honey

Jan 2016

blankpoems

I am not going to lie anymore, it is easy to write about you.
It is a gut instinct.
It is muscle memory.
I kept the letters, the postcards.
The first one you sent is in bad shape; folded edges, crumpled body.
I almost set it on fire twelve times.
You don't understand how every night I stand outside looking at the stars
realizing that we can probably never see them at the same time.
There is nothing poetic about how we feed off of eachother.
There is nothing healthy about holding on to this.
But all I know is that when I talk to someone, I almost always say I'm sorry as a greeting.
Because nothing I ever say will be pretty anymore, I have a serpent tongue when you're gone away.
And I'm sorry that they're not you.
I will still get your words on me.  I will hold on to the pain of the ink seeping into my skin.
Forever doesn't have a fighting chance against the chokehold grip you have on my thoughts.
Instead of this train of thought, paper bodies.
Ignition.
Fire.
Think of me when the candle goes out.
Think of me when you're drunk again.
Instead of this poem, broken bottles.
Instead of this poem:
Blue sheets.  White pillows.  Your hair was never this color before.
Your poems were never about me.
Slam poetry in the way you threw my necklace in the river.
Find me waiting at the window for you to let me in.
You left the bottle open, it smells like whiskey in here.
Blue sheets but yellow flecks of sunlight and candlelight and streetlight.
The light has almost disappeared since you went away.
Instead of this poem:
Come back. Stay away.  I am fluent in ******* things up.
Fire.
Ignition.
Paper body.
Think of me when the candle goes out.

Jan 2016

blankpoems

Primrose

I hope she knows what she's getting herself into.
I hope she knows what your heart sounds like after a night of
comparisons between her handwriting and mine.
I want you to know that I am through with dumbing
myself down to fit inside your god complexed hands.

Don't tell me I never tried to save us.
I wrote you songs with knives on my palms
and your ears were anything but listening.

I had a dream about you every night since you told me
you didn't know how to love anything with a heartbeat and hope.
I started sleeping again when you came back, and oh when you came back...

I am not sorry that my temper is as short as the lifespan of us.
I am not sorry that your smile is the only one that ever made me
want to wake up in the morning.
I am all pain and long long longing and she has always been
a storm with a heart dead set on your stillness.
Our problem is that I never stop shaking long enough for the dust to settle.

I've been writing with the same pen for four years and
you still only recognize my words when she plays them back.

Let it not be confused, foggy or incomprehensible-
you were the one.
Until the one became none and I stopped being a number when you stopped counting miles.

I hope she loves harder than a woman with dementia, relearning parts of you every morning
in the places you reserved with my first and your last- maybe next time.

Maybe next time, maybe next life will be different.
Maybe I'll be patient, stronger, I'll stop covering my smile. You'll stop pretending to be in love.
I will stop shaking and the dust will settle and her poetry will make you sick.
Her poetry will sprout evening primroses and she won't know that you always fall asleep before midnight
or that you're allergic to flowers that bloom when the sun is down.

Jan 2016

blankpoems

don't snap

I hadn't cried in years.
I was always taught that strength
was not having the courage to let yourself feel but
******* it up, holding it in.
I am sick of "You're going soft on us, honey"
Today I came to understand that
you are completely okay with writing the same poem
over and over again.
This is a metaphor for the way you ****** her in my bed.
This is a metaphor for the night you copy and pasted love letters.
This is a metaphor for what really happened-
I never fall in the same place twice.
Except when I do.
I think the critical difference between the two of us,
critical because there are many differences
but- I think our hamartia, our fatal flaw,
our end scene is this:
if people didn't like my poetry, if nobody listened,
if I walked out on stage and nobody snapped their
fingers, I would still write for just your eyes.
I would still cramp my crooked, birth defect,
quadruple jointed fingers writing to you about the nights
you loved me back,
for a minute there you loved me back.
And you loved 20,000 other people back.
And you loved small towns back and big cities back and the entire west coast
back when you drove through, making temporary homes out of people
who should have been permanent
and I loved you.
And I hadn't cried in years.
Not because I wasn't sad, but because I was taught that showing emotion
was weakness.
So if my father made me memorize the How To's of strength,
if I were going by the book, today I'd be so fragile
you could say hello and I'd shatter so suddenly you'd
forget you were the one that let go.

Jan 2016

blankpoems

I ******* love you

they're saying "all you do is drink and cry", "I think you're bad for everyone" and you're not saying anything and I'm saying I love you,
I ******* love you
And maybe I needed something to bring me back to reality maybe these bathtubs are always a little too deep for me but I fit so perfectly in small spaces because I learned when I was 14 that i was never gonna grow into a butterfly
but my aunt still calls me hers and I'd still flutter my eyelashes on yours while the earth turned to ash because I like things ending so softly
and you are a ******* miracle if I've ever seen one I want to sleep with you so badly, on a trampoline in the summer and I want to watch you do bad things and smile so sweetly at you and you'll know that I don't give a **** what you do as long as you're still loving me while you're doing it because baby we've got this one life and I've been loving you as long as I have known what love is and I know it's in the way you whisper and I know it's in the way you say you're my world and if the world stopped turning tomorrow we'd be the only things still moving with excitement you make me so nervous and calm and nervous and calm and deep breath you make me nervous I bet you'll make me nervous when we're older and I'm making you pancakes and I feel your eyes on me and I burn my fingers but you always kiss them better baby
you're an alleyway and the kitten that sleeps there
you're the rain on the windowpane and the water breaking the levee
I'm drowning in everything I have ever said to you so if I say one last thing one last thing,
while you're not saying anything,
I love you,
I ******* love you

honey Feb 2015

Phantom Limb Syndrom

The distance melts my heart and I'm crying your absence in oceans tonight. The salt burns my face more than usual as I remember choking on water, hoping it would buy us more time to say I love you before we drowned.

I close my eyes and remember watching the sky with you when everything was moving too fast.
It made me believe that time stood still.

I find myself leaving the window open for you or the stray cats,
and jump whenever the wind whispers something
that sounds like my name.

You're gone and far away,
but can I still call you baby on Sunday mornings?

"Sit up and drink your coffee,
I'll be your saviour and we wont have to go to church today"

I warmly say to the vacant space in my bed.
I still see you sipping your coffee
pretending I put in enough sugar
and sometimes I catch myself setting out two mugs before work,
pretending you're still here.

It's another Sunday morning and I'm sitting in church.
I imagine God speaking to you -
When he speaks, you buckle at the knee's
as he proclaims

"she wants you. You are gone and far away but when you look up at the sky you think of her and it seems hard, buts its simple"

she wants you.

Today I prayed that you'll never go deaf.

Six Sunday's have past since I've gone to church,
and I'm sitting on your side of the bed this morning.
I hear you mockingly whisper into my ear..

"sit up and drink your coffee love, I'll be your saviour and you wont have to go to church today"

I squeeze my mug so tightly that it shatters into 365 pieces, a shard for each day of the year you lied to me. It burns and bleeds and God is laughing at the symbolism of the self inflicted pain derived from not knowing how to let go.

it's been six Sunday's since I've heard my own voice and from the day you left I've stayed awake at night counting the thousand different ways our lips touched, and how this was our way of talking
about things you can't describe with words.
But now I can hardly speak through these water logged lungs.
I try to cuss but I don't recognise my voice unless its singing your name, we spoke a language of our own but you left and cut my tongue out along with my heart and every ****** Sunday I hear God screaming,

"ARE THEY GENTLE WITH YOU? DO THEY TAKE THE TIME TO COUNT YOUR FRECKLES OUT LOUD AND NAME THEM? HAVE THEY WATCHED YOU CRY. HAVE THEY HEARD YOU SPEAK? can you hear yourself speak?

I look over to that infamous vacancy in my bed and whisper something that sounds like an obituary

"they want to make love
but I have to replace it by holding hands while taking drugs
and I think they know where I go every time
I think they see your face in my eyes,
but they know better than to ask what's on my mind
because they know ill lose the breath from my lungs.."

*they know you are my mother tongue.

#love #pain #loss #separation #missing #distance #wishing #prose #miracle #freeverse

Feb 2015

blankpoems

tell me where it hurts

my pianos a deaf mute
doesn't care when I smash the keys
I tell it anyways, listen here, you miracle, you conversation piece, I'm going to play you without plugging you in because 1) who makes electronic pianos and 2) I can hear the sounds in my head, just like old times old times old times
I map out a Beatles song I hate because I really just want you to hold my hand
I never take my foot off the soft pedal because it should always be gentle and I should always be gentle to you and God knows you're the only one listening so listen here and listen close
i know im not really alone because we are attached by the red string of fate or friendship or car crash and I know this because you're the only one I can say these things to without getting myself committed
if you want me I'll be in the bar buying you drinks you'll never be thirsty enough to let touch your tongue and what is all of this shaking for
who first felt this feeling and said **** I'm in love or **** I Might be dying because my chest kind of feels like the monkey bars after rain we all fall off of because we're too ******* stubborn to wait a while
what is it about instant gratification that has everyone around me filling up their gas tanks because "it's not gonna get this low again for a long time" and how I wish I could say the same for myself or
how I wish I could say the same for you
I don't know if this poem is a piano or if this poem is you or if this poem is drunk and wanting to call someone who will pick up or listen or want to
But
I once said to someone "I think I really need to talk about this" and I shouldn't have been surprised when I was handed a hotline but maybe you have always been answering the phone "tell me where it hurts, and then tell me again"

honey Jan 2015

OMEGA

I dreamt of you nearly every night this week
and I'm searching for the difference between love and manipulation.
I dreamt of you while his arms were around my waist and as he kissed the nape of my neck I wondered if there was any difference
between missing you and loving him.
When I was trying to quit smoking
we drank red wine from coffee mugs,
I called your green eyes celery
and you called my freckles coco powder.
You laughed as the red wine stained my teeth and I laughed because
it wasn't wine.
I'm thousands of miles from where you are now,
trying to be a grown up who spends her money wisely
and drinks wine from a stemmed glass.
I'm cooking your favorite meals,
I can't help but forget that I hate roast beef.
I'm tired of these wine glasses
and I can't find any coffee mugs to chip my teeth on.
I miss drinking out of them on Sunday mornings,
pretending it was coffee,
my freckles were coco powder,
your green eyes were celery,
pretending,
pretending,
pretending,
until we believed.
I keep saying under my breath not to think about you,
but I can't help but wonder what you're wearing today.
or if I miss you,
or if I hate you,
or if I've gone insane.
I dreamt of kissing you so passionately that the world around us disappeared and as I kissed you everything made sense, I think.
As I kissed you I played connect the dots.
I woke up and wondered if there was a difference between
holding a hand and chaining a soul.
I've been smoking a lot
but not nearly as much as I hear your name in the dark,
as much as I see your silhouette in front of the TV,
or feel your hands under the sheets.
I woke up this morning hating you
wishing I could love him with all that I have
but I've woken up and realized
that there is no difference between love and manipulation,
you have me in a choke hold
and I can't help but wonder what it feels like to breath
All I feel is suffocation,
my hands are cold as ice,
your favorite color has always been blue,
are you connecting the dots?
I've stopped drinking.
red wine.
I've stopped eating.
celery.
I've learned that love is an organic thing.
it deteriorates.
it softens.
it rots.

#love #poetry #metaphor #drunk #alone #forgetting #smoking #manipulation #freeverse