Baby - Hello Poetry

Baby Sep 2015

O K

Uneven breath forms a cleft
between moistened lips, parting as I remind myself and you and everyone for the millionth time
that everything is okay.

“Everything is okay. Really,
love,
I promise.”

A lull.

Third time’s the charm,
maybe next time I’ll find myself in your arms. Maybe next time I’ll have something more constructive to say.
Maybe next time we’ll both feel convinced that my words are more than sounds ushered out of a mouth that longs and longs and longs to do more than say:

“Everything’s okay."

Baby Aug 2015

Lost and Found

I hold my breath at the crest, the release and return of my body into your body into her body into a night full with the drumming of an artificial pulse, a pulse beating through and through our chests and out through the sway of limbs like seaweed caught on the current, reaching up and up and up towards the exultation of continued existence, momentary wholeness, whole, swallowed whole, we find our home in the belly of a whale, eaten by the motherdarkness, eaten, we are eaten and broken dowwwwwwndowndown into the bodies of a thousand strangers held in the sway, tribute paid, to be freed, even just for the length of a song, from the lonesome burden of individuality.

I wrote this a while ago, but forgot about it until I went to a festival this weekend.

#darkness #dancing #whole #existentialism

Baby Jul 2015

Swans

Forlorn, floating in an ocean
that is not my ocean
a cacophony of foreign tongues and beer bottles
bang against my thighs
leaving bruises like souvenirs
or the memory of good luck kisses.
I am an island
littered with the debris of
another world
breathing and floating and trying
to reach you
like the swans
gliding through ****, dipping down
to gobble up things invisible
because I can only find you
when my eyes are closed.
You melt against my tongue before
I have a chance to swallow.

The freewrite that preceded it: "My heart quickens with the realization that I am floating forlorn in an ocean of foreign voices and clinking glass bottles. Plastic fragments that refuse to be broken down and instead amass themselves around me. An overwhelming island of debris. Breathing and floating and trying not to let myself sink into waters that stink of sewage and blatant disregard. Before. Before. Before, I stood watching the swans glide through ****, dipping down to gobble up things invisible to me. Reaching blindly through the garbage and distractions of another world, my mouth tastes something familiar. I can only find you when my eyes are closed. I try to savor the moment before the reek has a chance to permeate my senses. You melt against my tongue before I have a chance to swallow. My nose is already deadened by their cigarettes. My hands are numb from trying to find yours. "

#him #missing #overwhelmed #codependency

Baby Mar 2015

A Vacuum

Birds without song might fly
on languid currents
whipped into life
by their own impetus.
A desire to
continue moving
through a room without walls.
A room marked out
by the stagnant weight
of its atmosphere.
The seemingly endless
nothing
closing in with
a presence found
only within the abstract.
A solidity created
first in the lungs.
The cramped panic
of finding yourself
in the belly of a snake.
Swallowed whole.

Sometimes I'm a flock of birds that are lost to each other, side by side in the dark.

Baby Mar 2015

A Wrinkle

When I put you on speaker
Pretending you are here is
As easy as closing my
Eyes against the dull sight of
Familiar walls, familiar
Reminders that I exist
In a world within a world
Found on the boundary between
Two elements intent
On being closer and yet
Separated by forces
I can't say for sure are real.

#love #missing #distance #sound #tesseract

Baby Mar 2015

Wane

The moon is just past full
And like that half-filled glass,
I focus on my contents,
Ignoring the gnawing pull
Of a discontented soul.

#feelings #depression #optimism #fighting

Baby Mar 2015

Cages

Fingertips catch the hum,
the static electric,
low throated, zipper pull
moaaaaannnnn
of a large cat locked
in some forgotten room.

An empathetic burn
between my tense shoulders
as a beast like fire
roaaaaarrrrrrrsss
into life with a strike
at a night without stars.

My blind hands fear nothing
as they strain towards claws sharp
with years of contempt and
hurrrrrttttt.
Undaunted, I reach out
to feel you.

#fear #anger #emotions #depth #empathy