December #19

the only color in his face is sick,
the purple lips of illness in a face
of paperwhites. this gaping slash he licks
in ev'ry moment he and Pa Time race.
There's not long yet, for he can barely speak,
and tremors move his withered old man hands.
who knows when death arrives, when illness peaks
and eyes stay shut, when Life itself remands.
grandfather, he lies there, a man no more,
a bag of bones that clicks and rattles sharp,
and while we wait we listen for his snore,
the only outward sign of a beating heart.
we wait like birds, as sick as he, just not
as noble - we're impatient to watch him rot.

December #18

my last poem for you, my love, my last
sad mourning hymn. for you have gone, from heart,
from hands, from bed. It was my fault, your start
away, the move towards our end, our past.
The present just was not enough; I needed
room to breathe. You gave me that and more
besides; this thing, both good and bad, is sore
and sad in my heart still, my eyes yet wet.
but you and i, we've long finished, and top
to that, it needed to be done. we loved
but lost, were meant to stand but instead moved.
our hearts could not withstand the sudden drop.
i'll miss you, if i may, but let you walk
by me, and take your path - don't go astray.

December #17

These lies of beauty spread under the skin
and force pale noses up into the air.
Oh spare me from your vanity, your sin.

Too many girls will forgo food for thin
and powdered faces always will look fair.
These lies of beauty spread under the skin.

The compliments will fly on idle whims
as people try, pretend that they do care.
Oh spare me from your vanity, your sin.

It's smiles and hearts and beds men try to win
as countless smiles and silly winks they share.
Their lies of beauty hide under the skin.

Women are taught to think they ought to twin,
imagined beauty, but they should be ware
and spare me from their vanity, their sin.

for those that judge by looks will cast lots in
with cover judgers - they will never win,
for lies of beauty spread under the skin
and spare none from gross vanities and sins.

December #16

I Salome dance to the beat of worlds,
the sound of drums that pulse to heart's rhythm,
and moved to dance I rise and spin and whirl
until the world must move and sing my hymn.
I Salome swirl and dip and bend,
seduce with flashing legs and eyes too dark
to stay away. Good reason gives no friends
to me, only the dying dare to gawk.
Despite my pretty face I only hide -
I have no skills to meet a man, much less
to keep him. Other girls have learned to try
and lure them in, but this I can't confess.
No matter what you think I must confess
I look but do not act the lioness.

December #15

I listen to poetry of the beat
writers and try to understand why I
am uninspired by words, their words. I try
but nothing arises, I feel no heat.
I listen; song of English kings resound
in rolling rocks of words but I can feel
no sway, no dance, nothing to help me heal
my tired, unrhymed mind. I want to drown
in music, words that fly and soar in clouds
no beats that drag me down onto the earth
and tie me here. I know what words are worth
and what they do; I know what moves a crowd.
But what I need I could not find it words;
I spend my time with music, bands and birds.

December #14

Oh Emily, Emily, sing a song,
of words and slanted light tha pushes you,
down to the floor. Your words, so close, so few,
so marked and scorned, have hidden far too long.
Oh Emily, tell me your secrets. I strive
for you, your white, your sharpened eyes, your frown.
So let me be unloved, unknown, my sound
ignored from day to day - my meager life.
But can one every understand? True Art
in poetry is skill, not chance. I'll write,
and hide, and never share my feeble light
with you. I'll hide these words inside my heart.
Oh what's the use? To push and pull at words
that never fit bun only clash like swords.

December #13

You give up awful easy for a man
who seemed sincere. So why is that - am I
too stupid, foolish, just not worth a damn?
Or are you bored, or mad, or did you lie?
Because perhaps you did. You like to say
you're perfect, like you can do no wrong.
And I'm the one that falls and fails, that pays
too much for my errors. I'll join the throng
of spurned women, pretend to cry - but sir
to call it done so soon? To just give up?
It's not your style, shouldn't be. Give more
before you let me go. Wring out every drop.
It's not my choice, I'll let you let me go
but I would rather push, just so you know.

December #11

I love the roaring magic of the trains
the song of death they sing from track to track -
the humming in my heart that echoes back -
I love the murderous sound of rattling chains.
For trains are death in metal and on wheels,
enchanting, pulling, still just mere machines
that hurtle on into the lovely scenes
of inky night - little towns, empty fields.
But don't they make you think of shaking bones?
Black skeletons that snake cross every land,
and chain us down like grains of golden sand
that slip from out our grasp. The lights that shone
on you between the lines of steel and black
could not keep you here, they only took you back.

December #10

For some reason when you hung up I cried
great heaving sobs, as if I were a child
and my beloved dog or aunt had died.
You left me with emotions mixed and wild.
But why was I so saddened and so moved?
I tried so hard, I wanted to believe
the worst. I tried - you left me so confused
I had nothing to think or to perceive.
All day I had survived the endless wait
and thought I'd be okay. Not great, but I
could live. It hit me, though, a bit too late,
that this would count failure. I'd rather die.
I wouldn't take it well, I said. It'd just
be proof that I should wrap my heart with rust.

December #12

My life is made of coffee cups and spoons.
I wander through a daze of days and mist.
I learn people by TV and show tunes.

Futures are told through tea leaves and through runes.
You read the lines I cut into my wrist.
My life is made of coffee cups and spoons.

My mind is made of shifting, windblown dunes.
I cannot know what I have never missed.
I learn people by TV and show tunes.

I'd rather spend my time with raving lunes
than memories of men or boys I've kissed.
My life is made of coffee cups and spoons.

My father drowned his sorrows in saloons.
He taught me lessons with his angry fists.
I learn people by TV and show tunes.

So all my learning's stuck in old cartoons,
I watched them as my father showed me this -
My life is made of coffee cups and spoons.
I learn people by TV and show tunes.

December #9

The red haired girl who sits beside you laughs
behind your back. She thinks you're slow, you know,
she thinks your jokes are bad. In Math you graphed
your ex and why she left you so alone
But never did you manage to sum up
just who you were. High school is cruel, I know,
I long to give you peace. But I must hope
you'll find your way without my guidance through.
My boy, you'll fall, but don't we all? It comes
the same in the end. So I'll kiss your cheek,
you'll flinch and ask, perhaps, for a set of drums.
They're cool, you'll say. I'll sigh and pay this week.
You'll grow, you know, this life will fade away.
The burns will heal, the heat will cool some day.

December #8

I let my days fly by in idle sleep.
No fires burn within my mind or heart,
I seem to think my soul of ash will keep.

I dream of wonders, rising from the deep,
of novels, poems, perfect from the start,
yet I let my days fly by in idle sleep.

My mind is full of thoughts and dreams that leap
from point to point, but will they stay so sharp?
I seem to think my soul of ash will keep.

One day my mind will only slowly creep,
And I should grab my chance and do my part -
But I let my days fly by in idle sleep.

My pen can only throw my thoughts in heaps,
and so I fear the critic's cruel remark.
I seem to think my soul of ash will keep.

But ash can crumble, fall without a peep,
no shaking steadiness like that of Art.
I let my days fly by in idle sleep.
I seem to think my soul of ash will keep.

December #7

Please can we walk and talk a while? I need
guidance, a solemn conversation. Give
me hope, some light to follow, let me feed
my tender soul with good reasons to live.
It's not that I have no reason, it's just
that all of mine are bad. I base my life
on little things, a wheelbarrow's rainy rust,
the chickens, plums, all balanced on a knife.
The edge is thin and razor sharp. I fear
to see them fall - my colors sink in mud
and filth, my chickens white, the barrow near
and red, these images befuddled.
Please can we walk and talk awhile? I long
for meaning deeper than within some song.

December #6

The falling snow fits on the distant trees,
like hands that mesh together to form one.
I hate the snow, I hate the cold, the leaves
that drip, with melting mess, so all alone.
Don't talk of hands or love or lips so sweet,
My heart which hates the snow is lusting for
the cold. It is too soon for me to meet
someone who pushes me, to take shelter.
Or so I say, peculiar thoughts in mind,
because it's less simple than I pretend.
I fear to look because of what I'll find -
a handsome man I only call my friend.
I close my eyes and lull my heart to sleep,
This feel is not love, will surely keep.

December #5

Maybe I froze my heart,
locked it up, threw it away
into the snows that cover my fields.

Maybe I burned my heart,
let it love too hard,
until it extinguished itself.

Maybe I buried my heart,
in a well of loam and soil,
and covered it, forgot to mark the spot.

Maybe I blew away my heart,
whipped it with cruel winds
until it gave up, tired
of trying to care.

December #4

perhaps I should have saved my poems,
eked them out one by one,
day after day,
instead of exploding them in noisy type
expanding across the pages.
perhaps i should have stored them like gold,
safe deep inside,
letting them out one by one.
slow and steady wins the race,
but who can run that way?

December #3

They called me Annandale, and I -
I took the road less traveled by.
There was water, water, everywhere,
and not a drop to drink,
but so much depended upon
the red wheelbarrow, glazed
with rain.
I hung my last duchess on the wall,
and went to the western gate, Luke Havergall.
There I looked at all the lonely people,
wondering where they came from,
when Time with his bending sickle did come
and then I raged, raged against the dying of the light.

December #2

She became a smoker
when he left her.
Her solution to overheating
is taking more clothes off,
not turning down the thermostat.
She had two children,
Will and Robin,
before they took them away.
They left her alone,
small house,
too warm,
in a sea of cigarette butts
and discarded clothing.

December #1

In a desperate rush to ensure
that not all my new year's resolutions go to waste,
I realize I must write
four poems of some meaning a day.
Well, time's a-wasting.

November #18

Each time I try to hide from one person,
I bump into someone else. In pairs they
walk, catching me off guard by light of day
or moony night. They laugh to watch me run.

Oh lovers, nameless friends, it's all the same.
For when I seek my meager solitude,
then in they swoop and I must not be rude.
Hello, hello! My gritted teeth complain.

Society is fine, but this poet
can only think when she's alone, besides
how many friends disguise contempt with lies?
Better to trust as far as can throw it.

Alone, aloof, suddenly I recant.
Who knew poems made one rather distant?

November #17

i once knew a man named chuck,
with him you don't want to fuck.
he'll cut off your toes,
and next your nose,
if you're alive when he's done you're in luck


Hey. It's a limerick. No complaints, please :)

November #16

How does one lose a poem?
Write it down, forget the words,
the sly turn of phrase.
Burn the paper.
Take the ashes,
scatter them at clifftops,
over a hungry ocean,
and watch it disappear.
It's still there,
irrevocable.
Those words, on those paper -
a real poem doesn't need presence.
A real poem sings, stays,
is permanent, undestructible.
A real poem burns beneath the collarbone,
aches to be let out,
to sing loud. Poems cannot be lost,
they can merely fly away.

November #15

I never knew you had tattoos,
hiding beneath your shirt,
black bands of meaning,
earned through needling pain.
I never knew you had tattoos,
and will never know why;
this is knowledge gained
not through you but
idle conversations with friends,
flipping through scrapbooks and memories.

November #14

why do i do things like that?
stupid deletable things,
but ones that still exist?
what's the purpose of reaching out,
when it's only to make a fool of yourself?
get it together, pig.
that'll do.

November #13

november is all about rain.
it never snows, it never shines,
but it rains constantly.
there are songs written about it,
and everyone knows the truth.
no matter what friendly facade november tries to give,
it will only rain,
in dark gray dismal days
with mounds of clouds piled like threatening ships
launching on their mission
to drown the world.

November #12

We raise our glasses,
red wine full,
to the ceiling light,
chinking them together as we praise
the glory of being ourselves.
To friends, to family, to thanks,
to world peace, panda bears, love.
To overeating, overdrinking,
family stress and football games,
here's to Americana.
Here's to us, we say,
full of ourselves as well as turkey,
and we down our glasses in fell single sips.

November #11

what's the purpose of spewing empty words,
words with no meaning or use,
onto private pages?
why pour your soul into locked books,
taking down notes on every day,
recording every soul's breath?
why bother to release?
why bother to share,
to share things no one wants?
the cruelty of writing,
the mistress that forces the pen to move,
and yet promises no skill,
no readers, no fame, no future.
the pain. the rejection.
the pointlessness.

November #10

2 x 4
tightrope.
narrow walk of wood
what would you risk?
what would lie
on the other end of the line?
at cocktail parties
it's easy to say
- money - enough money
- children - my children
- power - total power -
but imagine that ledge,
the teetling, toppling thin board,
the wild wind working
to pull you down.
what would you risk?
would you surprise yourself
with unknown bravado, or
reassure yourself with familiar cowardice?p

November #9

Suddenly I see
through the dark,
a silent sea,
on the other side of the world.
Miniature disasters
heal over -
a false alarm.

November #8

Why georgia,
your body is a wonderland.
I don't trust myself,
something's missing
and Im not myself.
My stupid mouth.
Come back to bed -
stop this train.
There's no such thing
as city love.

November #7

Thanks a lot,
good looking.
Help me get rhythm,
by the big river city of New Orleans.
I love you because I'm so doggone lonesome -
you win again.

November #6

I will possess your heart,
we will laugh indoors,
and I will follow you into the dark.
This is the new year,
the one in which
you will be loved,
and all your frowns will be fake.
This is what Sarah said.

November #5

Someday you will be loved
but you can do better than me.
I was your kaleidoscope,
blacking out the friction.
I was the line of best fit,
the sound of settling.
For what reason
will I follow you into the dark?
They're all different names
for the same thing
and I don't know
why you'd want to live here.

Novemebr #4

a scientist studies
the employment pages
blacking out the friction
from a movie script ending.
The ice is getting thinner
and there's no joy in Mudville.

General

I submitted 4 poems to the University of Delaware literary magazine, Caesura, this past week.

Additionally, while attempting to participate in National Novel Writing Month, it's going even worse than my attempt at 365 poems. Cheerio.

November #3

a dirty wind is blowing,
foul and viciously cold,
awakening dull senses
only to make them run away,
hide, escape from the biting bitterness.
november.
month of long cold rains,
angry gusty nights,
too dark twilights,
when we lose all our light.
hide inside, shelter yourself
from the sad and bedraggled
scenes outside. survive.

November #2

transition
into a new you, a new me.
regress into what was once comfortable.
getting used to spare time,
free time,
time that will gradually fill
with the things you once did.

November #1

you've gotta spend some time, love
spend some time to work it all out
you've gotta spend some time, love
spend some time, on you and me
so let me spend some time, love
let me show you what i'm doing
let me take some time, love,
and do what it is I need to do.
You've got to give your time, up
you've got to share it, with you and me.
You've got to live in the moment, love
gotta do it peacefully.

October #15

overwhelming -
but what would i do
if i wasn't?
i could minimize,
cut back,
but the idea makes
me pull away. What would I do?
With all that blank, frightening time.
How could I fill me up, ensure that I wasn't wasting
a single precious minute if I didn't have something
to fill that darling minute with? I could waste time
on sleep and exercise and meaningless things.
But I don't want those.
I want brilliance.
I long for stardom,
for supernova,
for permanent memory in the minds of men.
I yearn for meaning,
not peace.
I will be blown by mad winds, slogged through slag heaps,
tear myself up and down, burn out in a quick hot flame,
but I will not waste
the ruby emerald diamond seconds,
each too small and short,
that I have got.

October #14

Each time I try to avoid some one.
I run into someone I'd rather miss.
Each time I try to make excuses, run,
I accuse myself of social cowardice.

October #13

lucky number, isn't it?
or evil?
hotels skip it,
for whatever reason.
so do some artists,
leaving blank tracks
in their albums.
superstition?
the hotels and singers
are quite successful.
from what i hear.

October #12

falling behind

what can you do
when you stumble off the rolling train?
it's gone before you know it,
and no silver can run like the wind,
to catch you up.
from that moment on
it's the mad dash,
the full out race,
falling faster and faster behind.
a mountain piles up,
days fly by,
and all of a sudden where has the time gone?
halfway through the semester,
ten days til hallow's eve,
six days til your party,
two days and homework's due,
tests to take,
friends to keep small contact with
before they, too, drift away.
oh life's a madcap race,
and there will never be enough hours in the day.

October #11

I strip off my clothes and dive in to the subnormal pond,
shivering and freezing in the water, my mother, my maker,
and swim. There are fantastic fish here,
huge and gold and whiskered,
and though the water is murky the lower I sink,
they shine all the while, a beckon or beacon of other things.
There is no bottom here, only a darker, muddy, dirtiness,
near which blind white mountain cave fish murmur,
sickeningly grotesque, pallid shapes that come too close
but do no harm.
Is there harm here? There must be, but not in the depths.
The warning comes treading water in the middle,
unsupported - insupportable, unpardonable, ready for the snatching.
Come take me! Here I am, weak and lonely, too far to
speed to shore and pull myself up. Too far.
Too far.

October #10

there is no premeditation here.
i do not examine,
pause the wordflow.
no cork stops my mouth.
my wine pours out intoxicating
drowning
and it's up to you to drink or pass by.
can you live with this,
my sick gold, my horrible wealth?
there is no pausing here.
i pull back my sleeves and thrust my heavy hands
into the bloody, open mess of a body.
i refuse scalpels,
use sharpened rocks.
instead of stitches i leave patients to slowly sew themselves up,
with the thread they make themselves.
i am not silent, i am not kind,
i am not cruel - only truthful.

October #9

Exposure

The northern exposure
freezing cold,
rocky mountains,
no protection from the wind.
That's where the word "exposure"
comes from, anyway.
Nothing to hide you from the chilling cold,
the bone-rattling gales
that shake you from the peaks.
Oh, for the serene postcard stillness
of plausible mountains.
You and I,
we know.
They're not quite so
photogenic up close.

October #8

throw me back
wards in time and
make me remem
ber.
there are people i have forgot
ten long ago,
peop
le i don't ever think
about.
but a song
a mention
a look
and there they are
waving hello.
how disconcerting it is,
seeing these ghosts all about
walking in daylight.

October #7

white legs flash
down the side of dark roads
"it gets so much darker out
when i'm at home
or maybe just earlier"
weapons held in both hands,
heavy blocks of wires,
communication,
entertainment -
the longer one runs,
the heavier and hotter they get,
these tokens,
pressed upon the runner
by roommate or boyfriend or mother.
white legs flash,
all alone,
dark roads.

October #6

Since when have I had this current inside of me?
Before there has been the excruciating birth,
the babies hastily forged, forcibly pulled,
screaming and crying,
from out my bloody brain,
into type and life and legibility.
But now with this season and this time,
an inspiration has moved me to fertility,
wondrous, productive, endless fertility,
the kind where I have so many idea that
I actually can afford to forget some -
and do,
though I wish it not and regret it much.
But there are too many infants in me crying for atteniotn,
and one or two must always fall behind.

October #5

I love this month.
I love what it means.
I love the feeling tha
as soon as this month starts,
the air will be crisper,
the apples riper,
the pumpkins oranger,
life a little more surreal.
I love this month
because fairies and goblins,
mushroom rings and red capped men
are more alive for me now
than at any other time.
I love this month because of possibility,
about wild dreams,
about nightmares.
Because I want to be one with the night sometimes,
and this month lets me.

October #4

let's talk about tired,
about waiting up
on foolish excuses
because of silly fears.

let's talk about tired,
about wasting the night away
on one boy, one hope,
because of long loves.

let's talk about tired,
about burning time
plunking at the keyboard,
because of school or research.

let's talk about tired,
the kind of tired that stays with you
even after you've slept every night,
ten hours,
twelve hours,
fourteen hours,
and you still
can't
get
out

of your bed.

October #3

Give me autumn,
she cried,
give me autumn or I will die.

Who did she think she was,
anyway, Patrick Henry?

It's true the fall casts a special air,
makes sunsets more poignant,
underlines our mortality,
livens up our life
as the cycle of celebrations begin.
In February we will fall again,
laughing,
tumbling to our seats trying to catch our breath,
as the swirl of holidays finally passes us by.

What good times! we will exclaim.
Never will we have known
company friendlier,
champagne better,
memories sweeter,
mistletoe and egg nog more intoxicating.
Then we wil sigh and pluck our clothes
and ponder how long
til next fall.

October #2

the leaves fall down
covering dawn with russet colors,
the leaves fall down,
protecting the earth like patient mothers.
the leaves fall down,
and mere humans watch and whisper,
but the leaves fall down
with no thought of mortal trifles.

October #1

Do not I owe some tithe of poems
to be sung and celebrated this day?
Am I not responsible for some joy
some expression, some rhymed lay?

The leaves watch me as they wither,
and the acorns, pumpkins, too
whispering me secrets of coming winter
And must I not follow through?

I have a debt, but not a burden,
a requirement of words,
a message of thanks for Nature's ken,
that should ring forth like fighting swords.

September #29

They ask me about it,
my pregnancy,
like my life began
the day that strip showed me two lines.
"Oh -
is this inspired by ...?"
"How did you feel when...?"
"Is this really about...?"
Usually, no.
But to satisfy the curiosity,
here goes.

I was nineteen. In a relationship.
Skipped a period.
Got nervous. Peed on a stick. Then
Planned Parenthood, university health center,
real doctor. Each time I brought another friend
with me just to be safer.
I had to tell my mom.
She cried. So did I.
My dad's not around anymore.
I go to the doctor.
My friends keep me sane. My boyfriend
likes


This was written in September, but never finished or posted. Here goes.

September #28

I have this goal for this month
more poems than I've written for any other month
Guess what?
Here it is,
my page for September.
Like Langston.
I'm pretty sure I'm spelling that wrong.
Is that heretical?
Must I be perfect?
Can't I just know,
and trust that my spelling is usually right?
Or must I always prove myself?
Sometimes it seems that way,
as if simply because I choose the less popular view,
I devalue myself and my abilities,
when really I am better suited for other posts.
But enough human vanity.
Let me sleep, and dream.

September #27

I was going to write about
how I can't believe what day it is
when I realized
it was already a day later.

September #26

on failing goals

I am suppose to run
every single stinking day
for seven days in a row.
Today is day 4
and I have not run
and I think I can't.
It is a simple matter
of forcing myself out of bed
combined with getting out of the house
and not getting yelled at
by my loving parents.
I want to run
but I can't deal with their caring,
and so I may become angry at my own self
for failing my goal.
Which is worse?

September #25

okay
i'll admit, it's true
i've been snappy lately
or rather,
easily irritable.
i think i've held back rather well
and am only really lashing out
on the people that are annoying anyway.
of course
i did just spell lashing
"leasing"
so let's not let me drive tonight
shall we?

September #24

long distance runner
where are you going?
into the cold night,
swallowed in the dark,
white legs flashing
away from the world.
long distance runner
from what are you hiding?
into deep woods,
swallowed down paths,
face barred over
by the trees.
long distance runner,
what secrets do you know?
so strong, so silent,
like a marble statue,
thoughts hiding
behind your unmlinking eyes.
long distance runner,
who are you?
who are you?

September #23

i am lazy
a lump



need to get up
off my stomach
and actually do things




am i sick? or just bored?

September #22

sometimes
i forget what i've done
or
how much i have left to do.
i hate it
i get behind
lost
lose track of things
and fall so far behind.
i feel like i need
to always always do things
to always always do so well
and that i can never stop
to breathe.

September #21

Isn't it funny how we think
that time gives us wisdom and objectivity?
Somehow suddenly, since something
happened some time ago - six months,
a year, two weeks, a few hours -
we can see it all clearer,
or so we like to think.
Maybe we saw it clear then,
but ignored it
because it was uncomfortable.
It isn't the sight that improves,
it's the ability to say
that we are unlikable, too.

September #20

I remember her,
my freshman year roommate.
She was peppy,
friendly,
discontented with me -
I was never there,
worked too much,
had my boyfriend over
too frequently.
She liked to drink,
sometimes brought stange boys home,
and we readily,
quickly divided our rooms
one for each.
But she was no worse than I -
sometimes, I even think, better.
The point is we tried,
muddled along,
made what we could of it.

September #19

we sit in chambers,
as messy as we make them,
and do what little work
we can manage around each other.
we are strangers, friends,
lovers and would-be lovers,
students
crammed into sardine tin dorms,
weathering the year out.

September #18

the days begin to drag together
as I wait for sad-autumn-fall
leaves colored limply dripping
the cold prewinterrain has bludgeoned them
into patheric mobs.
oh fall!
how i love thee
with your biting cold,
bitter, pathertic emotions
and tenderly melancholy
trees, stripped of protection.
Oh fall -
I love thee.

September #17

what day is it?
i can't remember.
other people's verses
are echoing strangely in my mind,
pushing pounding out thoughts,
my thoughts.
i cannot think
i cannot write
i am consumed
by this other.
who knew poetry
could devour?

September #16

yet still
the frame eludes,
iambs refusing to form
despite their basis
in common tongues.
i can form no meter,
force no thoughts
to follow form
as tidily as they should,
as i would be glad to push them in.
instead perhaps i will have to carve away,
minimizing,
puling endstopped lines,
heroic couplets
out of my already present poetry,
or else
disregard past examples
and be considered
undisciplined.

September #15

so I guess this is what it's like
to be on time
not rushing towards doom dates
wasting cyberspace
with nonsense words
to fill a self-obligation.
finally i can feel my thought clicking,
though,
and poems arise
faster than i can put them down.
months of forced writing
and i am poet again,
seeing things differently -
strangely, yes,
but literarily, too,
and that is what i have strived
to return to.

September #14

bathrooms -
how like cells they are
doors locked
each girl sitting head down
hands clasped
legs thrown slut-careless
stifling untoward sounds
for fear of publicity.
we are abu-styled,
row of all the same,
humiliated.
oh
how we hide in bathrooms!
how we inspect,
and cower,
and embarrass.
we choose them
for cleanliness or convenience,
but we shit in them all just the same.

September #13

Bixby Canyon Inspiration

I was walking along the bridge
when on the bridge I saw
your feet pushing down the bridge's
red bricks, the bridge that shook
and sighed as you walked on, my bridge,
the bridge where we'd kissed and loved.
We'd met on this bridge before
though not that long before - this bridge
used to mean so much, a span, a bridge
between us, but you broke our bridge
before and as I see you on our bridge
I fall, because I'm walking on no bridge at all
after all - yet here we are bridged again
no longer meeting, walking both ways down our bridge,
our backs say goodbye as we've said goodbye on our bridge, to our bridge, my bridge,
the bridge you've said goodbye to before,
the bridge that has always only ever been mine.

September #12

I run to corners,
lick my wounds,
fill them with salt.

I bandage my wounds,
wait for scabs,
rip them off.

I let blood dry,
watch and wait,
and pull the skin open again,

This is how I heal,
slowly, painfully.
I cannot resist the horrible delight,
cannot stay away from my wounds,
know that I hurt myself and still
never stop.

September #11

Maybe it's time
to stop complicating life.
There are some things
I am not willing to let go of -
body concerns,
for the most part.
But at the same time
I will open up
and stop shielding myself
from honesty.
I will be who I am,
not who I think I should be
to protect myself
or impress others.
i have fought many times
to make other accept this skin,
this body,
this person.
Now it's time to fight myself.

September #10

she's tired
and wonders
what would happen if she just walked away
for a day
or a week
or a month,
just took up her personals
and wandered out of life.
where would she go?
and who would follow her?
she's tired,
endlessly tired,
and watches the rain thunder down,
wonders if something's wrong with her
or if she just needs a good night of sleep.

September #9

musings

upon a midnight
long ago
when daytime
was memory
and nighttime
oppressively
present. There was a
man
and a demon
a bird
and a fiend
and of course
a poet
in the middle
of it all.

September #8

I saw the star, I saw the tree,
and saw the wish which cursed me.
I saw the leaf, I saw the flow'r,
the one that sprung from night shower.
I saw the worm, I saw the ant,
who moved through me towards the plant,
the plant which had brought me high
and there released me, alone to cry
and sigh, cry and dream,
of secrets of the way of being.
I saw the earth, I saw it all,
and in that moment began to fall.

September #7

Doesn't a dystopian
sound like a drink,
a cocktail
that would taste
perhaps insidiously sweet
and then kick you
as it burned in your stomach?
Maybe it would have absinthe,
or some other exotic flavor,
chacaca perhaps,
something you would
have not heard of before
you asked for it
at the smoky bar.
A dystopian would kick you
after you swallowed,
after you greedily consumed
every last drop.
But then what
would an Anarchy Bomb do?

September #6

Right now
I need a good bra,
support,
holding me in place,
keeping me from falling.
I need a corset,
an iron backbone holding me in.
Be my backbone.
Be my support.
Hold me tight,
but let me breath.
Don't let me fall,
don't let me fall,
don't let me drown.

September #5

today
i learned about virginia woolf
and how i might be similar to her
and how she wrote
and stressed about her work
and wrote some more.
she wasn't beautiful
but was powerful,
elusive,
precise,
moving and careful.
she was strong.
and strength is what i need.

September #4

I was going to write this great poem
about how work changed me
and made me better,
this great experience
that rid me of my naivity
and yet fostered
my kindness.
I was going to
but then today
work made me cry,
perhaps with exhaustion,
or with hurt,
or from sheer exhaustion.
I remembered all those times last year
when management or boys or just
the workload
made me want to quit,
to run away,
to walk out tiredly,
unable to move my feet.
So I guess you could say work has taught me something
about perseverance.
But at what cost?

September #3

i would like to write
the one poem for you
the perfect one
that describes your skin
your smile
your body in bed
lit by moonlight.
It would have to talk about
your wow addiction
and your inability
to make me really angry
and then I would talk about
how wonderful you are
and have been,
about fall and spring,
festivals, presents, and yarn.
I would like to write a poem about you
that could tell everyone
what you really are,
all of it,
the good
and the bad -
for we both know that there has been bad.
but you are not bad,
no more than any other person,
just one human
moved by your heart
as well as your head.
I would write this poem,
but it would never stop,
continuing as you continue.
So I cannot write that poem,
or else I would become wrapped up
in my story oef you,
and lose you,
my time with you,
and my perceptions would fade,
losing accuracy,
and instead detail a dream.
And after all,
you are so much better
than any idle dream of mine.

http://www.meaningless.com/home.asp?poem=i_wrote_a_good_poem

Love,
Emily

September #2

they met at the movies
over fishnets and corsets,
shouting gang-bangs to the screen.

they kissed over dinner,
greasy burgers
eaten standing up at counters,
wrinkling their elbows
with leaning.

they loved in parking lots,
wild fields and public bathrooms,
beds and tables and chairs.

September #1

a new month begins
with new musings,
new mutterings,
new friends,
new pencils
sharpened with wit,
not blades.

August #23

Concert, music, people, drinks,
smoke and fog, lights and noise
filler space and filler bands,
each one better,
til the show begins.
some of the best
are old as the hills -
don't be scared off
by grey hair,
wedding rings,
the scars of commitment.
sometimes the best comes with age,
not the exuberant boy
running around onstage,
singing his heart out.

August #22

This time of year comes,
and the season calls me back
to yellow school buses
and newspaper-wrapped textbooks,
to fond memories
of homecoming games
where the sun always shined
right on the crowd's face.
This time of year I am strongly and
constantly pulled
back to halls full of students,
a body that I knew and was a part of,
a community where I knew everyone by name,
and everyone knew me.
I remember favorite teachers,
hated teachers,
and would give my memories away
to have the reality.
But this nostalgia is just that -
memories,
whispered reminders,
and I must move forward,
enjoy each new fall
for what it is,
not what it has been.

August #21

can you feel the onward rush,
the moving thrush,
the steady wind
and whispered sin
that comes with fall?
for don't we all
know too well the joy
that comes within,
when we see the bringing-in
of life and green and fresh?
when spring arrives we gladly mesh
with chicks and eggs,
wobbly horse on feeble legs,
with youth and golden days.
but we love life's dregs,
the age, the ways
that fall forces us to watch our pace
and we slow to lie in wait
for snow and the cold-hearted fates.
we rush to fall with blowing wind,
like the wind blows dry leaves in.
instead of brushing out the old
we revel in the signs of cold,
we do not clean but we count
the days until the snow can mount,
pile upon pile, to lock us in,
leaving us in our guilty sin -
the sin that makes us love our fall
much more than spring, and flower's call.

August #20

What is there left
when you've written about everything?
Perhaps, to wallow
in the morbidity of death -
it would certainly ensure
immortality
in the literary halls of fame.
But how overdone,
how better done,
by so many others,
by Emilys and Sylvias and Poes,
Dickenses and Garpses and eternal others,
others we study for long hours,
hunched over dusty books
in endless halls
of peeling, tall-windowed wisdom.
What is there left to write about,
but symbols and jargon -
no wonder those other writers long before
could write so deep,
for after they covered the briefness
of humanity
and the bloom of all life,
they could only resort to theme,
empty, longing, meaningless,
symbolic theme.
What else is there to write about,
when love and hate,
despair and hope,
have been exhausted, extinguished?
Longlasting theme, indeed.

August #19

do you ever wonder?
what comes before,
what comes after,
how can these moments cease to be?
instead
they are continous,
never-ending,
always existing
in memories,
never stopping.
time never stops,
moments always are.
do you get this,
she asks, stubbing out her cigarette,
or is this too
transcendent for you?
and she gets up, leans over,
you will understand in time,
and walks away into the sunset.

August #18

Heaven looks into the room
spattering through lace white curtains
and illuminating the floor,
as a breeze floats in
through the open windows
and stirs cool air about.
It is a lovely room,
a spacious room,
packed with the girlish
necessities of life-
daydreams and secret crushes,
diaries and best friends.
It is, indeed, a lovely room.

August #17

On the way into surgery
I wouldn't speak to the doctor.
It was my first time, you see,
I didn't have any questions,
and I was scared.

When I woke up
the first thing I said
(to my mother)
was
"I'm sorry I was rude
I need to apologize."
(This was through the tears
left over
from before they knocked me out.)

And she must've smiled,
or something.
It was hard to focus.
But when he came in
the first thing I did
was apologize.
I was scared.
I hadn't meant to be rude,
I just didn't want to talk
when he was asking me all those questions.
He laughed,
and I had no pain.
It was good.

August #16

at this point
it's about racing the clock
typing fast
getting it done
reaming things out
racing
til the deadline approaches.
at this point
quality dissolves
into what one can do,
and do well,
and what one does not do
because one can't.
concerns
and perfectionism die,
the night of a deadline.
speed is the devil horse left.

August #15

she muses
on actresses
and their crooked smiles,
on truffles
looking lovely in glass jars.
she ponders sit ups and pushups,
pull ups and let downs,
and cracks her neck,
stretches her arms out,
thinks about
the glamorous death of smoking.
It's time for bed,
not that she wants it,
but she can feel the tired coming on.
It's time for sleep,
time to die
another day.

August #14

today
was a very good day
wherein i made plans
and broke them
so i could be with myself.
i made cookies
and ate them
so i could be myself.
i bought cardboard cartons
and ate chinese
so i could enjoy myself.
i went to his house
and cuddled
so i could love myself.
today
was a very, very good day.

August #13

In which the author is very, very clever.

I am clever,
she said to herself,
as she cleaned her room.
I am very clever,
she said to herself,
as she put her yarn away
somewhere she would find it later.
I am so clever,
she said to herself,
as she cast on with the same yarn
a portion of the hidden ball.
I am extremely clever,
she thought to herself,
as she ran out of yarn,
because she knew she had plenty.
I am so clever,
she sighed after tearing her room apart
(twice)
I am so clever
that I have forgotten
where I have cleverly hidden
this yarn.

August #12

Let's go for coffee
and sit and talk
sipping our beverages
as they cool, too fast,
and be contemplative.
Let's hold our cups in both hands
and gaze out into the distance
over the rim,
like they do
in movies,
when the heroine
(who is probably Scarlett or Uma or
some other perfect blonde)
contemplates
some not-really-life-altering thing.
Let's do it
and catch up on life together
by sitting in coffee shops
pretending to be people we're not.

August #11

sometimes I sit
and wonder about the world.
sometimes I sit
and wonder about reality,
Euclidean planes,
moebius strips,
government conspiracies,
and the twelfth dimension.
Who knows?
That speck on the wall
could be another universe,
and when you dust it into oblivion,
that could be their supernova.
We could be a fly
sitting on a positively massive
fractal tree
in some unknown,
unthinkable
universe.
We could be nothing,
or we could be alpha, omega.
No one knows any more than you.

August #10

Sometimes I spend far too much time
with mirrors or computers or people
and I have to get away.
Sometimes I forget what I look like
or need to write or play
or just need to talk,
to pour out my soul,
to some other
very human being.
Then, I return.

August #9

I was walking today,
or showering,
I forget.
Anyway
as I was doing
this mundane thing
(whichever thing it was)
I was writing,
in my head,
snatches of poetry.
Really good poetry.
But now I forget it all.

August #8

Whereupon the Author Realizes, to her Dismay, That She Believes In Romance

I believe in romance
not in the common sense,
the typical
white knight gray steed sense
But in the way
that I believe
in poets that only wear white
and authors who walk
for miles and miles every day
contemplating the ends of the universe.
I believe
in hope, in people, in light, and love
in waiting, once you've found that person'
months if you have to,
until they come back
from wherever they were.
I believe in being a lady
but I think
I may be a feminist.
I believe in family
and children
and maybe
one last name.
I believe
and I realize
that I believe in a very rosy,
romantic kind of life.
Who knew?
not I.

Short Story

She was a bad driver, always had been. Sometimes she would sing along with the radio when her favorite song came on (and they were all her favorite songs) and then the music would get to her and she would dance, grooving in her seat, until suddenly the light had changed and the people behind her were honking, leaning on their horns until she could hear them, just barely, over the music that she had turned up in what seemed an attempt to deafen herself. She loved music. She was music.
One day, though, one day she was alone at the light, and she stopped and grooved and forgot all about her midnight cruise to retrieve something from the grocery store before it closed. Suddenly, four songs later, it was quarter before one and she was embarrassed, sitting alone in her car, surrounded by the dark. She turned her music down, pulled away.
It was all about moderation, you see. She could dance if she needed to, she could express herself in that way, but she couldn't totally escape the confines of life and live in a club within her car. She had to do other things, to explore. It is necessary that we all wander the great outdoors, and learn about others as well as about ourselves. Deafening oneself by drowning in one's own music only makes it harder for everyone to understand each other. We must reach out, as well as reach within.

August #7

Tomorrow
I will be sitting in class
and when my teacher comes in
tell her
that feminism is disturbing my love life,
in little ways at least.
She will ask me why
and I will tell her
about the
last-name-battle
and then she may ask me
what I think.
I know what I will say.
"I think
I am far too young
to be thinking about marriage
either way."

August #6

Jazz

I dislike jazz
Starbucks
and people who go
to such coffee places
to surf the internet
on their MacIntoshes.
I feel it's
pretentious.
I dislike
the low-fat no sugar soy grande mochachinno frappuchino decaf lattes
that hipsters sip
sitting at little tables
eating their coffee flavored cookies
and listening
to that insufferable jazz music
the kind
that is predictable
and done.
That image - that silly, yuppie image -
and yet
I go to my Starbucks,
order my non-coffee beverage
(can't stand the taste)
and open up my computer
which I have made to look
like a renegade Mac
and play
and sometimes
I even enjoy
the jazz.

August #5

For Alex Palumbo

He said
he wishes he could flip
some switch in me
like I'm a circuit or something.
Can't he get it?
He's liked me for years
and I've always said no
it's never been good
and then finally
I give him one try,
one date,
and when at the end I tell him
"no, thanks"
he starts talking about some switch.
It's not a switch.
It's not some magical lever
that if you raise it right
I'm all over you.
It's just
he's not the right guy for me.
And I'm still not the right girl
but he keeps hanging on anyway.

August #4

Two Sides of One Conversation

on the phone
she says
"What are you talking about?...
Things are going to be fine, you,ll see.
We can work this out.
No! Honey,
don't do that. Don't do that
to me. Everything's going to be okay.
I love you, I love you so much.
Do you know how much you're hurting me?
Stop this, stop it right now.
You can't do that. Baby,
I know things are tough right now,
but we can fix these problems.
See a psychiatrist?
Of course I listen to you!
Don't, okay? Just please don't, I'm coming as soon as possible,
and then we can talk about this.
Just stop thinking about this
until I get there...
Baby? Baby? Are you there?
Did you hang up on me?"
She dissolves into tears.

On the other end
he was saying,
"I hate my life.
Nothing's working out.
I hate everything. I just
want to die. I think
I think I'm going to kill myself
It would be better this way.
Look, it's better for everyone this way.
I'll stop messing up your life
you'll move on
we'll all be happy.
A counselor?
Are you kidding?
No one listens to me, not even you!
I hate myself, I hate you, I hate everyone!"
And then he hung up
and stared at his gun.

August #3

I woke up
and started crying.
I could not stand
the awful dream
that tried to tell me
my father died.
The thought was awful,
the dream too graphic,
and I had to creep
out of bed like a four year old
and step down the hall gently
to watch my father sleep and snore.
I have grown too old and too big
to jump into bed with him
and whisper my worries
into his old ear, big and unattractive.
But I am not old enough
that I can do without him,
my daddy, my bestest.
I hold on
and hope
that dreams are just flights
of frightened imagination.

August #2

I remember Virginia
standing in a big meadow
at ten past day
watching the lightning in the distance
so far that it framed the horizon
dancing in orange shots
down in the valley-city below.
I watched the stars
come out and dance
a planet rise, a planet fall,
a plane go by full
of people looking down
at the beauty they could barely see.
The cicadas echoed the hum of my heart
as I stood there in the big meadows
hiding from the world.
The cicadas were my heart
when I thought of you.

August #1

I should have kissed her
I should not have kissed her
I should have kissed him
I should not have kissed him
Regret in all its silly forms.
What's done is made
cannot unform.
Our lives are stone, into which we carve
not malleable forgetting substances.
I should have read her email
I should not have read her email
I should have read his email
I should not have read his email
What we do
and how we curse ourselves
is of our own calling,
our own making.
We bring storms down upon us,
call them out of skies
that may or may not beckon rain.
I should have fought for her
I should not have fought for her
I should have fought for him
I should not have fought for him
We make our choices and we choose
to battle on or to admit defeat.
We don't need agreement in these affairs
because we are autonomous and will do
as we will.
But for now
yet again
I will fight.
So many times I have fought
hopefully
for a good cause.

July #22

why don't i pick on you about something
you're sensitive?
like i don't know
your body
or your looks
or something.
don't pick on me
about my weight
the one thing
that i hate myself for.
my weight
is a constant issue
the worst of all my evils
and you think it's funny
to pick on it,
something you've never said
before tonight.

yes.
let's make fun of me.
the girl that constantly worries
about how her body looks.
my achilles heel
that's the size of the moon
my weak spot.

pick on my weight enough
and you'll make me beleive
i am a fat, lard-induced monster.
i don't understand
why YOU don't understand.

my weight is an issue.
why did you decide tonight
that you could focus on it?
since when did you decide that?

and the thing is
you know how i get
how when i weigh more
i obsess
freak out
can never look good enough

you've seen me gaze at the mirror
turn away in hate
or tears
or come out of a bathroom
feeling ugly

since when did my weight become a target?
since i started losing it?
just because i'm less fat
doesn't mean
i'm more secure.

think before you speak

July #21

frustration boils inside my belly
an aching pain
the pounding strain
against
how I feel.

July #20

I wonder what it is I did
to make you come to class with me
live just down the road from me

I wonder what it is I did
to be so lucky finding you there
sitting so unconsciously

I wonder how it could've been that I
had never known you before this

before love

July #19

there's this girl
that I used to know
and now begin
to know again.

she and i were
new friends full
of warmth and lies,
hopes that died.

it's interesting to watch
us reform some nebula -
she is eager and i
i am wary.

July #18

I like the casual
I imagine
the beginning
so expository
proclaiming.
I imagine
that if I were to write great poetry
it would begin
with casual phrases
that knocked you away
with their power.
I imagine
often.

July #17

I imagine
that if we live in London
we will live in
rolling countryside
dotted with sheep
and streams
and rurual life.
I can't imagine the actual place,
the throbbing city life
of a bustling booming
busy capital
of that foreign country.
I don't know what is really London,
but I'm trying to find out.

July #16

I worry about
being shut out
forgotten or abandoned
by people I think friends.
I worry about
being shut out
cast aside
for more interesting people.
I worry about
being swept out
ignored, forgotten
alone all the time.

July #15

London calls
it is drowning
in lonely people
in half couples
with no one to embrace
London is calling
alone and feebly
drowning in single or half single people
looking for the answer.
London is drowning and I
I feel like the river.

July #14

I sent off a letter today,
a convincing one, I think.
One that compared
the stupefying heat of summer
to the literary world
and wondered
are you bold enough
to read this and take it
and shake it up
make it rain?
are you bold enough
to say yes?
It was a challenge.
Unfortunately
now I have to wait two months
to see if they have thrown down
their glove with mine.

July #13

I have been hiding all weekend from a mountainous pile of assignments and finals,
one that looms before me as I cower in dread. And today
today this day of rest that is today,
it is time to roll up my sleeves, shake my head, and get down
to work.
Honest work, successful work, work that makes me feel smart,
prepared, honest work that might get me a job someday.
Time to face the music
so that I can interrelate everything
and get a life.

July #12

We


We are going
to have a house,
a nice house,
somewhere
far away from where I am right now,
somewhere that I may have never been.
We are going to have a house.
We are going to have a garden,
with flowers and pumpkins,
because I like pumpkins,
even though
they might not grow well there.
We are going to have our garden and
I am going to have my pumpkins.
We are going to have children,
adorable children,
who take after relatives we don't know.
We may not even know they take after people,
because we'll be far away
from the rest of our families.
But it is a beautiful place, I hear.
We are going to have a yard
with room for a sheep
and two dogs
and a cat, at least one cat.
Perhaps
if the children convince us
we may have a hermit crab as well.
But no bugs, snakes, or slimy things.
We are going to go visit our families for Christmas
and Thanksgiving
and New Year's
and maybe sometimes in the summer
just for fun.
We are going to be happy,
with our house and garden and children and pets,
and high priced airfare.
But we would be happy
in an apartment
with high rent,
no kids,
one flower growing in one pot,
and a goldfish,
if we had to.
Because we know what love is.

July #11

There is poetry in silence
in carefully crafted blank pages.
Sometimes the absence of words
reveals so much more
than abusive, muddying, confusing words.
Words can mean
whatever you want -
but the silence is always apparent.

July #10

The poems I was going to write
have flown
becoming birds that,
upon startling,
escape further than any human can go.
They are v shapes far above
flying off
reaching the horizon
whereupon they float away
escaping gravity at last.

July #9

I came home today
checked my email
and got irritated at my teacher
who emailed us twelve pages
to read in 17 hours
except that
i will be sleeping for seven of those hours -
ten hours -
in class for an hour and a half -
8.5 -
commuting
which means driving my mother around
and parking
and walking
in hot summer heat
for another hour -
7.5 -
and then
before i can manage to do the reading
i need to write two response papers.
one is halfway done.
and
what about that damn essay?
i sent an email
to the same address
that he emailed us from
twelve hours ago
asking
for the extension that he said
he would willingly give.
despite getting
twelve pages of more work
i have not received even one word
of actual response back.
he is not getting his five page essay tomorrow
reply or no reply,
the essay i have managed
to write a page of.

July #8

About How You Can Never Complain Again




so
this one
is about how you can never complain again
about how sometimes when you call me
and i'm too busy to talk
or i'm hanging out with other people
and am talking to them
instead of you.
this one
is about how your right to do that
has been revoked.
and this one is about how
i put away time to talk to you
when i was away
and you
you can't really be bothered.
this one is about how
you turned off the volume
when i was talking to you
so that you could do other things
and the sound bothered you.
this one is about how
even when you're online
"talking" to me
you don't say anything
and i have to wrestle with the conversation
to make anything
happen.
this one is about how you don't really talk to me
unless we're on the phone
and you have to.
this one is about how
i do things, so many things,
for you.
not everything.
but i put away time and don't develop friendships
so i can talk to you
and i support you,
your drinking, your friends
that i don't know, or that i don't like,
and i never, ever tell you
that i'm so uncomfortable with something
you have a deep desire for
that you can't do it.
this is about how
we are uneven
and more and more
how it matters.
this one is about how
you can't complain any more.
with love.

July #7

spinning
the act of creating use
out of easily broken
formless fibers,
magically transforming them
is a process that has been done
as i have done
for hundreds of years.
maybe i will prick my finger
on a spindle
fall asleep for 100 years of solitude,
wake up
when I am kissed
and turned into a frog.
Or is that
not how it goes?
oh well -
back to work,
the wheel,
ever turning

July #6

I want to know why
I am so silly.
Others might say
I am compassionate,
or humane.
Isn't it funny how close the words human and humane are,
and yet how different the end products?
I drove today,
beautiful twilight dusk
that was destroyed
when I watched a rabbit
flee too slow
and end up between my tires.
Trying to reassure myself,
I listened for a crunch
that never came.
Yet still
I drove to my house,
found my father,
put my head on his shoulder,
and whispered
the unthinkable,
and then, unthinkably,
I cried.

July #5

Driving
down country roads
headlights on
against the dark
when a sudden turn down a hill
lights up one thing:
an innocent white tail
tiny and low
bobbing much too close
to your headlights.
it is too close
and too soon
to react.
you can only watch,
and grieve prematurely.

July #4

I said
I am drowning
in a pool of vomit
and then to lighten the mood
said that
only the best die that way.
But to tell the truth,
I was not feeling best.
I was feeling suffocated,
buried,
in messes of my own making,
messes that I could not swim away from,
that bogged me down
and would not let me surface
to breathe.
And when I tread water,
the very movements
pull me further down.
I am suffocating,
face down,
in an ever deepening pool
of my own vile vomit,
and no one will save me.

July #3

I am still so broken
in ways I never knew.
I am envious
of friends that I have to share.
I worry
about losing everyone,
anyone,
to that other.
I am insecure
and broken
and want to hide it
from the world,
yet cannot help wishing
to expose my weak
awful
inner self.

July #2

"It makes me so happy, and so devastated at the same time."

"Well yes. That's life."

life
a mix of extremes
the times
when joy is bitterest
are the times you love the most
the times you feel most alive.
when pain is the sweetest,
burning within,
deeply lighting
the core of you.
life is too flat unmixed.
it requires
combustible combinations
to make it all work.
life,
and love,
my love.

July #1

So I got waay behind on last month's poems. Time to fix it by doing a lot this month.

1.
It seems I spend all of my months
waiting for summertime,
the golden summertime
that I love best.
It is in the heat of summer,
the blistering, smeating heat,
that I am finally warmed,
my lingering winter frosts melted
in the love and the glare
of the brightest sun.
I wait and yearn
for the summertime
when memories become edged in gold
and onlythen
do I feel perfection looming,
reaching for me.

june 13

I am

I am a music junkie
a radio lover,
a CD fiend.
I am eclectic in my tastes,
indulging in the awful,
the standard, the classics.
I am a believer -
I believe in music,
in rhythm,
in emotions put into words
that then stir my own feelings
even as they move my feet.
I am an equal-opportunity listener,
eager to expand my repertoire,
constantly possessing CDs
that I have yet to listen to,
constantly seeking recommendations,
new bands
to know
and love
and cherish.

Like music
I am a literary junkie,
purging on tawdry romances,
diving into Dostoevsky.
Dystopians are my favorite,
disillusioned warnings
of twisted governments
and what we might be becoming.
I am obsessed with language
and nuances,
analyzing and comparing,
figuring out
the real happenings.
That it why I love my music,
my books -
both are open
to interpretation.
Both require you
to step in, plunge into the messy
inexact language, strip aside
red herrings and ungainly phrases,
to reveal the true fault or crux or hero.
I want to share this,
this literary or auditory surgery.
I want them to feel
that amazing sense of discovery
because it's not just a fun song
or a tedious book
but a tale,
something that once was,
was real and vital
and can be so today.
I want them to be thrilled
that they are blessed, blessed!
With the ability to hear,
to read,
and to take it all in
and think.
I want to share
the sense of joy
and discovery
and moreover I want them to adopt it,
unthinking,
into their every day life.

June #12

It's funny how success
has come to be a vital part in my life -
success in classes and technicalities,
I mean.
From a haphazard way of living I have grown
to an organized approach,
a dedicated approach,
single-mindedly exceeding expectations
to receive grades that will have no influence
in five years.
So fleeting, so consequential -
this success
is not real
is not life
but still I grasp it.

June #11

"I am" Poem

I am at my best alone,
free alone,
at peace alone,
my thought and worries
pushed away, ignored,
as I enjoy alone, revel alone.
Alone I have no secrets
that I cannot discover;
alone, I have no lies
that I am not fully aware of.
I can be anything when I am alone,
I can realize the power,
the potential,
of any fleeting foolish dream.
I am uninhibited,
unbound, released alone,
not influenced by anything
except me.
I am at my best alone.

Yet there are limitations
to this selfish meditation
and this admittedly freeing solitude.
Hermits have no place in the world,
make no difference in the world,
learn nothing and can teach nothing to the world.
Alone, one can be...lonely.
Alone, one cannot act or take action,
cannot influence,
cannot experience.
It is better to be burdened
- if you can call life a burden -
with society, interaction, interest,
friends, family, husband, child,
that to be so entirely alone.
I am at my best alone,
but I will forsake my best
for the chance of life and love.

June #10

I just realized today that
memories still hurt.
After all,
why shouldn't they?
I was tossed away
and begged to be redeemed,
I was fooled by friends and boyfriends,
I never saw it coming.
I was in love
and some girl
had no qualms
about overstepping her boundaries.
Of course it still hurts -
I would be a fool
to expect myself to be well,
and at peace in mind.
There is still plenty
of healing to be done,
trust to rebuild.

June #9`

Sometimes I wonder
and worry, and pick
and create holes and mistakes
where there weren't any, before.
Is it the human condition?
Is it just me?
Do I create problems,
or do I really feel them?
How can we trust our emotions and our thoughts
when nothing is solid,
nothing is really real?
We are capsized in a sea
of subjectivity, no reasoning
powerful enough to right
our emotional boats.
After all
we can all argue both sides of the case,
can't we?

June #8

thank you for the flowers
the flowers that are still blooming
despite the intolerable heat.
they make bright my day,
a visible token of your love.
I am loved, by you,
and would have it no other way.

June #7

i
love
your car cuz
it is summatime.
the leather
stickin to the backs
ov my legs, the smell
those seats have in the heat,
of well luv'd leather
fading away
to cow-skin heavun.
for that
plus more
i luv ur car.

June #6

It's funny the troubles
we choose for ourselves.
Like greatness,
some we are given,
but some we must
accept the blame for.
Even the perfectly sound have
swiped themselves
more than they admit.

June #5

I don't know if you know this
but I'm not all the girl I used to be.
I'm half that girl,
and the other half
is this scared, madly in love,
afraid to lose anything,
afraid of everything,
easily hurt, easily bruised, easily broken and betrayed half woman.
She feels abandoned easily.
She is ruled entirely by her emotions.
The other me,
the first me,
the one you feel in love with,
can think and breathe and make living sense,
but she is overruled by this new presence
who sometimes
insists that horrible things will happen,
expects things -
and then wonders if she's expecting too much.
This other woman
doesn't know her limits
but knows that she has fallen so deep in love
that to extricate herself
is suicide.
You need to treat her gently.
I am not her,
and most of the time,
that girl you feel in love with
is dominant.
But on days like today,
when that new woman has put herself
in the spotlight attempting
to make you happy,
you must be gentle,
appreciative, loving,
and hold her hand and look
into her eyes
and tell her what she wants to hear.
Because otherwise
she'll leave,
and call later,
and let you hurt her
again
and again
and again.
Then she'll wonder
how many chances you're allowed to have,
and cry more than she should ever do.

Just love her the way you love me,
but gently.

June

#1.
I have been remiss
in fitting words together
caught up with moving.

#2.
Finally summer
arrives in an unnoticed
slow warming of earth.

#3.
I love more than words
and speak more than just language,
giving you my heart.

#4.
Who says the newborn
lamb chases his mother when
she is in a stranger field?

May #24

I walked and saw death today.
It shuttled along steel rails,
a massive solid thing
of moving plates,
connected by chains.
It reminded me of a spine,
so delicate yet vital.
I stood nearby and was impressed,
for perhaps I had been long acquainted
with the children's version of death,
the one that we could tame,
and forgotten
how awfully strong and wilful
the real event was.
Wind rushed into my face and
sound whistled, boomed
in my ears.
I saw death today,
death for a drunk college girl
in the headlights of a train.

May #23

Cleaning,
going through papers,
things in my desk drawer,
I found a treasure trove
of love notes,
you to me.
They reminded me of things
I'd forgotten,
like how we use to write love notes
and hand them off between classes.
You bought me yarn,
we went for crabs,
I wrote pages
in your yearbook.
Funny how much you can forget
while remembering
still more.

May #22

Still worrying

Something's bothering me,
and I don't know what it is.
I do know
I want you here by my side,
and if no one comes to that party tonight,
well then that's fine by me,
it'll be just
you and me
and we can eat all of those cupcakes
(I made ten)
and complain about getting fat,
order out,
eat in bed,
then push everything off the bed
including our clothes.
I'll make it through work,
but after,
you have to promise yourself to me.

May #21

Warm sun, cold winds -
let's get rid of those.
When will it be summer time?
Let's complain about the heat,
go for walks in shady parks
and have picnics
until the ants get in the food
and the grass isn't comfortable
and the ice melts into the lemonade.
Let's go fishing
at odds hours of the morning because
that's when my dad insists we'll catch fish.
(But we won't.)
Let's go out on evenings,
let me dress up in summer dresses,
catch fireflies and trip
over high heels.
Get rid of long pants,
hoodies,
sneakers.
I want barefeet or sandals
swimsuits and tanktops,
summer skirts swaying as I walk.
When will summer come?

May #20

I revisit by walking
old places we have passed
and wonder at how happy we have been,
how joyous we still are.
We have walked streets at night
laughing, falling against each other,
clasping hands,
dispelling serious fits
by tickles and jokes and kisses.
We fight with pillows in my bed,
joke about smells and noises
and yes
embarrass each other
in public or private.
Laugh -
it's what we do.
It's what will keep us together,
overwhelmed with love,
through all those years.

May #19

Something is Wrong With My Country

Yes, yes,
we all know.
Something is wrong
with your country.
Well that's just great.
What's wrong, precisely?
And what do you plan
to do about it?
Because the way I see it
you're just standing around
complaining.
Instead of whining
about some problem which
you can't even identify,
why don't you get up there,
do some research,
decide what your cause is,
and then instead of talking,
simply do?
If it's so important -
and obviously it is,
what with your
bumper stickers
t-shirts
facebook groups -
then stop crying,
stand up,
be strong, be proud, be righteous,
and fix it.
Assess the problem.
And when you sit down
and find out there isn't one,
don't come crying to me.
I'll be making a difference.

May #18

Remember when 

I used to cry

during Grey's Anatomy

because I thought I was Addison?

Or Meredith?

Or sometimes both?

And remember when

each new week, each new episode,

always related to my life?

And sometimes -

since that was a while ago now -

when I still lived with my parents -

I would sit on the couch and squirm

as they talked about sex

 you weren't supposed to be having,

parents you weren't supposed 

to lie to,

friends you were supposed to like

instead of want to strangle.

I remember.

I don't cry now,

and I haven't watched a new episode in months,

but sometimes still I ache

for Meredith Grey. 

May #17

I still worry, you know.

I can see people telling me,

like in a movie,

Oh, you're coping so well

when on the inside

I am just beginning to stabilize.

Like any new thing,

you have to repeat it

to learn it,

to like it,

to at least

get used to it

and eventually forgive it.

I'm still coping. 

Just in a different way.

May #16

It's funny how sometimes I refuse to learn things,

let my curiosity get - well, not the better of me

but in control of me. 

Even after it's caused me so much pain

I will continue to pursue knowledge,

and maybe it's because

I have an inner quest for honesty

rather than comfort. 

It sounds true enough to me,

and so

I won't curtail my questions

or stop my subtle looking.

I just have to be prepared

for all the hurt that comes 

with looking when you're not supposed to.

(It's not just discovered presents,

but discovered crushes,

discovered hates.

And when I find them,

I must remember

it is my own fault.)

May #15

My history TA
taught class today;
the last one of the semester,
the first one he's done.
I'm proud of him,
as perhaps we all are,
for there was a roar of applause -
though
in college
that could be attributed
to delaying class.
I think he'll do well,
relate to his students
more than our professor does
(because of youth
not
for lack of warmth or humor.)
When they are younger
we sympathize more,
believe more,
forgive more.
We condemn the old
too easily,
lacking patience
for those we should revere.
Let us learn from them,
instead of make fun,
or distract from their lesson
so that we don't have to do
what we came to college to do-
that mythical, mystical verb,
learn.
Let's wish them all luck
for each year begins new in September,
not January.
Let's sympathize for the old,
for the fact that it is
their twentieth time teaching this class,
as well as the new,
for the fact
that it is their first.

writing

I knew this girl once. She was fascinating - she could bend boys around her finger without a thought, dreaded their eventual confessions of love, would always be friends with them afterwards. She dated, and when she fell she fell hard. But if it got too tough she'd quit them, almost without a thought it seemed. I only saw her cry after leaving a guy once, and they never left her. She had it made.

And then you know what she did? She went and she fell in love, harder and deeper and faster than she ever had. It was good for her, too, kept her sane during the last month of a school year when she'd been thinking about buying a pistol or running to Canada for too long. Then she did the next, most predictable thing in the world, which was, fuck it up. They'd started fighting, too much pressure in the new year, they just couldn't handle it well, their relationship changing, and she got scared. Ran to one of those boys, the type she was used to, and hoped it would help. Maybe she'd get over this love, too, and maybe things would go back to the way she was used to. Maybe she'd forget that great love.

Didn't happen. Couldn't happen. When you love someone the way she did, well, that's the end of it. Your life, without that person, is gone. A love like that is permanent, life-changing. It's the kind of love that you can never move on from, you can never get over. The kind of love that makes people get married and stay together, for fifty years, and then when they die and come back - they find each other again, their souls in different bodies, and really they're together for eternity. She couldn't escape that, and once she came to her senses she realized she didn't want to. She wanted that love, she could never hope to find that love with someone else.

Of course she went back, are you kidding? It took her four months to get him back for good, though, and a lot of pain and crying and convincing too. It's hard to win a man back, harder if you've broken his heart, but she let him break hers in return. It wasn't quite even but it was right, more right than they knew.

Now? Where are they now? How the hell should I know? Off somewhere, happy, I'm sure, dreaming dreams and making children the way they were made to. Just hope you find a love like that, child. It's what'll complete you, and all of us, a love like that.

May #14

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

there is hope
for the girl
who cries too hard
and longs for
permanent respite.

there is hope
in the form
of a lover, a boy
who hurts her
but at least is trying.

there is hope
and they'll make it
she just has to fight through
and realize
this all will pass.

but until that time,
he can't hold her too tight,
or tell her he loves her too much.

This, too, shall pass.

Just love me.

May #13

I've never had a greater love,
nor one that hurt so much.
I've never had a better boy,
nor one who's taken so much.
But I've never been as painful,
as in this relationship,
and I've never been as needy
or as willing to give.
So I have to know,
it's give and take,
and right now,
I'll do the taking.
But there's only so much
til I bleed him dry,
and it's selfish
to even try.
So I've got to move,
and be happy myself,
instead of depending on others.
But in the meantime,
I've still got his love,
no matter how hard it might feel.

May #12

I feel like I've paid
for the wreck of the day,
the traffic jam I'm found within me

I feel like I've gone
through the pain,
it shouldn't be long
til I'm breathing again

I feel like I've lost
the security I had
feel like I'm tossed
on seas gone mad

I don't know what to say
I don't know how
to make you understand
I feel alone now.

I want to be there,
lie in your arms,
and know that you really do care.

May #11

it's that simple i guess
three words
lined up in the right order
to say something
indefinite
indefinable

have you ever had that
feeling taken away?

i have
and its the worst
feeling

emptiness
you're so alone
even if that person
that other person
is lying there holding you

because if they dont feel the same
it becomes a lie.

thank god for love
and thank god
i have mine.

May #10

I could stay up and not sleep at all,
finish my novel,
sip hot tea,
pet the dog,
be poetic and ridiculous.
But I could be pragmatic,
and return to bed,
and be slightly less cranky
for two hours of sleep.

The first appeals more to me,
but then I remember
that boy I've left in bed
and I know where my heart lies.
He will not wake up without me.
It is simple;
I return,
novel unfinished,
essay unwritten,
water hot on the stove.

Love comes first.

May #9

Early morning Sunday
watching the sun rise
and I am all afever with the joy of it
the life that I can feel
springing
deep within my bones.
I want to dance in the upcoming sunlight,
celebrate the glory of it
with all my being,
and I hear the birds calling to me
as I stand at your kitchen sink
and contemplate tea.
I can feel the powers
of the universe that I believe in
pulling at my heart,
calling me to join,
but I will not, not tonight,
for it is far past bedtime
and far too cold
and you are far too alone upstairs
unaware of my desertion.
No, I will return to thee,
my love,
and bring down the sun some other day.

May #8

To His Unknown Mistress, Upon Occasion Of His Death

You and I shared the same bed,
rested unknowingly both our heads,
lay we close by night to night,
two beds, two girls, one man, one life.

You and I had different souls,
different visions, different goals.
While you wished to make your pay,
I strived for peace for every day.

I was bound to him for life,
fought with him, constant strife.
You gave you with no joy,
indulging just another boy.


He had two girls, he had twin lusts,
but what of that other goddess, love?
We lay with him because we must,
not because we shared his trust.

May #7

I can feel the liveliness of spring
in the cooling mornings,
the promise of wet dew on dark grass,
and my heart swells.

May #6

For some reason
things are hurting more recently.
Maybe it's too much thinking
maybe it's security
giving me time
to become insecure.
I'm pushing it away
into corners and closets
but sometimes it seeps out
of the corners of my eyes
trickles down my cheeks.
As it runs down
it fades
and it is smoothing away
into the past
even as I cry.
But hold me close
night by night
no matter what.

May #5

I think tonight
I will convince him to go out
in the early hours
and watch the sun rise
as we languidly,
sleepily talk about nothing
and pretend to regret
staying up
all
night long
while really we will remember
how we loved and lived
and it will be perfection cherished.

May #4

Note: I wrote a May 3. I published a May 3. Perhaps Blogger ate it. Onward.




What Cosmo Taught Me

Cosmo said,
Living with a man
means getting comfortable with him.
Beware!
Once he sees you clipping your toenails,
you'll become usual to him.
Keep up an air
of feminine mystique -
or lose him!
And I, the little tadpole,
eager to learn and to please,
swallowed the lesson whole
and when my life came to
the turn I am,
when it came to sleeping nights together
and spending days together,
it sped out of my mouth again
at some moment.
So I measured my life
against those
glittering, laminated scales -
the Scales of Cosmopolitans -
and found myself
perhaps a little wanting
in decorum.
Yet I knew
I was still a wonder to his eyes,
could still impress him
with a simple dress-up
and could turn him on
with a look,
whether I was sleeping in
his ratty tee or no.

May #2

This started
as a poem
about staying up late
and morphed
into something I'm not
ready to talk about.
We will stay up late
and not discuss
but live in love instead.

May #1

Was that the first of May?
Did my mayday fly by
so suddenly, so unnoticed,
full of twenty four hours -
just like every other day -
but commentless,
uncelebrated,
unloved?
Mayday, mayday,
holiday,
a better indicator of spring
than any equinox.
And dismissed, out of hand,
gone already -
already it is the second day
and I cannot go back
into time and reverse it.
Goodbye, my day, may day.
Goodbye.

April #27

Let's lie together under the stars
on top of blankets, to protect ourselves
from dewy grass
and hold hands
and tell each other stories
about the shapes those stars make.

Let's kiss together on bridges
and in cars, and planes, and what about
a bicycle
built for two
so that we can remember those kisses
when we are old and gray and faded.

Let's whisper together in the dark
hiding our secret future from everyone,
especially ourselves,
so in love
that we don't want to speak in loud voices,
lest the dream dissipate.

April #26

Love can be grown,
encouraged, started indoors
and then moved
after the heavy frosts,
a domestic plant
that couldn't survive the cold.
But love can also be the quailing violet
who arises after the first rain
early in the spring
and can be seen until
late fall.
But either one
can heal when injured
can recover from a wound.
Love is powerful
no matter how it starts.

April #25

let's surround ourselves
with beautiful things
and let our minds soak it in.
let's dive into worlds
rich in color and texture and feeling
giving us plenty to look at and to feel.
drown our ears in only the best music,
the classical, the greatest hits,
the wondrous awe-inspiring kind.
walk through museums
in silence and in awe
and yes, sometimes
in unimpressed pacing.
let's try to be educated,
aware of what has gone before.
throw away sad trash
and read the Brontes,
throw away ugly moderns,
and regard Picasso and Matisse and van Gogh
and then we'll throw away our culture
and return to real life.

but we'll be better for it,
won't we?

April #24

Springtime grows in tiny flowers,
little leaves and ivy bowers.
The air grows free and fresh and bright,
while lovers talk and walk in the night.
Bees will buzz, and birds will sing,
while schoolchildren run by whistling.
Then summer will come, drive us all indoors
enchanting or frightening with blowsy storms.
But while the season is here, let's make it last,
and spend all our time in the present, not in the past.

April #23

Isn't it awful when people
step out of being who they should,
and turn into feeling, thinking machines?
Instead of neatly fitting into the boxes we've made
they reach outside into the wild world
and traipse along by themselves,
forming their own reality,
utterly ignoring what we want theirs to be.
Parents are lovers,
and so are children -
something neither wants
to be true of the other.
When was the first time
you realized
your teacher didn't live at school?
Your mother had obligations
to others than you?
We are autonomous,
and it is hard to believe
that anyone else is.
But reality is skewed, and
none of us
can fit any one mold,
even should we try.
We must be careful,
not to upset others' visions
when we do it.

April #22

My father and I are unlike.
I believe in the greater good,
trust in humanity,
have changed from pessimistic views.
I will give second chances,
and third changes,
and possibly even fourth,
if I love deeply enough,
if I have not been wounded enough.
I will break my heart for the world,
and I will care too much.
My father wants to protect my precocious soul,
banning me from hurt
by banning me from people.
He loves me,
and so does not act out of active injury,
but in anticipation of future harm.
He believes that done once,
an action will repeat itself,
given the chance.
I love my father,
and all the more for his
sheltering arm
against heavy storms.
But I am young,
and I must hurt
and see all the world for me.
He knows this unknowingly,
and grudges but gives my peace.
I can love freely,
and for this I love him all the more.

April #21

She lies in his arms,

defenseless and unclothed,

and prays against the coming dawn.

He is warm and powerful against her,

and she can smell

his special sweat scent

all around her.

Please,

don't let it come,

she begs.

Let us stay in this haven,

this perfect perfection.

But dawn must come,

and so the day.

She must rise out of their nest

and go forth into the world,

and hope with everything she has

that he will still be there when she gets back.

April #20

Have I given up tough skin

in order to be a nice person?

I care too much

about certain other people

and should just shrug them off.

Perhaps

in my search for treating others

as I would be treated,

I have become vulnerable,

far too worried about self-image.

I am paralyzed with thoughts

of who is friends with whom,

and why not me -

worriment

why they don't like me?

What could I have done?

 When I used to shrug off these thoughts

with a simple social finger.

I feel that yes,

it is tied to wanting to please everyone

to treating them all kindly.

There is more than that

but the relationship

is definite. 

April #19

I get a little afraid

of saying too much,

holding too close,

loving too dear. 

You are my precious,

and my one,

and my only, 

but I fear that I will 

smother you in kisses

and hugs

and neediness.

I need you so much, you see.

Don't let me turn you off,

push you away

in my tormented tears

and hidden emotions.

Understand that I need a rock

as heavy and immovable

as your sleeping puppy,

as dependable and sturdy

as any ancient car

built when the building was worth it.

Be my rock,

my protection from the storm.

Just know

it may be a while

before I can trust you to be that steady

and in the meantime

you can help me 

just by being.

April #18

I have love now.

A true love,

a good love,

a love that can scare me.

I have time now,

lots of time,

even as I fill it up

with activities and jobs and works.

I will take this now,

and live in it,

and give it my all.

Perhaps I should stop this poem, then?

April #17

I talk about real life too much sometimes.

What's going to happen - after.

How I can't wait to leave

where I am,

in search for something more real,

more tangible,

more realistic.

I came across a quote today,

trite as it was,

and it sort of, 

well, 

revolutionized my thoughts a little.

Life is now. 

My life is

every moment.

It's not about after college,

or after work,

or when this project is done.

My time will not be saved

for after I finish whatever is ahead of me.

I have to cherish, and live,

and love the now.

So I vow to do it, 

silly and pointless

and sudden and revolutionary

as it may seem.

It's time for now.

It's time for real life.

My worries will waste each day.

Let my loves live them instead.

April #16

frustrated
tired
worried
angry
and
i don't want to be any of those

it would be such a relief
to let out my anger on her face
on her feelings
and to just purge it all

but i can't,
and i won't,
and i would never let myself anyway
you know that right?

no matter my big talk
she won't be hurt
at least not physically
unless she touches you
flirts with you

if i see her laugh
and look into your eyes
and give you a hug
that girl will be sprawled on the floor.

but as it is she is blameless, guiltless
so sometimes i must sit and stew
at the both of you
and make sick twisted plans
to come to nothing.