close, and
tilted my head
and took your lips for my own.

i don't know where it goes
from here,
although i'm pretty sure
i know this time
the feeling's mutual.
but here's where there is
no trail - no connect the dots,
find the ways it should play,
to lay out what will give us
the ending we are looking for.
even my expectations must now fall away.
i have no idea what i want
out of this, i can only watch -
we could be everything - or nothing.
we could find folly,
find a happiness unimagined
by us both.
or, looking back to this moment
we could see something
that needed no changing -
here we are,
element introduced,
moment taken -
irrevocably changed,
if only for a night.
where do we go
from here?

it is

so strange that
the years have not diluted
my longing for you
to lean in
and kiss me.
i believed i was over this,
years ago
but i suppose
some loves never die,
after all.
why now?
we were so blind when
we were younger, more
similar, both
longing for the pretty
neighbor kid something
fierce.
now
i cannot fathom a way
it could possibly work - yet
like two magnets,
we are opposite poles
and we are irresistibly drawn in
every time.
i can see it in your eyes.
but i am everything
your morals
stand against
you don't want what
i can offer.
but i saw the way tonight
you hesitated, held your face
close to mine.
i made the decision for you.
it was not the right time.
don't get me wrong - i
wanted it to happen,
wanted my fairy tale ending
more than i can explain.
but i am terrified - to give in
to this would jeopardize our
hard-won friendship, the
painstakingly built trust,
and i know
your heart only wants mine
when mine's unavailable.
so perhaps
if i hold back enough
from you,
then i can make you look
and see me,
really see me.

watching velvet night begin

my hands shake i
know the signs
the quick, darting movements
where precision becomes impossible
i am fluttering paper blown
by the wind, the breeze moves
my transient ways, my hair flows
in an unseen force
we may only experience
by noting how it changes
everything else.
the sun goes
into its descent and evening begins
to set claws into the passive sky.

so steve says, “if you fuck her, do you think you’ll get her out of your system??” *

her breaths come quick
when she is kissing me, her
soft sigh
starting up high

and then descending in
pitch, “hhmnm,”
slightly

muffled by my lips
that
insist

upon knowing the very
best of her tonal ranges
and gasps

while my fingers
slip and hold, she swaying
against my taut arm
cheek crushed againstinto my shoulder

(those gasps come quicker
now, the
rise and
fall
of
winded lungs)

moans

delicious

her curves rest
their weight on my flesh
and i support her
trembling limbs,
and run
my fingers
down
her back and sides




[hardly]






*senior thesis poem

near the eye august 29, 2005 *

i.

i’m watching the back yard
dance in the winds, trees
moving their hips in a circular
motion to match the salsa
rhythms
of the wind.

it’s

seven or eight.
the light is
filtered

through dirty
dishwater clouds
and
lightning
flashes as the day darkens upon

the city.

and i with my open
window, blinds shoved upward,

am awake alone, my roommates long since sleeping,
as i watch the trees
shake
their hair and tango in
the gusts of the wind
to the music that
cannot be heard, only watched quietly

in awe
of power, and beauty.





ii.
the sky is misty, all
the water in the air
thrown by the winds

back and forth
splattering buckets against
my window
in a cycle of nature’s finest
powers of destruction

and i am watching the pines

bend down,
like supplicants
down

no vegetation untouched
by the dancing winds,
the four foot
weeds in our back yard
crushed
as
they start, and slow
bend
and blow
in the buffets
from
all sides, a
beautiful
synchronized

chaos as the trees find the
rhythm and ride,

body swaying, hips
beating a life well-
lived.




*senior thesis poem.
about, obviously enough, experiencing hurricane katrina as it bore through mobile

go obfuscate yourself *

we play with the meaning
of nudity,
only cover the
important
parts.

suspended
in a haze
of smoke, and liquor, and girls,
you can lose hours,
whiled away with searing
glances, the play
between the sexes,
false seductions, alcoholic
flirtations that
sway
and bend

when asked for veracity.
an atmosphere of lies,
few things as they seem,

and i flirt with these men,
i do
i lie with my body and say
things i’d never mean; buy
me a drink, buy time with me,
buy my hot body gyrated
over your lap so you can
run to
the
restroom
when your time is up

in grim imitation
of longing, of desire, of being
close to someone,
being held.



* B.A. senior thesis poem. i'm sure it's not everyday the students turn in poems about stripping in their thesis. i'm pretty sure i hold the title on that one.

confession

and yes, i worshipped you

i bent to kiss your scarred ankles
and held your broken body
in an attempt to make you feel
anything other than pain.

i lived for you, your breath
alone was my religion. (if i keep
you alive, then i will not die)
but my adoration you turned to
heresy.
i cannot forget
the utter despair of realizing
that the love of my life had looked me
square in my eyes
and turned her back on me.

barfly

lately, i have joined the single few
who go to bars
in an attempt to make the
ache fade.
time stretches and slows
opposite my longings, races past my groping
hands, rocketing into the no man's
land that means i must start over
again.
i am tired of new beginnings
that excite, and then let down.
time
marching forward
does not slow for
my broken psyche, my muttered pleas,
the unwillingness to be thrown back
into the race.
i am still wearing my
hobbles, desperate to hold onto
the familiar, yet dying to be free.

please pardon

i don't know where the hours go
i sit, unmoving and time flies around me,
for i am but small impedimentia in the way.
i blink and the sun is coming around my
curtains and i am wondering where
the hours go
forcing my insomniac eyes
to close before it is too bright to sleep.
and i know that it is on purpose that i
avoid the oblivion of sleep, but
my reasons are obscure
i'm wishing that the few minutes
i had with
her hands stroking my flesh tonight
could have lasted into the early
hours. i am more lonely than i
have the right to be.

gasping and shivering

you used to say wings were for you
and i don't know how much
you've forgotten, but i've had to remind
myself every so often of the
nearly three years of space
between us,
i have clung
tightly to the memories
of what we were and
remembered your words,
our whispered promises
in the dark, your
talk of wings swelling
my heart.

i don't
know if you still
desire that pattern of ink
on your skin, but
baby if you're still
yearning to fly then please
oh please
just let me know

hindsight

you spend your whole life attempting
to be like all the others
and you wonder why your heart
won't cave and
why the boys
they mean nothing.
you chide yourself for your cruelty
and expect next time to be different
yet it never changes,
and then
you meet her
and she inflames you
like nothing else
and you spend years chasing her memory
and crying because she is gone.

you do not realize the importance of this lesson.

passing through

it's the loneliness i can't handle, the
feeling that i am utterly alone,
disconnected from the world
devoid of any ties
i've developed to a
fine tune the skill of ignoring
those around me, yet now
i long
for physical contact. i have not
had so much as a hug from
anyone but a stranger's mother, who
greeted me cajun-style in a bar
in new orleans, where i began
perfecting the personae of the
girl who sings, and doesn't mind
if her skirt is see-through.
so forgive my habit of observing
you in the late night hours

you i worshipped

i don't know
what to feel anymore
a sense of finality, a peace
that covers the mess
of lies between us
an unfinished conversation, we are
a letter half-written, with
no reply in sight,
the unfinished novel
that moulders on the writer's desk
and i loathe this
i am not okay
with our unfinished state,
i needed an ending
i could understand, an encore
as the applause faded
into the night air
i don't know
it's a past of what-ifs and why-mes
and i cannot detangle the good times
from the times that felt
like dying
the picture blurred and spotted
even in my mind.
her limbs around me,
i cannot even remember this bliss
without also the times she would
not touch me she would not
and she will not
touch me.

roles we play

if i just let go
of all of it,
then what
will my identity be
shaped by?
who else will i become?
what else will open
for me,
as the years begin
to unfold?
i am buzzing
the pulse of the energy
i cannot manipulate, only
sense with a fierce longing
and an inquiry,
what are you,
what am i
a part of?

they realize what the scars are from

my sickness outed,
i can feel the eyes on me
as if i do not have the perfect right
to blow myself
spectacularly
to pieces...

heart drop down

it's the letting go, the realization that you're
not all right
but it's okay, and you
are ready to go on,
bare body in the
moonlight again, half shadow and half
blazing with shimmery light
as you
clutch your wounded heart with the
transparent, fragile beauty you do not see
in yourself and you wait to love again
while you swear off the whole mess entirely

but you can't escape love, it snatches
and tears at your heart, begging a night's
lodging, and you know better,
but you always let love in.
despite the struggle,
the constant reality of pain versus the fairy tales
the cutting of her abandonment, the sting
of his lies when you discover the truth.
love is a game, a battleground, a muddy
field slick with rain and gore
as you sink neck deep into the refuse
you weep and realize that yet, if not
for this feeling, the despair and
tumultuous passion, you would
never be able to feel truly alive.

thor*

it is beautiful outside.

thunder
rolls across the sky and the rain
quickens from a sprinkle on the
roof to rain
so thick it makes the air grey.
i am really ready for it


i've nothing to do all day but get wet
and watch the deluge form puddles
and rivers on my street.
days like this i miss being twelve,
when you're not old enough to
be embarrassed by wearing a
swim suit outside in the rain,

to
frolic in the flooding streets.
but i am old enough to have the
excuse of
run-
ning
to my car to get wet,

and i'll go

with that.






* in my B.A. thesis as well... almost completely unedited.

in days, i will break up with you.

it's that heartstop realization,
the dread
twisting you into nauseated knots,
the place where
"what if it doesn't work"
becomes "how can it?"
but it's not over
it's never
that simple that easy that clear - emotions
are see-through as mud
and you fumble through
knowing you're doomed
yet attempting to change the future
with the wrong tools and the wrong person
and the wrong heart

wasting time

i have often wondered
if love can ever be wasted
like always wanting
and never being able
to touch her, kiss
her body
does this waste love?

am i wasting -
have i wasted my blood
in aimless love
hoping she would understand/

we all hope we aren't failures
throwing away our love
and our lives
learning how to break our own hearts

i can see that

soft boots, scarves tying
back your hair, clothing
scavenged from thrift stores
or sewed by inexpert hands.
i've been there - i've stitched in my
uneven way, and rescued
soft and flowing things from
scrap bins and enjoyed every
uneven, raggedy hem from
my own hands. i
can relate to that. the need
to create your own life, instead
of buying it prepackaged off a shelf.
they were hippies, or poor college students
or dancers who liked to recycle or
children of the night who bought black by
the yard and draped their bodies until
they finally believed that they, too, were beautiful.
it's not an isolated theory - so many
live by the same principles, no matter
the era, or what precise thing you abused
to transcend a deadened life
you could not remove yourself from.
through the decades each generation tries
to separate itself from our diseased society
one religion, life-theory, commune,
drug, scar, eyeliner line, rip, and seam at a time.

holding on

he says, let everything go
and back away,
but he speaks as one
who is used to people
who come to him to talk
i am afraid
that if i
withdraw any more
i will become as invisible
as i feel
standing here
in a place we used to come to,
and touch
and watching you
walk by me
as if i was no more
to you (or less)
than the rain on your shoes

remains

your lies were
not even
delicate
you did not
try to stain my world
a better shade
you just bloodied the water
left scars
and walked away
with stained fingertips

predictions

his voice drawls across the lines of verse
smearing metaphors and symbols off of
their pages and into his neat, labeled
& organized boxes where they drop down dully,
stripped of life and beauty. venerated authors
have their words amputated from their poems
[i shudder to imagine Plath's consternation at
his butchery of "Mirror."]
seeing this ripping,
tearing, ignorance of the meaning and truths
behind mere words - do i really want the
cutthroat treachery of fame?
for the priviledge of watching teachers rip apart
my heart and soul, watch the fragments
of meaning twitch and jerk, dissected,
devoid of the emotion i have invested so carefully,
trembling upon the cold steel of a critic's surgery table.

all i have left of him

a gaping hole he
used to occupy,
some snapshots
that seem so trivial now
the things left on my computer
that i do not need...
i leave crumbled in my hands
the useless dreams of yesterday
like chattel in the wind.
let the rain wash away
my heart - i have no use
for the filthy little thing.

keeping the bad with the good

if i threw away
every broken promise
all the times i cried
while you stood
silent, across the room
every single caress
that later turned
to ash in my mouth
every time you hurt me
all of your phone calls
the touch of your hands
in the dark
if i ceased to remember
all the times it hurt
and the way syou let me down
then i could scarcely
remember you
at all.

false requiems

abstract ideas are vaguely accepted
yet, when tested
all semblance of tolerance
is lost amidst the anger
the "sin" of it all
explained in terns from
an accepting, loving man
morphing into high morality
the refusal to accept anyone's values
yes, bathe in the blood of jesus
and pronounce his tenderness a sin
and in his name
kill the faggots and the heretics
and the witches and whores
burn them all until you don't remember
that behind closed doors
you are just the same.

kelli

in her eyes i can see the word girl glint off her
surfaces, although her mouth tongues boy
as she gives me that smile, knowing and
yet closed with visible longing for cessation
of deception, while father screams in the
living room not to be like 'those faggots.'
she winds the long hair up, watches the mirror parade
the whispers of dyke, and attempts to find a
male to take to prom to hide her dirty little
(girlfriend) secret.

speak*

he reads the sports section
rustling the pages

her fixed gaze is lost on him.
the television is muted, the fan
creaks
as it revolves.

she gathers the words against
her teeth and they
clack
with anticipation
but her breath lets out in a rush and
the words
flee
before she can force them into sounds.

he turns the page and settles in
to read.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

stoned, in ethics class*

a myriad of stars in the diamond heavens
could not light my way well enough to

tap-
dance
through the moral tarpits and
trip-
falls
required of intellectuals
to theorize, and puzzle out
the reasons, altruisms, empathetic sighs

as our fingers are tested in the silt-filled babblings
of philosophers, clear springs water now full
of sediments, dirt and

original
guilt
from the newest opiate religions of the masses.

communion hands full of
spaces and
pauses

in the struggling of the mighty
i.q. of the highest persons scraping out
the theoretical impersonalities of universes
that could have been
if not for our
ability to feel,
and love,

and dream.



*also in my senior thesis. almost completely unedited from when i first wrote it, in ethics class; i only changed the title.

concrete jungle

i do not see what is in front of me.
birds call in the air and
the pages of my book are
ruffled by the chill of autumn air
but i am in another universe,
unseeing eyes staring.

i am imagining
the peace of forest, the harsh
loamy smell of leaves from seasons past,
watching squirrels and rabbits
the scent of pine and earth
and leaves crunching beneath me
when i shift my weight.

[never mind my concrete surroundings
the sounds of traffic
from the nearby highway]

in my world, trees rule the
earth and within their branches,
i am melding into bird calls
and rustling leaves, and the
gentle noise of forest creatures who
scamper and live under roots
and in burrows under logs.

comprehension comes slowly

her eyes met mine
and for the first time,
she really saw me
straight through the layers
and bare into the center

i saw a flicker of comprehension
and that's all i really needed
i just wanted her
to see that pain
acknowledge the reality

it wasn't an admission of fault, or
an apology i was searching for
simply requiem in her eyes.

ideal kind

the way you move,
tracing shapes in the air
that only you can see,
and the lazy way you turn
my head to kiss me
and i love you, i do
when you touch me
with those hands and
whisper in my ear -
love, you do things
to me i'd never do to myself.
masochist that i am, i
have not the heart for these things.

entranced

i'm not entirely sure how long
i watched the screen-saver's
swirling lines and loops and curls

my mind snapped awake and
iwasthinking

i gotta get out of here
i gotta get out of here

the screen-saver continued its
frantic journey

i'm caged here playing my life on
loop like a crazed creature
bumping and pressing against
the glass of my computer screen.

scry

i am still evolving
i press my form onto the cloth
in an attempt to discover
who i am
perhaps i will divine myself
from the debris
of all that the others
have left behind.

better in the dark

what if i don't want
to be a certain thing,
what if my place
is in ambiguity,
and i am not meant
to become a definition?

am i not all of my lives, all
of my failures,
shortcomings, my
myriad mistakes,
am i not
every person i have ever been?

thankfulness

a sickening swirl of stomach
the clenched fists, nails
digging into your flesh, waiting
for the phone call - the yes or no.
sitting, twisting and turning
in your seat, glancing and glaring
at the clock, tapping your leg
impatiently, waiting
for the right time to leave, drive away
to the anxiously awaited appointment
your toe-jittery, teeth-grinding interview
where they hang your future in the balance
and watch you writhe before
handing you what you need - they say,
makes you grateful, that way.

april fifth

where we fail to mark our lives,
they make marks upon us
and your words burn holes me me still.
i cannot shut my mind to still
the echoes of flames.
i don't hope anymore,
concerning you.
i am sick unto death
of wishing you towards me
and away, so tired
of your appearances
just as i believe i
may have forgotten you,
and then here you are
and i scrape myself everywhichway
to cater to you.
i am tired
of the lurch in my throat,
your way of pretending
nothing happened at all,
the flighty, loveyou, hateyou,
mournful look
the secretive smiles
aimed ten degrees to the left
of my face,
of saying hello, then goodbye,
watching you slowly disappear
from my life.
now only dates mark my memory.
i will remember each year -
one year older, one year
further away
from you.

too good at lying to myself

pathetic insipid child,
there is no love,
didn't mommy tell you that?
as she unpacked
the crates from the divorce,
she said
marry rich
not for love
i thought her a fool
(but who is the fool
indeed?
i sit here
with a crumbled life
and she is beginning anew.
no regrets.)

battle

i'm studying the war cultures right now
and i begin to understand the rage
felt by all these ancient men
stirred to march and die for causes
they deemed necessary for bloodshed
i could take up my sword right now
i could lose myself in the death throes
of the people i hack down in blood-rage
and come out on the other side of battle,
filthy and worn, but whole as i could be
having hacked my heart to bits in war-mongering
i could walk on, and try to never feel again.

identity

you know it's on the line
trembling between past present
former and future
you wait
grasping for both sides,
terrified
of letting go
but you know that
forward is the only way,
there is nothing for you
in the past.
begin to throw away
your old life,
tearing a new spot for yourself
in the fabric of the world,
while the past digs its claws
into tender places.

leave everything behind

try not to mind when
they cry when you leave.
it is only a few moments,
their eyes will dry.
do not compulsively
clench your throat,
do not look back
as you drive away.
the road promises new
beginnings, and people
who have not lived
your middle school failures
and small high school triumphs.
you will be anonymous, alone.
do not cry when you realize
you have run away
to a new set of problems.
your status isn't changing,
you are still the same.
they are still the same.
it is all the same.
do not call your old best friends
and watch even the most familiar
melt away into strangeness.
most of all, do not admit
your failings, when home for the holidays -
no, it's good, really -
i'm fine.

patiently

pale green lampbeams shine
from the black fur of face.
short glints and she looks away,
tail twitching, waiting
staring at rough bark.
i hear the cheerful chirping
she is so enamored of,
and i really hope
(although i rather like birds)
that her fur will hide
from glints of sunlight.
twitch,
a tensing of body and limbs.
birds shoot from branches
and she flicks her tail
once, twice,
and curls underneath
the tree's shade, waiting.

worn through with you

why, whisper,
do you long for death so?
surely you know
it will not stop your longings,
fears and heresies. deeply inside
where your heart rots from misuse
in your chest, you can feel
that death is not the escape
you'd love it to be.
no, you will find
yourself again, over and over
you cannot expect the mortal coil
to change you.
death is nothing.
it will not kill your forbidden desires, or
help you run away.
death will bring you back here, over and over;
you cannot escape
from yourself.

mania

hold my throat i can't breathe i can't feel
my arms i can't feel the bleeding again
it's nothing it's nothing
fuck pretending forget i'm useless again let's
start the cycle over again why won't
you Talk To Me why won't you recognize
that all i want is to erase the
feeling of a whore is all i'm good for
i help you forget the ones you really loved
i've been everything but the one you
Would Have Died For how do you think
that makes me feel? how do you think
that makes me feel? Stupid girl you thought he
loved you. you thought She loved you
You Keep Dreaming Fairy Tales nobody
loves you nobody wants you
Stop Pretending you're anything
but a Stupid Playtoy nothing
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

hurricane aftermath

leaves on bushes and trees
glint their startling green into the sunlight.
as i walk, my shoes
crunch the dead and dying leaves
blown down by the winds.
it is an early illusion of fall.
if i close my eyes and
forget the heat of a southern september,
the sounds my feet make
bring me home
to a place where, in fall,
foliage turns bright autumn colors
and you can find leaf piles
under trees
the sounds small children make
running to jump into a pile
of the beautiful fiery colors

she died

not from violence, but
silently
each time her girlfriend
forgot to call
every glare from her mother
when her girl
walked in the door
and she knew she
wasn't wanted
a plague of humanity
a diseased brain,
never mind love.
forget the feeling like
everything would be
wonderful -
when girlfriend walks out
the door,
all you are left with
is an angry silence
the words dyke and sin

rehearsal

it takes more than just your clothes
to be a dancer.
try on the shoes, fit your toes
into the confines of pointe
your slicked back hair,
and the weariness
of knowing the steps by heart
and failing anyway

hammer

at first when we were new
you took that necklace and
you tied its cord around my throat
i wore it constantly, it was
always on my body to remind me
of you.
i wasn't yet yours,
just something quite profitable
to hold on to.
now that you claim me
i have my own necklace
to swing around my neck
yours stays firmly tied to you.
i am not sure if this
is a better arrangement.

friend/foe

the way when you turn to face me
you don't know whether to smile
or stare, aloof, away from me
and the emotion plays in the
lines of your face and
you don't understand when i walk away -
when i touch your face and
you duck your head, attempting
to avoid my touch -
these things.
i wish i knew you like i used to
the days i could count on my
fingertips
and i could have drawn you
from memory alone
with my heart

he

he says i'm too intense
for people to deal with,
and i understand
i burn with a ferocity
that scares even me,
sometimes
the way i'll be high
days after a smoke
the ways i see things
that aren't there, quite.
fucking crazy
like maybe they shouldn't have let
me go
but it doesn't matter.
i am here.
and i scare away
everyone i love
with my intensity.

on purpose

you'd think
that if we were as
goddamned happy as we
claim to be
then we wouldn't
drown ourselves in liquor,
smoke until
our tongues are raw
lie to the hallucinogens
(i am not as fucked up as you think i am)
the uncomfortable stares you get
when they've found out something about you
they didn't want to know
the smile falters
the brusque manner,
the hasty retreat.

the curse of memory

try as i may
she will not leave.

this latest incarnation
splashes the ceiling in the bathtub,
laughing and comfortable
legs entwined within mine
chaperoned only by the rubber ducky.

i know her legs, the scarred ankles
the way her hands felt in mine
it's not over, but it is

he says i want a girl
but that's not it, precisely
what i want is her
i want to move on
and to stop looking back

over-exposed

the glint of blonde made the camera glare
and the otherwise pristine picture was
washed in brilliance
that obscured the details of the faces

she was kissing his cheek
his abashed grin
her peaceful ambrosial bliss, eyes closed
steadying herself on his shoulder
a moment captured, yet obscured
simultaneously

$3.76 is

the price of a ticket
to buy solitude
music in the background like
a trance -
the words don't matter, or
the chords
just the feeling of being alone
when i want nothing more
than to run away from everyone,
i would pay any price to fade
into the obscure crowds
so you'll forgive me if
i don't think the price
of a big coffee is too much
to become nobody.

sometimes you ache
for another's touch
on your flesh but
sometimes, nobody
is not a bad person to be.
when lost in the crowd,
when walking alone on the street
thinking how nice it would be
to be somebody

i don't regret knowing, just feeling.

he doesn't know what to tell me
how immature
how sad my smile
how trouble seems to follow me
in waves
when i say how i'm doing fine.
and i am
when i've stamped the
suicidal screams to
faint whispers,
when i cease to mutilate
my arms
you're beautiful,
he says, why you date
the guys you date...

and i'm thinking how i'd
much rather date
no guys at all

you wanted to know who i am.

one who once knew your every curve
who would lie beside you and
try not to breathe
for fear of waking you
who would hold your lithe body against mine
who loved you.

now i am cut by your words
instead of a blade
i am the one who stares at you, numbly
when you look into my face
and you don't say a goddamn thing
when we once talked in the language of blood,
pain and tears.
your pictures, i stare at
out of the corners of my eyes
memories i did not make, merely borrowed
from the photograph albums of friends i perused,
hoping to see your beautiful face,
and averting my eyes in sorrow
when i saw your smile.

disappear

imagine the ease of her leaving
hugs her family,
boards the behemoth
alone, not grieved.
it is a breath let out
a weight removed.
imagine you never have to spot
her in the grocery store,
or at your favorite coffeehouse
her poetry no longer glaring
from the pages
imagine
you have no more links to her words,
her anguish falls on deaf ears
in the town she has abandoned.
imagine taking your hand
and deleting her presence
as if she has never lived for you.

everyone walks straighter,
as if a burden
is lifted from their shoulders.

which drugs, how many, how often, how soon?

i can feel the concentric circles
around my body
can feel the walls pulse and sway
contracting around my outflung arms.

i do not remember the reasons.

your company

when your heart turns actress
and you cannot stem the ebbs
and flows of that creative tide
when your mouth speaks words
that make you cringe
inside (no, no, don't go,
please stay, i didn't mean it)
and your hands, they let go
of everything you've been holding,
what then?
how do you reposition your lips
around your traitorous mouth
how can you stand to touch
yourself with those hands?
how do you forgive yourself
for banishing
the one thing you'd kill
to have?

poet humor

a little bit about me: i hate form in poetry, for the most part. i do like haiku, i also love sestinas. i might even throw a villanelle at you, but i hate ABAB rhyme forms, and any variation thereof. you can believe if i wrote a sonnet, then someone made me do it. so, this:
i found this, it's from a creative writing course i took before tenth grade (in high school).....
it still cracks me up. this is what you get when you make me do things i hate.



the sonnet-hater's sonnet

i do not want to write this stupid sonnet
though the assignment was to write in verse
of Shakespeare's time, and stay right on it
i rather think it molds my verses worse.
although it holds my rambling po'etry tame,
sonnet form my inspiration bums.
maybe someday this sonnet will bring fame;
though all think the word "gag" for sonnet sums.
constraining form is sonnet's major vice
it makes the poetry sound rather rough;
i'd really hate to write this sonnet twice
i think that torture once is quite enough.
i've learned my sonnet writing isn't best;
i'll write in something else, like anapest.

starting to lose

the song reminds me of years ago
before i even knew how to fuck
i'd spend hours listening to it on repeat
and imagine the scenario in my head

he would bring roses
or it would be perfect, somehow
we would be the pair
of movie soul-mates
matched moves, with a broken sort of sweetness
a completion
i was in love.

grey Nissan, year '92
the upholstery was piecey
he bent me into the narrow seats
radio playing
a commercial for cars.

on the way back,
he told me how,
years ago,
he had laid out roses for his prom date
who said no

when rage becomes desire

i want to be the girl
who can't quite manage to cry
when you fail me

Whisper*

i’m pleading
to
any deity that might
listen

that one day i’ll look you
in the face

and all i’ll think is,
“yeah, i used to love her.”




* also in my B.A. senior thesis

my face against the fabric

my eyelashes brush the glass and the tears
pool in the lenses
frames smashed between my face
and a pillow
i fling them off and watch
the salty liquid roll away,
or, if left alone long enough,
evaporate in the sun
like blood in a vial
scars on an arm
meaningless love letters
the scent of her on my clothes

picture me trying to evoke her
long after the scent has faded.

s.o.s.

same old shit
you ask every time
when you call me
three hours late,
"what you doing?"
and i answer,
waiting
waiting for you
because it's the goddamned truth
it's what i've been doing
since august
for every in-between call,
some small forgotten promise,
and the songs you won't let me play

it doesn't matter
i'm good at waiting.

i perfected the art
early in junior year,
lying still in bed, barely breathing
hoping she'd touch me -
a familiar scene i've repeated with you
and when
for the thirty-some-odd time, i fail
i stand in the rain,
smoking pain away.

love is*

like grapefruit

sweet when it curves
into your fingers but
after the fruit is devoured
all you're left with
is a pile of refuse

a bitter taste
on your mouth and fingers





* in my B.A. thesis. they wanted me to switch the first line for the title, and vice versa... so i did in the thesis, but i personally think that's crap, and have switched it back...because it's mine... and my prerogative.

this princess is quitting

i'm sick of all the lies about
the fairy tales
your goddamned happily
ever after
bunk and hogwash
i used to wait for that
fucking prince you swore
would save me

well then where was he
when i was slitting my
wrists, and why
didn't he hold me
when i cried

when i mixed poisons
and crawled
on the living room floor
thinking i was dying
when i prayed to the porcelain gods
when i fertilized
the cemeteries with my blood

where the fuck was he
playing his video games
or getting stoned

an imaginary thing
a lie no one bothered to rescind,
like they would about the tooth fairy

they leave the important questions hung
in the air, loud and unanswered.

conceiving bitterness

a faithless sort of man
the kind that will promise the world
and hold you, and then leave

you will choke on the sawdust
when he is gone.
he leave trails of broken things
behind him,
daughter, marriage, wife

how to become invisible

it's in the way you reach over, suddenly
propelled out of inertness by chords
all too familiar, and none you
want to hear

the way when i put certain songs on,
you change my entire lineup
and put your preferences on, instead

and look, i know it's not a social commentary
about my music tastes, or the
appropriateness of the sound

no, your problem comes with
long, curly brown hair
the kind that piles up in
the corners of showers
and sticks to you in
unexpected places, and
won't stay off your clothing

kind of like the way her memory
stays in the corners of your
mind and infects the
curves of my body

i remind you of her

but i'd rather leave you behind
than become her flesh-incarnate memory,
a replacement
to knock around your bed,
a shoulder to cry on

roommates

she wears blue contacts
the kind designed to
camouflage a darker color
like curtains for a window.
she doesn't let him see
her eyes naked, he already sees enough
with his penetrating glance,
and the way he undresses her silently
as if she is a statue
incapable of moving, or
independent thought.
the way his fingers trespass...

she closes her eyes.
he'll never see her.

cute girl seeks same

a gamer, i think
someone who gets lost
in a computer screen, or
one who can contemplate the complexities
of a d20.
someone who won't notice
my presence in the room
until i sit down in her line of vision,
so i can see that light jump
into her eyes.
i want a nerd
someone with glasses, so that
when i take them off and
they can't really see
they'll stare, unfocused, with a small grin
i think someone who would pair
a sports coat with jeans
and Airwalks
the kind that, when your eyes
meet in the bookstore, you both
just smile
because you know how to laugh
at yourself,
laugh at the world.

smudges in my rear view (irritants)*

i.
i can see your heart
although you’re trying
to cover that wound
as an oyster would
a pearl

ii.
the gentle curve of neck
does not betray tension
small and cold
surrounding the
abrasion
but your fingers do a
tap—
dance
on my coffee
table




*this is also in my B.A. thesis, edited from the original version a bit

hold your breath

you hear the room tense
with silent anticipation
we walk past with
fading breath
an unrequited love song,
an accidental death.
the room seems empty,
frozen, devoid
of warmth and life

film

every picture makes my stomach clench
an old familiar feeling i can manage
to pretend i'm comfortable with
but betrayal is never something that leaves
your mind. while i thumb the snapshots
(your naked smile)
i try to deaden, every time
the lump in my throat
the convulsive ways my eyes betray me.

[& but now]

those soft tones used to evoke you

i see only her
she stands over the whispered words
a memory no amount of blocking
could undo
i cannot escape her
i attempted to resuscitate my life,
free of her omnipresence

but i can't bleed this away
no, i cannot bury my insecurities
into my flesh, and dredge up
the old show of mask
and stone

i don't expect anything

dig in with your razor teeth
take the flesh a piece at a time
tear into the core
and keep going
until you have a perfect piece of artwork
hollowed from the inside out
a porcelain heart
empty
but beautiful.

daughters of Jupiter

such is my divinity
but having him as father
has not saved my heart
from a slow death

i can control the world
and create joy in lives
for short intervals
i can caress a cheek
and contain love
in my hands

but it is a useless talent.

no person may be satisfied
with mere moments
a glimpse of the love they long for

i cannot bend or force free will
to sculpt a situation, i cannot
work the wiles of cupid
to stay so permanently

the dawn brings emotions
i cannot change

disbelief has killed my power with cruel hands.

pathetic

you're like a bad drug
you promise paradise
leave me lying in hell.
and i can't drive away
and leave you standing there
like i should
you parasite
you've invaded everything
i held dear
and i don't understand
i can't burn
or bleed this away
i can't hold this in my hands,
and let it drop
like a leaf
coming to rest
on water.

irony must be a writer

even when
i could feel myself
start to shatter
i lay staring at the ceiling
composing a poem to tell you how i felt

instead of simply doing something
about the cause.

the classroom of her

fingertips twined in your hair
brushed back from your face
to find the eyelashes that
tremble against my cheek in sleep
the mouth that holds mine in its sway
the kiss i lose my mind in,
every time
we play these games
a fingernail caress
hands that shy and turn, yet
hold yours like a saviour

i have never been here before
no familiar paths guide my steps
i stumble blindly
like living in darkness for centuries,
and walking suddenly
into sunlight.

small roses

i look into the past and it hurts less
the sharp ache is gone, replaced by sadness
that, while pervasive, is not overwhelming
simply there in the back of my mind
when i choose to acknowledge its presence.

i have become far more than i ever dreamed.
and i did it
while walking on shards of glass
holding my broken heart
bleeding in my hands, and for this
i have a sense of pride in every small scar.

the housing of blackmail and love

you can travel time in photographs
(they are an unwilling machine, but no matter)
you can stare at yourself
and imagine
back into the world of the snapshot
and close your eyes (there you are).

desire

i wanted to know her
like nothing i could have ever imagined.
i prayed to a god i didn't believe in,
as our knees touched under the covers,
please let her feel the same
as i do.
her lithe body curled against mine
in sleep - i could hardly breathe.
i became even more of an insomniac,
just to watch her dream.
there is nothing else that compared
to the feeling of her small self
pressed against me, in a self-
conscious way,
our hands clasped secretly
in the darkness.

swept back into the familiar ways

slicked back
my hair's long enough again
bend the strands into the same old knots
to see my former self in the mirror
missing, albeit, the grace
charm
proper attire
and stance
of a dancer

i have changed, but it is transparent
and when you lie me over who i used to be
the patterns still fit
(they just need some adjusting)
i have become everything i wanted
desperately, and at the same time
was afraid to be.

four am

set spinning
by the way
you waken me to say goodbye
like a dismissed child
set spinning
by the drugs i've consumed
to try & get rid
of the memory of you
(& your hands on my body & face)
set spinning
by straining to stay away from you
straining
against the power of the pills i swallowed
to paint a better picture
stretched on a gravestone laughing at the sky
bleeding onto the stone
set spinning
by the lack of clouds
& goddamned beautiful music
& the touch of cold metal on my skin
the warmth of blood
& shitty alcohol
set spinning
by the lack of you
in my days & my nights
like a blanket removed
so i shiver all night long.

they say leave you

behind
like a bad dream
but oh
& it's so hard to let go
of dreams, once they have
taken root & festered
& tangled into my heart
like to still its beating.

i didn't want you to be like the others

your fucking face won't
get out of my head

nine times this morning
i thought of you and
turned that pain loose
on myself like a spear,
squeezed it tightly like
a knot,
where no
amount of untying
will ever loosen
my clenched teeth
the fake smile i give
to strangers when i pass

i make fun of people as stupid as i have been
the kind like dogs, who cringe away at
a blow
and later run back for the attention.

i remember talking, laughing
conversation
the kind about the type of men i like
i said i always ended up liking/loving
the ones who treat me like shit

you said you'd beat me, to keep the spark alive
and i laughed, because it was funny
but i'm not laughing now

masquerade*

welcome to the masochist’s ball
rent your whips and your chains
by the hour –
search down an empty-eyed partner
in a mask, blank –
faceless, smooth
and let her pour her rage into you.

when your stranger makes you scream

your stains will mark the pavement
like a murder scene.

chalk lines
are only found

in fiction.





*in my B.A. senior thesis, also

don't bother

i need stitches.
some things (never) change.

the reasons i couldn't leave you, at the time

kept waiting by the small and silly things -
the way her hair falls
from behind her ears, no
matter how firmly placed -
the way she breathes when she sleeps
curled into my neck
while the world outside
waits for me, i stay here
captivated by her movements
the small rustlings
of the covers as she moves
and yes, i have made a study
of this,
i have noticed
each thing
the motions even she
does not know intimately.

like (almost) a prayer

your voice like a hand over the phone line
to caress my cheek (like an unseen breeze)
love you, love you [not] - oh,
like it's ever a conscious decision - like
i could ever pin you down, and classify
this feeling (pit of stomach, a flutter) feeling
like time stands still - like love and hate -
the same intensity of emotion, simply
different ends of the spectrum.
like time stands still like stuck in mud
whenever our lips touch
whenever we mouth away our sorrows
and our yearnings.
let's say it's love - well
maybe but it's
hard to tell
when your hands touch mine, and
i turn away
(wanting oh so badly, but too afraid to try)
but i'm here, hold me -
make me believe.

i see through you

you can tell everything by the
clothing one wears
by the manner in which one
presents his case, his self,
the abrupt manner of his chopped syllables

public speaking

it's not a subject i tread lightly upon
the repercussions are still raised and indented
on my arm, however slight or harmless (looking)
but who am i to insist you not
broach these topics of conversation?
they broach themselves, insistent and loud
they want to be heard, yes
and sometimes i am helpless
to stop the tears, or streams of words

how to die (when already dead)

take a razorblade
attempt to carve your life story
into your arms
drink too much, and smoke
like a chimney

let your body think
you've given up on narcissism,
then
lash back out
and fail to breathe

turn colors
make the audience
gasp in alarm
wash, rinse repeat - (through the months)
make a habit of sleeping

in the street, praying for trucks



p.s.
this is modeled after a poem by Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh, called "How to kill a living thing"