emma-erbach - Hello Poetry

This, my suitcase heart, waits quiet outside your door, preparing for flight.

0

Jul 30, 2013

Jul 30, 2013 at 9:31 PM UTC

This, my suitcase heart, waits quiet outside your door, preparing for flight.

Teej. God owes us an apology for this one. It is a failure of the world. If there was too much hurt in the dark corners where you were cupping your palms, trying to light matches, then there is too much hurt. Jellyfish Baby, we could see through your pinkwhite skin to all the bleeding pieces but not stop the suffering. So you sliced a hole in the skin of the world and leaked out. All the brightness of you spilled like a slurpee on the sidewalk, dropped by careless hands. We should've been more careful with you. We should've built warmer nests in which to cradle your tender heart. We should've whispered in your ears as you slept that 'home' is not a place in the sky but people around a table and dinner plates for everyone and no one going hungry or alone. It is a failure of the world. There is too much hurt. And there are still dark corners but we have no matches.

0

Jul 25, 2013

Jul 25, 2013 at 2:55 PM UTC

for MasikaniCrocodile

Teej. God owes us an apology for this one. It is a failure of the world. If there was too much hurt in the dark corners where you were cupping your palms, trying to light matches, then there is too much hurt. Jellyfish Baby, we could see through your pinkwhite skin to all the bleeding pieces but not stop the suffering. So you sliced a hole in the skin of the world and leaked out. All the brightness of you spilled like a slurpee on the sidewalk, dropped by careless hands. We should've been more careful with you. We should've built warmer nests in which to cradle your tender heart. We should've whispered in your ears as you slept that 'home' is not a place in the sky but people around a table and dinner plates for everyone and no one going hungry or alone. It is a failure of the world. There is too much hurt. And there are still dark corners but we have no matches.

33

You told me, once when you died you wanted to be eaten by a bear: something used up and on the verge of starving; something that would feed on your for days, savor your marrow. Being a predator is terrifying. You said, you are constantly aware of death. As if that made you brave. I want to be eaten by something more beautiful: a snow leopard or a tree. Dig deep roots into my hollow spaces turn my blood to branches so I can keep growing, growing until I'm all acorn bones and blue skies. But maybe that's just me being scared of dying. Maybe that's just both of us being scared in different ways.

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Jul 14, 2013

Jul 14, 2013 at 1:49 AM UTC

Do Not Go Gently

You told me, once when you died you wanted to be eaten by a bear: something used up and on the verge of starving; something that would feed on your for days, savor your marrow. Being a predator is terrifying. You said, you are constantly aware of death. As if that made you brave. I want to be eaten by something more beautiful: a snow leopard or a tree. Dig deep roots into my hollow spaces turn my blood to branches so I can keep growing, growing until I'm all acorn bones and blue skies. But maybe that's just me being scared of dying. Maybe that's just both of us being scared in different ways.

23

Dear Trayvon, We should be rioting in the streets But it’s raining. We should be banging our fists ****** against the locked doors Of state buildings screaming justice! But the tea kettle is on and I had one too many drinks last night, so. I feel guilty for the protection of patriarchy, for never Wondering as I walk home in the evenings Who will shoot me For my skin, For never waking up at night from The nightmare picture of my son’s killer Smiling as he walks free. They pretended this was About youth violence and Text messages and Self defense, which is like saying Matthew Shepard was about a broken fencepost And the Holocaust was about the right of innocent Nazis to collect gold fillings From shattered jewish teeth. You were black. You were black. And being black In America makes you threatening And being scared of a teenager turns ****** into Neighborly behavior. And I will never have to worry About someone protecting themselves From the threat of my skin. So I will never have to question My complicity in a country That would rather shoot down Than stand for Its young men. So I will stand outside Drinking tea and letting the rain cry for me While I beat my fists against nothing And by the morning you will Already be forgotten Just like all the other Beautiful threatening boys We never cared enough to know.

0

Jul 14, 2013

Jul 14, 2013 at 1:30 AM UTC

Dear Trayvon

Dear Trayvon, We should be rioting in the streets But it’s raining. We should be banging our fists ****** against the locked doors Of state buildings screaming justice! But the tea kettle is on and I had one too many drinks last night, so. I feel guilty for the protection of patriarchy, for never Wondering as I walk home in the evenings Who will shoot me For my skin, For never waking up at night from The nightmare picture of my son’s killer Smiling as he walks free. They pretended this was About youth violence and Text messages and Self defense, which is like saying Matthew Shepard was about a broken fencepost And the Holocaust was about the right of innocent Nazis to collect gold fillings From shattered jewish teeth. You were black. You were black. And being black In America makes you threatening And being scared of a teenager turns ****** into Neighborly behavior. And I will never have to worry About someone protecting themselves From the threat of my skin. So I will never have to question My complicity in a country That would rather shoot down Than stand for Its young men. So I will stand outside Drinking tea and letting the rain cry for me While I beat my fists against nothing And by the morning you will Already be forgotten Just like all the other Beautiful threatening boys We never cared enough to know.

45

Let's spend a week forgetting to be lonely. I'll fly into Knoxville, drive east until the roads run out. No one goes to Harlan County unless they have to. The mountains are giants, here, they almost disguise the desolation-- the pieces of people that got caught when the mines collapsed. You tell me to be careful, as if this isn't my country, too. As if I wasn't born with dirt beneath my fingernails. I like how you treat me delicate. I like to pretend I'm a flower. You touch me like I'm breakable. I want to protest that I'm not, but I'd be lying. Look at me like you mean it, like I'm the only clean water you've drunk in weeks. The wells have been choked with weeds. So leave bite marks on my back as you burn the brush. There is a sweetness in me if you can find it. Let's drink like teenagers; make sloppy love. I want to *** at the same time and then lie around giggling and smoking cigarettes. Pull the blankets off the bed and trail them through the house until we've ****** in every room, twice. Let's build a pillow fort, drink cheap wine out of mason jars, and then **** so hard it falls down around us. I want you to lose hours in me, whole days, come up for air next Tuesday and we'll cook breakfast at midnight. You make me so hungry. Tell me about your childhood, tell me the one thing you asked for every Christmas and never got. I wanted an Easy-Bake Oven. I wanted to play normal. Tell me all the things you got but didn't ask for, never wanted, didn't deserve. I'll run my teeth across your earlobe and let my hips listen to all the words your tongue never learned to say. We are both still just babies. I like how you scare me. How sometimes you hold my wrists together when you tell me I'm beautiful so I can't wriggle away, because you know I've never been good at accepting compliments. I can count the number of nights we've spent together on one hand, but the months of distance take more than just digits. I used to think you hated me. I used to hate myself for it. I know the darkness in you. Three days down in the mine with no canary and me just waiting for you to reemerge. You always seem to find your ways out of it. I like to think of myself as a lodestone; you tell me not to get arrogant, that being wounded and beautiful aren't interchangeable, but I believe they both can make us strong. I want to write poems with my fingers on the small of your back, leave scratch marks as a reminder of how far I've come. You make me forget to be sad. You teach me not to take myself too seriously. I want to be your canary. Follow my voice out when it gets dangerous. I'll only scream when I mean it. Get a little lost in me. Undress until I can feel the heartbeat in your **** reverberating up my spine. So run your tongue down my torso; forget to breathe, while you Tell me the things that scare you. Show me your seams. Somewhere beneath all this rock there is a gold mine, so trace my veins like a treasure map. Maybe someday they will lead you home.

0

Jun 9, 2013

Jun 9, 2013 at 10:40 PM UTC

Appalachian Love Song

Let's spend a week forgetting to be lonely. I'll fly into Knoxville, drive east until the roads run out. No one goes to Harlan County unless they have to. The mountains are giants, here, they almost disguise the desolation-- the pieces of people that got caught when the mines collapsed. You tell me to be careful, as if this isn't my country, too. As if I wasn't born with dirt beneath my fingernails. I like how you treat me delicate. I like to pretend I'm a flower. You touch me like I'm breakable. I want to protest that I'm not, but I'd be lying. Look at me like you mean it, like I'm the only clean water you've drunk in weeks. The wells have been choked with weeds. So leave bite marks on my back as you burn the brush. There is a sweetness in me if you can find it. Let's drink like teenagers; make sloppy love. I want to *** at the same time and then lie around giggling and smoking cigarettes. Pull the blankets off the bed and trail them through the house until we've ****** in every room, twice. Let's build a pillow fort, drink cheap wine out of mason jars, and then **** so hard it falls down around us. I want you to lose hours in me, whole days, come up for air next Tuesday and we'll cook breakfast at midnight. You make me so hungry. Tell me about your childhood, tell me the one thing you asked for every Christmas and never got. I wanted an Easy-Bake Oven. I wanted to play normal. Tell me all the things you got but didn't ask for, never wanted, didn't deserve. I'll run my teeth across your earlobe and let my hips listen to all the words your tongue never learned to say. We are both still just babies. I like how you scare me. How sometimes you hold my wrists together when you tell me I'm beautiful so I can't wriggle away, because you know I've never been good at accepting compliments. I can count the number of nights we've spent together on one hand, but the months of distance take more than just digits. I used to think you hated me. I used to hate myself for it. I know the darkness in you. Three days down in the mine with no canary and me just waiting for you to reemerge. You always seem to find your ways out of it. I like to think of myself as a lodestone; you tell me not to get arrogant, that being wounded and beautiful aren't interchangeable, but I believe they both can make us strong. I want to write poems with my fingers on the small of your back, leave scratch marks as a reminder of how far I've come. You make me forget to be sad. You teach me not to take myself too seriously. I want to be your canary. Follow my voice out when it gets dangerous. I'll only scream when I mean it. Get a little lost in me. Undress until I can feel the heartbeat in your **** reverberating up my spine. So run your tongue down my torso; forget to breathe, while you Tell me the things that scare you. Show me your seams. Somewhere beneath all this rock there is a gold mine, so trace my veins like a treasure map. Maybe someday they will lead you home.

78

All creation is an act of naming: creatures defined by certain syllables, resting safely within their own unique boundaries of sound. Only able to know themselves through owning their own distinct definitions. Without names, we are voiceless. Without voices, we cease to exist. When I first began learning the languages of hearts my mouth was sewn shut by cruel hands, careless with their stitches, until my lips grew silver-smooth and tight containing my breathe like a caged beast. At night I used to dream in whispers. But the act of growing up is one of slicing sutures, carving away the scar tissue and letting long-unused muscles shudder with the possibility of movement. So teach my tongue to sing a song other than silence, to wrap its longing around the pearls of my teeth, to view my lips not as cages but as wings. There is no shame in stealing the keys to your own prison, so I am unlocking swollen lips with stolen visions of a girl grown so much louder than any pain could silence. And I am beginning to name myself. I am naming myself whole. I am naming myself beautiful. I am naming myself worthy of being heard. But the vocabulary of my heart is still small. I am only just beginning to learn what love sounds like. It is not a word I heard often. But creation is more than one singular moment of definition: creatures named now name each other their mouths like caverns full of butterflies. So teach my tongue to fly. Teach me to relish the soft strands of syllables against my fragile wings, the wild rush of words that sounds a little too much like freedom, teach me how to hold myself together even when it rains. For it has been raining from my eyes for years, each tear slipping into a stream of syllables I wasn't allowed to say; so teach my eyes to pray. Someone once told me that birds in cages must think flying is a sickness, and I'm only now discovering how sick I am of this. They can't cross your boundaries if you never learned how to set them so build walls out of words and then speak your own doorways: The only bird that sings for freedom is one that knows its definition. But I am singing now. I am singing now. I am singing myself wings.

0

Jun 9, 2013

Jun 9, 2013 at 10:27 PM UTC

Spoken

All creation is an act of naming: creatures defined by certain syllables, resting safely within their own unique boundaries of sound. Only able to know themselves through owning their own distinct definitions. Without names, we are voiceless. Without voices, we cease to exist. When I first began learning the languages of hearts my mouth was sewn shut by cruel hands, careless with their stitches, until my lips grew silver-smooth and tight containing my breathe like a caged beast. At night I used to dream in whispers. But the act of growing up is one of slicing sutures, carving away the scar tissue and letting long-unused muscles shudder with the possibility of movement. So teach my tongue to sing a song other than silence, to wrap its longing around the pearls of my teeth, to view my lips not as cages but as wings. There is no shame in stealing the keys to your own prison, so I am unlocking swollen lips with stolen visions of a girl grown so much louder than any pain could silence. And I am beginning to name myself. I am naming myself whole. I am naming myself beautiful. I am naming myself worthy of being heard. But the vocabulary of my heart is still small. I am only just beginning to learn what love sounds like. It is not a word I heard often. But creation is more than one singular moment of definition: creatures named now name each other their mouths like caverns full of butterflies. So teach my tongue to fly. Teach me to relish the soft strands of syllables against my fragile wings, the wild rush of words that sounds a little too much like freedom, teach me how to hold myself together even when it rains. For it has been raining from my eyes for years, each tear slipping into a stream of syllables I wasn't allowed to say; so teach my eyes to pray. Someone once told me that birds in cages must think flying is a sickness, and I'm only now discovering how sick I am of this. They can't cross your boundaries if you never learned how to set them so build walls out of words and then speak your own doorways: The only bird that sings for freedom is one that knows its definition. But I am singing now. I am singing now. I am singing myself wings.

56

Every story is a sad story. Everything is sad. Too many tragedies, not enough time. They pile up on top of one another, Clamoring for attention. Bombing tops earthquake tops ****** tops **** Burying us under the weight of too many Bodies, their cold eyes pleading See me, hear me, remember me but Every story is a sad story So no one stays sad very long. When sadness is ever-present it becomes normal. So now we don’t even blink, just Scroll through our newsfeeds thinking: The world is horrible and what’s for dinner Simultaneously. When reality is too sad Sadness becomes a simulation, acted out On the stage of nightly news broadcasts and Candelight vigils, as if: If we all just felt sad enough for long enough That would solve anything. As if: If we could compartmentalize our sadness into New national holidays and moments of silence We could stop feeling everything so sharply. But I am running out of room in my closet for charity t-shirts. Every story is a sad story. I am starting to become cynical. One child dead from a drive-by shooting is no longer newsworthy. Give me more bodies, more pictures of distraught mothers crying, More suffering. We have fought too many wars in too many places to remember that the bombs in Boston that shut down the entire city Are an everyday occurrence everywhere else. Except sometimes they are our bombs. But rarely are they our children. Every story is a sad story. Everything is sad. I am not sure which is worse: constant sadness Or no sadness; Constant tragedy or constant denial. I am becoming too sad to write anymore. The world is too horrible. What’s for dinner?

0

Apr 21, 2013

Apr 21, 2013 at 11:36 PM UTC

For Boston and Everywhere Else

Every story is a sad story. Everything is sad. Too many tragedies, not enough time. They pile up on top of one another, Clamoring for attention. Bombing tops earthquake tops ****** tops **** Burying us under the weight of too many Bodies, their cold eyes pleading See me, hear me, remember me but Every story is a sad story So no one stays sad very long. When sadness is ever-present it becomes normal. So now we don’t even blink, just Scroll through our newsfeeds thinking: The world is horrible and what’s for dinner Simultaneously. When reality is too sad Sadness becomes a simulation, acted out On the stage of nightly news broadcasts and Candelight vigils, as if: If we all just felt sad enough for long enough That would solve anything. As if: If we could compartmentalize our sadness into New national holidays and moments of silence We could stop feeling everything so sharply. But I am running out of room in my closet for charity t-shirts. Every story is a sad story. I am starting to become cynical. One child dead from a drive-by shooting is no longer newsworthy. Give me more bodies, more pictures of distraught mothers crying, More suffering. We have fought too many wars in too many places to remember that the bombs in Boston that shut down the entire city Are an everyday occurrence everywhere else. Except sometimes they are our bombs. But rarely are they our children. Every story is a sad story. Everything is sad. I am not sure which is worse: constant sadness Or no sadness; Constant tragedy or constant denial. I am becoming too sad to write anymore. The world is too horrible. What’s for dinner?

44