i was a poet.
my words
counted
structured
organized
picked and chosen
so carefully
i stifled my heart
in the process
but i loved you --
-- silently
from the bottom of coffee cups
in the transactions of homework
[your spanish, my english]
and my phone history;
all those calls i missed
hitting the mute button
when you played piano
and you understood
you knew my words
didn't say much at all.

but i am a poet.
and fifteen months
after my words were too late
he fell for them, instead
the counting
their structure
my organization
i picked and i chose
like a calculator
starving my heart
in the process
but he loved me --
-- gullibly
from the bottom of his heart
in the middle of the night
never mind my phone history;
all those drunk calls i made
to you
feeding him pretty words
so he could love me
because he didn't understand
he didn't know my words
didn't say much at all.

encased with passion & desire,
love & lust he waits for her still,
a muse

he's restless & listless, his heart beats,
& bleeds, catch up, catch up,
a muse

leaking lover lost through, a dripping soul,
red raw, vulnerable, closed,
a muse

a fragility so unknown to her, a naivety,
oblivious, at risk from all men,
a muse

he couldn't have her, so he destroyed her,
she disallowed all men in,
a muse

denial & unfazed, she's dazed, confused,
he watches from the sidelines,
a muse

this obsession won't hit him,
or maybe the day she is gone, he will,
a muse

drugs were a power, greater than her,
releasing caged birds, an angel above,
a muse.

© Sia Jane

my father and i were drinking orange juice at
two thirty in the morning when he turned to me and said,
“i never taught you that you could be anything you
wanted to be because the truth is that you can’t,”
and i decided he was right when i realized i was too
right-brained to work a nine-to-five job and that i’d rather
destroy a computer and call it art than create one and
call it science.

but maybe he was only thinking about the big picture,
and by now i’ve realized that the big picture is never
the most important and that the small scribblings that
mainly go unnoticed matter the most and i thought
back to when a tenth grade teacher had asked me a
simple question and expected a simple response,

and while i had given her a real answer, she claimed it
to be unrealistic and the corner of her lip twitched as she
tried to suppress a laugh, but i wasn’t laughing because
what’s so wrong about saying that, “maybe i want to be
your favorite constellation?” because it’s true —

and, “i want to be the goosebumps on your arms when you
hear your favorite song performed live. i want to be the aching in your
ribs after you’ve laughed too hard, your favorite Sunday dinner,
a constant reminder that you are beautiful and that you are
kind and that you don’t need anybody else to make you happy.
i want to be compassion. i want to be sympathy, treachery,
creativity. i want to be the reason you wake up in the middle
of the night without really understanding why. i want to be
the question, an answer, a hundred possibilities.”

she asked me what i wanted to be, and i told her i wanted
to be everything — and maybe other people don't know how
to feel the same way that i know how to feel,  and maybe that's
because we spend so much time teaching kids how to compute
and to quote instead of how to express and emote and i find that
to be very disappointing.

Touch me like I am,
a moonbeam of delight.

A sky diamond no flaws,
a flashback through time.

Seek solace in midnight memories,
a weight in golden worth.

Arrest me make the suggest,
to hold me in utter nakedness.

Pretty dancer whiskey bottle,
phone on repeat dead line.

Custody danger never to be seen,
another round null no sound.

Constance in the coffee shop,
scouting out potentials.

Blows off steam outside church walls,
ringing bells magical three tolls.

Great thinkers diseased,
malady of souls.

Faking it 'til they make it,
open your eyes.

Sorrows of another night,
off the wagon.

Pick you up,
lost cause.

Judas.
Judas.
Judas.

Desperation,
a blinded soul.

© Sia Jane

hang me a poem through the mouth of night the slender smolder of cold
imprecise light that it might build into a thin strip of almost bursting
  intense colour(purpleandred). it might suddenly stagger up the
   common heap of sky--through the cheeks of white neatness--
    the blithe cursor of brutal dawn, spilling with such brinding
     creepness of light the thighs of earth full of lancing steepness
      all the wriggling of life shall commence with body lathered
       of youth in stupid love of dumb *** there will a coronet
        of hot dew wreath the pistils of flowers and the dirt
         will speak the rich secret of life in colours innumerable;
          the bending of words upon always quiet paper
           cannot meet with them the fullness of their
            drooping incantation(and lips cannot
             say with always talking mouths
              how deftly the primness
               of their serene
                majesty
                 is,

                  '

                        ,


             '

                                ,




    '





                                                           ,

i care about you more than i should. there's no rational reason for me to; it's been long enough, with few enough words between us and small enough talk. we've dissolved into strangers, but to me you'll never be estranged; i think about you everyday, even when you should be the farthest thing from my mind. when i'm putting on my uniform for a school you never attended. when i'm driving down a road that you couldn't even name with a map. when i'm dissecting a cat, for christ's sake, committing an act so clinical it could be performed by a robot. i shouldn't feel anything, especially not for you. but i do. i still do.

it doesn't consume me the way it once did, thinking about you. you don't consume me the way you once did. i don't ache at the thought of you.

but still. there you are. you've made yourself comfortable in the back of my mind and something tells me you've no plans to leave.

and something tells me i'm okay with that.

I need you to know
that I no longer write about you.