Category: Poetry

the secret handshake
to my soul
discovers an old bra
lost for ages
resting softly
in the wake of so many
pajamas
socks
panties
and what a beautiful day this must be
to be alive.

five twenty-two, a.m.
and my cursing at my longest nail now broken
is heard only by the newly lit sky
so these thoughts,
like those four fifty-three raccoons,
unsettling the stable sense of wanderlust
awakening ever-steadily all these mornings
when i wonder if you minded
that i called you; sometimes, i
wonder if you’d keep me up
for a long drive home…

considering the history
of my sex
which drips from the yarn
i knit together
and all those times
in which we were considered equal
in our own right,
i find myself longing
for the spinning feeling
of us
pressed silently, sleepily
under quilts.

without our idealized version
of history
it would be only i under the quilt
and you
wondering if i’d ever give it back.

earlier attempts at poetry
left me breathless
and aching for a love
which i could ceaselessly write about:
you were never that boy to me
just a shell to fill
with pretty words
and i loved the way you
held me, in those
little sheets of paper
because it meant
everything to you
as i nervously fretted
about my crumbling talent

so i figured it out:
every lie you told
started
with the opening
of your mouth
so,
when it comes to jesus,
et cetera,
the tears fall
at the grieving
over forgotten faiths

and the first star i see
may not be
a star.

our letters,
like my memories,
are not lost
only resting
beneath the aching
trumpeting
noise
of what is real;
what is now.

i just hear the missing.

it’s always been the same voice
sitting in the back of my head
commanding the messages from my heart,
it’s always oh you know you…
         LOVE LOVE LOVE
    and I do,
a rational being i know these things
and i can force change like hurricanes can force evacuations:
 maybe i shouldve
maybe i just didnt
   there is no one to blame here, but;
        i think there’s a part of you that just kinda wants to
        spread yr dirty bloody fingers against my skins
        and love me because i bleed

you still see me
between the eraser marks against my skin
little bars i
    sink into you
   and you know me by the scars
ive left and you call me
   by name

the haunt of a muted trumpet
tells stories of our love so forgotten
and i’m just lying so close to you
wondering when or if
you’re gonna make your move
every single dew drop kiss
will melt away the emptiness
and i’m so vacant i can’t even remember it now:

the soft dreamers figure
beneath my frame
and i am crooked
and you are awkward
these stories will intertwine in their abuses
every misstep in the right direction
and every lovers lament
blending sadly
and silently
on the same burnt up canvas

i hope you know how destroyed you have the power to make me
that time i sat and cried on your staircase
without leaving you, i always left you
as you threw a ten dollar bill in my direction
calling me a whore
and i never thought to go
i just sobbed, grabbing onto you
like a little helpless fuckup

i dream of children
i do not want
i dream of my own innocense
this vulnerability
i unendingly refuse to let go of;
my mind fills with pity as i black out
falling to the ground

and awaking in your bed;
your lips are uninvited
but you won’t listen,
i suspect
i learned in the morning
by the bruises on my wounds
of your touch

and i remember weeks later
the taste of all that alcohol
so odorless against
the freshly beer drunken backdrop of my lips
i just kept kissing
and you just kept asking questions
in encouragement
of tonight’s ridiculous main attraction
ms. jess and her glorious curves
never tainted in this way

but your blankets were so so soft
and my wait to fall asleep in them
seemed broken, shattering peacefully
the dreams of waking up with you
morning after morning
my little worrisome daughter-of-my-mother mind
wondering if tomorrow i will even
see the sun at all

i just keep wishing
for a better day
and a better daydream
to replace nightmare
after nightmare
after, wait.

hold me closer,
glittering starscape
stories of the moon
weaving themselves
within the tapestry of your eyes
i crave you:

i crave your wreckless availability
the knowledge of your heartbreaking
against the walls of your chest;
i hope i someday get to see you cry like that again,
darling, it was cradled
in the annoying, too-open hollow space
of your lips that i last believed
in anything

i am dying in my own failures
and i suppose i deserve every last minute of it.
so press up against your princess
in one last bittersweet embrace
i’ve learned the steps now,
i can dance now.

this feeling
is a paper tiger
threatening us
with its graceful
blowing in the wind

when it stops its taunts
in the crashing fire
i’m expecting a slow
drawn out melancholy
that explodes into a million shades
of regret

you and i
have lived a love
as dreamers
not regretters

and i’d take it all back if i could.

i alone own the sickest sweetest fantasy
of being yours before knowning you
the quick adrenaline pull of cheating
and getting away with all the lies
would never feel so good,
baby, baby, won’t you
just let it go
and fall into me?
and i, i could know
i could know you
and never love you.
not once.

i’m the aggressor,
i realize my words attack
but i have
no words or bullets left in my pack
i lost them all,
i lost it all,
back there then
when i read the truth about you
and wondered where
the stunning,
reality beautiful
of you
got lost in the
meaningless madness
of me.