cold tea falls behind my teeth.
I always liked dead flowers better anyway--they're easier to draw.
at least they're done decaying. easier to relate to.
"sometimes too grand a compliment hurts worse than a slap to the face",
their pretty painted petals only ever waiting to die.
wherever they grew originally, I'm sure they thought they would live forever.
they thought they were free, but they were only beautiful, trapped in a greenhouse, blossoming, dreaming.
they were pink and thought they were immortal.
now they sit in a vase, next to my bed, slowly shedding petals.
the charade is over and they know it was no field they were growing in.
brown, like everything and everyone else now, we were beautiful and thought we were free.
but these days, flowers are grown for glass vases.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 2:24 PM UTC
I write poems, not people,
And in them we all move so gracefully.
I diagnose myself freely with the
fluidity of tongue that can only serve to
mask motives.
no love is sloppy
Besides, it is heartbreak that is the most poetic, and I, after all,
write poems.
(poetry dictates artistry, ensures emotions, grants form, prevents freedom)
Even myself I work over into prose,
selecting words carefully,
double meanings,
hiding secrets within stanzas and passing them off as purposeful.
I am no riddle.
I am a poem like the rest of you,
terrified to be messy and avoiding interpretation.
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
I howl for you, against myself.
I howl for you because I hunt.
primal instinct
unstoppable
echoes
moons
I howl for you
it escapes
Loud
before my mind understands the function
I
LEAK
this urge out of myself
and the black air steals it
My throat carries this betrayal
into everywhere
into you
I don't know what it means but this hallelujah is hateful
I howl
I howl for you
baby
my baby
Should I squelch it?
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 12:30 PM UTC
Chasing wine with cigarettes--I can hold your face but I could never hold you.
My love, you are far too heavy;
Dense with things I never should have told you.
At the time, a sweet release for me
But I did not know I would have to pick them back up inside of you.
One day I will look at myself and wonder where I thought it would lead to, this trail of my pieces I leave scattered
In cluttered woods of stronger arms
In oceans of deep longing
In a moan that makes its way out into the impenetrable and inviting blackness and plants itself in the ground we've already pressed on,
The next point by which you'll try and follow me.
I would love to kiss you,
But I'm convinced you will sink,
And I'm either too weak to save you
Or too scared to try harder and
I'd hate to find out which.
Apr 28, 2014
Apr 28, 2014 at 6:03 PM UTC
Sometimes I think I could have loved you.
Quietly, in my way,
like a guarded mist that surrounded you.
You must have been blind,
at least in that temporary way,
playfully,
to have known my deluded cloud-ness,
to desire that weather,
to even let my
encumbered enchanting
E-R-I-N
out into what swallowed us.
I am what you fear I am
and my fog has left my love impalpable,
even to myself.
I am what I fear I am
nothingness
pure speculation--
If my heart beats, it is only to shut its own doors.
As a child, many great green vines of wild honeysuckle overwhelmed our wooden fences. Beautifully misplaced and sweet-smelling I drank their nectar out of appreciation for these small gods.
Every summer we would slash and tear them apart for the fear that soon they would overwhelm our boundaries.
How bare our home seemed without them.
But my whole life
has been practice
at protecting my fences,
and I have come to love them so fiercely
that now
no seeds
are thrown
there at all.
You should know I still adore wild honeysuckle,
and that darling,
sometimes,
I think I could have loved you.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
Longing to long for something,
I toss petals from my mind onto paper
without hesitation.
Their verdict is uninteresting.
Oct 21, 2013
Oct 21, 2013 at 2:45 PM UTC
I hope that I'm your Moby ****
I hope I'm the sneering, many-toothed crocodile from your Captain Hook head.
I hope you awake, late in the night, sweating, hearing a ticking sound,
Because I hope I'll always have just enough of you to haunt you.
I have great confidence you'll think of me often,
so perhaps that's why I could stop thinking of you.
I don't attribute myself much besides longevity,
and to you,
not even that.
One stormy day,
You'll find me,
Covered in ink, washed ashore in a bottle
on the same sands that
tick-tick-tick
your hourglass away.
My message will speak simply of your failure to toss me beyond the tide.
The mind is no place for hiding things, and fate has a way of showing us that.
But perhaps,
Darling,
you're still defying them both.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 10:43 PM UTC
Three hot tears rolled down my face
and I think they were what's left of you.
The sky darkened as we drove home.
Somehow, even the locusts knew not to chirp.
In the damp grass the ants did not stir.
I guess that's the trouble with memory.
It makes things static,
makes them malleable,
makes them like
one of those stress-relief stones that you carry in your pocket
and rub with your thumb when you're feeling
lonely or anxious,
all the while boring a whole straight through.
You were solid but not designed to give strength.
You were my favorite mountain.
Nobody could replace you--
Except a new version of yourself.
But even in your Everestine heights,
I did not know you.
A mountain, yes--that is what he must be!
I would have preferred a man,
because when I fell down
you could not bend to catch me.
I hope you eventually forgive me
when I make myself happy outside of your shadow,
but the whisper of a new light
is enough
to call me out.
As we pull into the driveway, I slip silently onto my feet.
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 10:14 PM UTC
I wish it was easy for me to do what you do,
But I have never been very good at opening myself up.
You do it with such elegance.
Your every word begs for attention and leaks a little of you into the air.
People breathe you like oxygen,
and have come to need you even more.
Life.
Your eyes tell me what mine could be like
If I dared to follow in your
Rebellious, graceful,
Albeit complicated footsteps;
once again you are the first one on the dance floor,
But the beat I hear most clearly when I'm around you
Is not the one you inspire Club One to clap to.
One million loose-lipped ladies and never a line about you,
because no one has it in them to talk about what isn't in you.
You are a poet's dream.
You are pure beauty in its rarest form--sincerity.
You are every coin thrown in a hat,
every victory yell,
every unexpected smile at the turn of something new,
every bird who refuses to fly in a pattern.
You are what's inside every note.
You are fiercely loved.
You are frustratingly, and unfathomably,
too good for words.
and only the sunshine deserves you.
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 7:41 PM UTC