hello, poetry.
no, no, keep your seat.
i just wanted to talk to you about
how i can't stop writing you.
if you could stop pushing into my head
and making my fingers itch
and my eyes wander,
and if you would stop showing up in the margins
of my geometry homework,
well,
i guess i just wouldn't be me anymore
(probably be doing better in geometry though).
so, i was going to ask you to stop.
but, on the other hand -
it would get pretty lonely.
just me and the margins.

i'm becoming cynical, jaded, and edgy
my words
rap-tap out of my mouth
sharper
and harsher than i mean them.
i worry that i'm becoming
the people i despise.
i worry that i'm a poser
and a fraud
and i worry that i've forgotten my own kindness.

hearts are strange things,
and they do tell lies
but this is the truth of mine:
it pulses, it breaks, and it heals;
crookedly,
but it does heal.
it is susceptible to almost anything
and hardened against nothing.

isn't there hope, after all?
my quick angry words betray
a deep tenderness that i fight for,
that i protect,
and i believe.
i believe in the instrinsic power of human beings.
i believe in magic,
that music is the most powerful thing in the world,
and that words can change
minds
can color
hearts.

i believe in the power of dreams,
and i believe that things are temporary,
that they are fragile,
that we must become oblivious to nothing.
i believe that people are becoming ignorant
and i believe that we are coming back from ignorance.
i believe that i am a remarkable
and i believe that i am painfully
insignificant.
i believe that at least 50% of poems
(maybe even this one)
say nothing at all,
and i believe that the other 50%
say the things we need most
to say.

*and i hope that i don't believe
for nothing.

fingers like stardust and lips like moonlight,
she smiles.
shapes traced across the hollows of hips and his whispered words,
and the rocking of the ship will surely make me sick.
the light spilling from your smiles and the stars that spark from your eyes
catch stories
like sunlight
on the walls.

girl, you're pretty, but as empty
as the laughter
you ting-a-ling out for those hungry boys.
they think you're simple and so, so easy
(to figure out)

they're not worth
the dirt on your designer shoes.

girl, your eyes
are empty as glass bottles
and only half as green.

you crinkle them up in your pictures but your smile
is forced as your baby-blond act.

girl, your jack-in-the-box *****, bounding from
pretty boy to
pretty boy,
wears a little thin from time to time,
even
especially
for you.

you're not more than that, they'll say.

girl, you're pretty, but i am too.
my eyes are full as glass bottles, and twice as green,
and i laugh
with my whole body.
girl, you're pretty, but you've got to find a way to make boys' eyes burn
into something other than the back of your skirt.

girl, you're pretty, but sometime you're going
to crash-land into yourself
and realize that there's a person where you thought
there was only a porcelain-face
and an empty ******-inkling of a laugh.

girls and red roses
in grotesque poses
within the covers of him

flashing red lips and baby blue eyes
wolfishly at his whim

and there's nothing to them, i'm afraid,
but the blood-white dresses they're in.

you head-beckoning
soft-smiling deceiver.
you would have my heart again
(to break)
and i will not give it.

at the risk of sounding cynical,
you don't get to care now
you half-smiling
soft-watching deceiver
not even for the kindness,
the tenderness of your eyes today
(across the room, and gentling into mine)



vulnerability is a cruel thing
to play on

the dancer
she pads, across
black-painted stage
scattered with fallen glitter
like stars.

she raises her arms -
head turned
to one side, eyes
down, and
face
serene.

she leaps
and light curls from her toes
sparkling
swirls.

her body makes
fierce
hostile
whipping
and beautiful turns,
round and around
she circles
she
twirls
kicking up
dust and
stars
which drift around her
in the silence
of the awe
she strikes.

her feet make muffled
bare thumps
as she glides
and lands
no music, only
the quick swish of her
ruffled skirt
and the
gentle pads of her
light leaping

she is silent, she is
reposed.
her eyes never find
the audience that watches her
they are fixed on
the stage
her lips
they move
counting
whispering
beats,
barely.

she spins
and she leaps
she twirls
in the heavy velvet-silence
of the black theater
she twists and bends
and leaps and circles.
the silence
proves true
her incandescence,
the golden swirls
twist with her.

the dancer
she falls
still
toes point towards floor
arms hover
eyes search the blackness
which, as one,
explodes.