I'm struggling to write the first few lines of this poem
1. because I haven't written in awhile
and 2. Because I think it will be a very good poem
and don't want  youto abandon it
trust me
we give up too easily
for example
when I'm older I want to write movies
but when I watch a movie I constantly check my phone
even if I like the movie
we are worse off than we know
I've been thinking
lately
that is a lie
it's only been recently
very recently
regardless
why I do write best when I am depressed?
why is that when I am most profound
why must my life be strewn about around me
for me to have a grasp on literary prose
then again is it wrong of me
to consider my only important writing
the ones that can be deemed "good"
is that unfair to myself
there's a select few I always come back to
they are very good
but I was hurting a lot when I wrote them
were they worth it
maybe
I remember something I read one time
it was written by a woman
and she was talking about her pain
and her writing
she said that pain was now fluid in her life
all that really mattered was her writing
no matter how much the pain hurt
as long as her writing benefited
she would welcome it with open arms
what a **** way to live
maybe it's just nostalgia
that's *******
you wrote better before
you know that
I'm right
I've become a better person
and a worse writer
and both
frighten me

When that day comes, whose evening says I’m gone
Unto that watery desolation,
Devoutly to thy closet-gods then pray
That my wing’d ship may meet no remora.
Those deities which circum-walk the seas,
And look upon our dreadful passages,
Will from all dangers re-deliver me
For one drink-offering poured out by thee.
Mercy and truth live with thee! and forbear
(In my short absence) to unsluice a tear;
But yet for love’s sake let thy lips do this,
Give my dead picture one engendering kiss:
Work that to life, and let me ever dwell
In thy remembrance, Julia. So farewell.

2/13/2016
"notice how he has numbered the blue veins in my breast.
he is building a city, a city of flesh.
he is an industrialist."
anne sexton

i've seen god themself stirring
subzero confectioner's sugar around this place,
you are the dried up ***** on my face

something acrid that i fell asleep and neglected to wash
i used to cut down swathes of brambles, and the bees
they'd run away

when i was a kid they followed me everywhere.
"you're sweet, kid" my father would say
now he just says i am stupid, so droll

as if i've never known that before
my bulbous arteries run with the notion of
him, sweltering, pointing

"bowie's on sale again,"
the same stamp on the telephone box
there, rotting, gentle

two years later
i say this: there is nothing in princeton
and everything in manhattan

that princedom where you stumble on
***** sidewalks and run hands along bubonic
subway railings

where, really
wanting to throw myself on the freight rail
would just be wanted to throw myself off the Veranzzano.

sylvia said it best, i guess
my own bell jar sour as ever
no matter whether

i'm in Bremen
Lesotho or
in his bed, again

i'd find a way to do it,
i told her
the only place i am willing to.

/

1/30/2016

we spoke in the darkened auditorium,
waiting for a dance,
waiting for stories told wordlessly

I told her about that summer and how
although I didn't like you I remembered it vividly,

and how you woke up at unbearable hours and i did it for you,
so I would wake up every 2 hours just to make sure I didn't

sleep past my 7 am alarm

I was home alone that summer
most of the time,
we laughed when my parents told us

we didn't spend enough time together
it was extraordinarily hot that summer
i remember, it was like breathing into an oven,

We drank a lot of rootbeer, sat on the porch with sandwiches, and you brought me blueberries and tried to make me laugh,

And you usually suceeded-
I hadn't yet succumbed to
tearing my hair off and sitting
in the white room like later

and I swear I've aged so much
in these two years
but I got carried away

and I told her
I don't love you at all
but rising  those chlorophyll mornings

I've never forgotten that,
I know not why-
maybe it was the light. maybe it was the heat, maybe it was my youth.

1/30/2016

there was an age
where I discovered that I had a face.
It happened all at once-

everyone tried to tell me
how they thought I was hot or cute or are you down to hook up girl?

Virginal me, i raised a pastoral finger to wag and say no no no,
I wish I had that kind of leverage now

but I am a blood stain on a sheet
a cataract in a cornea,
a nick on a peridot

but mostly
the blood