Summer 2016 Post
I.
Fuck You, Scientist
//
Fuck you scientist
ill no longer shrink my heart
to fit into your graduated cylinder
I'm sure you've calculated
that statistically, ill stay with you
because 100% of the time I say
"I'm leaving and I mean it this time"
i dont
perhaps this is just another one of
those times
in which case
fuck you.
You play love songs to no one
because you like the chords
i wish you meant the words
and that they were for me
i wish i didn't have to beg for you,
to show my naked body
to indifferent eyes that barely bother
to look up
i never realized how much i missed
picnic luches, serenades,
flowers on my birthday
how much i miss feeling desired
looked at with hunger
but you never seem to need to eat
and shame me for wanting a bowl of
soup when I'm sad or a bite of dark
chocolate when i remember how
short life is
so short
why waste time waiting for numbers
for approval
for milestones
you will never be prepared
never have enough trials to prove
your theorem
that you refuse to even write
you say i love you as if
it is an indisputable fact
but i say i love you as a burst of wind
intangible
fleeting
powerful
but above all felt
rather than stated
fuck your statements
i want a painting
i want a song
i want a profession
a dare
a dream
an outstretched neck
with closed eyes
because thats how mine feels
i want a promise
i wonder if because i promised myself to you
i'm not allowed to leave
but then i remember,
of course i am,
because you make no promises to me
life abides by no promises
and neither do you
so why do we make them?
to fight the feeling that all of this is temporary
that we can trust nothing
that we can die at any moment?
but if we look in someones eyes and
say forever
we for a moment
believe that we have found forever
and for a moment
forever does exist
because we believe it to be so.
but scientists don't believe in
perspective
they dismiss it by accounting for the
effect of observation on an
experiment
well fuck the observer
fuck the experiment
fuck you scientist
for not remembering
that your very eyes fabricate what they see
look at the world upside down
fuck you for that
for your biology
for believing that thats all there is
if you reduce me to that
i reduce you to fuck you.
fuck you.
i love you scientist
"forever"
and today i wish i didn't
II.
a torn grey sweater
never stitched
/
outside a shop
melting eyes
through a window
thin glass over
blue raincoat
/
four brewed pots
of cinnamon tea
none awoke him
/
a chewed up straw
thrown away
can cracked lips smile?
III.
she is sad
his arm on her
/
why ask
lie on her, boy
/
use me
eat my sun
/
she let him go
no
a day
IV.
I am but am
an urge bare
screams drunk
head mad
aches luscious
cry doesn't
spring not
lust, a dream
like and like
you, I
purple, the
your suit says cool
but ah, do crush
live it
overly juicy.
V.
moan here
gown of fluff
revealed in
sordid wind
rust beneath sky
languid woman
goddess blood
shadow rains
sweat runs
ugly life
repulsive language
raw always.
VI.
pink diamond
honey tongue
whisper is the apparatus
delirious peach
hot sea mist
not water
stormy symphony
worshiping skin
pleasing mother music
bedded beauty
reded breast
VII.
I wanted to sleep with you
so we said I do
and ah we did
/
for our love can shine boil pound trudge soar
it could see us
through a thousand bittersweet togethers
of watching summer moon
in the garden
/
where smoothest petal
waxes and rips
with frantic need
smearing the picture of you and me
into
a timeless stoplight
singing to death
its gorgeous plaything.
VIII.
Glowing screens
our adult pacifiers
distracting us from the terrifying
freedom of time
soothing us into the illusion that we
are seen
we drink information from a straw
made of self
never leaving our shells
because we have everything we need
in the glowing screen.
IX.
Now that I'm bipolar
I write about my brain
What a funny task
Like a dog charing its tail
Like the wind blowing against a brick wall
Self-awareness is a tragic game
Filled with false victories
And imagined opponents
Players swim through oceans of
dangling carrots
of never-ending longing for the
satisfaction of knowing
who we are.
X.
I can't write anymore
my brain swims in exhaust fumes
choking on commitments
it cares nothing about
/
sometimes
when the smoke clears
I can see the dreams I once believed in
fading into twilight nothingness
they gasp for life
beg to be loved again
for their own sake
but I am sinking
and they are too far away
to touch.
/
I can't dream anymore
my brain lays defeated in a pile of broken glass
sharply sliced by self-doubt each
time it tries to move away
from this.
/
I am medicated to wait for the savior
I can no longer be for myself.
Autonomy forever euthanized
when I fell of the horse of self control
I can't *really* live anymore.
XI.
Cinnamon Summers
//
Dust, rogue
And a baby in blue
To dare to dream
/
A hitchhiker
ever so softly
trekking
the path from lds to lsd
he exhales on my pagan cheeks
/
leaves crunch pentecostal
rain-showers epiphanic
mudding dust
smearing rouge
beckoning the baby in blue
/
A man traversed Armidale
to sing tambourine tunes
and behold the day's first sunset
In meloncream hues
/
In Iowa
I shook hands with
sun, moon, stars
lauded by Vonnegut
heard bearded whispers in bubbling
creek below creaky bridge
"be soft"
/
fade out dust and rouge
welcome
this pilgrimage for two
towards raincoats twisted English
and jetpuffed-up daydreams
/
crawling knees-red everyday
to out kaleidoscope-eyed baby in blue
XII.
Orange Butterfly
//
Orange butterfly on the tin can
Streetlamp sadness all that she can
Sleep on her eyelids butterflylid
teardrops
Stream through the silence look at me-stop
/
Where are we going? whirls the south wind
mouth wind
bend your hips sideways hear the
ocean
roar in the bedroom where has she
been
dead on the sidewalk near the
mountain
/
friend pretend you love me
just for one night
let's hide behind the shadows
of our old sins
/
we can't see the blood that's still
runnin'
in my veins down the street
there she lays was it me is she white is she
young do you care let's have fun now
we run now we run
now we run
/
orange butterfly
dead
on a tin can
Streetlamp sadness? It's just in my head.
XIII.
(Prose)
If the world was a painting, a sculpture, a song, you have resurrected mine from a crumpled ballad in a dumpster into a budding canvas in a quiet, dimly lit basement, that smells of pizza boxes, vanilla-berry candle wax, and a pinewood desk just cleaned with lemon pledge. You surrounded me with kind, simple sounds that made my brushstrokes reevaluate what they could become. And as you began to chisel the edges of my rigid absolutes, the world became a softer, kinder, more livable place. As you shattered the cultural blinders that deceived my vision, I learned to see the world through more and more eyes. Good days and bad days melted into days, vices and virtues into actions, and day, night, seconds, hours into moments. As my perceived limitations of the world faced into gentle, harmonious variations in hues, as the blazing cattle prod rules silenced into a dull hum, my own skin began to shine brighter and my heard began to beat louder and each thought that passed through my mind was transformed from unwanted nuisance into glorious epiphany that made my heart dance and my hair swirl with the wind of self discovery. Because I met you, the song of my newfound identity resounds throughout my flesh, and caresses each curve in my ear with a joyous melody - that is mine - the morose dirge of inherited conscious abandons its numbing, venomous hymns and picks up the score of its own unique, unlimited, and untested spirit.
XIV.
Manic
//
Today I'm feeling
up
like the sky is living in my heart
like someone's coated my brain with
gently melted butter
/
I wonder if it was the rain
washing my windows
muddied with fear,
or the music
massaging bruised heartbeat
back from the dead,
or the laughter in my stomach
shaking my frown until it
breaks
/
I am
alive again.
Manic.
XV.
Delusional
//
Yes, I whine.
Thank you for noticing.
/
Do I fish for compliments?
Absolutely!
It's so dark in here
That sometimes it's nice to be near people
Who own functioning flashlights.
/
Am I controlling
Abusive
Manipulative?
"We do what we have to do to get our needs met" - My therapist.
I don't even know what I need
Because I've spent all day rocking while holding my knees
In panic.
And I'm sorry if I hurt you
While spinning
So fast
That I pushed you down.
It happens.
/
Am I a mess?
Of course!
/
Just don't call me delusional.
Yet how I wish I was!
XVI.
It's Just a Thought
//
"It's just a thought"
"I'd never actually do it…"
"My mind just goes there sometimes"
Here I stand in the road
Not really
But my heart lives there
At the cross streets
Dodging cars
At the last minute
Pounding
Remembering to breathe
Only sometimes
Other times
Turning completely blue
Until shaken by a new wind of
The commute
That I'm not a part of.
XVII.
Nice to Have a Friend
//
Strong people
Loud people
Sane people
Funny people
Quiet people
Incomplete people
Gather around
Death
The only friend
Of all people.
XVIII.
A Blast in the Library
//
I've written an entire library of words in my mind
With titles ranging from
Dirt Bike Princess to
How Chocolate Milk Saved My Life
And Other Lies Depressed People Tell
to
Existentialism: A Hoax.
And right now instead of writing
frantically
calmly
even passionately,
I desire,
desperately,
to burn
it all
down.
Why?
Exactly.
XIX.
Dream Bigger
//
Dream bigger.
Dream that you're not asleep.
Dream that the prince who is charming is a part of you.
Dream that you don't need their applause to sing.
Dream that the girls on the playground who push you down
Don't have any hold over your success.
Dream that the man you love
Falls down sometimes too.
/
Dream that it's all okay.
Dream that it's okay to have a broken heart
Okay to have a flustered mind
Okay to break a leg on stage
Because that just means you ran so fast
That your body couldn't keep up
With your ambition.
Dream on
Dream on
Dream of nothing more than you can do
And of nothing less.
XX.
Days When
//
There'll be days when we're happy
Days when we're lucky
And days when we're misunderstood
/
Days when we're hungry
Days when we're blind
Days when we're without a roof
/
They're be moments of smiles
And teardrops in silence
And through it all
There'll be moments with you.
XXI.
Two Drunk Lovers
//
We were two drunk lovers
Skipping class
Skipping stones
We were two drunk lovers
Ripping hits of yellowed bongs
Ripping pages of yellowed poems
We were two drunk lovers
And I took you to that neighborhood my mother hates
We were two drunk lovers
And I took you to my hell.
/
Know that I love you
No means no
Touch me til I shiver
Touch the red button on your phone
Sing me softened lullabies
Scream me more embittered goodbyes
When we’re two drunk lovers
Our hatred and our love
Your skin and my bones
Melt with our sweating temples into one.
/
“The sun also rises”
I wish I didn’t have to say
I roll over to smell your dewy hair
But your heart has flown away
Sometimes stock language like these whispers of farewell
Are the only way to convey
That I like it better
– Being two drunk lovers –
Than writing these disappointing verses
That I almost offered you today.
XXII.
Visions
Asleep
1. A man yells outside my gorgeous Latin American Mansion (in New Mexico?). He rapes me, but I do not experience this in my dream, only my reaction in the following scene. Where I am staring in my bedroom, alone. I don’t look like me, but have thick, dark chocolate hair in a smooth curvy pony-tail with a thick top. My skin is milky ivory. I feel sick and shocked and traumatized, and it feels real in the morning.
Awake
1. A bouquet of six to seven dark red roses ripe and drooping over the edge, their necks bruised, bent, weak. One flower, the one closest to the eye and a little to the right, spontaneously catches fire. The bulb slowly and gluttonously burns. The stem follows at a faster but not instant rate, and stops about half way down, about one and a quarter inch from the point above the water in the vase. The vase is clear and, um, vase shaped. But a lame vase whose curves are so weak that it kind of cylinders in.
2. (Falling asleep) Red bird with helmet feathers and little yellow bird make blue speckled egg, laid by Nolan, the yellow bird. I take care of his nest and protect him. The egg is then destroyed. Janessa saves the girl from the bad dream from the man.
3. Flickering images of commercial-type icons. Statue of Liberty. A palm tree. Wet streets (reflecting these images?). The letter L …. Huge yellow. This seems the most important image, and it is frightening. I cannot hold onto any other image besides the zooming inward L, but even that leaves though it faintly lingers. The field of viewing is slick. Oily/watery. Dimmed by yellow faint, bulb-y street lights. It is unnerving that I cannot hold onto the images. I try to hold onto the lady with the cleavage. Nolan. The vision is and feels brief but intense, when I open my eyes it is a sudden jolt and I feel terribly unsettled.
4. Marylin Monroes face smirking and tilted upward.. Still, then her neck moves around, then still. Snow white. A dwarf. The Disney caterpillar. Peter pan. I try to access my subconscious, but I can’t. All I can think of is my desire for sex. MM’s image flickers once more. I open my eyes. I smell weed. I have smelled it all day. Dinner was good. I am hungry. (I was too awake. I tried to instigate and control this vision.)
XXIII.
Lamictal - A Feeling
Racing
Visions
hover
white ceiling
suffocation
/
pills
deadlines
mental fog
endless sleep
all day a caffeine crash
why am I so tired?
/
work
with rocks in my shoes
will it end?
can I do this?
stomach knotted
brain dulled
/
I used to write poetry
and say "I'm okay"
ticking
fading
wanting
wanting you
/
You're so far away
saying "I'm right here"
but I can't see you
(I haven't for awhile)
/
did you become invisible
or do my eyes no longer see?
/
dizziness
nausea
the edge of something
/
plastic lumps in my throat
echoes of brokenness
ripples of embarrassment
let me go
/
will I ever leave this place?
wIll I emerge from this thickness?
/
a bell ringing
fragility enveloping
wistless longing
soon nothing
/
Visions
quieting
lost.
XXIV.
Cheesiness Vaccines or Please Kill My Horse
//
Originally, the term “cheesiness vaccines” was coined to protect my – shall we say emotionally jaded? – boyfriend from the gushing emotions flexing their haunches before an imminent wedding ceremony. Now, I consider it to more mean that cheesiness can function as the vaccine that protects us through its little spurts of shallow indulgences from the often despairingly abysmal depth of the world.
/
I’m sorry, I just have a hard-on for semantics. I also need to stop adopting phrases like “hard-on” and “grow a pair” that only encourage masculinity being set as the fucking default. I have an odd fetish for semantics. There.
/
Another side note is that I do adore my boyfriend, especially his emotional jadedness. My emotions are far too on the raw side, sometimes bubbling with excessive pus like an infected wound. His on the other hand, are what one pours on the would to clean it – it fucking stings and makes you feel like you’re just worse off than before, but at least the diseases go away and I am able to start over and acquire more wounds. Anesthetics are pure substances that don’t get bogged down by that kind of bullshit.
/
Life has been jarring lately so I am not going to put a transition here.
/
Or here. I found an article last night describing how if one inspects tears beneath a microscope, tears ensuing from different emotions have different biological make-ups. Another strange factoid is that crying a lot from one cause often results in crying for another cause more easily as well.
/
“The umbilical cord is around his neck. It’s both a noose and a life line. Funny.” Two and a half years ago our friend died, and now we all want to get married. This correlation seems pretty self explanatory, but maybe it’s not so I’ll try to keep going.
It will be difficult because often (for me at least) the self-explanatory occurrences seem to be the hardest to explain.
/
Possible explanations: / We are awake.
We are sleeping and our dreams are just more real so it seems that we have awoken.
We are on fire from emotion and are now just moving more quickly.
The electric shock fibulator thingys that they probably used to try to resuscitate him after his body flew through the glass window (he was so heavy…how…?) didn’t work on him, but were telepathically transmitted to us.
We have become addicted to risks, because we value life less.
We are too scared not to take risks, because we value life more.
Risks are a paradox, (just like capitalism. It both claims to empower the individual and ignores the individual’s existence. That doesn’t makes sense but just go with it…)
We are sad, seeking happiness.
We are lonely, seeking companionship.
We like chocolate and maybe my boyfriend will bring me chocolate.
I should stop writing while I am hungry and go eat
I should not stop writing even though I am hungry because this is when in starts to get good
I should go drink on an empty stomach and then resume writing so that I can continue to harvest these little stray thoughts that clutter up my mind-desk.
I am confused if this is a poem or a prose.
This is just words.
Life is just words.
But then why do we have pictures?
The author created the pictures when God said let there be light?
They think I don’t know scripture because I had an abortion.
They think that I don’t feel sorrow because I feel it was the right decision.
Billy died.
I live.
You live.
We breathe.
We remember.
We have sex …
I thought that was the climax, would be everything, but I want more
I would rather sleep with you every night, and never do the other than sleep with you one night, and never do the other.
The funny thing is is that I am too lazy to be concise.
I want food. Hooray that means I’m not depressed dadadadada loneliness I miss being allowed to rhyme in poetry that’s when my chaos could be free but still be seen because it would be shackled to these syllable sounds don’t you see but I’d rather die than earn a B for not worshiping your monotony
/
Please kill my horse.
XXV.
Random Autobiography
//
When I was little I told Santa
That I didn't need a Christmas present,
Because I already had enough toys.
However, I have never stopped hoping
For three things:
More books
More friends
and a puppy.
/
As I grew up I learned
Long days at Catholic school
Plaid skirts tossed in the doorway
My brother's bent-up glasses
Stuffed in the bottom of his backpack
Two pairs of tiny shorts running
To our backyard
Handfuls of earth
Forming mountains
Blackened with gentle pats
and swirling motions
Into a hard mound.
The nuns told me
"God has all the answers."
So I read the Bible.
…and other books too.
/
When I washed my hands
I never finished the "Birthday Song"
So there was always
Dirt under my fingernails
hidden between pages
Of sheet music
Like my awkward, cautious voice
Hidden beneath the melody of the choir
But with time
It grew louder
Strengthening
With each realization
Of its insignificance.
I am happiest when I remember
That silence and dirt are powerful.
/
Twelve years old
My first poem
by a campfire
My first dystopia (The Giver)
I read it three times
My first dog
my long-awaited Christmas gift -
named Cookie.
I trained her all by myself
We were so close
I would whisper to her all of my problems
Tell her that she was the older sister I never had
One night, when I locked myself out of the house
We slept on a giant beach towel together under the stars.
/
Middle school friends ditched me
Joked that my nose looked like Mount Rushmore
Said that I was pale
I kept my A+ test scores
And clarinet jazz solos to myself
To keep them safe.
At seventeen
After years of perfecting my GPA
And training -hard - for cross-country races
My ex-boy friend passed away
On the way home from the state football game.
No amount of puppy-kisses, midnight poems, or solo choked-up trail-runs
Could change it.
High school friends stopped texting me
One by one
And each time I felt like my arm had been
Bit off by a shark.
I wish I could say
I never cried myself to sleep.
But it's okay,
I have Dr. Connor's serum
This lonely lizard
can regenerate.
/
They say that for teachers to not
Use scientifically tested instruction
is malpractice.
But the best lessons I have learned
Cannot be measured.
No standardized test will ask me
If I know how to build mud-mountains
If I always say "I love you"
If I know that the best friendships can be with books
Or if I thank my boyfriend for doing the dishes. Every. Single. Time.
The best lessons can be taught
Only by ourselves.
XXVI.
Bluebird Wishes II.
//
I heard a bluebird on my window
Sunday afternoon
I heard a poet humming lowly
Silver beak lifted to croon.
/
She sang of bitter wishes
Tarnished old ambitions
Fading in the [dusky] sky
/
The cars send up smoke signals
This is our ink.
/
She asks is tenderness just hopelessness
This journey but a whisper in the wind?
/
Singing oh
“You say you think
You can whiten your teeth
But I say fight for your wishes.
/
Shed ink like its your blood.
/
The axles of worn axioms
Let us only turn so fast
Yet we mortals made of eggshell bones
Claim that we are blessed!"
/
The paw of a cat
Reduced her neck to a snap
Gnawing bluebird proverbs
Inside his jagged teeth
/
The ink of her blood kept singing to me
/
"We all die beneath one sky
Under one canvas of lonely stars.
On one tired telephone wire…"
A dewdrop tear slips down my cheek
Face whitened with wishes.
XXVII.
I can't believe I'm saying this
Yet out the words drip from my lips
Out they aim to soothe when you sing the blues
Out they dry your tears when we play to lose
Out they fly to tomorrow over setting sun
Out they push past the thought of running away
Out they flow out they stutter out they laugh out they mutter
Out they mount out they croon
Out they shout that
So it seems
I love you.
XXVIII.
On Toxic Family Members
//
My own eyes staring across the table at me
like I'm some circus freak
his booming voice
asking, "are you okay?"
really saying, "you're fragile" "insane" "pitiful"
/
My mother invades my bedroom with her tears
begging me not to "provoke"
to do whatever he says
chastising me for his violent outburst
"YOU ruined the painting"
I am his sister, not his puppet master.
/
Pushing pushing pushing me to the edge of the cliff
and when i fall blood rushes to my face
pressure mounts in my chest
and I can't help but scream
as I run away
but I can't run away
their thumbprints linger in the crevices of my brain
/
But it could be so much worse
If they knew me.
XXVIV.
Selfless
//
"selfless"
a compliment?
without self
without identity
without individuality
selfless.
/
selfless:
"concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than with one's own"
so selfless
we don't even know
our own wishes
we neglect our own needs
/
"others"
why are others more important than the self?
why not equally important?
/
these are words i never dared to speak
never dared to think
self led to sin
self led to ego
self led to cruelty
but all selflessness leads to is self hated
to sin to the self, cruelty to the self, to an ego so mangled that when it tries to embrace others its thorny limbs scratch them
/
"unity"
where the self is not separate
from the other
unity:
where self and others are one
where ALL needs are valued, ALL wishes pursued
/
i dream of a world
where saviors and martyrs
become characters of fairy tails
tragic heroines and heros
/
unity:
"the state of being whole."
