dear book...

i hate to admit it....

but i'm scared of you. the amount of effort i'll make
to satisfy these blank, ravenous pages.

i'm feeling transitory lately. hope
the feeling is fleeting - writing in
eraseable thoughts, i think, is
a sign of my changeable mind.
it's not that i want to disappear,
but i'd like to make sure
i'm capable of change.
never static, always bending
(just a little)
[don't stop
evolving into yourself]

in[valid]

today i feel impermanent
and mostly see-through
camped on the couch
or the bed i do not own,
clutching my mug of tea
and a blanket
i do own, i keep thinking how
i pay my rent just like you, but
this still feels like your place i'm
intruding upon

and i scald my tongue on my tea
and think about eating food i don't
have the appetite for,
curled under my covers
like an [in]valid
in[valid], not
sick enough to count,
not well enough to
shrug off
your oblivious insensitivity

it's days like this
where i want my body to be
less substantial
to match the way i feel -
a little translucent,
turned sideways so you can't quite catch
a good glimpse
of me

the same old refrain en français

je t'aime
halfway between
lie and truth, between
what i say i want, and the
reality
of the situation.
un peu...
beaucoup...
passionnement...
pas du tout.

pas du tout.

it's true

distance will
distill
you, from your parents, old
friends, things you were
supposed to do,
thousands of miles can
change you.

do not presume what you find
is the only " you" you can be. or that this new product
is "you" at all, don't think
you're not trying on new faces, this far
from home. it's so much easier
to hide behind your masks
when no one can distinguish them
from reality.

book now firmly planted
in my bag again,
i pull it out now
when my fingers get itchy.
i am slowly walking back
to myself.
my brain has
turned back on,
retrieved my desires.
at night, i wonder about
unused words, lines
that need to insert themselves,
details not yet plugged into a page.
sometimes, i am afraid
of the sudden outpour,
the reveal of the underbelly,
naked pink secrets.
remember
when i displayed my secrets
in blood on my arms,
wrote them in capital letters
on the page?
these days it's safer
to play my cards close to the vest.
they are plastered to my chest.
i do not assume,
anymore, that those
who read my words
will let them remain
in hiding.
small matters.

those words i let escape
into light,
i pin,
wriggling,
against the black backdrop
of internet
anonymity.

burn out

i've decided not
to go to sleep until
my jaw stops clenching,
an exercise to see
if i can wake up
without aching.
you look so calm when you sleep,
legs slanted toward me,
reclining into your pillow
as if in the throne
of sleep.
looks like a lovely place;
wish i was there.

it's hard to hold
someone already sleeping,
set into
their unconscious patterns,
limbs leadened
into slumber.
i try, but always,
in spite of the warmth of you,
feel
like an impostor.
maybe tomorrow night, we will fall
together, all tangledup
in one another,
and i won't feel like a voyeur,
when i'm lying
next to you.

weakness

i imagine it to be pink-red raw
like rug burn on your knees
where all the skin is scraped away
and the flesh left swells, as if
compensating.
that kind of tender. that
way of laying a large, gaping
hole like that down,
one i've kept a festering lid on
tight for these eight years now
and now i'm open, waiting by
my wound
for you to come by, cover it,
help me heal
i don't know
what i expect from you.
i only know what i fear.
i fear
opening this, at all.
but these days,
i fear more
the blinding wall i built
around myself so tightly
that nothing
could get through.
not anger, guilt, or the agony
she put me through
nothing
could have broken that shield
down.
not even you.

when you leave

you won't be knifing me
with it
too self-possessed, and
kind. you'd be the type
to cry more
than i would. i save
the bawling, for later
when i think no one
can hear.
no, you have no knife in this scene,
the owner of the blade is me -
turning it over and over
in my fingers, walking along
its razor-sharp edge
with my mind, trying
to spot its flaw.
sometimes
i watch you while
i fumble around my
sharp metal,
collecting
"paper"cuts.
i'm planning
and preparing. i'm not a fool,
this one's easy
to spot coming.
you'll fade away,
and, alone,
i'll peruse my body
for the best place
to stick that blade.

havoc

she sits straight up in bed,
never got to lying, back stiff
and aching.
her stomach twists,
and wrenches
quarter-sized pieces of flesh
from her insides.

soon she will need to walk downstairs, staggering
to the bathroom to crouch
over the toilet and watch
the slow hemorrhage of chunks,
staining the water ghastly pink,
a waterfall
of red stains
on the white porcelain sides.

it wasn't a baby now,
hadn't ever been, wasn't even
a concept
until the bleeding came,
in the middle
of the cycle, all wrong.

her lover watches her body eject
the foreign material,
something that never was, and
tries to argue:
must be side-effects from her new birth control,
anything
but the reality of the word miscarriage,
which must, by nature,
imply first
the fact of pregnancy.
the fact that his gentle, sinuous body
has wreaked violence upon hers.
he sleeps beside her rigid form, right hand
curled around her ankle.
the ache shifts, lowers.
she breathes slowly, and,
untangling his hand, steps one foot
toward the staircase.

contemplating it

i think i'll never
unravel your complexities
the way i think i've got you
all pinned down
and you take that moment
to shock me.
your text: "be ready
for me to come home."
you never waited for the bed.
who is this animal
underneath your usual
musical composition?
why don't you let it out
a little more?
i think of your brain
like a computer - a mass of wires
i'm scared to touch
for fear of malfunction
and there's so much complication
a million ways for things
to go wrong,
none of which
i have the skill
to fix,
the technical know-how
to troubleshoot.
i'm standing outside your locked door
knocking, not afraid
of hurting you,
anymore.
i am afraid of really, truly
feeling all this
when it is over,
and i don't
want to be there
when i fall.

the hanon book

i remember the repetition
the endless up-and-down
the plunked-out plodding scales
i hated them so
but what
i would not give now
to have that certainty
of fingers on keys
hands to rhythm to
keep the music coming.
the things we do not understand
always come back
to haunt us
with my ghost
of a skill,
and uncertain, shaking fingers
pressed to keys no longer familiar.

forever and crap

you crashed into me, gently
but with force enough to twist
my path,
head me in a different direction.
it wasn't intentional;
you wouldn't dream of interrupting,
just insinuating, gently
interjecting
a hand with an open palm,
an open interpretation,
an A or B or C choose one,
choose all of the above,
choose anything
but not choosing.
now i'm staring back the way i came,
the path paved with
my shame and rage, my tears
and impotent innocence all
combining into fear and disgust,
all the reasons i'd tried a new path
but here i am, deja vu
give it a second whirl.
until the fear is gone, disgust
optional.
open your eyes
really see it, stare
until you know what you were
supposed to be looking for.
then, try
your parallel road. give anything
a try,
but be prepared with the knowledge,
first
of who you are.
of where you are going.

meld

the ferocity with which i grasp
at you terrifies me,
as it must you.
i love you
i'm not IN love with you.
how much of this statement
is true, how much
a lie?
which one of us was lying,
who
is lying now?
sometimes as we sleep
i try to fit into you
as though i have always
been a part
of your body

moving in together

teeth tasting, tonguing
the sharp, bitter
pop, iridescent
effervescence winking
away as i chase,
open-mouthed, palate agape wide
to eat the shining
see-through soap.
our hands
are slimy with mr. bubble,
waving, reaching to hold
brief round moments
and pass them between
our fingers.
they cluster, compound,
disappear when we move
too quickly.
the late sun shines
through us.
"do you think we're still
children?" you say.
"yeah," i say
"i think we always will be."

transparent

like a vampire i rise
to meet myself in the glass
and stare
at the hollow void
i have become

thrift

like your old
clothing, lying hidden
in drawers, cardboard
boxes mouldering
in the attic,
like the
homemade things
you would have thrown out

i also
am discarded.

do this in remembrance of she *

sometimes
i scry my wrist like
an unwilling
oracle,
trace thin
white lines
from origin

to completion.
scarred flesh pillowy-soft at
surface, rope-like, raised
and rigid
underneath.
my fingertips
read lines like Braille,

this
from when i called hysterical,
cried, begged you
stay
on the line, i’m
scared, so scared,
so
can’t get the bleeding
to
stop.

this
from the year my watch strapped
permanently
over blown veins,
collapsed, bearing no blood,
vessels
mangled
through a fine science.


lines
i ignore out
of habit, almost
forget, until they
glint silver in
sunshine, draw attention
to my arms.

sometimes
i catch myself
in class, staring
at my skin,
touching, pulling
pleading memory
out of flesh,
begging
twisted tissue

for an
explanation.




*B.A. senior thesis poem

i actually wrote this in class, less than 10 days before my final thesis was due. i put it at the end; it seemed to sum up everything quite nicely.

butter *

smeared languidly
by
the middle finger on my
left hand, the
blood i wiped on my pants blotched
the thin, greying material, between
the spatters of paint.

you were oozing
between your shoulder blades, left of your spine
on the scapular
tattooed wing that webs
across you

i licked my finger
let the salt and tang dissolve into my tongue,
the way i want
to melt
into our lives, without interrupting
you, or me

effortlessly

as simple as freeing
you of droplets
that would have
stained your shirt.

i don’t mind shit
on my jeans.





*senior thesis poem

the view from kelly’s window *

nonfiction classmate
beating off under blanket:
oh god! close the blinds!





special thanks to two of my wonderful friends for inspiration for this haiku.



* also in my senior thesis. this particular poem is a true story - my friend lived next to one of my nonfiction classmates, and one day saw him doing the above activity in his living room - of course he denied it (said he was petting a cat - HA!), so naturally, i shamed him publicly.
also, he deserved it, for being the prick that my entire senior seminar class loathed, universally.

B. achelor of A. rts *

call it stuttering pen syndrome,
a thing learned
in classrooms.
i find
the transformation suspect:
i formerly wrote prolifically
in stark contrast to the
two or three
poems composed
in this last year.

my
exuberance

has been appraised,
honed,
[mnemonically
harmonically
composed]
something lacking
in the evisceration
what not to do
all the ways you’re
Doing
It
Wrong.

uncertain
and afraid
of tiny
missteps,
my work has transmuted from chaotic
foot
prints
of a mind
on a page

to the ironic sneer
of a one-finger salute
to an education in writing:

a blank page full of lines,
through which thick black marks
obliterate any coherent meaning.



* yes, of course i put this in my B.A. senior thesis. had to. how else are you to thumb your nose at teachers and peers?