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b e mccomb Aug 2016
i didn't understand half
the words he said
and i don't understand half
the words you write

michael jackson
and waylon jennings
wrapped in a paper towel
"papa would be proud of you"
scratched in the back of
a children's book

it's the oddest thing
to no longer miss
someone who's been
gone so long

an odder thing to sit
in silence on your bed
with the fitted sheet all pulled
off the side next to the wall
feeling your best friend's
little sister's scratchy blue
nylon mattress rub
up against your sore feet

and open card
after card
after card
filled with glittering
words of praise and
monetary gifts

and then read about all
the things about you
that people think are
worthy of mentioning
and you start to
see a pattern

"thank you for serving"
"humor"
"creativity"
"imagination"
"let God lead you"
"keep rapping"

(thank you
and by the way
i don't rap only
occasionally slam)

it starts to feel like a
bulletpoint hallmark eulogy
like you've left your body
and are reading about someone else
reviewing all the better
more visible parts of yourself
the parts deemed loud
enough to be acknowledged.

and you start to see
what's lurking off
the edge of the card
and the words they didn't write
the places that you
went wrong

the question marks
behind their eyes
wondering why they
haven't seen you for two months
why your hair is a different color
why someone else is in your seat

and the semicolons in
your stomach
when you realize that
you've made a mistake
and even with all the hurts caused
you've still got a family out there.

i'll say this
when it comes to
graduations and funerals
you find out who your friends are

the people who matter
will show up in the end.

am i mislead in thinking
that sometimes people
don't say everything they
think or feel until it's too
late because it takes a
loss to make them realize?
Copyright 6/13/16 by B. E. McComb
scully Oct 2015
its taken me too long to unstitch my hands and free every thought you shuffled and stuck inside of my head

one. i think you lost me somewhere between wanting to cross miles to get to me and forgetting i exist because at some moments it feels like you worked overtime to fix the abandon architectural artwork inside of me like i was community service

two. after you came and knocked down trees and shifted the tides, every ounce of clarity was able to mirror
your whimsical efforts of drowning me out with pretty girl phrases and only calling me when you were too high to choke out my name

three. i had something inside of me that was kept under glass and i let you behind closed doors and watched you destroy it
i let you build me up with toy blocks just how you wanted me, and i let you lose interest when you decided it was more fun to knock me down and listen to the noise i made when i hit the concrete

four. the Worlds Most Fragile museum was being catered to in the holes in my chest and if i was an armoire and you opened me up your name in red pen ink would spill out of me over thousands of artifacts and priceless memories that you've bubbled over and consumed

five. even as i write this, you'd think i would find a home in an elementary classroom by the way i can barely remember how to speak
and ive got no doubt that you went out with your usual bang
and when you left you took a goodbye that never quite delivered and all of my words with you

six. my grandmother told me insects sing, for months, the same song in hopes that they will attract a mate with their repetitive soliloquies and maybe that's my hope when i tell you i love you even when you hurt me, hope that maybe one day you will pick up the phone and echo my ache with a clear, sober melody that sounds like home.

im sure the insects will find someone who enjoys their neurotic patterns and im sure i will sleep alone in an uncomfortable bed only shushing the silence as the mailcart comes by my front lawn and pauses for a second as if it empathizes with the way i stand at the door.

seven. im always waiting for a manilla package addressed to me
containing every night i spent trying to be anxiously clever and overlooking your bad judgement and the flickers across your sentences where you were forcing yourself to care

eight. every night all i receive is the crickets and a reminder that the letters that spell out your name had become my own personal hamartia before i started whispering it in my sleep

nine. ever since we met you've infected my veins like you were a deadly back alley drug and there's something so addicting about wanting to fix someone and figure them out and work for their love

ten.  if you steal my expressions and bury them in your ground and stick a wooden stake through my last words in order to make sure i only resurface when your sobriety is fully compromised, i will, as writers do, create myself a new dictionary

the act of your name will become a verb: forcing time to scrub the inside of every part of me you touched like im a sold off garage sale item and you're trying to expurgate any emotional damage that might have been done to lower my price

the way the bugs echo will become an adjective for when i am too tired to go out and pretend that my feet arent sinking into the floor

the drilled-for-oil glass museum in my heart will become a noun;  the eighth wonder of the world, and i will continue to let people destroy it and piece it back together for the sake of art

the way you left me and the ferocity of how you stole every part of me i showed you will join adverbs and Aristotle's tragedy principles among people who created their own cloudbursts.

the way i wrap everything i've wanted to say to the back of your head as you walk away into a bulletpoint essay will become my new definition for poetry and i will build myself up from the ashes i will create from your destruction, i will sing my own songs and showcase my own museums and mail my own letters and i will **continue.
*******
Angel  Nov 2017
Another Try
Angel Nov 2017
I CAN'T FIND WHAT ONCE MADE ME WANT TO WRITE
It was an inspiration that just whirled up out of thin air, went through my ears, and bam!
There it was, a beautiful piece of sadness describing the most tragic heartbreak anyone could image out of just one simple thought of agony.
I had this lighting speed of easiness, the words came so rapidly, I was screaming in the quietest form.
Now I skip to all sides of the conversation, to each bulletpoint in the topic, and my second guessing makes me write maybe too many times.
I want to write each letter with a dignity and a form I didn't erase.
The words will have already wrote themselves without a re-reading to know if it makes sense.
For ***** sake, no more lists.
I want a story of what has been forgotten by my finger tips.

My heart hasn't been hurting, i've spent all this time healing.
The blood doesn't pool onto the floor anymore and there are no more risks at dieing in the hands of oneself
So is that the reason why poetry is no longer a language I speak?
I thought I was fluent.

— The End —