It is okay
That you are just this person that is
tall
and
cold
But I can't be mortar between bricks of unconsciousness anymore.
Please Save Me.
December 08, 2012
November 17, 2012
October II
I can smell October rain on your skin
And its disgusting
There is a bomb shell in your ribcage and god damn if I don’t find a way to set it off…
Your mother taught you how to slow dance in the living room the night before our senior prom
And the scuffs your marshalls black dress shoes left on the floor remind me of your hollow lungs
Of the way you fell asleep in church once and the way you fall like
October rain…how I fucking hate
October rain.
And I wish I hadn’t yelled at you
With my tongue flapping between my teeth like Medieval war flags
and I wish you had yelled back
Told me to sleep at my mothers or told me to take a walk
But you didn’t
And i do not forgive you for that
And its disgusting
There is a bomb shell in your ribcage and god damn if I don’t find a way to set it off…
Your mother taught you how to slow dance in the living room the night before our senior prom
And the scuffs your marshalls black dress shoes left on the floor remind me of your hollow lungs
Of the way you fell asleep in church once and the way you fall like
October rain…how I fucking hate
October rain.
And I wish I hadn’t yelled at you
With my tongue flapping between my teeth like Medieval war flags
and I wish you had yelled back
Told me to sleep at my mothers or told me to take a walk
But you didn’t
And i do not forgive you for that
dandelions to weeds
Inevitable things.
Summer leaving
October returning.
Love lost.
Broken fingernails.
Dandelions to weeds.
And Goodbyes.
The good and the bad kind. At one point we sat down and we learn to look past our sad stories and just sit in the quiet remembering we made a place filled with inevitable things.
Summer leaving.
October returning.
Just like it promised. No secret.
We’d whisper loud enough for our parents to know because in a world so filled with inevitable things, we secretly wanted to make sure wed never get lost. Or in too much trouble.
Or at least enough trouble to say we made all these days worth it.
Love lost.
Broken fingernails.
Two things you never regretted sharing with your mother because she told you so. In at least two languages one that involved yelling.
And remembering.
How we thought crossing bike tracks meant we were married and pinky swears were blood oaths and how being scared only lasted seconds just like now..
where we learned we can only hold our breath long enough for the monsters to disappear, then all we have left are our own ghosts to be afraid of.
How October would always end up returning.
Sometimes too late, when we were already gritting our teeth preparing for the cold when really we were just too scared to say something that might mess this up.
Like I miss you.
And when august would roll in with frostbite and goodbyes we’d unlock our bike chains
and never look back.
Because it wasn’t worth it.
Because we might’ve messed it up. Inevitable things. Like goodbyes.
Like growing up
Summer leaving
October returning.
Love lost.
Broken fingernails.
Dandelions to weeds.
And Goodbyes.
The good and the bad kind. At one point we sat down and we learn to look past our sad stories and just sit in the quiet remembering we made a place filled with inevitable things.
Summer leaving.
October returning.
Just like it promised. No secret.
We’d whisper loud enough for our parents to know because in a world so filled with inevitable things, we secretly wanted to make sure wed never get lost. Or in too much trouble.
Or at least enough trouble to say we made all these days worth it.
Love lost.
Broken fingernails.
Two things you never regretted sharing with your mother because she told you so. In at least two languages one that involved yelling.
And remembering.
How we thought crossing bike tracks meant we were married and pinky swears were blood oaths and how being scared only lasted seconds just like now..
where we learned we can only hold our breath long enough for the monsters to disappear, then all we have left are our own ghosts to be afraid of.
How October would always end up returning.
Sometimes too late, when we were already gritting our teeth preparing for the cold when really we were just too scared to say something that might mess this up.
Like I miss you.
And when august would roll in with frostbite and goodbyes we’d unlock our bike chains
and never look back.
Because it wasn’t worth it.
Because we might’ve messed it up. Inevitable things. Like goodbyes.
Like growing up
Dirty House
This house is dirty, but it is comfortable
Love me biblically with messy church buried in bed sheets.
And don’t remind me I’m crazy
Even when I am kitchen knives to the holes in the wall
Even when I am scissors chopping locks at the dining room table screaming, “make me new!”
hoping you’ll tuck me inside yourself until I’m good again.
Inherit my breath
Know I am a rough draft
Ugly poetry, you scrawled in lipstick across the mirror
Unfinished poetry, the kind you use to get into girls bedrooms
This house, we built, is filled with closed windows and broken bible verses because we knew neither of us could keep up with that shit.
It is comfortable
like watching the world fall apart from skyscraper walking stilts.
And you don’t remind me that I am crazy because I am so afraid of being all spit fire and bruise… and also a little afraid of Kama Sutra.
Heard that we can make ghosts from the doorway
Heard we can make bedsprings turn into symphonies
Heard that age doesn’t make us less great-I want you to know, that your heart is much like my palms, always searching and always shaking.
Shake me awake in this house, that we built.
Dirty and comfortable.
And don’t remind me I’m crazy-just that my souls too big for this body- and that you're more than happy to leave some extra room.
Love me biblically with messy church buried in bed sheets.
And don’t remind me I’m crazy
Even when I am kitchen knives to the holes in the wall
Even when I am scissors chopping locks at the dining room table screaming, “make me new!”
hoping you’ll tuck me inside yourself until I’m good again.
Inherit my breath
Know I am a rough draft
Ugly poetry, you scrawled in lipstick across the mirror
Unfinished poetry, the kind you use to get into girls bedrooms
This house, we built, is filled with closed windows and broken bible verses because we knew neither of us could keep up with that shit.
It is comfortable
like watching the world fall apart from skyscraper walking stilts.
And you don’t remind me that I am crazy because I am so afraid of being all spit fire and bruise… and also a little afraid of Kama Sutra.
Heard that we can make ghosts from the doorway
Heard we can make bedsprings turn into symphonies
Heard that age doesn’t make us less great-I want you to know, that your heart is much like my palms, always searching and always shaking.
Shake me awake in this house, that we built.
Dirty and comfortable.
And don’t remind me I’m crazy-just that my souls too big for this body- and that you're more than happy to leave some extra room.
May 05, 2012
My biggest inspiration
I pull my greatest amount of inspiration from one poet- out of many. Her name stands as very prominent in the poetry world and stands as one of the highest known activist/poetry writers. Andrea Gibson has a huge stance in my book of inspirations. Below, is one of my favorite pieces and one i read as a conclusion of my high school theater involvement.
Last night I painted a purple tree on my bedroom wall
I woke up this morning in a pile of leaves
The color of a million different faces
Thinking of that hand
That planted the seed
Of the family tree
That grew us all
And how each one of us
Will one day fall back to the ground
This morning
I was listening to my heart pound
Knowing with every single beat
That a thousand other hearts
Were falling asleep forever
On a day they never thought they would
And I know there are tribes of aborigines
That decide how and when they’ll die
After a hundred years or so
They walk into the desert alone
Offer up their breath
And within two minutes
Soar into a death
As beautiful as their life
And I was thinking I
Will probably never be enlightened enough
To decide how I want to die
So this morning
I decided how I want to live
What I want to give
What kind of song I want to sing
Now I’m no longer
Looking at my days like they’re a cup
Calling them half empty or half full
When they’ve always been enough
They’ll always be enough
To fill me up
If I stop thinking so much
And start drinking them up
Until I get so drunk and high on my days
I’ll be walking up to strangers and saying things like
“Hey, I know Jesus was born in a manger
But I woke at dawn today
To watch the earth’s horizon
Give birth to true rising sun of God
And I can’t stop singing hallelujah”
Can you believe we’re here?
Can you believe there are gods somewhere praying to us?
I want to be that nut on a bus
Who’s really a prophet
Telling everybody
“Smoking is bad
Stop it
You might be an opera singer some day
And how are you gonna hit the high notes?”
I wanna live like those high notes
That rise from the throats of old ladies
When they see little babies
Riding in shopping carts
I wanna start somebody’s heart like that
Taking ninety years back
So you’ll have sworn
You weren’t born
Until you saw me
Planting roses
In all the sidewalk cracks
So when you trip
You’ll fall in love
With someone you thought you hated
And now look at what that love has created
Look
There’s a sky
On her faded blue jeans
With a flock of birds
About to fly to my words
And my next line’s
Gonna rhyme with her eyes
And she’ll wink
And I’ll think I’m as beautiful as him
I wanna live my life
Like it’s a little league game
I don’t care if I win
Just wanna watch some little girl
Get her very first hit
Watch her father cheer so hard
He spills his beer
And decides to quit
I wanna split some woman’s
Tired eyes open
Wake her with her own sunrise
So she knows
There’s reason to be hoping
She’ll say
“There are stingers in my heart
But I’m sure that I’m a queen”
And that night
She’ll vow to swarm
Until every angry car horn
Is reborn a song
Of let there be light
Every angry war cry reborn
A song of let there be life
I wanna build the timid teenage boy
A microphone that will
Echo his rhymes
The same way
They echo in his shower
When he’s home alone
I wanna write poems
In the tone
Of your mother’s eyes
When she whispered your name
For the very first time
Poems that will make you go home
Pick up the phone
And call her
While I call mine to say
“You know those lines
On the kitchen wall
Where I grew
Taller and taller and taller
Put a couple more there won’t you?
Cause I’m growing up here”
No longer looking at my days
Like they’re a cup
Calling them enough
From now on
They’ll be overflowing
Since now I’m knowing
It’s up to me
To fill them up
Home- howd you ever say no
The problem never was going home.
It was finding out where home really was all along.
So I’ve got one knife in my heart and one in my hand and if you asked me to dance this last time
…well I wouldn’t say no, id just say that its dangerous
And I’d hoped you’d take the risk.
With every morning we’d spend sleeping past ten and pulling pages from the bible looking for some kind of answer we’d find that everything gets easier and clearer after a good cup of coffee.
Then maybe you’d stop looking for answers all the time and let someone else be worked up over the biased news casting for once
. I’ve known too many kids with their fascinations and self diagnosed addictions to Aderall and late night reality TV to let you slip into that societal coma.
So if you get the chance, try to find your way back to home
even if what you thought would be waiting there all along isn’t.
But maybe there’d be just an empty ashtray where you burned old love letters and a piece of birthday cake your mom made from scratch because you’ll never have those two things the same one day.
So if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this is that when you come home soaked in rain water and you can’t remember the last time something went at least ok, call your grandmother.
Or bake brownies and you probably will make it out alright.
If a girl with a knife in her hand and a chip on her shoulder asks you to dance…well you take that dance and know that one day you’ll look back on it and wonder
how you’d ever had said no.
It was finding out where home really was all along.
So I’ve got one knife in my heart and one in my hand and if you asked me to dance this last time
…well I wouldn’t say no, id just say that its dangerous
And I’d hoped you’d take the risk.
With every morning we’d spend sleeping past ten and pulling pages from the bible looking for some kind of answer we’d find that everything gets easier and clearer after a good cup of coffee.
Then maybe you’d stop looking for answers all the time and let someone else be worked up over the biased news casting for once
. I’ve known too many kids with their fascinations and self diagnosed addictions to Aderall and late night reality TV to let you slip into that societal coma.
So if you get the chance, try to find your way back to home
even if what you thought would be waiting there all along isn’t.
But maybe there’d be just an empty ashtray where you burned old love letters and a piece of birthday cake your mom made from scratch because you’ll never have those two things the same one day.
So if there’s one thing I’ve learned from all this is that when you come home soaked in rain water and you can’t remember the last time something went at least ok, call your grandmother.
Or bake brownies and you probably will make it out alright.
If a girl with a knife in her hand and a chip on her shoulder asks you to dance…well you take that dance and know that one day you’ll look back on it and wonder
how you’d ever had said no.
Not rugged or Brave
I never wrote a poem for someone and id never write this for some boy.
This is not about some boy.
Its about the monsters under our beds we convinced that covers and hall lights would mark us invincible AGAINST As we learned that broken glass could split a home in two at least when it comes from things as valuable as grandmas china ware and your little sisters sippycup mentality.
We learned its finding scattered bobbypins on his bathroom sink that do not belong to you…that split a home in two This is not about a boy. Not the boy your mother met in a new York bar not the boy you fell so hard for your scraped knees wont even forgive you for it. But if you asked me.
I would stretch the world out before us tugging at the flesh of its entirety and say tell me where you’ve never been. And I will use every last ounce of energy I got to take you where you never had the courage to go alone. Even if you were everything ive always been afraid of. There are no longer monsters and bedtime ghost stories but the memory of you casting shadows on sidewalk drawings done up by childhood neighbor boys.
The way it was “once summer “now it seems like we don’t know what summer feels like we haven’t been home in so long even the smell of cigarette smoke is enough to remind us what our mothers voice sounds like. This is not about a boy.
Even if it were it wouldn’t be about you because you remind me of my father. Not because your rugged or brave…its because nobody gets your humor and you embarrass me 9 out of 10 times at the grocery store. So if you asked me…to take your hand when we step off the rocks with a hundred feet to drop itd fall two steps faster just to be sure youd have something to land on.
But Id know to walk home alone when its over and done because ive watched two houses fall apart more fragile then origami paper wings. This is about the monsters that we thought went away when we turned 13. Nightlights do not protect you from your own demons dear.
But if you had only one favor to ask and you asked it of me Id do just about anything to let you know where I stood
This is not about some boy.
Its about the monsters under our beds we convinced that covers and hall lights would mark us invincible AGAINST As we learned that broken glass could split a home in two at least when it comes from things as valuable as grandmas china ware and your little sisters sippycup mentality.
We learned its finding scattered bobbypins on his bathroom sink that do not belong to you…that split a home in two This is not about a boy. Not the boy your mother met in a new York bar not the boy you fell so hard for your scraped knees wont even forgive you for it. But if you asked me.
I would stretch the world out before us tugging at the flesh of its entirety and say tell me where you’ve never been. And I will use every last ounce of energy I got to take you where you never had the courage to go alone. Even if you were everything ive always been afraid of. There are no longer monsters and bedtime ghost stories but the memory of you casting shadows on sidewalk drawings done up by childhood neighbor boys.
The way it was “once summer “now it seems like we don’t know what summer feels like we haven’t been home in so long even the smell of cigarette smoke is enough to remind us what our mothers voice sounds like. This is not about a boy.
Even if it were it wouldn’t be about you because you remind me of my father. Not because your rugged or brave…its because nobody gets your humor and you embarrass me 9 out of 10 times at the grocery store. So if you asked me…to take your hand when we step off the rocks with a hundred feet to drop itd fall two steps faster just to be sure youd have something to land on.
But Id know to walk home alone when its over and done because ive watched two houses fall apart more fragile then origami paper wings. This is about the monsters that we thought went away when we turned 13. Nightlights do not protect you from your own demons dear.
But if you had only one favor to ask and you asked it of me Id do just about anything to let you know where I stood
INSIDE
I really love when people turn themselves inside out so when you try to give them the words you held in your mouth way to long, they can’t do anything but feel like an open bowl you have no permission to pour back.
I really love when you turn yourself inside out
You’ve gotta story under there somewhere- but I swear I won’t dig for it.
Maybe then when the guilt overwhelms your everything…we can press our ears to the wall and listen to one another breathe between two inches of oak and fiber glass.
We could wear each others armor like accidents where we piggyback ride our way through the proofreading when we were told “ you’re just not doing it right?
And I imagine that we would end up being each others emergency contacts one day.
Or maybe we’d be the each others hurt.
Hoping wed fall into the quiet hideaways of parents no longer in love.
Or lovers..far too scared to run. And we’d laugh like jackals sleeping under desert moons there is nothing sad about disspearing when you’ve spent your whole life hiding.
Then We’d touch the lullabyes of our fingertips together and remind eachother of this.
And how this day would be marked with the salt from each others skin.
How our voices cracked like the spines of phone books when we tell each other to “ piss off” then make out to rap music.
There is dynamite in my cerebellum because of you and im window shopping for a day that matches the ones like that just to feel some kind of explosion.
But mostly, I really love when you turn yourself inside out.
Gives us a chance to see what your scratch-gaurd plastic bodies been trying to tell me all along.
I really love when you turn yourself inside out
You’ve gotta story under there somewhere- but I swear I won’t dig for it.
Maybe then when the guilt overwhelms your everything…we can press our ears to the wall and listen to one another breathe between two inches of oak and fiber glass.
We could wear each others armor like accidents where we piggyback ride our way through the proofreading when we were told “ you’re just not doing it right?
And I imagine that we would end up being each others emergency contacts one day.
Or maybe we’d be the each others hurt.
Hoping wed fall into the quiet hideaways of parents no longer in love.
Or lovers..far too scared to run. And we’d laugh like jackals sleeping under desert moons there is nothing sad about disspearing when you’ve spent your whole life hiding.
Then We’d touch the lullabyes of our fingertips together and remind eachother of this.
And how this day would be marked with the salt from each others skin.
How our voices cracked like the spines of phone books when we tell each other to “ piss off” then make out to rap music.
There is dynamite in my cerebellum because of you and im window shopping for a day that matches the ones like that just to feel some kind of explosion.
But mostly, I really love when you turn yourself inside out.
Gives us a chance to see what your scratch-gaurd plastic bodies been trying to tell me all along.
Hands
The only thing I ever really knew about you was that your heart beat was always a few seconds off and your bloodstream looked exactly like cursive lettering.
A little skewed.
And at times that’s all we ever wanted to know,
Because sometimes when you listen to good music
your hands become iridescent and I can see your veins pulsating.
There is love in the words you let in.
The ones you let into your milky blue blood there is not much we are allowed to have here.
But those words you sure never neglected to let push through.
And its good.
Good to know there are things that keep us grounded anchors and ex girlfriends
We know its good like the good kinda vulgarity used in Italian films and the kinda language your mom uses when talking about her divorce.
Simple…and a lot like trying to weed out the cursing.
But its good in all the same ways its good we remember the first bite of pancakes you ever had and the way your front teeth felt when you got your braces off.
Kinda weird And in the curse of growing up and giving up young well youll never forget your first kiss.
The one you had under the stairwell with iridescent hands gleaming green with envy because you know if she were a rabbit well shed cut off her own paw and give it to you for good luck.
Theres not enough of that kinda weirdness and love out there.
And on these days?
Yeah youll feel like the luckiest on these days.
The ones where we recognize the beautiful weirdness as much as the unshakable nerves that it may not work out.
The inside airplane take off of your heart KNOWING these fleeting memories may not make it till morning.
And when its possible that they wont. well that’s whats lucky about it in the end.
That maybe its not the hopes and prayers that shell come back to you, but the fact that you probably just need to get some more sleep.
And maybe stop convincing yourself that one day youll bleed red like the rest.
But for today,
bleed blue while lyricists creep theyre way into your pulmonary arteries in days filled with good and weirdness,
birch trees for stability and iridescent hands in case someone comes along with a need to see through.
A little skewed.
And at times that’s all we ever wanted to know,
Because sometimes when you listen to good music
your hands become iridescent and I can see your veins pulsating.
There is love in the words you let in.
The ones you let into your milky blue blood there is not much we are allowed to have here.
But those words you sure never neglected to let push through.
And its good.
Good to know there are things that keep us grounded anchors and ex girlfriends
We know its good like the good kinda vulgarity used in Italian films and the kinda language your mom uses when talking about her divorce.
Simple…and a lot like trying to weed out the cursing.
But its good in all the same ways its good we remember the first bite of pancakes you ever had and the way your front teeth felt when you got your braces off.
Kinda weird And in the curse of growing up and giving up young well youll never forget your first kiss.
The one you had under the stairwell with iridescent hands gleaming green with envy because you know if she were a rabbit well shed cut off her own paw and give it to you for good luck.
Theres not enough of that kinda weirdness and love out there.
And on these days?
Yeah youll feel like the luckiest on these days.
The ones where we recognize the beautiful weirdness as much as the unshakable nerves that it may not work out.
The inside airplane take off of your heart KNOWING these fleeting memories may not make it till morning.
And when its possible that they wont. well that’s whats lucky about it in the end.
That maybe its not the hopes and prayers that shell come back to you, but the fact that you probably just need to get some more sleep.
And maybe stop convincing yourself that one day youll bleed red like the rest.
But for today,
bleed blue while lyricists creep theyre way into your pulmonary arteries in days filled with good and weirdness,
birch trees for stability and iridescent hands in case someone comes along with a need to see through.
Orthodox Moth
You are beautiful in what you are not what you believe
Cherry girls bleed blue on pricked fingers spilling into one another like the words we never considered saying to our parents one day
“You gave up too easy .”
Pricked fingers pressed to pricked fingers like,” if I give you this, Its yours to keep”, sisters- brothers by association, guilty by relation.
I do know, orthodox moth,
That your eyes will tell the truth even when your mouth tells lies.
The
Broken non commercial praise scattered on porcelain sinks.
We sat in wooded brush tucked quietly behind the trees knowing the sunrise would protect us soon enough,
and there’s nothing scary about dying for a 14 year old.
Orthodox moth, patterned by your mothers beliefs and stained by your fathers traditions.
Leaking from the finger tips- marbled hopelessness to conform.
A pact that wasn’t made on a Bible.
December 18, 2011
Eternity is a long long time
Society
come and ride with me
You can even have the window seat
But I warn you
It’s not pretty what you expect to see
So come roll with me
You brush your cheek on my cheek and we can pretend with don’t ignite like flint and steel
But we do
Rough, brash and without warning
We could resort to Adam and Eve like believing where we create what we taste
We give in to seduction of propaganda and political control
Delicately placed in our hands as we look into each others eyes and beg “run”
A political extravaganza is before us
Society
Ride with me
Society
Roll with me
Society. We are more than the footsteps of our forefathers
We are more than the mistakes of our parents youths
We are not flag waivers or victory marchers
Walk with me
Its cold outside so we’ll grit our teeth
We are the feeble and connected machines
We are the dirty deeds conceived in gas station bathrooms and on pool tables.
Run with me.
We can go and go with fingers laced
Running like melted amber
We can run like there is a finish line in the 21st century
Society. We are not the gifted youth of “I hear America Singing”
We are the chemically enhanced underwater mortgages of debt doomed parental figures.
We are dirt worshipping material spawns of hippies and dead-heads
Move with me
To the beat of censorship drums and drug laws
Move with me like leaking bloodstreams we are not the 99%
Mother fuckers we are a brick in society. We are social movements and inventors. Future debt collectors and map makers
Place us at the top of the world and we will give you our all naked and exposed. We will give you art and exasperation we will apologize for nothing but I sure as hell will give everything
Injustice is our disorder and we will give nothing more than a cure
Society
Run with me.
Nothing can hurt us till we are dead and we are not dead yet
come and ride with me
You can even have the window seat
But I warn you
It’s not pretty what you expect to see
So come roll with me
You brush your cheek on my cheek and we can pretend with don’t ignite like flint and steel
But we do
Rough, brash and without warning
We could resort to Adam and Eve like believing where we create what we taste
We give in to seduction of propaganda and political control
Delicately placed in our hands as we look into each others eyes and beg “run”
A political extravaganza is before us
Society
Ride with me
Society
Roll with me
Society. We are more than the footsteps of our forefathers
We are more than the mistakes of our parents youths
We are not flag waivers or victory marchers
Walk with me
Its cold outside so we’ll grit our teeth
We are the feeble and connected machines
We are the dirty deeds conceived in gas station bathrooms and on pool tables.
Run with me.
We can go and go with fingers laced
Running like melted amber
We can run like there is a finish line in the 21st century
Society. We are not the gifted youth of “I hear America Singing”
We are the chemically enhanced underwater mortgages of debt doomed parental figures.
We are dirt worshipping material spawns of hippies and dead-heads
Move with me
To the beat of censorship drums and drug laws
Move with me like leaking bloodstreams we are not the 99%
Mother fuckers we are a brick in society. We are social movements and inventors. Future debt collectors and map makers
Place us at the top of the world and we will give you our all naked and exposed. We will give you art and exasperation we will apologize for nothing but I sure as hell will give everything
Injustice is our disorder and we will give nothing more than a cure
Society
Run with me.
Nothing can hurt us till we are dead and we are not dead yet
October 20, 2011
Now and Then and all the growth in between
We let the embers of the morning under our skin as we woke to Autumn
I remember it like it was yesterday
Only it was yesterday and god I think I forgot it already but man I can remember the city lit up when we strolled through.
That was then…when the embers of the morning shook us to our melted cores.
But now.
Now our kerosene soaked kisses get lost in the sky
Your whiskey tongue is searching for mine in a complicated swing dance neither of us knew the moves to
And I’m learning…
That there are times we get left with holes
And people will always be trying to fill them with their belongings things making less into more
I’m filling my own this time.
We can do what we want for once.
And baby if its something you’ll regret in the morning…sleep late.
Cuz the morning will bless us again in sizzling embers a nighttime fire dead now before us.
Dizzy in the sunshine creeping through that window when all I want to do is find that fine line between being alone and remembering you.
Sometimes…you’ve got to jump and enjoy the free fall.
I remember it like it was yesterday
Only it was yesterday and god I think I forgot it already but man I can remember the city lit up when we strolled through.
That was then…when the embers of the morning shook us to our melted cores.
But now.
Now our kerosene soaked kisses get lost in the sky
Your whiskey tongue is searching for mine in a complicated swing dance neither of us knew the moves to
And I’m learning…
That there are times we get left with holes
And people will always be trying to fill them with their belongings things making less into more
I’m filling my own this time.
We can do what we want for once.
And baby if its something you’ll regret in the morning…sleep late.
Cuz the morning will bless us again in sizzling embers a nighttime fire dead now before us.
Dizzy in the sunshine creeping through that window when all I want to do is find that fine line between being alone and remembering you.
Sometimes…you’ve got to jump and enjoy the free fall.
October 02, 2011
The Season of Cleansing
October, be kind to me.
At least help me find my way through this sunken night sky.
So take what I got because the more I give the less I gotta lug around.
Here are my half-truths my broken down lullaby-"kiss me one more time"-good nights and all the other stuff that kept me from telling the truth,
I will give you the palms of my hands the bend in my neck just give me in return all the summer one-night-stands-and-secret romances-under-football-bleachers-kids-with-braces-making-names-for-themselves-in puffs of cigarettes-kinda love.
Or at least a momentary prayer to a Maybe There God that these times we hold hands, will make up for all the bad things we both know I’m about to do to you.
Be kind to me.
Grant me a cold night that fits just right October. I’m not giving up on you. If you could just not give up on me. You are my reckless choice you are my something uncomfortable so give me your scars you hold as craters and Ill wish I was more sorry. And you'll say this is why we don’t hold hands any more.
This is why your teeth chatter when your want to be kissed.
October, be kind to me.
At least help me find my way through this sunken night sky.
So take what I got because the more I give the less I gotta lug around.
Here are my half-truths my broken down lullaby-"kiss me one more time"-good nights and all the other stuff that kept me from telling the truth,
I will give you the palms of my hands the bend in my neck just give me in return all the summer one-night-stands-and-secret romances-under-football-bleachers-kids-with-braces-making-names-for-themselves-in puffs of cigarettes-kinda love.
Or at least a momentary prayer to a Maybe There God that these times we hold hands, will make up for all the bad things we both know I’m about to do to you.
Be kind to me.
Grant me a cold night that fits just right October. I’m not giving up on you. If you could just not give up on me. You are my reckless choice you are my something uncomfortable so give me your scars you hold as craters and Ill wish I was more sorry. And you'll say this is why we don’t hold hands any more.
This is why your teeth chatter when your want to be kissed.
October, be kind to me.
August 19, 2011
We finish this
Looked all night for your shitty car but you never showed up
So I counted all the stop signs we kissed at… hoping that a number the the name would make it as insignificant as all the nervous cigarettes and fake phone calls used in human avoidance.
Darkened pathways on bitter November night led me here I demanded we finish this race.Admit you like it..or at least..like the way I make you not alone. At eighteen we became anchors and you never did tell me if you'd ever cut this ship loose…you never said the circle connects somewhere.
Ill stay. I will choke on every bad joke and stretch this silence into a jet trail I will stay…just show me this disproportional concept of fate and when it’s all over…I’ll try to find things as beautiful as you left here.
Your shaking skins putting out Morse code saying come back go home I may never know which way to go but until these chemicals settle I gotta create something stable. How do I brave it when all the details got blurred in the syllables and there's something more to this just Ive grown out of so many things….whats one more worn out soul?
So I counted all the stop signs we kissed at… hoping that a number the the name would make it as insignificant as all the nervous cigarettes and fake phone calls used in human avoidance.
Darkened pathways on bitter November night led me here I demanded we finish this race.Admit you like it..or at least..like the way I make you not alone. At eighteen we became anchors and you never did tell me if you'd ever cut this ship loose…you never said the circle connects somewhere.
Ill stay. I will choke on every bad joke and stretch this silence into a jet trail I will stay…just show me this disproportional concept of fate and when it’s all over…I’ll try to find things as beautiful as you left here.
Your shaking skins putting out Morse code saying come back go home I may never know which way to go but until these chemicals settle I gotta create something stable. How do I brave it when all the details got blurred in the syllables and there's something more to this just Ive grown out of so many things….whats one more worn out soul?
Hollowing
The 9th ward holds the sounds of ragged hope.
So I promise to Keep those fists high.
You broke your knuckle and it reminded me that I’d staple myself to every cause
So I bandaged your bones.
I can’t watch the world turn to debris in your hands.
I can skip town catch a train but I’ll never escape. At best feel relieved…That maybe you’d be the savior
Not just the waiter.
I’ve ridden too many trains watching littered city streets become homes for women who fought too hard
Are we fighting too hard?
How do I change the world from the cart of the train cabin
I wrote the word peace on my knuckles maybe I could fight off the worlds ghosts.
But you cant fix something so broke. I was so finished with prayers. So finished with allegiance. Cracks of hands become trenches and we’ve melted down all our shields to make bullets. I can do it all but I can also forget. And so will you…but to forgive takes more courage outside the neighbor home hangs an American flag. It looks like a clothesline for ambulance sound that rings through Japan ridden in Nuclear radiation. It hangs like a haze over India. But they never took it down.
America sounds a bit hollow. So lets keep our fists high…we can spread the word “CHANGE” like cancer cells.
I’m done being hollow. Its train tracks and waiting in the yellow glow of moonlight and lies. Ill wait for years but its easier to forget. Catch the train. Get a little hollow.
So I promise to Keep those fists high.
You broke your knuckle and it reminded me that I’d staple myself to every cause
So I bandaged your bones.
I can’t watch the world turn to debris in your hands.
I can skip town catch a train but I’ll never escape. At best feel relieved…That maybe you’d be the savior
Not just the waiter.
I’ve ridden too many trains watching littered city streets become homes for women who fought too hard
Are we fighting too hard?
How do I change the world from the cart of the train cabin
I wrote the word peace on my knuckles maybe I could fight off the worlds ghosts.
But you cant fix something so broke. I was so finished with prayers. So finished with allegiance. Cracks of hands become trenches and we’ve melted down all our shields to make bullets. I can do it all but I can also forget. And so will you…but to forgive takes more courage outside the neighbor home hangs an American flag. It looks like a clothesline for ambulance sound that rings through Japan ridden in Nuclear radiation. It hangs like a haze over India. But they never took it down.
America sounds a bit hollow. So lets keep our fists high…we can spread the word “CHANGE” like cancer cells.
I’m done being hollow. Its train tracks and waiting in the yellow glow of moonlight and lies. Ill wait for years but its easier to forget. Catch the train. Get a little hollow.
Making me Nervous
It shouldn’t be this way
It shouldn’t be me looking at a tree wrapped in barbed wire saying its beautiful
Its making me nervous
Why is it so beautiful the way your scars look like nooses
Your hanging the bad days from your knuckles
He wants to be painter but instead hes a sniper
Shoot it up spit it out spread it free. Wipe your feet
Shackle your dreams
There’s a revolutionist in prison
Living in a casket where he said hell doesn’t judge from here
He graffiti tagged my heart with his spray can filled with change
He lit the bible on fire and told me to believe in myself he lit a cigarette of politicians and transformed it into a scripture. Banksy made art in the miracle dirt of the cities and Vincent made the night starry but hes the artists and Banksy’s a criminal.
I keep finding all these dirty things beautiful and wanting all the sunshine to disappear because I can see in the dark
Those scars like Braille down your chest where the hours at a canvas became lashes from society.Were all waiting for trains down here.
Something to take us away.Something to bring us near. There's a dancer in Baghdad and a writer in Colorado he says hes really a doctor but in the dark…were all monsters
So in the nighttime darkness hell be a writer…And I’ll be a poet.Well always be waiting for trains.In this darkness we can all be monsters
It shouldn’t be me looking at a tree wrapped in barbed wire saying its beautiful
Its making me nervous
Why is it so beautiful the way your scars look like nooses
Your hanging the bad days from your knuckles
He wants to be painter but instead hes a sniper
Shoot it up spit it out spread it free. Wipe your feet
Shackle your dreams
There’s a revolutionist in prison
Living in a casket where he said hell doesn’t judge from here
He graffiti tagged my heart with his spray can filled with change
He lit the bible on fire and told me to believe in myself he lit a cigarette of politicians and transformed it into a scripture. Banksy made art in the miracle dirt of the cities and Vincent made the night starry but hes the artists and Banksy’s a criminal.
I keep finding all these dirty things beautiful and wanting all the sunshine to disappear because I can see in the dark
Those scars like Braille down your chest where the hours at a canvas became lashes from society.Were all waiting for trains down here.
Something to take us away.Something to bring us near. There's a dancer in Baghdad and a writer in Colorado he says hes really a doctor but in the dark…were all monsters
So in the nighttime darkness hell be a writer…And I’ll be a poet.Well always be waiting for trains.In this darkness we can all be monsters
trains
Here comes that feeling I thought id forgotten
Every time I see the train approaching
Knowing I have no place to be on time
No clock to be looking at
Nobody who misses this
Here comes the feeling I thought Id forgotten
Bury the smile behind my teeth as the rumble of creaking tracks races through my skin
I’m waiting to leave nowhere and my body misses
Knowing I have to be on time
Here comes the feeling I thought I’d forgotten
Every time I see the train approaching
Knowing I have no place to be on time
No clock to be looking at
Nobody who misses this
Here comes the feeling I thought Id forgotten
Bury the smile behind my teeth as the rumble of creaking tracks races through my skin
I’m waiting to leave nowhere and my body misses
Knowing I have to be on time
Here comes the feeling I thought I’d forgotten
August 11, 2011
Beauty Project Post 2
Today it’s me watching grandma dance meringue on hard wood floors
Bodies like sweat pools on cement street corners when the music’s so loud we cant make out the words
But there in Spanish anyway and the only words we ever needed to know in Spanish were gracias and arroz con pollo.
Today I am on summer vacation nine years back and when they see grandma walk down the streets of Fordham Road they know her by her big red hair
Shes a firebird but mostly, she smokes cigarettes under the porch in a downpour outside Puerto Rico.
I Don’t know this world.
What I know is the city lights in Denver.
My own mothers mother’s sadness reminds me of this place. Bright blinking stoplights telling people to get back from the speed of the sky. From here we scrapbook storytelling and cul-de-sac homemakers nobody can compare this Colorado sunrise to the History left in New York City.
I hear my grandmas voice calling through a cell phone to my mother
There words transverse through the night sky she sits on the kitchen floor with a Marlboro light between her red nails saying te estraño mami, because missing someone is the most you can give some days.
Today I am collecting stamps because I’m going to send an envelope to every person who wasn’t as lucky as me. I’m filling it with rosary and salsa music because that’s how you grow up in a house like this. Your grandma never talks about god but mom says she use to burn incense and scare off the ghosts. I wonder if there are ghosts in the Bronx.
If you’ve never looked at an old portrait of your mothers mother I advise you to do so because it’ll hit you like a train heading West through Manhattan. It’s like a rush of existence.
I don’t know this world but I am part of it. Everyday I fall into it and Today I am home.
Miles from New York City.
Today my grandmother sends mom giant avocados and a recipe for rice pudding. Because in this home food is more of a message than a letter could ever be. Love is edible here.
Today I am watching mom make plantains in our kitchen
And no I don’t know this world…but every day I become part of it. Enveloped in this culture like her fingers in my hair as she braids it down my scalp. Don’t tell me I have never been here I BREATHE HERE!
Life like a hidden treasure this is beautiful.
Bodies like sweat pools on cement street corners when the music’s so loud we cant make out the words
But there in Spanish anyway and the only words we ever needed to know in Spanish were gracias and arroz con pollo.
Today I am on summer vacation nine years back and when they see grandma walk down the streets of Fordham Road they know her by her big red hair
Shes a firebird but mostly, she smokes cigarettes under the porch in a downpour outside Puerto Rico.
I Don’t know this world.
What I know is the city lights in Denver.
My own mothers mother’s sadness reminds me of this place. Bright blinking stoplights telling people to get back from the speed of the sky. From here we scrapbook storytelling and cul-de-sac homemakers nobody can compare this Colorado sunrise to the History left in New York City.
I hear my grandmas voice calling through a cell phone to my mother
There words transverse through the night sky she sits on the kitchen floor with a Marlboro light between her red nails saying te estraño mami, because missing someone is the most you can give some days.
Today I am collecting stamps because I’m going to send an envelope to every person who wasn’t as lucky as me. I’m filling it with rosary and salsa music because that’s how you grow up in a house like this. Your grandma never talks about god but mom says she use to burn incense and scare off the ghosts. I wonder if there are ghosts in the Bronx.
If you’ve never looked at an old portrait of your mothers mother I advise you to do so because it’ll hit you like a train heading West through Manhattan. It’s like a rush of existence.
I don’t know this world but I am part of it. Everyday I fall into it and Today I am home.
Miles from New York City.
Today my grandmother sends mom giant avocados and a recipe for rice pudding. Because in this home food is more of a message than a letter could ever be. Love is edible here.
Today I am watching mom make plantains in our kitchen
And no I don’t know this world…but every day I become part of it. Enveloped in this culture like her fingers in my hair as she braids it down my scalp. Don’t tell me I have never been here I BREATHE HERE!
Life like a hidden treasure this is beautiful.
Beauty Project:Post 1
That morning after the sun exploded
We awoke in our fossil beds
Left holes in our souls for the birds to climb in
And expected nothing more from the earth.
I wondered in those lasting moments of truth whether I’d live once more, a day to see next
I wondered
What If I gave you my heart?
Would you have given it to the sun in one last sacrifice with nothing else?
Would you wrap it in a bubble wrap box…send to the UPS man mail it back my way?
Would you find something beautiful?
In those moments when we thought there was nothing more than the dust on our fingers to feel would you hold that heart?
Would you hold me?
Would you find something beautiful as the stars fell like water droplets asteroids raining to our feet? As the city windows shattered into the gleaming fire our skin rusted in the heat would you clutch it to your chest?
If I had given you my heart?
Would you…
Push it to your one heartbeat so you could feel me close again. Would you fill that hole in your soul with our lasting moments connect our veins so we’d do nothing in vain
What if I gave you my heart?
Would it be beauty you’d see?
We awoke in our fossil beds
Left holes in our souls for the birds to climb in
And expected nothing more from the earth.
I wondered in those lasting moments of truth whether I’d live once more, a day to see next
I wondered
What If I gave you my heart?
Would you have given it to the sun in one last sacrifice with nothing else?
Would you wrap it in a bubble wrap box…send to the UPS man mail it back my way?
Would you find something beautiful?
In those moments when we thought there was nothing more than the dust on our fingers to feel would you hold that heart?
Would you hold me?
Would you find something beautiful as the stars fell like water droplets asteroids raining to our feet? As the city windows shattered into the gleaming fire our skin rusted in the heat would you clutch it to your chest?
If I had given you my heart?
Would you…
Push it to your one heartbeat so you could feel me close again. Would you fill that hole in your soul with our lasting moments connect our veins so we’d do nothing in vain
What if I gave you my heart?
Would it be beauty you’d see?
I took a picture I dont like to look at
The dust here is like the dust on the floor of an old chapel I once knew
I stopped saying prayers when I saw that god took off his ear
He wanted to become something like an artist
This is why I remember every breath you took in the snowy air
Cuz it’s a lot like the air around here like…when I drew your portrait on the tip of my converse
The sound of traffic outside here is a lot like the sound of the footprints we listened to quietly under the stairwells of a broken household
There are no footprints here.
The poetry I write now sounds like shotguns
Blasting messages that sound like love poems but really is just a public service announcement
Trying to tell you stop hitting your kids and stop polluting the skies
But I don’t really care,
Because the air here is hardly functional
Everything I write sounds suffocated and I think its because the dust here is like the dust on the floor of an old chapel
I keep murmuring the gospel hymns like
I don’t really forgive you for yelling at me
And this poem isn’t really about you its not really about anything Except
I really miss what “there” felt like on my naked toes
And I gotta tell you
They don’t quite make a Sunday dinner here like they did there
And now we’re not going anywhere till’ I figure out where I took a wrong turn and ended up in here
The sky here is like the soft sounds that gasp from the pages of a freshly opened library book
The sky here is not like the sky there
That’s why I remember every step you took watching your old crooked body move like a hammock swinging into the mountain air
I remember….that here is a lot like nothing I had there
Here has a lot less of you.
I stopped saying prayers when I saw that god took off his ear
He wanted to become something like an artist
This is why I remember every breath you took in the snowy air
Cuz it’s a lot like the air around here like…when I drew your portrait on the tip of my converse
The sound of traffic outside here is a lot like the sound of the footprints we listened to quietly under the stairwells of a broken household
There are no footprints here.
The poetry I write now sounds like shotguns
Blasting messages that sound like love poems but really is just a public service announcement
Trying to tell you stop hitting your kids and stop polluting the skies
But I don’t really care,
Because the air here is hardly functional
Everything I write sounds suffocated and I think its because the dust here is like the dust on the floor of an old chapel
I keep murmuring the gospel hymns like
I don’t really forgive you for yelling at me
And this poem isn’t really about you its not really about anything Except
I really miss what “there” felt like on my naked toes
And I gotta tell you
They don’t quite make a Sunday dinner here like they did there
And now we’re not going anywhere till’ I figure out where I took a wrong turn and ended up in here
The sky here is like the soft sounds that gasp from the pages of a freshly opened library book
The sky here is not like the sky there
That’s why I remember every step you took watching your old crooked body move like a hammock swinging into the mountain air
I remember….that here is a lot like nothing I had there
Here has a lot less of you.
Leave all your Loving Behinde
I babysat the skies with my eyes glued to the clouds like
I wanted to see where jet trails disappeared to
I wondered more about darkness than I wondered about the boogie man
I was ten years old.
My knees were like oak wood
Rivets as deep as the pacific
I dreaded birthdays and thought raccoons were Jesus in another life
I couldn’t figure out how to sit still.
My father made spider webs for a living
He caught every bad thing coming his way
My brother got lost for awhile
Some days I think he comes home. But sits so silent we never felt him close.
I’m still learning to sit still
I was ten years old and Baptized into uncertainty
I thought my hands were invincible.
I know now that they’re not.
The best things in life crumble…so we can see how they recollect.
I’m still collecting tinfoil candy wrappers from my sock drawer
I thought I was an artist. I was going to make a tower
Maybe this one would stay
Maybe this one would be strong.
I’m still learning to be strong.
I am seventeen years old.
I write poems instead of essays
I still think my sister is a princess
I could stay underwater for the rest of my life
If only I believed in heaven.
Some days I wish I believed in something.
I was ten years old I learned to stay strong
Some days, I’m still learning.
I wanted to see where jet trails disappeared to
I wondered more about darkness than I wondered about the boogie man
I was ten years old.
My knees were like oak wood
Rivets as deep as the pacific
I dreaded birthdays and thought raccoons were Jesus in another life
I couldn’t figure out how to sit still.
My father made spider webs for a living
He caught every bad thing coming his way
My brother got lost for awhile
Some days I think he comes home. But sits so silent we never felt him close.
I’m still learning to sit still
I was ten years old and Baptized into uncertainty
I thought my hands were invincible.
I know now that they’re not.
The best things in life crumble…so we can see how they recollect.
I’m still collecting tinfoil candy wrappers from my sock drawer
I thought I was an artist. I was going to make a tower
Maybe this one would stay
Maybe this one would be strong.
I’m still learning to be strong.
I am seventeen years old.
I write poems instead of essays
I still think my sister is a princess
I could stay underwater for the rest of my life
If only I believed in heaven.
Some days I wish I believed in something.
I was ten years old I learned to stay strong
Some days, I’m still learning.
Never Be Lost Again
If you find yourself losing direction
Don’t buy a map
Come find me and Ill guide you by your freckles
Let me count them down your spine let them take to the road where your gunna hit some signs
Youll be askin yourself too much for one ear so youll have to come back spill it to me then I’ll send you on your way saying two steps left of your shoulder blade then it looks like you head towards you toes for about six miles.
Then youll be on your way.
If you find yourself losing connection you come back I’ll give you a net to hold onto some faith
But those tiny nerves in your body will keep pulling you from the dustbowl were hiding in
Your doing your best to keep those eyes straight
Keep trecking along and be sure to look up. You never know when youll catch those fleeting moments released from his hand like a paperboys grasp
I know you think your getting lost
But your right where suppose to be
If you don’t believe me well Ill try and do the same
And Ill redirect your defect directions in tell me all the things that make your bones shake
Ill remind you that you did bad in good times and that you didnt use to believe in miracles.
If you find yourself losing direction
Don’t buy a map.
Just look at those freckles those road stops and breaks in your skin where the kiss was too rough
That’s where you follow to.
Cuz afterall the only one who can tell you where home is..is you.
Don’t buy a map
Come find me and Ill guide you by your freckles
Let me count them down your spine let them take to the road where your gunna hit some signs
Youll be askin yourself too much for one ear so youll have to come back spill it to me then I’ll send you on your way saying two steps left of your shoulder blade then it looks like you head towards you toes for about six miles.
Then youll be on your way.
If you find yourself losing connection you come back I’ll give you a net to hold onto some faith
But those tiny nerves in your body will keep pulling you from the dustbowl were hiding in
Your doing your best to keep those eyes straight
Keep trecking along and be sure to look up. You never know when youll catch those fleeting moments released from his hand like a paperboys grasp
I know you think your getting lost
But your right where suppose to be
If you don’t believe me well Ill try and do the same
And Ill redirect your defect directions in tell me all the things that make your bones shake
Ill remind you that you did bad in good times and that you didnt use to believe in miracles.
If you find yourself losing direction
Don’t buy a map.
Just look at those freckles those road stops and breaks in your skin where the kiss was too rough
That’s where you follow to.
Cuz afterall the only one who can tell you where home is..is you.
8/11
I was too young to understand the idea of loss
Until I watched a bird die on the quilt of my bed.
I wanted to stay underwater forever
That bathtub blue water my only ceiling and I made sense of the words
Liquid satisfaction
My hideway was my addiction
I wanted to understand why the sky took my mothers fingers
Cuz I never saw her hands set still for a moment I wouldn’t even know if they existed.
I was too young to understand why love hurt
Until I heard the heart beat of a bluegrass guitar
It was something like getting chills in your stomach cuz it became real.
I forgave myself for loving.
I was too young
The grasshopper lawn chair nights would promise me nothing but a reason to take off my shoes
I promised I’d look for where I went wrong.
I was too young to understand how loss and love came hand in hand but without grasped fingers...just the touch of tips
So tell me now
Where did I go wrong
Between loosing teeth and growing pains
And somewhere in the middle of forgiveness and goodbyes
I forgot to open my eyes
I learned hello from watching his heart stop..that night upon my quilt.
I learned goodbye from the first kiss
My clarity, so clouded in the lens of a child, came to in the underwater tub of a bathtime addict
The pruned toes creeping down the hall
In prayer that one will never become two
Stay together for the children
Stay together for sake of forgiveness
I was too young to learn the reasons of loss but I somewhere in the clouded underwater I found a reason to love.
Until I watched a bird die on the quilt of my bed.
I wanted to stay underwater forever
That bathtub blue water my only ceiling and I made sense of the words
Liquid satisfaction
My hideway was my addiction
I wanted to understand why the sky took my mothers fingers
Cuz I never saw her hands set still for a moment I wouldn’t even know if they existed.
I was too young to understand why love hurt
Until I heard the heart beat of a bluegrass guitar
It was something like getting chills in your stomach cuz it became real.
I forgave myself for loving.
I was too young
The grasshopper lawn chair nights would promise me nothing but a reason to take off my shoes
I promised I’d look for where I went wrong.
I was too young to understand how loss and love came hand in hand but without grasped fingers...just the touch of tips
So tell me now
Where did I go wrong
Between loosing teeth and growing pains
And somewhere in the middle of forgiveness and goodbyes
I forgot to open my eyes
I learned hello from watching his heart stop..that night upon my quilt.
I learned goodbye from the first kiss
My clarity, so clouded in the lens of a child, came to in the underwater tub of a bathtime addict
The pruned toes creeping down the hall
In prayer that one will never become two
Stay together for the children
Stay together for sake of forgiveness
I was too young to learn the reasons of loss but I somewhere in the clouded underwater I found a reason to love.
How Real
I think too much some nights.
When the gospel hymns of Colorado plains don’t quite lull me to sleep.
I’ll find myself thinking into holes.
Looping back to days where we all thought less.
I’ll find myself feeling, those stitches you left below my ribs where I laughed my lungs to pieces and
now I think You left a debt on my skin
The kind that taught to me to keep walking on
Now there’s nothing but bruises. The kind tattooed on my knees
Ones I got from knocking into the piles of memories we left in the darkness.
I think about when you stitched my palms together cuz I’ve learned never to fight with my fists when I could fight with my words.
And it’s got me thinking?
Maybe you stitched my knees together so that they could never buckle.
And it’s got me believing.
I made a huge mistake by walking on and it’s got me tearing the stitches from all the warm places we closed up long ago.
Everything will change and I’m starting to feel it grow taut
Ready to pull.
And that’s it.
Now All this thinkings' split my stitches
And every time I tried to write it all down I could only scribe in cursive
The connection of my letters in loops and holes has your name rollercoastering through the swirls and twists of my l’s and that sweet wisp at the end of my sentence…well yah that’s got me thinking.
Thinking we stitched up all the memories to make room for the good stuff cuz there’s a lotta good stuff coming my way.
Hold the needle
I got the string-stitch me together to keep me from bleeding
All the cursive memories that turned into believing.
And one day…
When the traffic slows and the city lights glow low
I will come to you.
With a blanket sewn from my stitches in hopes of keeping the good around your shoulders.
When the gospel hymns of Colorado plains don’t quite lull me to sleep.
I’ll find myself thinking into holes.
Looping back to days where we all thought less.
I’ll find myself feeling, those stitches you left below my ribs where I laughed my lungs to pieces and
now I think You left a debt on my skin
The kind that taught to me to keep walking on
Now there’s nothing but bruises. The kind tattooed on my knees
Ones I got from knocking into the piles of memories we left in the darkness.
I think about when you stitched my palms together cuz I’ve learned never to fight with my fists when I could fight with my words.
And it’s got me thinking?
Maybe you stitched my knees together so that they could never buckle.
And it’s got me believing.
I made a huge mistake by walking on and it’s got me tearing the stitches from all the warm places we closed up long ago.
Everything will change and I’m starting to feel it grow taut
Ready to pull.
And that’s it.
Now All this thinkings' split my stitches
And every time I tried to write it all down I could only scribe in cursive
The connection of my letters in loops and holes has your name rollercoastering through the swirls and twists of my l’s and that sweet wisp at the end of my sentence…well yah that’s got me thinking.
Thinking we stitched up all the memories to make room for the good stuff cuz there’s a lotta good stuff coming my way.
Hold the needle
I got the string-stitch me together to keep me from bleeding
All the cursive memories that turned into believing.
And one day…
When the traffic slows and the city lights glow low
I will come to you.
With a blanket sewn from my stitches in hopes of keeping the good around your shoulders.
Old and New
Together we grow up we grow out. We protect ourselves from sadness by protecting ourselves from happiness and spend our days unlearning all the feelings that we felt TOO much
We grow up we grow out
We learn that to be grown you
destroy what destroys you
You look at how everything starts to move shifting shaking into this
beautiful mess
we
learn to be unbreakable
learn to be broke
We learned to
let ourselves become a totem pole stacked upon the monsters of our underskins so we can rise above the beasts and maybe
find the things you didn’t know you lost.
Broken locket
Lintball collection
..love.
And we grow to learn the best way to get noticed is break some shit.
And we kept growing up and growing out
Till we figured out the best way to get noticed was to be nothing at all.
The barren mother breast is no longer a pillow of rest and home
But just a test of our reverence when you walk out the door for the last time.
These arms? They grow up they grow out
Further to reach for Aryan wider to hug your sad bones one last time before Im gone and out.
I figure after were done growing are feet become too anxious to sit still and keep us going
We learn that the marble stones in our brains that shake n’ rattle when the storm comes stirring
We learn that the sound is your ugly saying hello so you choose to write your pain in poetry instead of on your lovers
Mother…Im growing in and growing old and I'm bursting to tell you we learn to let go some day. And the music will taste good in your ears again and youll still hear me laughing in the garden as we once played pretend.
And we all play pretend.
We grow in and grow out only to touch once more the moon that swallowed me whole the night I was born and spit me back out in a home.
Together…
We grow in and grow old
We grow up we grow out
We learn that to be grown you
destroy what destroys you
You look at how everything starts to move shifting shaking into this
beautiful mess
we
learn to be unbreakable
learn to be broke
We learned to
let ourselves become a totem pole stacked upon the monsters of our underskins so we can rise above the beasts and maybe
find the things you didn’t know you lost.
Broken locket
Lintball collection
..love.
And we grow to learn the best way to get noticed is break some shit.
And we kept growing up and growing out
Till we figured out the best way to get noticed was to be nothing at all.
The barren mother breast is no longer a pillow of rest and home
But just a test of our reverence when you walk out the door for the last time.
These arms? They grow up they grow out
Further to reach for Aryan wider to hug your sad bones one last time before Im gone and out.
I figure after were done growing are feet become too anxious to sit still and keep us going
We learn that the marble stones in our brains that shake n’ rattle when the storm comes stirring
We learn that the sound is your ugly saying hello so you choose to write your pain in poetry instead of on your lovers
Mother…Im growing in and growing old and I'm bursting to tell you we learn to let go some day. And the music will taste good in your ears again and youll still hear me laughing in the garden as we once played pretend.
And we all play pretend.
We grow in and grow out only to touch once more the moon that swallowed me whole the night I was born and spit me back out in a home.
Together…
We grow in and grow old
Already Out
PULL THE STRANDS of hair out my head and use it as your kite strings to fly above this bent world like my nothing could be your everything
And I see the way nicotine leaves your lips like veins from your heart peeling out of you up to the song birds up their.
And you could hold those two big palms flat to sky and say look look at these!
Your hands could do more than jesus because you can stop traffic with your rusted movements your revolution
Know what heaven has gates so come to me cuz we welcome everyone in this schoolyard.
let my nothing be your everything.
I will let you in on a million secrets
Like never correct your mothers grammar
And sometimes we prick our fingers to watch something besides lies spill out of us
And your brave. And you call that a secret but I call that a favor.
Cuz I see a shield beneath the zipper fly of your hoodie when you want to fall like rain drops.
And that makes it just that much harder.
So let me lend you my spine something to help you balance
Between being super hero and wallflower
Cuz my spine does nothing for a jellyfish like me but in the right set bones
Something like an archeologists dream lookin at you. My nothing could be your something
Take all of my everything rip me down to barren tendons
Till I stand naked on rubble of myself to watch you glide free
You could shake the barrens of this town if you wanted to so
I will be the infrastructure in your uprising and then maybe you’ll realize I have always been your something.
February 07, 2011
seeing
She looks in that mirror like what ive lost is you not me
Bones sticking out at 45 angle degrees now honey that isn’t pretty?
Purge and binge like empty cyles the spokes of a tire turning and turning but it’s the same blurred picture over and over when the tire spins, it doesn’t become something else. Just leaves a tread. A trend.
Prettys skin deep
And I told her look past the way your thighs look when your sitting,
At the corner
Corner of a street next to four boys holding their eyeballs practically in their hands presenting them in her face to get a “closer look”.
At the corner
In the corner
Pearched aside a toilet seat looking like a white hole of hope.
Prettys skin deep
And your looking and looking for approval from the way your dress skims over
Like inhaling the fumes of words smokey and pulled tight around your tonsils like
Swallow I dare you
Inhaling and rushing past the mirrors in a race so deadly…not even the bravest make it.
Prettys skin deep
It’s the needy media and medication and every person who wants from you.
She looks like girl just needs a hand no not pushing her towards size skinnyass jeans or pree teen magazines. Needs a hand outstretched gripping her her feet pulling her back like a falling plane. Just trying to find ground again.
Bones sticking out at 45 angle degrees now honey that isn’t pretty?
Purge and binge like empty cyles the spokes of a tire turning and turning but it’s the same blurred picture over and over when the tire spins, it doesn’t become something else. Just leaves a tread. A trend.
Prettys skin deep
And I told her look past the way your thighs look when your sitting,
At the corner
Corner of a street next to four boys holding their eyeballs practically in their hands presenting them in her face to get a “closer look”.
At the corner
In the corner
Pearched aside a toilet seat looking like a white hole of hope.
Prettys skin deep
And your looking and looking for approval from the way your dress skims over
Like inhaling the fumes of words smokey and pulled tight around your tonsils like
Swallow I dare you
Inhaling and rushing past the mirrors in a race so deadly…not even the bravest make it.
Prettys skin deep
It’s the needy media and medication and every person who wants from you.
She looks like girl just needs a hand no not pushing her towards size skinnyass jeans or pree teen magazines. Needs a hand outstretched gripping her her feet pulling her back like a falling plane. Just trying to find ground again.
November 11, 2010
replacements
Id like to think the world is becoming a better place
But my eyesight is not so great so maybe Ive been blurring the details.
I can smell the gasoline
But as long as I cant see the sparks who am I to complain
So I will just get comfortable as to not disturb and not make a fuss because although the skies looking a lot less atmospheric and whole lot more tenebrous
Ive got an ipad
health insurance
blue ray
central heating
and first amendment rights so who am I to complain?
Maybe theyre shipping our boys away like Japanese Urban Outfitter Sweater vests and maybe theyre telling us windpower comes before nuclear arms when it doesn’t really matter because ive got standardized tests to prep for
When would I have time to watch 7 o clock news?
And we are too focused on the fact that ,that one girl from High School musical is in rehabilitation and Harry Potter reviews than the fact that were still testing on animals and blurring the nutrition labels.
But why should I do anything? I’ve got English homework and a seven hour starbucks shift I don’t have time to save the world
Who do you think we are captain planet?
Weve only been her seventeen years polluting the air with our range rovers and paris Hilton accessory products. Why should we do anything.
I mean the worlds not too bad if we squint our eyes and blur the lines right
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all think like that.
Being naive would be so delightful in a place so spotted with disaster
Is it harder though to avoid the conflict with the universe, or harder to tell ourselves its all okay and walk past it? Cuz at some point we learned to blur our eyes and everyone became ghosts instead of people and we decided it was better to not take responsibility and let the ghosts do the talking
tomorrow brings strange things
I am tired of being asked about my faith
Im sick of being told I need to believe in something
But you wanna know what I believe?
I belive that some how we all ended up here and were stuck.
I believe in hot summer days and closing yours eyes so as not to see the blood then maybe it wont hurt
I believe in running cold toes against the heater vent and wrapping your fingers into someone elses
I don’t need a buddah sidhartha god jesus mary or joseph to tell me what faith is
My faith is in the ten fingers I have because that’s the only thing I can count on and make me move forward fom the pressure from society to brush my hair and write an essay that says my lifes so hard but someone I found time to get a’s in chemistry.
My faith is in every single dad apologizing to his daughter because he cant tie a pony tail and hes late for work ask your sister to make breakfast.
I don’t need a chapel and bible to tell me I'm no good at life
I don’t need a string of roseary to guide me to safety after death
I need a well padded coffin and properly manured soil to settle it in.
I am tired of being asked about my faith.
Not BECAUSE its between me and god not because I don’t have any its because if we all had real faith we would find it in ourselves not in a book tucked behind a wooden pillar
We would lead ourselves and breathe and not worry about why the hell were suppose to wake up in the morning.
We would have faith in the grassy lines on our palms that feel our hearts beating when placed on our chest when were stuttering to the republic under god in the united states of America.
We would pledge allegiance to the sky and moon and ourselves. Wheres that book?
peaches..this is for you
Shes hard to impress cuz shes already seen the sun set and its hard to beat that
Shes the sweetest tea I know and scatters bits of happiness in a trail that maybe someone will find her. But im thinkin the birds might be eating the crumbs cuz no bodys found the path.
Shes Got ahead full of awful things but this towns so small they practical can look into your ears peek into your brain and see all those nasty things
Keep it shut
She puts a twisted twig behind her ear and tucks it beneath her hair to say I stick to the roots and ground myself so when I sleep the stem can grow into my pillow and all the scary things will be blocked out behind my big blooming branches.
But she cant.Shes got something stuntin that growth Cuz theres a hole in her where her heart fell out when she went scurrying away from those monsters that we learned lived inside of us, not in our closets anymore. Yeah her heart fell out and I tried to look for it mybe I could wrap it up and give it to her
Look I found it
Don’t be scared
No don’t be scared
Just take it
But I DIDN’T find it but want to cuz she needs it and she deserves it and the monsters who made it fall out better not go chasing her again.
This girl is the peaches, soft and bitter all at once. She says she thinks shes moving backwards cuz nothing new ever comes along and makes it all good, And I said hey, I know you’ve got that big old hole for awhile, but if you want I’ll fill it with cocoa and maybe a few bits of that happiness you were scattering and maybe youll be full again and itl be okay.
She said shed like that and sweet tea peaches and I went on walking.
And I told her no more monsters would come running after her ever again.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)