notification

I no longer post poetry on this blog, and since this blog was intended purely for poetry, it has been silent since I made the decision to keep my poetry offline.

I made the decision as I began to submit poetry to literary journals, etc, for potential publication and I realized that publishing poems - even their drafts, even on an informal, quasiprivate poetry blog - counted as 'first publication' for copyright purposes, in the eyes of many of these journals.

There were probably other reasons I made that decision, too.

At any point, this is a notification that this blog is in essence closed; although I hope there's no one who does this, anyone who's been hovering about F5-ing for updates, hover no more.

In fact, guys, future people who stumble across this because perhaps I'm following their blog, or, whatever? please don't read this. It's embarrassing.

If you choose to: bad poetry & emotional trauma, ahead. Ick.

I've tried to mark poems that aren't mine as such and if I've failed in any past post or posts I do apologize, copy infringement, bad bad, etc.

Fin.

quote for thought

A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read “The Lost Symbol”, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it.

Writing In The Sand

There was a time, once
when you left your door unlocked
and I stole in after 8 o'clock running
and snuck under the covers next to you,
my fingers still frigid from the frosty morning.
"Mm cold," you complained when I reached beneath your shirt,
to hold your heaterlike body to mine,
the smooth skin of your breasts marred
by a mess of goosebumps I'd made.
It was a perfect moment,
stolen from the resolution of a romantic comedy,
meant to be savored.
Moments like those don't come often,
moments in which life outlines its poetical tendencies,
and they go too easily.
There's no film to rewind, no page to revisit
until with analysis the bloom can be gleaned from the plant.
For you see, the bloom fades.
Life is no photograph
and memory, I think, no engraven stone
but more a sandy beach with everlasting waves.
So much of you and I has washed away!
This small seashell, a conch or welk,
whirling around itself like we were then,
is the best piece I have left.
It sounds in my ear of breath, of heartpulse,
of "mm cold,"
and I wonder if you have any sand dollars saved,
or if you spent them all on movie rentals
and museum visits.

An Empty Cage; My Heart Has Flown

I want to take my heart and thrust it in
the hollow cage your ribs have made, to see
if life can last alone for two or three
quick beats. But then I spy a frost within.
I can't catch where the ice creeps from. Perhaps
it leaks, like marrow, from those bones. They're lean
and white, but not that frore. It is between
those corset ribs? I peer into your gaps.
It seems an icy hand sneaks up my spine.
There's nothing there where hearts would beat, but that
I'd known before. It's now I catch the trap,
detect your trick. To snare this heart of mine
will take more work than just a cage of bones.
You set it free before; my heart has flown.

Once More, With Feeling

I think it hurts the most after the cut
is done, the mark already made, when blood
is just arising fresh. Endorphins flood
the brain but do not force the new gap shut.
It's like the way I felt after you left.
At first when you had walked away I watched
you disappear without a flinch. I notched
the lipstick case, my fingers steady, deft.
But then the salty blood arose and burned
my eyes just when I thought the time had come
to knit my two parts back into one.
I hid my dreams, the fact that I now yearned
to take the time away. If only it
could be; my cuts undone, my love unquit.

I'll Be Your Light

I have no faith in men or love. I learned
my lesson well - all lovers leave somehow.
Even those who swear they'll stay til death with bow
out then, if not before. My mind has turned
the thought of love into a willing lie,
and rightly so. A fool might sit and dream
his life away on faded old sunbeams
but I have words to waste instead of sighs.
And in the lonely night that brings me down
beyond the pull of truth I build the ash
of hope into a pyre to burn the rash
impudent throughts away. I find I'll drown
my hope in any way I can to cut
the chance of pain and force my heart's door shut.

Read at Thursday Poetry

It got kudos from Dennis, who's phenomenal. So, I'll say it's not bad.

What Am I?

I am just one more sweaty patient scribe
eating week old chinese half naked and wrung out
on a life spent in pursuit

Pursuing the words of gods
that only come at inconvenient hours

The rest of our lives all as if walking from room to room
adjusting the temperature

shuffling papers

watching the fans spin
and the plies circle lazily below

the rest of our lives is waiting
compared to that moment

when god him or herself takes our hand,
and our pen

and uses it to scrawl words
in red ink as its bloody,
no longer silent, tongue.

poem

Time Passing, Beloved (EDIT: NOT MY POEM I FORGET WHOSE I'LL FIND OUT)

Time passing, and the memories of love
Coming back to me, carissima, no more mockingly
Than ever before; time passing, unslackening,
Bitterly, beloved, the memories of love
Coming into the shore.

How will it end? Time passing and our passages of love
As ever, beloved, blind
As ever before; time binding, unbinding
About us; and yet to remember
Never less chastening, nor the flame of love
Less like an ember.

What will become of us? Time
Passing, beloved, and we in a sealed
Assurance unassailed
By memory. How can it end,
This siege of a shore that no misgivings have steeled,
No doubts defend?

your exlover is dead lyrics

God that was strange to see you again
Introduced by a friend of a friend
Smiled and said 'yes I think we've met before'
In that instant it started to pour,
Captured a taxi despite all the rain
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain
And all of the time you thought I was sad
I was trying to remember your name...

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin
Tried to reach deep but you couldn't get in
Now you're outside me
You see all the beauty
Repent all your sin

It's nothing but time and a face that you lose
I chose to feel it and you couldn't choose
I'll write you a postcard
I'll send you the news
From a house down the road from real love...

Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...
Live through this, and you won't look back...

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save

I'm not sorry there's nothing to save...

...

need to say this and don't have anywhere to post it

i get angry at him when he implies i'll get over you, like you're some sort of childish toy that i'll forget within minutes of losing you from sight. i get really angry. my feelings are legitimate, deep, strong, and steady. he dismisses them out of hand to make himself feel better. i love him like a dog loves his fucking master's best friend, for christ's sake, and he's too dumb to realize that or even know what that means. fuckit.

To You, Who I Have Missed

when i miss you i like to listen to records
the records you gave me, the records that remind me of you
and I pour two glasses of wine -
one for me, and one for the absent friend.
as the evening darkens past midnight,
my living room fills up with smoke and music and sighs,
and I wonder why as I miss you.
Sometimes I will turn up the cars
and dance under the canopy of miniature suns,
remembering how I have done so before,
waiting for you.
and sometimes a simple lyric will cut my heart,
as I sit and ponder the universe
and me
and you
and if you were here to watch you would see
the tears like stars glistening,
noiseless under the music.
I will wait,
knowing you are not coming,
imagining that you will anyway,
until my glass is empty,
my cigarettes are gone,
my records have each taken their turn,
and my heart is full and sore
from lyrical pinpricks.
Then and only then I will stand,
and wipe my face,
and go to sleep under the covers
in my cold and empty bed.

So Much, We Give

We give so much of ourselves.
We give to those we love,
and we beg for them to give us back.
We lose parts of ourselves along the way,
so caught up in our giving and taking
we never notice the trades that occur,
and then we give what we have taken
to the third or fourth or fifth
down the line. For we are selfish,
in what we give and what we get -
sometimes it's more we give,
and sometimes it's more we take,
but we never give more than we choose to.
Of course, the utter gift,
the oblivion and loss of self,
is when we give our all, but even
then it is our choice, not curse,
and when eventually we have none left to give
it is ourselves to blame.
We give so much, to friends and foes,
to loves and fairy tales,
but what we give we can earn back,
with interest, if we choose.

villanelle

I got my tattoo without you, but it
did notchange me - the needle buzzed the same.
It hurt my breast, but pain just seemed to fit.

I missed you there. The thought of you just bit
into my pulse and made me blush with shame.
I got my tattoo without you, know it.

You don't have time for me, you say, and bit
by bit I know. Alone, my heart went lame
and hurt my breast, but pain just seemed to fit.

The chair held me the way your arms had quit
around my waist, your heart had quit its flame.
I got my tattoo without you, damn it.

You'd promised me so long ago you'd sit
by me today, but dreams of you inflame
me, hurt my breast. The pain just seems to fit.

I took the loss of you at once, a hit
upon my chest, and no, you never came.
I got my tattoo without you, and it
hurt my breast too. The pain just fit.

Masturbation

Please touch yourself so I don't have to.
Guide your twitching fingers down to those familiar depths
to stroke and rub your own way home.
My hands are virgin; you are not.
Don't touch me, smeared and sticky;
don't touch me beneath my clothes;
don't touch my hand or try to kiss my brow.
Stop touching me and please us both instead.

Return to Eden

Adam turned to me today.
He said, "I want my rib back."
He punched me deep with those words,
touched upon the very insignificance of my being.
I told him to take it back.
Subsume me into his being.
He could have his rib.
I wanted poetry back,
the poetry that made up the trees and streams and creatures of Eden.
I wanted purity back,
the purity that made me sleep sweet within our heady garden.
I wanted perfection back,
the peace and perfection that made me love him because he was all I had.
I wanted my blindfold back.
He can have his fucking rib.

304- f09

Abortion
I saw them, the couple.
They came down the backstairs in the star-dark middle of the night,
beneath the neon exit right by where I stand, and they held each other
as if they were falling apart and the only glue they had was each other.
They were fragile like broken china plates that life had pushed off the table.
And in their arms together they held a little bundle,
a warm swaddling mass -
I could see the steam rising up off it.
She turned to him and choked on her question:
“Are you sure?”
He looked at her and nodded, grimly,
pain etched on his face.
They walked up to me and slid open my heavy green door
and dropped their bundle in.
They dropped that baby in me and I was its second womb,
protecting it against the elements,
holding it deep within my belly.
I felt it kick and move, but it was young, and feeble.
The couple turned and left, not a single backwards glance,
and I felt the bane of life deep within me.
I was not fit to bear this burden.
I had not conceived it,
I had not asked for it,
I had no part in its making or birthing or living.
But they gave me the curse of being a part of its death.
I felt the baby in me.
I felt it kick, and struggle, and once -
but only once -
did she cry out.
She mewled pathetically, a sad little creature
thrust into the cruel cold trashy world only to perish.
And if my cold mechanical sides could have collapsed to hold her,
could have warmed to save her,
believe me when I said I would have done so,
and borne that baby into a world that was better than this sad rubbish.
But all I could do was offer feeble protection,
a slightly less awful passing and a hope
that she would live again and better.
I have no heart, only four metal walls, a lid, a door.
Still I mourned when they pulled her out from me,
her body long since blue in the night.
Their dark coats and sorrowful faces merged in one image,
their badges tarnished symbols of rescue come too late,
and my boxy metal construction was unmoved.
I have been a birthplace before,
for sewer rats and alley cats,
for fleas and ticks and maggots.
But I had never lost a baby before this night.

lyrics

You can make a plan
Carve it into stone
Like a feather falling
That is still unknown

Until the clock speaks up
Says it’s time to go
You can choose the high
Or the lower road

You might clench your fist
You might fork your tongue
As you curse or praise
All the things you’ve done

And the faders move
And the music dies
As we pass over
On the arc of time

So you’ll nurse your love
like a wounded dove
in the covered cage of night
Every star is crossed
by phrenetic thoughts
they separate and then collide
and they twist like sheets
‘til you fall asleep
and they finally unwind
it’s a black balloon,
it’s a dream you’ll soon
deny

I hear if you make friends
With Jesus Christ
You’ll get right up
From that chalk outline

And then you'll get dolled up
And you'll dress in white
All to take your place
In his chorus line

And then in you’ll come
With those marching drums
In a saintly compromise
No more whiskey slurs
No more blonde hair girls
For your whole eternal life
And you’ll do the dance
That was choreographed
At the very dawn of time
Singing “I told you son,
The day would come,
You would die, you die, you die, you die…”

To the deepest part
Of the human heart
The fear of death expands
‘til we crack the code,
we’ve always known
But could never understand
On a circuit board
We’ll soon be born
Again, again, again, again…


These lyrics are proving important to me. I'm big on the idea that, as Death Cab has said, "every plan is a tiny prayer to father time."
Lately my plans haven't been coming out exactly like I've expected.

facebook

I'm posting this here because this is one of the few things that remains visible on my facebook.

Yes, I shut down the majority of my facebook today. You (whoever you are, reading this) are unable to view pictures, videos, boxes, and any other similar information. You are also unable to post information on my wall. You will still be able to message, if you so choose. I believe notes are still viewable, and so I'm posting this here too.

I shut it down because on and off I've been playing with the idea of deleting my facebook. I haven't gone to that step because I think some people might worry about me and some people might believe I had defriended them, which is obviously not the case - after all, with 170 friends on facebook, if you're my friend, it's pretty much for a reason. I actually know you.

I also shut it down because it's unnecessary. Facebook takes up far too much of my time and moreover it allows me to stalk people unhealthily. Facebook holds a lot of memories, both mine and others, that neither I nor you need to be able to access. I understand that I could choose to delete my facebook or simply not navigate to it as much; I'm going to attempt that as well. Its accessibility and easy distraction, especially when I am procrastinating, are the problem there.

Finally, there's some shit going on in my life that I'm tired of dealing with right now. Opening up to people is tiresome and has proven to be disappointing as of late. Therefore, I've closed off one more part of myself. It's an outward manifestation of an inner action and attempt.

On to other things.
My schedule, over the next week and a half:
Tuesday: busy until five
Wednesday: busy until 6ish
Thursday: free til 11, free after six
Friday: free til 10, free after six
Saturday: free before noon and after four
Sunday: theoretically free all day, will probably be going home
Monday: free before noon and after five
Tuesday: free after six
Wednesday: free after six
Thursday: free all day
Friday: free before one, after four
Saturday: free before ten and after five
From then on out, my summer starts and I will be free most of the time.

I am posting this here because if I have any friends that are interested in getting together, hanging out, etc, I'd prefer to schedule them in, especially ahead of time. Currently I have no other engagements on my schedule. Feel free to start vying for time. There are a few people I would especially like to see; they are tagged. (Shayla: Brewed? I get paid this Friday.)

I am looking forward to this summer; there are several things that I will be able to clear up in my life after graduation and moreover it looks like a lazy, enjoyable time for me. There will be LARP - hoorah! - and beach trips, possibly a class (but only one, a miracle!) and when I return to school, my batteries will be refreshed and it will be my final year here.

I hope to see you all around. Pax.

27

you

are ignoring me right now but that's
okay
because after all i have been getting the feeling
that i did not turn out to be all you wanted
and maybe i am a little bit of a
disappointment

except that can't hardly be true because
after all we hardly knew know will know
each other

but i do get this feeling
that i am not everything you wished for
perhaps i am about half
or maybe even three quarters percent
but i am not everything

and i must struggle and push and wonder
if i should let you go
if i should turn around some day soon with a heartbreaking smile on
and say
come back to me when you're serious
or don't come back to me at all
or please please just love me.

i don't need you to love me.
i could walk away from this now with only
a modicum
of hurt because i have managed to keep you away enough
or you have managed to stay away enough
that my life will resume with only ripples
and a feeling of emptiness and or possibly loss
without a total self destruct

and yes i would miss you
and yes i would cry
and yes i would accuse myself
of pushing away or pulling away
but i don't want to lie up nights waiting
to see if i'll hear from you

or not.

26

response to philip larkin

You fuck them up, your mom and dad
You may not mean to, but you do.
You blame them for the faults you have
Between the sheets - your lovers few.

And you fuck them up in every turn
away from them you take,
while you pretend you want to learn
to not be them, make their mistakes.

You hand your misery to them
by blaming genes, not love and hate.
It helps you shield yourself again
when you say you fail because of fate.