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.

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.

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.

25

list poem (six months ago)

Six months ago there were lots of things I had.
I had three grandparents,
over a thousand dollars in savings,
and a boyfriend who would play with his computer instead of me.
I had a 3.516 gpa,
a grad school all ready to go,
and no fun in college.
I had taken nine English courses,
memorized Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven,"
and never read Kurt Vonnegut.
I had clean clothes all the time,
a sense of duty, responsibility, and appreciation,
and a disdain for my jail-bound brother.
six months ago I had a plan for the future,
a wedding on my mind,
and a future in domesticity.
I had old, fading scars,
my wisdom teeth,
and an alarming propensity to cry during The Office.
You should have seen me in the theaters when we watched Wall-E.
Six months ago my parents knew nothing and felt no need to cry.
my boyfriend's mom encouraged me to call her mom,
and I liked to listen to the Killers and Death Cab for Cutie.
Six months ago I had something that I called stability,
as well as something I called direction,
and something else I called motivation.
I had something else I never paused to identify,
a niggling feeling that ate at the back of my brain
when I was falling asleep. I wanted to fit into
the stereotype but the stereotype was suffocating me
whenever I stopped to draw a breath -
which was not often.
Six months ago i thought I had everything that I needed for my life to be complete.
I thought I had no worries.
It turns out that I had plenty of those,
and just not much experience to go with.
Some of these things I still have.
Most of these I do not.
But I'll tell you what.
I no longer watch The Office,
and the last time I did,
my eyes were dry.

24

List poem

I Want

I want to be with you, cute you
and I want us to be in facebook pictures together
that show us in our perfect summer
and I want to be young again
although I am not old,
I want to be young again the way I used to be.
I want to be less tired and I want to sleep less,
I want to spend my nights raging, loving, drinking, smoking, partying,
and I want to spend my days brilliantly.
I want every day to be golden,
and I want every horse to have a spirally white horn.
I want you to drive a white mustang,
and I want everyone to be happy,
including and especially me.
I want to go back in time and steal me-who-I-was
and make her change places with me-who-I-am
so that I can pretend these ideals will happen.
I want to believe that we will have that golden perfect summer
and I want to pretend, no, believe, no, experience me
being unbroken.
I want to cherish the idealism I once had
and I want to hold on to the fearlessness
that has faded because of pain.
I want to rewind time and meet you three years ago,
both of us three years ago,
and that's when I want us to fall in love.
Not here, and not now.
I want that to happen, because I think things could have been perfect then.
I want for things to have been perfect then.

23

How To

How To Descend

you start by breaking up with your boyfriend, your best friend
who might have been the only person keeping you sane
(but you didn't know it then)
and you fuck around.

You burn that bridge with idle sarcastic lies
that your boyfriend, your best friend, believes
(which just shows that he didn't know you too well after all, not after four years anyway)
and you find yourself alone.

You fuck around with people you shouldn't fuck around
but they're there, and they'll take you
(and at this point you're desperate to be taken)
and your self-image slips.

Then you tell your remaining friends that you have priorities,
that they're not number one, that this stranger is
(this stranger they don't approve of and who treats you like shit but mmmm, the sex is good, isn't it?)
and you wake up one morning alone.

You get very drunk a lot, vodka becomes your boyfriend, your best friend,
and on one of those nights
(those very drunk, half-remembered nights)
you let more strangers into you.

That's how you lose the guy who treats you like shit,
whose only redeeming quality was that he treated you like shit on a regular basis
(and mmm the sex was good, wasn't it?)
and you start taking walks.

These are not regular walks, the ones you take, they are ones
that start at midnight or one or two in the morning, and as you walk
(in the coldest nights, if you can arrange that)
you smoke cigarettes and fight back hysterical sobs.

And then you remember you have pills left over
from a long-ago surgery, that didn't hurt as much as it should have
(that surgery was another life ago, a happy and held-together life ago)
and they start to look deliciously good.

You realize you have a problem or two problems or at the very least some problems
which you think is a sign that you're getting better
(it always was a sign before)
and so you don't ask for help.

In fact you refuse to ask for help, which is when you start to really fall down
because you start to expect the health and happiness to come back
(because you've kidded yourself for so long about this one, haven't you?)
and you insist - you thrust your fists against the posts and still insist you see the light.

You start to "date" people and your eighth-grade mentality comes back
the mentality that never understood love
(and especially never understood anyone who said they liked you)
and you find yourself fucking for things.

You find yourself becoming a low-grade, college-level, materialistic whore
and you convince yourself it's all right.
(Doesn't everyone have a price?)
Finally you assert some ethics and quit it.

Then you just find yourself alone again,
because even if it was the worst sex of your life, someone was there
(and the nights weren't so cold and the walks weren't so long)
and they knew how to hold you, even if it was badly.

While you're alone you drink some more and you cry a lot,
and you cut yourself at home and at work
(no one is ever very observant, no one is ever observant enough)
and you relish the blood while sucking it away so that there are no obvious scabs.

Of a sudden you wake up and find you're dating three people at once,
which is every man's dream until he or she realizes it
(because when you have any sort of soul or humanity polygamy only tears it down)
and you hate yourself even more, ever more.

You wean away. You wake up to life a little. You break it off,
one by one, and finally you're only seeing one person
(one person who might be good for you)
and because you have fallen so far you think about breaking it off again.

If you break it off, you will be an island again, and no one will be able to hurt you.
You will be able to fix the people who you have hurt, because you have become familiar with the sound of settling.
(If you break it off you will be a hollow shell again, and no one will notice, and no one will care)
and you start to weigh the dangers of being hurt against the pain that goes with hurting.

Here is your decision.
Will you settle, and make your other lover happy?
No one will hear your soft sobs at night and no one will see your midnight walks recommence.
No one will be watching for you, and no one will catch you this time.
(Do you want to be caught?)
But if you open up,
and you let the possibility of pain grow
(if you let him try to fix you, and if you let you love him)
you may be fixed.
You also may be broken again,
at the end of this ordeal,
like a china plate which can be broken over and over again
into ever-smaller pieces
(into dust, and dust comes from dust, and dust unto dust forever and ever)
until you cannot move any more.

Here is your choice.
Do you break yourself,
or do you let someone else take you,
to be broken at some future point?

Philip Larkin

"They fuck you up, your mom and dad"

They fuck you up, your mom and dad
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-stylen hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can
And don't have any kids yourself.

I like this poem. It's funny, it's serious, it's to the point, and it uses the word "fuck." Helps show kids that poetry isn't all "thee" and "thine" and "love" and "dove." w00t

22

villanelle

VOW OF SILENCE VOW OF SILENCE
My cat, she likes to chase her tail and eat
small mice and twisty snakes she finds hunting.
She drops them, eats them at my shrinking feet.

His new wife likes to rack men up, each cheat
she marks with daggered smiles. And then laughing
alone, she chases some more tail - then eats.

My daughter watches me from under sheets
as shouts ring from my mouth. She lies; swearing,
she drops fables before my shrinking feet.

Model, guide, icon of forgotten heat,
my old mother watches herself withering.
She plays parent too thin and will not eat.

I lost my job today. Clever and neat
I was, but not enough for her thinking.
My boss drops me and scorns my shrinking feats.

I lost my job. I lost my girl. My sweet
love faded into sour roses wilting.
They all can thrive on chase and food - they eat
their success right before my losing feet.

21

been a while, hasn't it?

a held hand offers
more warmth than the chill wind can
ever rip away.

20

Our elevators are these scary things
that shake and shiver, wanting only rest
grudgingly pulling us down - they bring
our selves back and forth on our endless quests.

We quest for love, we quest for life, for peace
they mumble, groan, complain about our feet
that scurry too fast. we never decrease
our frenzied pace, they carry us all, our heat.

Heartbeat. Heartbreak. True love's first kiss - they see
it all, still unimpressed by comings, fights,
our goings, tears. But also they leave us be,
a haven from our lives, they leave us be.

No silent protest offer they, but still
our hearts they see, our secrets keep in full.

19

Our first, first kiss, first hug, heartbeat, quick breath
intake of air propelling us beyond
the now. We cling to warmth, to us, out of our depth
afraid of letting our hearts grow much too fond.

Some say - they say - these moments, the first are best
the ones where there's faith, no fear, a chance
of butterflies and dreams. We stay here lest
our feeble dreams stumble and spoil our dance.

To truly love, we must push on, heartbreak
is not assured. To take a leap, we must -
we gulp but move beyond the fear and throw
it up for truth. The truth is that we fake

our confidence. We must instead give up
and throw it all away in hope for better luck.

18

Fear

like worry.

like shivers.

like fingernails tracing unknown letters on your back.

like every tiny hair standing, soldier-straight, in goosebumps.

like thinking you're being watched.

like being watched.

like insomnia.

like scrunching shut frightened eyes.

like holding tight onto someone just to feel solid - forget safe.

like crying, but worse.

like a child in the night.

like losing.

like sickness,

like nausea,

like the gag reflex.

like the stench of burnt chocolate.

and stale cigarettes.

like the full moon, the dark moon, the crescent moon.

like watching impotently as the black wave of insects devours everything.

like hearing one scream

or like hearing a wicked, too-pleased laugh.

but mostly, like constant, bone-grinding worry.

17

V

like a lie
like a bluff that's been called
like a bewildered, bothered mother
wondering where her child went.
like a surprise, but a bad one.
like a young girl expelled not from home
but from country.
like choosing to go to sleep.
like closing your eyes to the bright sun
and opening them into an empty, deserted life.
like a revolt, a revolution.
like a change - but not quite, not yet.
like good music that sours because of bad memories.
like prohibition.
like fear.
like complete and utter shutdown.
like an idea that couldn't be contained.
like a wildfire.
like a young girl who would be shot for love.

like a vendetta.p