I would like to write a poem
about you.
But I can never seem to articulate
the feelings that you give me
I think if I could
some of the magic would be lost
and those sparkles of gold
would only be pieces of forgotten glitter
blown in on the wind
from some second-place school project.
And so I skirt around you
trying to save the wonder
in the wild rose
that could
(who knows?)
be lost if it were placed into captivity.

yes I know you love me
but please stop saying that.
It’s all so unbelievably juvenile
a kind of sugary sweet residue that lingers
on the back of your tongue and the back of your brain.
it’s a weighted blanket that is crushing me and crushing me
you’re a well-intentioned All American Boy
blond hair, green eyes,
the whole shebang.
and you tell me you love me at the back of the theatre
(we held hands the whole movie)
and here I am dying in your embrace
and you grin and grin with that dimple of yours
I want to scream LET ME GO
I am not the girl you love
I don’t want to go ride the Ferris wheel with you so we can hold hands at the top
I’d much rather longboard around the neighborhood
and run my hands through a girl’s long hair.
I’d rather the taste of cherry chapstick than cotton candy stickiness
(and yes I love you and I love you but that doesn’t mean I like it)
because you want to grow old with me
and I want to go out in a blaze with my hands wrapped around her waist.

(she tastes of moonbeams)
It’s 3 am I can’t fall asleep.
there lie my battered dreams at her feet
as she does stumbling cartwheel around the school field.
she is spicy and burning
ever intense but I love it.
he is pure sugar
stuffed to the brim with chemical sweetness.
hot sauce or cotton candy?
(he is stuffing his affection down my throat)
he has always been the one I was supposed to love.
he liked me-
(you know, he like liked me)
back in fourth grade
he asked me out on his birthday
an all American happily ever after
he is punk rock and early 2000s songs
stifling instead of comforting.
she is someone who I didn’t know till last year
and even then only really knew of her.
my crush’s girlfriends friend.
we have joked about dating
sometimes she sits in my lap
she starts a spark in my stomach
and I already know she’ll be the death of me because my bones are birch driftwood and my skin is watercolor paper
I am perfectly flammable and she is perfect fire.
I love her more deeply than I even know how.
he is so temporary
a cookie cutter boyfriend
but god the taste of her lips in my head
is what keeps me up at night.
I am sorry that I cannot be who I am supposed to be.
(and you might say But Lucy! You’re dating that all American baseball boy! and I’ll say yes but he was never my first choice. give him my apologies for that, really, but there’s nothing I can do!)
so while I go to the movies and go to the mall
and get cotton candy love stuffed down my throat
her fire and my death
will be on loop
in my heart.

she sits in the bathtub
back to her infinite melancholy
a paperback thriller sitting on the side of the bath.
she reads them to feel something
horror or even a twisted joy.

her mirrors have crayon on them
make me real, more than a doll
she begs at the foot of her bed.

people say she is lost
that's not the problem.
she knows where she is too well
how can you explore
when all you see are finished maps?

she knows who she is
but she doesn't know how she feels

she's a product of her environment
a blank person from blank walls.

spirit week is rapidly approaching
he's somehow both anxious and apathetic
how can he bluff his way through spirit week
when he's been feeling so dead inside recently

everything is boring
he almost misses the times
when he felt broken inside

at least it meant feeling something

he would have a mantra
or write something meaningful
but who would recite it
who would read it
(certainly not him)

ah how twisted is evolution
how twisted is the way
that constant exposure either leaves us numb or hurting

he remembers that day
curled up under the desk
when it felt like his heart
was ripping itself apart
now he knows it was ripping itself out
out of his chest

he misses the days when he could cry

When I was younger
I used to want to be the president
or a lawyer.
Now I understand how complicated people are,
I'd like to be somebody exempt from their twisted rules
Somebody who studies the simple and beautiful laws
which transcend humanity.
I think I would like to be a physicist.

I made us a joint spotify playlist
You haven't contributed any songs.
I don't know how to interpret this;
if you're shy
or if there's a lack of interest.
I would ask you, but it feels
I've shared too much already.
And I couldn't bear
to be judged by you.

Right now,
I am perfectly here.
The sunlight shines on my face
and I feel like if I could kick my feet up
simultaneously
into the air
they'd stay there
and I'd be flying.

tape my mouth with duct tape
whisper goodnight in my ear
and wonder why I do not respond

When they say
"you're not like other girls"
it makes me mad.

I find it insulting
to the other girls

i read poems written by professionals and grow inconceivably jealous.
they are beautiful and morbid in a honey-sweet way so you don't realize quite how bad it actually tastes until you've swallowed it.
they are the dying calls of a cow who has only known captivity, hauntingly high pitched and so human that they almost remind you of yourself.
don't get me wrong, i love them
i love reading them
they seem to understand who i am even though i don't
they seem to know my thoughts before i've thought them
which is why i hate them a bit
it makes sense, unfortunately
i'm a middle schooler (high school soon) with no training to speak of
and yet i am also the cow, i am also the sweet rotting pill of truth so why can't i write like it?
which is why sometimes when i lose motivation i go read one of their poems in the hope that practice will make my poems perfect, that practice will make me perfect.

mr businessman
with his briefcase full of battered dreams
sometimes he stays up late at night
but not to cry.

now he's an artist
put all his money in a retirement fund
and started his life from scratch

people say he used to be great
but who knows?
maybe he still is.

he doesn't drink anymore
not even as a social activity
it scares him that if he has it one more time
he may lose all semblance of self control.
he's put himself together
but the glue's still drying.

some day,
in a month or a year
an indefinable period of time
his gaping gunshot wounds
will have faded.
covered in scars, he will be the most beautiful person for just an instant.

but what's gone is not forgotten.
sometimes he will trace his fingers over ridges of flesh
and feel the phantom pain of necrosis of the spirit.
he'll be happy -
but not content.

a good businessman
is never content.

a hopeless romantic
now she's just hopeless.
he was the man (boy, really)
of her dreams

he's not a nightmare, exactly,
it's just that she woke up
and her expectations fell down
to be dashed on the rocks

she's not outright sad
just melancholy
not quite blind,
just an occasional haze

the rose-colored glasses
were knocked off her face
by her own half-asleep arm

shattering, tinkling, singing
a beautiful song of praise and hope
until the clattering glass turns
to a silent, frozen scream

oh why can't she ever be more
than half asleep.
not rested, not stolen away by her dreams
yet not completely here, either
a separate lonely chair
just for her.

life takes after art
art after life
there they go again
chasing each other
who is the dog
and who is the tail
it's hard to tell some days
the people i imagine feel so real
known yet mysterious
and the people that i could touch
are about a mile away

is it that life spawns art
predicts it
or the other way around

i. i could write about so many things,
about how i love him like he's a fungus
like something that is creeping and slow and is definitely not planning to just let go anytime soon, how i love him like he's a part of me that i love or rather that i love to hate.

ii. i could write about how i love her and she loves me too but not in the right way.

iii. i could write about how she feels like moonbeams and the wink of a star, like something that you're so lucky to have and you know it.

iiii. i could write about how i only really miss her when we're together, because then i'm afraid, afraid that i won't be how i seem online, afraid that i cannot possibly love her enough to justify this horrible betrayal of friendship which is letting her believe i love her like a friend

iiiii. i could write about how he doesn't love me, how we're not even friends, how he feels like love is a cage, a trap, a sugary addiction (and it was with him)

iiiiii. i could write about how it felt to kiss him even though we didn't kiss, how it felt like you were nothing and he was everything and how he didn't even love himself so i had to do that for him

but i'm just so tired. i'd rather let words dance on my tongue and then tell myself to remember them and then forget, forget the words, forget the emotions, because even if they were beautiful they're tearing me apart, because to write good poetry you have to be able to rip off pieces of yourself and observe them and write them down, even while you're still bleeding.

iiiiiii. i could write this. i could hit the save button and just let it go, go back to wasting the potential that feels so much like something else, like kissing him, like when i'm working on myself, (my work, that is, essays and diagrams and all those pretty little traps) i am really working for someone else, because if i were really doing what i wanted, it wouldn't all feel like a trap, like i'm stuck in a mental net, would it?

iiiiiiii. i could write about things that never happened to me, but they might as well have because the real way to know if things have happened to you is if they changed you, and i am changed like these people in my mind i so love to write about are.

iiiiiiiii.  i could write about how my realest poems are things like this or scenes from my imagination, from people that never lived and never will but suffer like me every day of their nonexistent lives.

now i think i've written enough to know that there won't ever be a good ending to the poem, but i've started it so i have to finish it, and this sentence is just that,
an ending.

~fin~

his skin feels so small
it doesn't fit him
he screams and screams
hoping that someone will hear him
and give him a better body
one that fits right
one that's not stained with tears
one that's not scraped and battered
"Don't you love yourself?"
they ask
"God gave you a perfectly good body!"
it's not a matter of love
it's a matter of claustrophobia
it's a matter of screaming until your throat's raw
until you can't do anything else
it's a matter of holding your breath to make it all go away

oh, oh

mother please come back

oh, oh,

someone please notice my silent screams for help

oh,oh
oh,oh

and still the world turns
and still he cries
and still people insist
on calling him the wrong things
and still he is scared
scared and disgusted
not by the body
but by the fact that this body
is his.

I had a nice dream last night
for the first time in a long time
(not another nightmare
or a dream where I would wake up feeling the absence of you
no longer dominating
more like the loss of a nonvital *****)
it was an abstract dream,
flashes of moments -
a nice cup of tea
a lavender-scented pillow
but progress is progress
maybe someday you'll fade into a scar
something I can trace to remind myself
of how bad the wound used to be
progress is progress
I feel like now I can finally say
"goodbye, my love"

there's a difference between loving
and being in love.

i was in love with him.
dancing in the space between our minds
we didn't talk about meaningful things
we were willing fools
until the very end
and even after that.

being in love is being a fool
and throwing yourself into the other person
like jumping off a cliff.

being in love is to dream every day
of kissing them, of holding them finally.

i am not in love anymore.
now i have my friends, my chosen family.
i love them and it is a choice
the best one i have made so far.

"poetry writes people"
"days feel things"
"true eyes left twisted girls"
"beautiful dream, better screams"
"gravity slowly wrote art"
"familiar hungry poets"
"hear(ing) the outdated void"
"she misses her sweet toothaches" (actually "misses special toothaches but whatever)
"rain forgets promises"
"simple euphoria finding groceries"
"(the) gnarled verses day spawns"
"common machines play unimpressive predictions"
"clothing stained (with) heartbreak"
"scrawled swears share unique stories"

Love is blind
and deaf.
Love's nose does not smell
nor does her skin feel.
And her tongue
has been this way for quite a while.
Forget rose colored glasses,
she gave me rose colored-blindness.
(which is not at all a bad way to live)

a scream is little
other than a sudden wake
let's all stay asleep

liquor remained necessary,
yet again,
back to the incubators
bottled;
out
to undergo
their little normality.
Bud, proliferate, divide.
From every adult.
Progress.

Why do they call it heartbreak
when it feels more like a toothache,
sourly sweet,
gently throbbing,
overwhelming and unimpressive.
She sits curled up
underneath her desk
her mug forgotten in the microwave
she bit down on something too hard
an old memory of the way he smelled
like strawberries and minty aftershave
or the way his hair fell while he was asleep
and now she has to nurse her injuries
and wait for the pain to subside.
She knew her sweet tooth would leave her here someday
and now instead of tasting moonlight and caramel in her mouth
like she did that night under the bridge
she tastes something sour
bitter and rotting and familiar
and holds herself tighter
wishing & wishing the pain away.

She built a ukelele
two summers (or decades, or eternities) ago
at a workshop.
It used to be a cigar box
the surgeon general's warning sticker still on it.
It sits on a coffee table
reminding her of how
she never learned how to play it.

Promises, promises,
made by a tree.
"Promise, promise,
remember me

Tell my story
when I am gone.
Think of me,
when I move on.

Perhaps, perhaps,
I am being deceived,
will you remember me
when I leave?"

And so, and so, 
the tree replies,
"look at my leaves,
they stretch to the skies."
"Why would one as lofty as I
look at you,
and tell a lie?"

And so, and so,
the children believe,
they carve their names,
they grow,
they leave.

And someday far,
or someday soon,
a very old tree,
with leaves all strewn, 

In the hours close to dark
will feel a brush against their bark
If they will look then they shall see
a child's eyes,
wild and free

And somewhere in them,
the old ghost
Of a name that served
as a sign-post

To a past, dear and near,
and a future,
one that's bright and clear,
Silently watches from the tree
feeling, indeed, a shock of glee.

For who would have thought,
and who would have known,
that to those who have gone,
and those who have grown,
this gnarled old tree,
would become home.

I'm sorry for the times
I didn't treat you right

I'm sorry for the times
I was petty in a fight

I'm sorry for the days
when I thought only of myself

I'm sorry for the days
I couldn't take you for yourself

But
If there's one thing you should know,
it's that I'll love you through the night
I don't care
if you were rude
or petty in a fight.

Because you are the center of my
universe

My love is packed
in every verse

In every stanza
every line
there is hope
that you are mine

And even when you are the one
coming oh so slowly undone
I'll love you more than anyone.

And just together,
one-on-on,

I
will
always
be yours.

There are infinite things to write
To transfer from my tired mind to a piece of blank paper
There are an abundance of words
And even more so thoughts and feelings
So why is it that when I touch my pen to that blank sheet
Any hint or semblance of organization disappears
And I am left with my words scattered
Floating in the void?

He isn't a poet
He won't understand
When I tell him
That words go hand in hand.

He claims he doesn't know
What these verses hold
Alas, he can't see
The truth that's untold.

But this is OK
Perhaps even better
He can still see the emotion
Behind every letter

So the words I use
With him are plain
Yet somehow he knows
When they're steeped in pain.

He isn't a poet
Or so he swears
But he can tell
(because he cares)

He knows exactly
What I'm trying to say
(Or at least most
of the time anyway)

I think he can tell
(Though I don't know)
Through the screen
I love him so

His mind may not
Process things in rhyme
But that isn't a bad thing,
Isn't a crime.

I guess that now
What I'm trying to say
Is that I love him
Anyway.

(to K.G.)

I have more unpublished poems
than I do published

These are the ones
I am afraid to show to the world
for fear it spits them,
laughing,
back out.

These are the ones
that are a part of me.
I wrote them
They write me.

These are the ones
that are untitled
because no words
can perfectly express my intent
my pure, unfettered emotion.

These are the ones
that I love and hate.
They are beautiful
but in their beauty
they are made of ugly things.

Perhaps nobody reads these.
(nobody reads my poems anyways)
but maybe that's ok.

These poems are more for me than you anyways
More for me to say I tried
To throw myself into the void
That is writing to people
Who may not ever read your poems.

Perhaps this one, too
will end up untitled.
Unread.
Or maybe I will publish it.
I could, after all.

Perhaps I will
That doesn't sound so bad