snow

free write challenge comparing a person to snow.


He is snow. Much loved, yet ice.
A trembling touch
He fits the palm of my red hand.

But he, is snow - and he crumbles
Under reckless weight
Of those who feel snow is a game

He is snow. Hardened, hollow
From a dark, cruel night
Quaking under a fragile moon.

He is snow, with a desire to be melted.
He couldn't be held
Long enough to be understood.

Fire and Ice could never co-exist
Yet how they loved
And longed to be more permanent.

Park

I'm searching
for
proof of life
a signal
sign
that somewhere beyond this reality
is another.one that was ours

when we lazed in parks
hand in hand
sauntering through summer's heat
and shifting seasons...
parked in pleasure gardens
under autumn's leaves
crisp air growing cooler
time ticking to
winters blast...
when
a new year brought
breakfast in bed
and love sprints down highway 81
we feasted on love
trapped and tangled under our covers
where markers bled into mattresses
concealing
a starving hunger
that lurked into
spring
and without notice
the self sabotage was seeping into summer...

fading in and out
the spiral began
reality was lost, truth was blurred
and it was over before it began.

The truth is
time is cruel
and memories are unreliable
and the best thing
that never happened is parked in
some park
waiting
for love to arrive,
and years spent trying to forget
will only make the memory
that much more indelible...

today is a good day.

that is all.

framed.

I see you
Framed in every window
Of those houses
Stretched in front of me;
As their curtains ache
For a tender brush of your skin.
Your smile aimed only at me
Turns to that smirk,
And I shrink
To dust,
Like the ashes
Of the joint-
Inhaled deeply,
The way only you do...

Breathe me in.

Trophy Wife

Another acrostic...


It was ingrained in
Me from the beginning- the importance of

Accessories.

That is until I became one-
Resting on your arm
Obediently standing beside you
Poised and polished at all times...
Hiding my intellect and free spirit because
You demanded it... I was

Whirling into the nothingness until
I couldn't be silent any longer- Today I
Found my voice. Fuck you and your
Expectations, I'm done.

lucky girl

Check your smile
in the blemished mirror
And give your pride a rest.
Lucky girl.
Swinging hair
Yearbook smile
All the while, she’s drifting inside
like tissue papers in the wind.
( Swirling, twirling, lost and gone.)
Lucky girl.
Hides her pain
with a sweetly glossed grin
to cover the bruised lips.
Always on the fringe,
beyond the outskirts.
Lucky girl.
There's have-nots and haves.
courses in naivity, envy and how to jaded 101,
where witty come-backs play like a soundtrack
Popularity is roulette for a
Lucky Girl.
There are those who know and those
who'll never learn.
The residue of everything she’s always wanted,
but that somehow slid right past her,
concealed under her too sugary
cotton candy fingernails.
Confidence borrowed from
a denim coat and poet’s lace.
A vision of togetherness
(falling all apart)
Her face, she doesn’t want you to recall.
Her laugh, you won’t forget.
Lucky girl wears sadness like a Homecoming
corsage.

fear

Punishing each tear with
the back of my hand
each tear that falls,
avoiding eye contact
afraid
of the words that will spill
from my lips
holding my breath
at each set of approaching footsteps
and
expecting to find him
on my front step
or behind the shower curtain
and at the end of every dream
I fight to escape
but cannot.

ramblings on sharing a shower....

Oh...so many sea secrets, this underwater girl, swimming up in her lilac mess


There she is in the very womb of me, not inside of me but inside my world. Touching my things, seeing my secret world, my intimates. She is in my bathroom, in my shower, touching the things that I use to wash away my sins and pains. There she is, in the place where I have bathed and soaked, stewed and cried, the place where I have rejuvenated, tore myself apart, put myself back together again, the place where I go to start fresh again, my bath tub. She has no idea the places she is touching and we are just flirting. On the exterior we are playing this game, offering up, assessing, appreciating each other... but, she has no idea how deep my shell echoes. That I throw my voice out there and sometimes it never comes back. I listen to her working and I stretch on my couch and feel a shift, a shiver, a release, an arrow to a heart and I know something new inside.

My soul is all kissed up.

mountaintop

Let me wake the stars
with a song
from a mountaintop retreat
let me meet my Master, my tao in
the wise hills
When the moon is a sliver of silver
let me pen my wishes in the earth’s soul.
Strength from the smallest wave
ripples into my prayer
making me one with Yaweh.
The wind is breath, I live.
The echoes in the valleys are my courage, I dance.
The whisper of leaves are my peace, I’m free.
When the last star yawns its waking
I will have found my will
Here.

sell me cheap

When I Leave

keep nothing.
Spread me out
among the violets
and honeysuckle;
lay me in the bluegrass
to gaze into the boundless
blue skies.

Sell me cheap
like a vintage bargain.
Let strangers
fumble through
the memories of me
and laugh as you recall
my quirks
and filthy language.

As for the books
give them away,
but only to those who
appear to have a soul.
Those who will pour over the underlinings
scribbled notes in the margins,
and folded edges.

As for my poems and journals,
they were my life.
sit back with a bottle of
cheap wine,
and all of my friends.
Read my secrets.
Finally know me.

memories trapped in scents and sounds

Distinct smells seem to trigger memories. I encounter certain scents and moments in time are born again. The scent of my grandmother's perfume catches me every now and again and takes me back to her, back to the days when I was a daughter and everything was watercolored and drawn in pastels. Back to those days after something traumatic, when I just wanted to be lullabied. I was like a chick who had pecked its way through the shell and lay exhausted and damp with the smells of life. Only rather than trying to exit that little membrane, that shell, I was trying to climb back in.

After the bad times, perfume and music were what got me through. I listened to the same song, on repeat for days. It was the only sound I wanted around me. I tried not to hear his voice, or the echoes of those from my childhood. I tried not to hear my own muffled sobs and pleads, or the sounds of ambulances and strangers with stethoscopes and charts. And I thought if I sprayed enough of her perfume and kept my eyes closed and concentrated on how my body would move to those sounds, then I could make it. Every strand of that song is a part of my body, it echoes in my cells. I hear it, when there is no music, no humming, I feel it in my veins and in the husks of my soul. It is my safety music, a safety net for a girl who has none. A soft place to land, that I have tried to create, however loosely woven and self-invented it is.

beneath the dust

Beneath the dust,
the cast off faces and places are exposed,
memories surface like trinkets
and sink.
snippets of a grin, a game, of youth
indolent grace.
a locket of recollections, resolutions, reinventions
[of rage, to escape, to survive]
generations of photographs
generations of unspeakable abuse.
I see myself,
among their faces and places
now cast off ‘neath the dust,

though sometimes I wish I didn't.

peeling an orange

I love to peel oranges, especially navel ones, because the skin is so thick and it makes that gratifying little sound, like...pffttt when you first pierce the skin and the orange mist spray gets all in your face. I had to study it for a while. Anyway, back to my point...
So, I decided I was going to peel my orange and try to keep the whole skin intact, not pulling off any pieces, just making a little opening, just enough to pull the orange out in a whole ball, but all the skin still intact. The skin is this perfect ball, just sitting there, like a husk. I can see the stamen sticking up through the center, it’s so beautiful.
The process was so meticulous in and of itself. I rolled the orange in my hand to loosen up the juices, I could feel them all pressing into the orange. Then I pierced the skin with my fingernail. I worked my finger into the orange and loosened all around the skin, breaking the little white veins that hold the fruit like a net. Then I just worked to move it out of the space I had created.
And now I'm admiring my orange peel ball. It feels a bit like a basketball, round, of course, but the surface is slightly bumpy and sorta...hmmm...smooth? Can something be both bumpy and smooth at once? The top of the bumps sorta feels smooth perhaps, making it feel like a second surface beneath my fingertips, which by the way have that sharply sweet tangy smell to them.

But this orange is...just like a woman, strong...full of mystery and wonder and complication; complete with a little baby, clinging to her side. Peeling oranges is an art, a celebration of citrus and of the wonder of life, the mysteries of womanhood, and of beauty in the oddest and most simple places.

earth

They were right about this planet, you know:
it's a flat-screen
and we droop across its landscape
like the dregs of a 3am house party
[cans, cups and trash strewn about, bodies slumped
in euphoric bliss];
exhausted but triumphant to be awake
in unnatural light.
Dim glow buzzes
through the ashtrays and grease
and our stares are those of zombies
or babies,
unable to support our own skulls
or do anything constructive without being prodded.
Disaster strikes and
we swap it for the more digestible
colors of cartoon energy;
continents could crumble and we would merely
change the channel.
Don't we all [secretly]
wish for an international remote control,
so that we could point – zap – and
silence the constant violence;
the senseless;
the too-complex;
the it’s-all-our-fault-I-guess;
ourselves…overall,
this big global mess?

photograph of lies

Self Loathing topped
With false confidence
An ice cream sundae
Of deceit and doubt

Perfection projected
from photoshoped images
a portrait of family
Conceals a nightmare of reality

Ironed on expressions
Forced smiles not meant
A flash of supposed to be
Placed on the wall for the world to see

Photograph of Lies...

it's wednesday.

tuesday i put neosporin on a student's stab wound, who was subsequently expelled for fighting back during the stabbing. I should also mention he was stabbed in the back, right near his spine.
I try not to seem too shocked by the things these kids endure. This is their normal, and if I indicate that it's abnormal, i've lost all credibility. Fortunately for me, when he first told me he had been stabbed, I thought he said slapped, so I shrugged it off.
The thing that stuck with me is that he also had a cut on his knuckle so i offered him some stuff to clean it up with. he's not the kind of kid you'd typically offer a bandaid to, but I did anyways. He seems more like the kind of would just wipe his hand on his pants, even if they were filthy, and move along.
I was trying to be careful when I offered the bandaid, I didn't want to be too motherly, or baby him. but then he shocked me.
Not only did he want the bandaid, but he wanted me to put it on for him. When he asked for that, I felt like I was taking care of my 4 year old nephew- a fragile little boy.

Then he asked if I could put some neosporin and gauze on his stab wound- and i snapped back to reality.

not my reality, but his.

he lifted his shirt and i saw a wound that probably should have been stitched... a wound that could have been much worse had it been a bit deeper... a wound that made my stomach turn for a thousand different reasons...

This kid has a tardy mother, absent father, and crack addicted grandmother/guardian with whom he shares a one bedroom apartment.

No wonder he wants a bandaid.

i want a bandaid too. a giant fucking bandaid.

poetry is a bullet

2 minute free verse challenge. "What is poetry?"


Poetry is false
it is a delusion of grandeur
a distorted perception of life
confessing love and genius
in a string of perceptual words
creating a fantasy
that the words actually mean something

poetry is for robots
we believe ourselves to be profound beings
editing other people's writing
as if ours has developed an idea
these letters put together
to make a word that makes a fragment
no use for commas period
and I run on and on
believing that my expressions in syntax
and declarations of independent clauses
will rectify something in your beating heart

poetry is not love making
it is a only a page
poetry will never let me kiss you
under a midnight sun
poetry will never change your mind
about what I have become

endless metaphors recycled
into new similes
and I keep repeating myself

poetry is a noun
and love is a verb
and you were the subject
of my silent thoughts
no matter how fluid
or creative I get on a blank page
poetry means nothing

poetry is a suicide note
it is a bullet
that is terrified of blood
it is a knife
too scared to slice a throat
poetry is a dead leaf
waiting to be crushed
by those who have forgotten
how green
it used to be