Ugh Christopher Green...




Get out of here.

You say I'm "reckless."
I take the subway alone at night
And walk past alleyways
I bike without a helmet
and accept rides from strangers.
I travel alone
to faraway places
with governments
America has flagged
and stay with strangers
I met on airplanes.
I have had casual ***
with lots of men,
I get my heart broken
from those who don't give a ****.

You say I'm "reckless."
My apartment is in a rent controlled complex with sneakers
stuck on the wrought iron fence.
I have water and electricity,
but not internet.
My neighbor was
in a hollywood gang
back in the day
The rest speak Spanish.
I find myself justifying
to you it's temporary,
but secretly am upset that
it will be torn down
just as I finish decorating.

You say I'm naive
when I say there is no evil —
just broken people.
It is people like you
who break them.
You say I'm idealistic
when I don't feed the system.
Why not eat the same rotation cause
it's efficient. *******, daughter!
Follow the recipe!
You say I'm "reckless,"
but I am just living,
and you are a scorpion
poised to attack
anyone who turns over
the rocks you live under.

When you say I'm "reckless,"
I flashback to moments
I'd never sting you with.
Like the time I opened
the window screen
and wondered how far
the fall would be,
crouched upon
a second story balcony.

No, I am not "reckless!"
I just can't understand
The point of fearing death
Or pain
Or suffering
The best art
is created by the ill-content,
the gonzo
the sociopath.
So why not let them live?
Please...just let me live!
Cause I can't take
your eyebrows raised
and the turned-down corners
of your pursed lips,
fearing I am "reckless."
Worried sleepless.
Your puffy purple eyes,
assuming I am floundering,
repulsed by marriage or a salary.
You should just accept
I will never have social security.
As a child...
you taught me I could be anything,
but frowned when I said I liked poetry.
To you, anything meant
a corporate ingenuity
To you, warriors
work hard and succeed.
They needn't take risks,
just business classes.
You wanted to pay for them
and then dine at
an overpriced restaurant afterward.
But I prefer the Bolivian markets.
I want to take you,
but you say it's dangerous
and you'd be rude
to the waitresses.

I know, when you say
that I'm "reckless,"
you are protecting —
a supportive parent.
But saying I am "reckless"
is starting to become overbearing.
You can stop now.
Cause you wont.
Stop it.
You will not **** my instincts,
only augment my rebellion.
You will not make me
in your image 'cause
I don't want to be like you —
Complacent in a bubbled,
grass-fed existence —
cows may live in comfort
but all they do is
pollute the environment.
The day I fear
is not your judgement,
but the day I stop living
and just say people are "reckless."
Even though I never
talk with anyone different.

No, I am not "reckless."
I ride the bus
and forget my headphones
I meet strangers
who become fast friends.
I learn about a world
filled with joy and happiness,
and pain and suffering,
and I love it ALL.
And I will continue to love
all the "reckless" things too,
just as much as you love me
when you tell me:
"Now, don't be reckless."

I don’t know you well enough
or I’d read you this poem.
I don’t know you well enough,
though your quite handsome.

I don’t know you well enough
for you to care about my interests,
I don’t know you well enough —
we haven’t reached that level yet.

I don’t know you well enough,
but if I did I wouldn’t want to.
I don’t know you well enough,
please keep playing elusive.

I like your life, but
I don’t know you well enough
to like your instagrams —
it could seem stalker-ish.

We’ve talked about dinner,
but I don’t know when
or if we’ll actually go.
I don’t know you well enough.

I don’t know you well enough,
but text you regardless,
you invite me backhanded
to your friends' plans.

I don’t know you well enough,
to hold your glance,
you buy me a beer,
my hands fold between my legs.

I don’t know you well enough,
but I know when your drunk.
Your friends leave
and I give you a ride home.

I don’t know you well enough,
but you invite me in,
your cat treats me like
a familiar friend.

I don’t you well enough,
but I know when we share spit,
it just lubricates comments
on our horniness.

I don’t know you well enough,
but I know your apartment —
your couch is too squishy
and your bed is too close.

I don’t know you well enough.
I ask if *** will ruin this,
but don't know what this is.

I don’t know you well enough,
but I sleep in your bed.
Your rolling-over motion
was disappointing,
but not unexpected.

I STILL don’t know you well enough,
but I know three unanswered texts
means your not interested
in telling me.

Or perhaps,
I don’t know you well enough.

I don’t know you well enough,
but I’m getting to know me
and I know that naiive
isn’t who I want to be.

The year you were born
was the year I turned 6,
leaving my second home
to a place where I didn't exist.
It was the first time
I remember being scared,
of a knock on the door
to a dark street corner,
not a voice to properly
enunciate my fears,
hands trembling,
I was naught a writer then,
just a poetic mind
inable, hands not stable,
to open doors to
concrete streets,
the gentle ****** or
the careful cat,
daddy loves you,
under my breath.
He only had time to run,
from place to place,
the most logical option,
for his career,
but not his young girl.
The world's forgotten friend,
having not a voice,
to say hi at the door,
or accept the house-warming gift
from the neighbor girl.

Dear Fish the Pig,
The year you turned 6,
I hit puberty.
Grew tusks,
that kept inching,
toward a person
hidden in the swamp,
watching beneath reeds
the blondes and skinnies
courting Hercules.
An ugly pink pig,
jealous of the swans
gliding across water
drowning my squeals for approval,
left behind from highs and *** and flight.
Snarling away the bugs,
company that could have been friends,
retreating to being busy,
terrified of high school eyes
that adjust to the darkness,
and call isolation insecurity.
No worse a disease.

Dear Fish the Pig,
The year you hit puberty,
I lost my virginity,
my naked body
a prime scientific diamond
to the boyfriend who
just wanted to love me.
Two heads rested upon his bed,
vocal chords distilled,
when I replied "love you too,"
and felt hollow inside.
His mirror cracked
with my scraggly hair and fat.
I was a treadmill mess
with no time to stretch.
My secret of the weighted, edible variety.
How could he be skinnier than me?
So I traded being a pig
for the femme version al him,
and gleefully changed
my nickname from stocky
to skinny-Minnie,
until I could wear his pants baggy.

Dear Fish the Pig,
two years from now
you will be 19.
Let me remind you of something
from someone who is 23
and is still uncomfortable with her body:

Don't be.

To be is a simple mistake
with a complicated result,
Because
A haute girl fainting in university,
isn't martyrdom for beauty.
It is stupidity.
Purging friends for a toilet,
isn't just punny.
It is insanity.

Dear Fish the Pig,
Don't turn your fantasy
into my nightmare.
Don't sign the loneliness
that wastes me.
Don't bury yourself in dust —
it doesn't feel as good as the dirt,
knowing the roots,
and working through their kinks.

Dear Fish the Pig,
I admire your honesty.
Your struggles
make for great poetry.
But idolizing a girl with
skin pale as white roses
also made a good story.
Longing is beautiful
with the promise
of a happy ending.
But depression
sporn from jealousy
isn't so pretty.

Dear Fish the Pig,
wear your tattered clothing,
blow my mind
with beautiful melancholy,
sit in that obscure place to reflect,
but never forget,
your life doesn't have to be an indie movie.
Weave words into beautiful tapestries,
but when you tire of their decor,
go out into the world empty.
Tint white walls joyfully.
Don't re-write my history.

She was a child wild
wearing a white dress,
galloping through fields of unrest,
inspiring anxious warheads,
for a hot second.

Off to the next.

She was
anxious like a feather
caught in a breeze,
far from that child
that minded none
the weeds.

Backhand compliments
more potent than
misogynic critiques.
She was Marilyn Monroe.

Where was Norma Jean?

Living in a man's dream,
pinned up in a
concrete bunker,
a porcelain poster
tearing each time
she wasn't taken seriously,
or spent nights
alone aside a dusty phone,
with no home but
Norma Jean,
Marilyn's martyr
long at peace.

You three believe in creating scarcity,
NOT union.
You build HOV lanes for your luxury cars,
caring less how efficient they are.
They roll royce cross your game board,
fuming trails of money.
Bell Atlantic bought Madison Avenue,
you bought all the properties.
Now tenants can't avoid
the traffic or the noise
of an internet rolled in palms
and diced
spiraling
to speed limits
...
...
...
...
and red highways
...
...
...
...
and orange traffic cones that
block hybrid cars,
already swerving
to avoid bankruptcy.
We
STOP
the
STOP
people
STOP
moving,
our preamble crumbles to a
STOP,
becoming a eulogy —
an ideal dumb to power trippery,
after Time Warner and Comcast merged,
allies on opposite sides of the game board.

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;
together you own pretty much
everyone but Fox and Disney,
(yet have invested in them heavily).

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;
your oligarchy is
NBC, Universal, CNN, Warner Brothers,
and now FullScreen,
family-friendly nepotism
that inbreeds bearing
deaf drones bored of flying,
over
Why Beyonce is a Feminist.
or
Why Ferguson was racist,
media's offspring
just keep clicking,
the headline genocide victims
basking in concentrated lamps
for a sliver of attention.

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;
Now you want the backend buffering,
bulging eyes and emptying pockets
of those Spocked into believing,
hyperspeed was ever necessary.
No choice when the exits are slow
and there are no backroads.

Verizon, Comcast, AT&T;,
offspring of the
Bell Atlantic Company,
we will not let your
****** populate the internet.
Call it Capitalism,
but your playing Monopoly,
yanking the carpet underneath
to the wood of Tyranny.
You shamed
Bell's invention
by stringing together
telephone
internet,
and
entertainment companies
until you could be lazy.
Monkeys who spent millions
to shriek at government parties
about the communication machine,
a system downloaded so slowly,
we
did
not
act
on
cons
piracy
theories,
when Amazon made online shopping so easy.

Dear Internet Service Providers,
so called ISP's,
WE ARE DONE playing Monopoly.
Our collective voice
will shout blasphemy
on your streets,
hashtagged
net neutrality,
till you're counting pennies.
So empty your Washington banks
cause it's 3 a.m. and
no ONE is winning.

Soldier,
I won't be your red dot,
my body the coordinates
you hit or miss.
What if you say no?
What if you say yes?
What if I could care less?
I won't hide me behind uncertainty to
compliments camouflaged
as criteria
I must fail or pass
this ****** up social game,
no one seems to change the rules.
So I'll hide in my bunker cynically.
You might say I have PTSD
because too many bullets skimmed me.
But you are just another ******,
most comfortable with late nights
and green lights,
killing souls of girls
who just want to run home
and sleep alone,
not held in your hands,
nor held in your eyes,
and certainly
not scaled from 1 to 10.

You're violent.

She wrote love on a screen,
copied and pasted Death Cab
lyrics most sincerely.
But sincerity in high school
leaves few friends.
It is ostracized
like curly hair
and blemished faces.

So she followed her
forgotten heart into the dark.
Obit quotes of friends and family
vacant of responsibility.
Everyone blind-sighted,
to the scholar they wanted to see,
leaving her final breath
warrantless,
as if advanced Chemistry
excused her from Depression.
No one payed attention.
Her suicide was a crime of pain.
Her favorite song was the beauty of Death
And with her friends gone,
family busy,
and identity lost,
her soul embarked
on finding light in the dark.

Allyson,
you found it,
suffocating your isolation
to cardiac arrest,
so I didn't have to
a year later,
crumbling next to a stuck window screen,
next to a world that
didn't love me,
rationalizing two stories
wouldn't **** me,
crying in the flashlight
of remains below
I feared being.

Sleep peacefully,
Allyson Rose Green,
because your soul
is forever breathing in that song,
at least, for me.
And eight years from your death,
hearing it again,
I wish we could have been friends.
Maybe then, high school,
you could have survived.
And I could have lived it
with at least one lonely friend.
I barely scraped by.

At home,

you taught me
how to crack an egg;
how to separate
the yolk from the white,
and put the rest in the fridge —
yellow pools for pudding.
Though, we never made pudding.
You taught me
how to beat stains,
how to separate
reds from whites,
to wash delicates and brights
in cold water.
You hung both to dry.
You taught me
how to drink wine,
that reds are bitter
than whites
with meat.

At school,

they taught me
subjects as periods,
how to learn
math and english,
because they're different.
Who was I good at both?
They told me
the direction I'd go,
how to tell left from right.
I still get lost sometimes.
They read me
the places I'd go,
how to separate
fact from opinion,
the world we live in.

At work,

they taught me
a business mind,
how to define
plans from ideas,
as if ideas
are not future plans.
They taught me
to manage time,
how to separate
work and life,
Still, I struggle
to juggle those words.

Hold my hand poetry,
the architecture of words,
cause my soul is caught
between
my mind separating words,
and I can't seem to
piece them together again.

When the beat of your heart
is the alarm clock of my dreams.
I still have three more hours of sleep.
Crusty eyes nod off
as I put off the inevitable —
to empty your promises
of being faithful.

Cause last night I couldn't hide
red sober eyes that realized
I just wanted the wings
from your back.
I just want you to text me back.
And you did for awhile.
I kept you from texting your ex
for a while.
And for a while,
the strings of my heart
sewed yours together again.
Broken wings healed,
but fearing flight,
tearing mine.

The router's a strobe light;
I can't connect.
The microwave fritzed,
I can't heat.
The circuit shut;
guess no electricity.
Ayo no technology.
Let's talk ancient
philosophy,
NOT whether
Beyonce is a feminist.
Let's have a bonfire
and roast meat
cause none of us
were vegan
before this.
Let's light candles
in the streets.
Pray batteries die
on LCD screens.
Cause we were alchemists
before technology,
the versed probing
the multiverse,
thrilled,
lighting our golden
embroidery on life.
Now were just bored.
Coy toys to tied strings,
webs that touch
everything,
but the space between.

Chivalry is alive
if you say so Don.
So ignore my chides
like makeup Don.
Just try and
conquer me Don.
Don me lady love
if you like.
Chase me 'til
I'm tired of life.

You say
I am turning
into the lady
with the large book
and CD collection,
with isolated friends
and few dates,
whose only love
will be a cat man
one day.
But I'm enjoying
my Saturday
with Kerouac
and kin,
dreaming of
yellow lines and
the open road
instead of
yellow lights
and bars.
Plus,
I'd rather write
these lines alone,
than spend my night
talking in code.

Inside,
you sleep on the floor.
Empty beer bottles
stain the edges of a
wooden coffee table.
Parking tickets
sit on the ironing board
that blocks the door.

Outside,
you smoke a cig,
tie a flag into a bandana
and snapchat yourself
tripping on route 66
because L.A.
swallowed you at Sunset;
white text quotes
Hunter S. Thompson.
You're so ironic,
but you'll never be him.
So desert your phone
and take a real trip.

Muzzling your lap
with a faded head,
I cross
your heart
with a
trailing hand,
the hashtag
unintended.
Please don't
followmeto
bed.
Sorry for
the @muradosmann
regram.
I didn't mean
to mislead you.
But I missed
leading you.