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 Feb 2014 Michael Valentine
Odi
It’s like looking for a heart,
In a metal junkyard,
And getting cut in all the glass,
People have walked on.

Even asked the wizard of Oz
If he knew where it may be
But all he said was
"Look inside child, you will see."

I looked for it in pictures,
Of me smiling with my friends,
I looked for it in winters,
That never seemed to end.

I looked for it in boys,
Who thought that they were men,
Even looked for it in monsters,
Under my red quilted bed.

I looked under the rain,
In my brothers eyes,
Looked to my father,
And said “I never cry.”

He said “I know,”
As I began to weep,
“I know,”
I heard him repeat.

I looked for me in shadows,
In the past and present dear,
Looked for it in music,
I never seemed to hear.

I looked for it in children,
The only thing that made me smile,
But all I found was 7 pounds of,
Useless blood, muscle and denial.
Overwhelming nostalgia blazes through my veins
And I fumble amongst the echoes of white noise

Trembling flashes of our summer together
Light up the inside of my head
The way thunderstorms lit up every night sky last June

I reach out, trying to touch one before it sizzles away
Trying to grasp any single intangible moment

Anything to feel your electricity again

But my fingertips are bruised from the static
And my efforts are in vain

Like trying to catch lightning in a bottle

The same lightning that flickers behind your smiling eyes
The same lightning I see every time I close mine
Still a work in progress. Please comment below any critiques/advice/ideas you could possibly have. I'm open to anything! Help a girl out.
I am from vivid dreams.
I am from fire
licking and consuming
the darkness.
I am from a wild imagination
and a logical consciousness.

I am from the Mississippi River,
moonlight glinting off my cat's eyes,
and paint on paper.
I am from the shattered shadows
of leaves rustling in the wind
on a brisk, early July morning.

I am from
BOO! and AHH!
in "****** ******" voices,
the way flashlight beams dim
as we use them for Morse Code
throughout the endless summer nights.

I am from jumping
in the dark
off our houseboat
into the void of black
that you would call Lake Powell
companioned only by the Milky Way.

I am from glow sticks
and silence.
I am from cracked rainbows
and shattered windows.
I am from lifeless wishes
and broken promises.

I am from baby turtles
making their way to the sea.
I am from moths
breaking free of the cocoon
that has held them prisoner
for oh so long.

I am from rippling stars ringing outward
on the surface of a crystal puddle
after a tear has fallen,
not from my eyes,
but from my soul,
eternally lost.

I am from outer space,
galaxies beyond imagination
so drown me in a heavy dose of fantasy.
Curled up beneath the duvet
knees drawn up to chest
inhaling the smokey scent of my fleece
sown fresh nostalgia
I remembered how
we laughed and ate off chinaware
while sipping out of plastic cups
sitting by the fire pit
in the backyard
my eyes wandered
towards the woods at dusk
and I breathed
realizing we are just specks of dust
that glimmer in the light of our Creator.
My first inclination
is to write about rifles and *** and ankle socks with frills
around the top, but I do not know
anything about that – much less all three at once.

One time I had a dream, or nightmare, or fantasy
of getting ******
by the barrel of the gun.

Instead of bullets,
glowsticks entered me.

Guns are shooting stars, like *****. I have to steal cartons
of iced coffee to stay awake and
bend the caps
into heart-shapes to have any hope –

morning wood puts me in mourning, that is all I can
ever understand about myself.
I was born to a woman who smoked cigarettes
and since I was a child, I tried to inhale blueberries until they
stalled my windpipe.

My mother taught me that word –
windpipe – after she coughed for hours upon hours. I
was so happy that day, imagining how I must have swallowed
windchimes for the doctors who helped birth me
in December’s final snow –
how I hoped they believed I sounded pretty, although

covered in that sop adults call life juice. Life juice sounds nice
but I had known babies who
came just as sticky as me and never got to breathe.

Windchimes, you know, the things
beautiful ladies in ankle-length dresses hang outside,
my daddy lived thirteen hours down the interstate and I knew
somehow that he owned one.

In my dreams, I touched it
and pulled on it. I twisted the copper-ends up like my
momma’s hair and pretended we were with my dad by some
lake where the breezes are heavy enough and I
am small enough for them to carry me up, up, and away.

Everyone insisted that windpipes are inside
while windchimes stay out –

I fixed that problem, too. I tried three times to plant chimes in
my ears, unglue parts of the skin there from myself
to make room for dangly jewelry. A tiny
slit was all I needed, but it would not stay open for long

and I never got to swing my head
pretend I possessed the ability to create music like how God
let my momma grow smoke. I never got to exhale.
Nobody knows how to say goodbye to anything, even the
sea has ruined edges
leaves its will to a muddy bayou. Our
phonecalls hang onto me after there rings a dial tone, a curly tail
of wires ribboned around my most important parts
thigh, artery, genital. The bed
is the whole bedroom, now. I am handcuffed from the ceiling
waiting for your voice box to quiver again
and am kicking and screaming –
I am heartbroken at nothing, not for no reason but for
nothing. Lovers are not versed in goodbyes
or else we would not be lovers. But I prefer the sensation of
suffocation to cold blankets,
rather heat them up with blood and guts than have a
mattress that has never smelled my ***. You do not know how to
ring my neck or drown me in sheets that’ll
just hide hide hide the word
goodbye. If this is your worst trait, not wanting to go,
I am happy to let you love and hurt me until I can float, too.
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