Poetry hurts.
It hurts to look at, hurts to read, because
it digs into the muscle fiber of your heart and burns its way
marking a fixed tattoo in your bone marrow
tearing through your brain material and ******* you dry.
It requires you to latch into the throttle of the soul and feel the pain
and joy
of everything you experience.
No, there is no escape-
explore your pain, stay there, fully enjoy the beauty and the frightening
love of this terribly glorious world.
Books don't hurt,
they placate. They are the balm on your poetry-burns,
allow you to view your pain objectively, to quietly observe
from a peaceful, magical
faraway land where pain doesn't matter
and that roller coaster is just a funny backdrop instead of
the vehicle in which you fall in love and lose your innocence
in the same run.
Books are the numbing, the morphine
to allow you to fall into an enchanted sleep.

We all need books and poetry at different times- to each his own-
but for my own part,

I prefer poetry.

I like the way your cheeks turn red when you're embarrassed,
or sometimes for no reason at all.
I like the way you say 'God Maddie'
I like when we are REALLY talking about
something else entirely.
I like your hair.
and I like when you let me play with it,
and I like how tenderheaded you are,
because I have to be extra careful I'm not laying on it.
I like when you get really excited about something
and I can't understand what you're saying.

and when people ask me to describe you, I say
you're short, quiet,
and that's not good enough, when I could describe
the way your eyes light up
or the way you say things,
or your mind,
or all the millions of conversations we've had,
or your laugh,
or your walk, as if you're the only one walking alone on a slackline over a mattress and you're there for the thrill.

You aren't a GPA or a collection of friends or a green-orange-gold-blue who is friends with a
blue-orange-green-gold.
You aren't even an aspiring pilot.
You're every experience you've had and every time someones' said your name.
and every kiss someone wished they had with you,
but didn't have the ***** to pull it off.
and every phase you've been through,
and every embarrassing quote from freshman year.
I wasn't there for all that.
But I can be there for the rest of it.

and I could write line after line and never come close. adjective on top of adjective with maybe a few verbs, couldn't capture you. or me, really.
there's a certain fire inside you
everyone who meets you can see it.
it's more than there is on the outside
and makes me want to burrow and dig for it
so I can be warmed by the gentle (or blazing) heat.
if I get too close, I might get burnt.
but maybe it'll be worth it.

I don't want to capture you.
capturing and owning and containing will slowly
**** your flame.
I don't want to change you.
I don't want to hold you down.
I want to see you fly.
I want to watch as your soul alights on the wings
of heaven, and the fire inside you finally finishes eating away at the outer shell and it
emerges in full glory,
and I've seen it for a long time and
now everyone can see it just like me.

You're looking for someone who sees things like you do.
I don't. I see differently. But at least I can try to understand the way and the why you see things like you do.
We're so ridiculously different.
but can anyone ever be similar?
Who you are is expansive and never-ending and unimaginable and no words could ever capture it. Who I am is completely in the other direction but the same in scope.
I hope that you understand-
who we ARE
is not nearly as beautiful and powerful as
who we can be
or who we will be.

i will wade out
                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
                                       Alive
                                                 with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                                       in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                                            Will i complete the mystery
                                            of my flesh
I will rise
               After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

You were far away.
Farther than halfway across the room,
A glass in your hand and that crooked smile
Rising like the sun on your face.
I was swimming-
Maybe drowning in a sea of people.
He was trying to talk to me-
About the every days that composed of
Almost nothings.
I swear I felt my skin wrinkle in my
Little black dress
And my toes pinch in
My high heels.
I told myself it was worth it.
He said I was beautiful
But I look across the room
And your eyes don't meet mine.
Each time I look at you and
You don’t notice me,
I feel myself taking a step into
The inevitable stairs of
Heartbreak.
I danced all night with him-
He taught me how to waltz in squares
And spin in turns.
His hands fit into my curves
Like those plastic cylinders
That build towers and cities.
But I still felt it didn’t belong there.
Your hands
I bet would fit like roots into
My earth
And this would beat any hundred story
Building because it was natural.
He might have disagreed with that
And at one point through that night
So did I.
If my heart was beating a thousand times
Per second and
My palms rained over my knees
And my cheeks were apples ready to
Be picked every time you passed by,
Surely that isn’t natural.

Slowly, I was pummeling
As the night neared its end.
I had not danced with you.
I had not talked to you.
I had not even walked by you
And yet I could have.
But with a heart beating as loud as mine
I didn’t want to risk you hearing it.
One thing for sure though,
I know was completely natural,
Was goodbye.
It was going to happen
And most say that it's the worst moment
Of any night
But honestly,
I had fallen in love with our goodbye.
Good night wasn’t enough but your
Tan rays of light blooming the roses
In my cheeks,
Proved you to be a source of life.

629

I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane—
She stopped—a Traveller’s privilege—for Rest—
And there upon

I gazed—as at a stranger—
The Lady in the Town
Doth think no incivility
To lift her Glass—upon—

But never Stranger justified
The Curiosity
Like Mine—for not a Foot—nor Hand—
Nor Formula—had she—

But like a Head—a Guillotine
Slid carelessly away—
Did independent, Amber—
Sustain her in the sky—

Or like a Stemless Flower—
Upheld in rolling Air
By finer Gravitations—
Than bind Philosopher—

No Hunger—had she—nor an Inn—
Her Toilette—to suffice—
Nor Avocation—nor Concern
For little Mysteries

As harass us—like Life—and Death—
And Afterwards—or Nay—
But seemed engrossed to Absolute—
With shining—and the Sky—

The privilege to scrutinize
Was scarce upon my Eyes
When, with a Silver practise—
She vaulted out of Gaze—

And next—I met her on a Cloud—
Myself too far below
To follow her superior Road—
Or its advantage—Blue—

Where do I start?... Its taken me over fourty years to write this


Half a bottle of scotch taken each night to drown out the fears
the heartrending sights
Yeah half a bottle is just about right to dull the dreams and the nightmares that still linger
PTSD they call it this day, councelling given to help them get through
what they did see, things they did do
I remember clearly after such a time being told I wasn't a soldier I wasnt a man for being sick with fear, tears in my eyes at the bloodied remains close to my side.
Yeah well I was a soldier but not yet a man, at 19 my life had hardly begun but I still had to survive at the point of a gun
Yeah half a bottle of scotch is the crutch I have found because I'm still alive... Not just another name on a hole in the ground
thousands of miles from home.
Patrolling the paths in the in a land burnt and harsh not knowing what would come, the bullet the bomb or mayber the mine placed or shot by the oft unseen had
OK so I still did my bit in spreading the ****.... Yes I've had their blood on my hands but I still regret the things that I did in that harsh barren land.
Did I hate them? Those men who killed the ones I called friends. No they were only doing what they thought was right in protecting their home and their lands
Yeah so half a bottle of scotch is the friend I now have, it helps to stifle the dreams of the places I saw, the things that I saw and also the things that I did.

nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.