She cannot remember
The number of lips
She has kissed in her lifetime
She is strangely proud of this
Like a kindergartener with a new watercolor
Look at all the fun I've had
Her memories are filled
With smart men
Funny men
And beautifully attractive men
And some not
Wince.
They come and go
She tells herself
Feelings are transient
And love is too much work
And yet
She finds
The more lips she kisses
The more arms that hold her
The more wedding pictures her friends seem to flaunt...
The more that piercing pang,
That warmth in her belly
Wants a man to stay
And yet
She tells herself
That she's not allowed to settle
An old German man told her so
But somehow
It becomes easier and easier
To imagine a future
With the men that she meets
Is it desperation?
Is it desire?
Or is she finally looking in the right places?
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 4:30 AM UTC
Today I unpacked.
I unzipped the memories
And let them ease past
The edges of the suitcase.
I picked them up
Shook them out
Cradled them close
And took a carnal sniff
Of the rough cedar scent
Of heaven
And opportunities lived to the full.
Today I glow
With my secrets
Flickering like tea candles
In a dimly lit jazz bar
Inevitably
He lingers there
In the soft sultry light
There
And not there
The ghost of a person
Swaying to the music
And staring into my soul:
Too spectacular to be real.
He is the road less traveled
Winding and twisting his way through my head
So I can’t find where the stories begin
And he ends
I try to explain
But stories are shooting stars
Staring out bright and trailing off
As I realize I live in the present
While his memories spark and fizzle like pop rocks
Punching my taste buds with a shock of sweet.
He is:
A quest for a perfect seat in the coffee shop
Holding hands in a small theater
Stolen kisses on the sidewalk
Dances without music
A skyline in sunset
And a tearful goodbye
As I got on the train.
I said I was fine.
I lied.
Desperately holding myself together
I dragged my bag
Through a maze of stations
Past the cautious scrutiny of uniforms
And onto the sterility of the plane
Thank God for windows:
Loss is staring out them.
Leaving him behind
Pretending you’re not dying
As your seatmate politely ignores your sobs
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 5:09 AM UTC
I talk myself in
I talk myself out
I pine
And I pause
And I hesitate
Hem-
Haw
Stumped by
Indecision
Fascinated
By you
Brain whizzing
Heart swooning
The duality of
Harsh critic
And romantic youth
Practicality tempers
The foolish hopes
Of the dreamer
They duel out
My insecurities
And reshape
My aspirations
Slicing away the cravenness
That covers my desires
Now
Daring is comfort
And Chance is worth the
Risk of Happiness
Hello lover.
Feb 10, 2015
Feb 10, 2015 at 11:28 AM UTC
She hates that she is a woman
The putrefying weakness perceived in the curves of her body
The naivete shown in her blues
With the unintentional flutter of butterfly lashes
That refuse to meet the glances of those that pass by
The fear-- Of what?
That stereotypes are true?
She doesn't even know
And it sickens her.
She sickens herself.
She hates that she is white
The blandest vanilla
The marble statue
Somehow revered
Worshiped
Privileged
But simultaneously overlooked
Boring
Unimportant
The Caucasian mongrel
In light of the fact that her People
Have no proud history
Which she can name herself heir to
She hates that she is middle class
Not poor enough to struggle
Not rich enough to be free
Just situated dully in the middle
A footnote in the statistic
That they tell her she must use
To identify herself
She hates that her belief system
Has to be called by a name
That she has to choose
To be a part of a group
As part of her "identity"
And she is not allowed
To stand by her own integrity
She hates that she is American
The pudgy, loud-mouthed, laterally-speaking nation
The brashly jumps into conflict
Guns blazing
As its political system decays
In the stench of its overwhelming debt and corruption
But in truth
She hates
That they force her
To whittle her essence down
Into Gender, Race, Class, Religion, and Nationality
A vomit-inducing statistic
As if there was nothing more to her
Than the facts surrounding her existence
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 6:11 PM UTC
I tread on the tightrope
Suspended between thinking too little
And thinking too much
I balance precariously
Tiptoeing towards optimism
But humanity sways me
And I shakily creep
Towards despair
The costume chafes
There is not enough chalk on my shoe
The lights are too bright
And a pearly bead of self-awareness
Trickles past my temple
And drips on the dirt baseness
A thousand feet below
And yet--
The crowd smiles
And gasps
And cheers
And claps
And I am reminded
That everything
Is a show
So I smile
And I bow
With a flourish
And I soak in the adoration
And try to forget
That the struggle repeats
Each night
In each town
But the show can
And does
Go on
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 5:41 PM UTC
Où est mon coeur?
Where is my heart?
It's pitter-pat is strangely gone
And there is a strange
Emptiness that I
Can't
Quite
Appreciate
I have sought it
Since the sun peeked through my curtains
And the spurt of a swiftly ended dream
Woke me suddenly... too suddenly!
But I could not hear drumming in my ears
Or a pounding in my chest
There was nothing.
There was silence.
Où est mon couer?
Is it holding my place betwixt two chapters of a book?
Non.
But if often rolls around in words. Funny that it would not be there!
Is it hiding in a flower ***
Non.
But it often hides in the ground hoping to grow. Strange that it would not be there!
Is it under the bed?
Non.
Stranger still. It often keeps the dust bunnies company.
Où est mon couer?
The panic
Is starting
To drive me
A little bit
Mad.
How could I have lost it?
Où est ma tête?
I am usually so good
At keeping it caged up
Penned in
Out-of-bounds
Locked away
Strange that it would vanish in the middle of the night
Without a sound
Without a trace!
Unless
Someone found it
Stumbling across it
In the foggy half-world of my dream
And picked it up
And put it in an oversize pocket
Stealing it
In a dream-act
That bleeds into my reality
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 3:14 PM UTC
They told her
That women fade out
Of the spotlight
As time
Tic-toc
Passes by
And they fade
Melt
And sag
In the summer heat
Of the ellipsoidals
They told her
That she wouldn't live
If she put on her armor
To fight off the criticism
And she donned the golden band
Uniting her with her dreams
They told her
That she would be surrounded by people
But entirely alone
And she listened
But behind her teeth
She locked a thousand biting words
And a lashing tongue
That she yearned to unleash
On their haloed heads
Instead she shrugged on her apathy
Strangely warm
And gray-hooded
Like a murky puddle
Formed on the cracked asphalt
Of an abandoned playground
But when she went home at night
What they said
Dared her to prove them wrong
So she shook off the gray
And the murk
And she did.
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 6:59 PM UTC
She hates that she is spineless:
Starved of strength
Emancipated.
She hates that she is passive:
She has two legs
But cannot stand for anything
When faced with a loud voice
And menacing words
That threaten the tranquility of her dream-world;
The dream-world
Where conflict is banned
And people always have the best intentions
Because in essence man is good.
She hates that
When faced with a thousand possibilities
Tensions rise
And gears stick
Creak
Metal on metal
Straining
Pushing
As she tries not to succumb to her nature
But in spite of it all
Her head overheats
And she overloads
The perpetual screaming kettle, *** boiling over, and volcanic eruption
All in one
Tiny salted droplets of shame
Race down flushed and swollen cheeks
As her mental fists
Painstakingly punch her essence
Into action
Fueling a transformation with
"Inadequate"
"Failure"
And
"Lazy"
A transformation
That never sticks:
At least not as well as
Her lack of faith in herself.
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 1:46 AM UTC
Sometimes
The mask cracks
Muddy tectonic plates have dried into dust on my face
Flaked off dream dust of the pretty girl
Who lies with a look
And truths with a song
It chips off
And is done
Gone away
Vanished
And beneath?
A tiny bird cheeps feebly
A lion cub fiercely squeaks
A cricket chirps
And the old wooden gate creaks on its hinges.
Berries ripen on the bush
The fox bares her teeth with a snarl
The birch trees shush in the breeze
And the world is one indescribable play-date.
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 4:16 PM UTC
The phone tinkles
And blinks with excitement
Dancing with a toddler's anticipation
Of sweets on her birthday
With a special message
That the girl had shoved
To the swamps
On the outermost edges
Of her consciousness
And stomped into the murky depths
Without even stopping
To watch the bubbles from its gasping mouth
Surface on the sludgey waters
Disturbed, the girl stretches her dream-numbed arms
Like new rubber bands
And for a moment shifts back into the blanket cave
Snuggling her pillow
In a half-hearted gesture of farewell
Before clawing at the bedside table
For the ticking bomb that beckons her from sleep.
Unholy light assaults her groggy sleep-puffed eyes
As the phone trembles enthusiastically in her hand
One year anniversary
Her whole body winces
Teeth grit, vise-like, as she tries to shove the memory down
Fingers scramble at the stubby keys
Delete. Where is delete?
Reminder deleted
The phone seems saddened
If only it were that easy.
In an effort to comfort her
The phone slides into bed beside the girl
And keeps her company
As she stares at the knots in the wood on the ceiling
Which trail across the inky sky of her memory
Like the comets of a night picnic
That was labored over
And planned out
By a boy with high hopes, bright smiles, and a haunted spirit
Who drew out her optimist and romantic with naive skill
Only to be betrayed by the duality of her being:
Her realist and her pessimist;
The downside of new love and long distances.
The phone sighs a ping.
Just wanted to wish you safe travels before you head off
He sent
The irony of timing was not lost on her
In spite of her fuzzy morning brain
His message on the phone which she had cradled
As he told her a story to fall asleep to
The phone they had talked through
To tell the minute details of monotonous lives
To send messages that gave butterflies
And lit up faces with beaming sun smiles
The phone that she saw controlling her actions
When he was a world away
The phone that showed her a stranger she committed herself to
The phone that had outright asked her:
"Are you breaking up with me?"
The phone that had whispered "Yes, I think I am"
And then echoed hours of his tears
And confessions of depression
That pierced her guilty conscience to the core
But strengthened her shoddily constructed resolve
The phone into which
He had tenderly placed
A reminder for her
On the night she decided
To be young and silly and foolish
For once in her life:
The night she regretted
Three months later when she said goodbye
And twelve months later
When it reminded her
Of how painful young and stupid can be.
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 6:05 AM UTC