"bottlenecked" poems
Dear Gwen Stefani Circa 2006,
The first music I chose to like that wasn’t
just my mom’s tuning of the radio was
Your solo CD, the first and best of two, which
I made sure to get on my twelfth birthday, after
I made sure to get my first kiss.
We were not rookie sixth graders anymore,
In soggy bathing suits teeming with pubescence,
So I publicized my plans to plant one on
Yeorgios Mavromatis, the new seventh grade boyfriend,
The first boy to buy me jewelry I would not like,
The first boy I used to make myself infamous.
Our hallway bottlenecked with twelve year olds,
Alone we sat on the bed, legs dangling above
The stained beige carpet. The kiss was damp and boring.
But the crowd that pressed at the door was an ******
Surged voices told me my dad was walking up the stairs,
I arched around to throw the boyfriend in the closet,
My father caught me, and I wore the walk through them
Like your scarlet lipstick. The album of
My first kiss was not passion, but gossip.
I’ve seen you in red lipstick, bindis, and blue hair,
A pink wedding dress, and a Platinum Blonde Life.
I knew you were making art meant to publicize.
The songs and the clothes and the Harajuku Girls,
The boys and the clothes and the Children’s Theatre,
The day I made a scene was the day I knew.
Catholic guilt and couture gilt and creative goals
Took two West Coast girls, only twenty three years apart
And turned them into people you paid attention to.
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 10:47 PM UTC
the stars were flickering, the moon was dimming out,
the sky was falling, and the earth was trembling at the
pulpit of your existence. but it was just me and me alone
feeling the earth collapse under the hypertension and the
world spun on an axis, excluding me from it's original axis
and i wonder if i gave you the rings so the earth can spin
on your schedule. regardless, i want it back. i want back
the reigns so this off course journey can finally settle into
its regular habits. if i have to live under a god complex
in order to verify that nobody will come close to breaking
my spine the way you did, then so be it. i will forge a
dystopian mark on myself and completely obliterate
any memory of you from that dystopia. when the time
comes, when i put my hands down and yours goes up
in surrender, you will realize how human i am in the
way i stretched myself out so much just to be your
optimal choice. i will sit back down on my virtual
throne, mend the craters in my chest, and leave you
without your gas tank floating through space. i am
not yours to control, to play with my puppeteer strings,
to have me bottlenecked with these desperate pleas. i
am a different person now, please understand this.
- kra
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 2:41 PM UTC
I've cried here...
haven't we all?
Did the tears dry on the
face?
Were they swept away by shaking
hands?
Were they evidence of void
plans?
Relax... come here and
walk these moonlit pastures.
The galaxy swirling above
swallows not only our planet,
but our disappointments, too,
if only for a night.
Think of how
tears aren't always the martyrs of
tragedy;
they can be the heroes of a
celebration.
Maybe... that's what we always cry
about.
In those moments when time does
stop,
as our hearts threaten to
pop,
maybe it's all the joy
bottlenecked.
The release of agony into
elation,
or the release of love into
transcendence.
As the sun invades the night,
carrying with him wondrous light,
watch the pastures transform.
The waters will sparkle.
The flowers will bloom and
the grass will glow green with envy.
The sky will turn a joyous blue.
When you cry, this also will happen to
you.
Jun 22, 2016
Jun 22, 2016 at 3:56 PM UTC
*“The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else,
but keep heart, it will turn out all right.” ― Vincent van Gogh*
the grand canyon knows nothing of being hallow like the
depth of the space between my ladder ribcage, climbing
out of this rut would be like rock climbing mount everest
without the correct equipment, but beginnings aren't
supposed to be endless paragraphs of traps you made
me so oblivious to. my hands have touched hell's scorch
and have brushed your heart strings, but nothing compares
to the way you make everything seem like a dream, like
an acid trip that took you into outer space and made you
float, but i'm tired of gravity pushing me down and this
is just pointless suffering, i'm not healing anytime soon
and my wishes are for the closure i haven't received yet
i have reached my breaking point.
it is a decaying cage designed for me.
i cannot see anything but good memories.
h e l p m e i am going blind, i am terrified.
these monsters don't want to wish me adieu.
bottlenecked like condensed traffic,
and stuck inside my head.
this isn't a place for you to call home, i am a prison.
you couldn't thrive inside of my heart, it would be
asphyxiating for you because my heart is like a snake
squeezing tighter and tighter, i am not a home for you.
leave before i take every good part of you and destroy it.
- kra
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 9:12 PM UTC
I have broken the seal
all the jumbled inside my
hand
bottlenecked in my trembling fingers
pours forth suddenly
and my blood ink stains
the pages black
This is the Great Flood
and the Black Death
This is the Renaissance
and the Dark Ages
That cusp of breathtaking proportions
where the long winter
is broken
and the dawn after the
longest night is come
The promise of fresh air
which does not hurt the lungs
Of warmth which pulls the sting
away from the frozen flesh
whispers through the soul
and the wait which
needs must happen
until Spring arrives
is even more agonizing
in it's first promise of arrival
than all the misery
the dark silence
ever
could
afflict.
May 2, 2010
May 2, 2010 at 8:58 PM UTC
another hull breach
most of her fortune slips away
suckled by the undercurrent
her shanties are bottlenecked messages
entangled in self-accusation
listing through distress and tide
she flags toward more sympathetic waters
love is the bright iris of balmy weather
a ballast for threadbare optimism
she makes berth in tiny lips
that pardon her insufficiency
emptiness, a welcome refuge
projected under the twinkle of satisfaction
mirroring devotion
May 30, 2019
May 30, 2019 at 12:12 PM UTC
when the words stuck in my throat mature
slowly like honeydew and childish adults,
that's when a line has to be drawn. when
words are lodged in your throat, not by
accident, that's where the line has to be
formed. when the scars of their words
leave you bottlenecked, trying to find the
words to express the vagueness of that
empty feeling, the line has been crossed.
- kra
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 1:16 AM UTC
Traffic light refraction , glass store fronts pan
the main avenue
***** , bluesy , defeated people in line for liquor ,
beer , milk and lottery tickets
Navy skies grow red to the West , streetwise
pigeons work overfilled dumpsters and city cans
Bus stops return workers from Atlanta , the-
local grocery methodically stripped of its inventory ,
children playing games on side streets beneath working-
yellow lamplight ..
Fire trucks fly by , no one even bothers to look up or wonder why
Porch lights irradiate the Westside , amber hues build -
over the interstate , cars travel South , bottlenecked in the race for home ..
Apr 4, 2016
Apr 4, 2016 at 8:15 PM UTC