Haley Rome

Haley Rome Jan 2014

1. Sit down and cry. Cry until you have no more tears and don’t even remember the reason for your sadness. Realize that nothing, not even misery, is permanent.

2. Close your eyes and imagine your dream home. Don’t skimp on anything, not even the tiniest details like the doorknob or the lampshade pattern. Keep it always so that whenever you are somewhere heartless and cruel, you have a retreat.

3. Discover a song you love. Listen to it as loud as possible, listen to it as softly as possible. Listen to it backwards, forewords, sideways, and upside down. Extract from it all the truth and magic you can until you’re sick of it. Repeat.

4. Try and realize who your real friends are. Not the ones who will smile at your jokes and laugh at their own, but the ones who will walk with you even in the darkest of nights and never have to reassure you that they’re there.

5. Cut your hair. Cut it as short as you can without making your mother cry. Recognize that when someone says they don’t like it, what they’re really saying is that your appearance is for their pleasure. Know that it is not.

6. Choose a day just to watch. Watch the wind whispering to the trees, the grass reaching for the sky, the clouds hanging on by a thread. Make eye-contact with the moon and see that everything is watching you back. They’re rooting for you.

7. Learn how to make your favorite food. Learn how to make it exactly like your mother does. And every time you taste those familiar flavors, know that home is wherever you are.

8. Draw yourself. Don’t look in a mirror while you do this, draw yourself as you truly think you are. When you’re finished, take a photo of yourself. Compare the two. Realize that how you perceive you and how the world sees you will always be different.

Haley Rome Dec 2013

Colin I.

you left me on a warm day in November, when the sun was icy and the clouds resembled falling

snowflakes, suspended in the same disbelief that I was. I had a sudden rush of recognition that the

long red thread that anchored our bed had broken and there was nothing more keeping you here than

the ghosts of a kiss that once held the world. I tried to hold you, to warn you of the damage you were

wreaking on my leaking soul, when you spit me out onto the sidewalk and lulled me with

kind words until you were far enough away to run. I won’t ever forget your soft-shelled whispers. I

won’t ever forget your pricked-finger touch. I can’t ever forget your deep-ocean kiss. I can’t ever

forget your fairy tale. I can’t ever forget our mutual thinly veiled neglect. your moan is all that kept

me awake during the draught. please don’t let me go.

Haley Rome Dec 2013

Stagnate.

Why must something so close feel so far away? Why must something so lovely also be as big and

scary as the ghosts hiding under my nail beds? I long for a real world away from these suburban city

streets reeking with the secrets and secretions of the American middle class. I long for green trees

wrapped around the throats of skyscrapers in an attempt to get them to listen. I wish to see men and

women locked in an embrace as strong as love but quite the opposite as they walk lazily to their ever

present corporate bloodlines.

Haley Rome Oct 2013

Memorium

I tiptoe past my doorway

trying not to awaken

my sleeping memories

of you.

Haley Rome Oct 2013

She Is

She flows in strange vessels, dripping out of her pores like music notes drunk on the moonlight debris. She heaves like a thousand seas and rips apart the patriarch with purple fingernails and cadaver bones. Her breathes are colored with the taint of regret, as if every inhale is a worry and every exhale is a doubt. Yet she speaks in soft shelled stutters with a trip of the tongue here and a pitch of the poem there. Her hair encircles galaxies with its twist and in each braid has surfaced such ships as Titanic could’ve dreamed of. Her hips sway in time to each blink that surveys her, staring at the endless wasteful energy she pours forth from her ****** innuendo wink and her children’s storytime simper.

Haley Rome Sep 2013

Where to Go

You’re sitting on the barstool next to Ronda and the fool.
Both are getting drunker than the man on the moon.
And the isolation kicks in till you’re locked up in your room.
Where to go, where to gone, where to die.
And your shirt is stained with incense dripping down between your toes.
Beneath the floor the liquids slipping to where nobody knows.
But the drinks just keep on pouring in the pockets of your clothes.
Where to go, where to gone, where goodbye.

And you feel the record turning
While the waitresses start burning
Into the floorboards or your eyelids,
To a place nobody knows.
Your temperature is busy rising
And you’re having trouble crying
Out about the things you have to say,
About what nobody knows.

Your body’s run away and now your nothing but your eyes.
Catching raindrops in your eyelids, tears for someone who can’t cry.
But will these tears still serve you when it’s you who has to die?
Where to go, where to gone, where oh my.
These lifeless souls all float around in their velvet parade.
You’re drinking whisky swaying slowly in the stillness of the shade.
You can’t muster up the courage to be the one who was saved.
Where to go, where to gone, where to hide.

Haley Rome May 2013

Heart.

Last night I dreamt of the space between the stars.
The darkness, the blackness,
The thrilling rift between the riots
Was saying to me in a voice so muffled and hot,
So hidden and so stifled,
So unbelievably moody and inclement,
That voice was telling me what I need to be.
I felt the slow stripping of my mind,
As if I was an onion.
I saw in my mind’s eye,
In the mirrored lagoon of nymphs swimming around in my head,
What I needed to be.
I saw a small girl
As tall as a tree
Who knew the weight of a human heart
And wasn’t afraid for people to ask
On the topic of her quite broken heart
Hanging on by a gossamer thread to her ribs.
She loved herself
And the life she lived
And loved her broken heart as well,
As it turned cold and warm and loved them all.