Monica

Monica Oct 2016

Crazy

Laughing at yourself is easy.
Self deprecation is hilarious.
To others, anyway. And to you,
to an extent.

It's good to laugh at yourself,
but you've become a joke,
a punchline,
a caricature of who you
wish you were.

You're a fun house version of yourself,
disproportionate,
and ugly.
In your head you're a smart,
savvy person with a
great body.
In real life, you're dumpy,
and messy.

You feel out of control,
your thoughts are lapping you.
You're still at the
starting line.
You'll never win
this race. Accept your
participation trophy and
move on.

You're the only person
who knows what you're feeling.
And guess what?
You have no idea how to
express it.

Monica Jul 2016

Blocked

Letters flash in front of my eyes,
scrambled—
like a dyslexic
marquee,
advertising a show
that no one wants to
see.

Thoughts on the bottom of a lake
where patiently I cast my
line,
hoping for a bite,
but nothing feels like
mine.

Words doing the backstroke,
swimming through a
sea
riddled with confusion,
never reaching
me.

Hands poised on the keyboard,
awaiting further
instruction,
not knowing that my
writer’s block will lead
to my eventual
destruction.

Monica Jul 2016

Peaks and Valleys

Down,
     down,
          down,
         fall down deep into a
s
    p
      i
    r
   a
l.
Tears, rage,
bottled up emotions.
All pour out.
All explode out
from within you.
There is no hope.
There is no joy.
Everyone is
out to get you.
You have no friends.
They all hate you.
You’re not good at anything.
You are...
      Worthless.

         Up,
     Up,
  Up,
               You’re on top of the world.
          Life is swell,
          and everything is a grand joke.
          Crying from laughter,
          not from sadness.
          Dancing about,
          feeling…
        Good.

          But knowing it’s only
          a matter of time until
          you descend back down,
                                                down,
                                                      down.

Monica Jun 2016

Release

I should miss you.

Shouldn’t I miss you?

After so much time together
I feel like I should miss you,
like there should be some
vacuous hole in my chest
whose edges are inflamed
and achy.

I feel like I should
want to be with you again,
like I should want to
love you again.

But I don’t.

And it is scary to think
about how easy it was
to let you go.

And it is scary to think
about how easy it would be
for someone to let me go.

Monica Jun 2016

The Storm Inside

Thunder rumbles through my mind,
muttering and grumbling,
angry at the world.

Lightening cracks and flashes,
illuminating the next thought,
exposing the darkest corners and crevices.

From the dark clouds pour
millions of ideas, millions of notions,
each worse than the next.

The constant rain
leads to a flood, and
all inhabitants are advised to
stay home tonight,
safe from the deluge.

It’s just too bad that I’m drowning.

Monica Jun 2016

Stuck in the Middle

The weird thing about life
is that you’re always
in the middle of it.

Whether you’re starting
a new job, or starting
a family, or ending
a relationship or moving
to a different place,
you’re still right in
the thick of your life.

The only true
beginning and ending
are birth and death.

So, it seems that
with regard to life,
we are like an author
who is at an impasse;

They know the beginning
of their story, and they
know how they want
it to end, but they have
intense difficulty with
the middle.

How does the
protagonist get to the
point where she meets
her true love, or get
that job promotion he’s
worked for his whole life?
How do the adventurers
find the buried treasure?
How does the ax murderer
ultimately perform his perfect ****?

The middle is the most crucial part.

It’s also the part that is
hardest to get through,
as a reader and a writer.
We are either desperately
wanting to know what
happens at the end, or
reveling in the simplicity
of the beginning.

Life is the same way.
I miss the simplicity of my
“beginning.”
You know, the part of life
where you’re confident
in yourself, and where you
just love everyone
around you.

You’re not cynical,
or jaded,
and you know
you’ve got a huge
expanse of life ahead of you.

I also long for the “end.”
Not death, necessarily, but
the part of my life that is
predictable, and safe.
I want to know that
I’m going to be okay.

I want to know that the
way I feel right now
isn’t the way I’ll always feel.

The way I feel right now
is what makes trudging
through this middling
part of time so horrendous.

But
it's what gives me
the hope that I can write
a spectacular ending.

Monica Jun 2016

Postmonerdity

Tick tock went the clock,
echoing
through monastery halls,
synchronizing the actions of men,
building up modernity’s walls.

Creatively destructive,
eternal
yet fleeting,
modernity was paradoxical,
according to the Harvey reading.

Art had expanded,
abstraction arises,
and Sigmund loves his mom,
more than anyone realizes.

Our friends the id,
the ego and its super,
tell us who we are,
Freud has the world in a stupor.

A catch-22 for dear Pablo,
who will sleep with a ****,
but is terrified of syphilis,
as is seen in his art.

There was power and truth,
and Foucault says we’re repressive,
but suddenly things change,
Postmodernity becomes quite impressive.

PoMo cares not for beauty,
or what pleases the public eye.
It’s style for style’s sake,
in the buildings stretching toward the sky.

Uma dances with John,
a young boy finds a severed ear,
Joaquin loves his OS,
PoMo film is, well,
Queer.

Yuppies love pastiche,
their lofts were once a workplace,
they’ve coated them with chrome,
they’ve gentrified the space.

Unlimited breadsticks
have soiled the very Italian name,
Baudrillard says it’s simulacrum,
there is no truth, it’s all the same.

We traipse through this
postmodern world,
not knowing postmodernity
is where we are.
We wear workboots to fashion shows,
we worship that reality star.

We think we’re special snowflakes,
and skinny jeans make us cool,
and media exposure’s made us cynics,
quite impossible to fool.

What we don’t realize is that
we are not our own,
we are pseudo individuals,
through PoMo we have grown.

written for my Contemporary Civilization final