"hesco" poems
i am overwhelmed;
bursting through plaster cracks
and jagged leftovers of stained
glass, my mouth full of wet fire
and heavy things and my limbs
shaking and shaking and shaking.
i have been devoured by love
for you—its teeth have never been
honed this sharp before they have
never snagged so deep but i think
they do now because love wants to
hold on this time, tear the protective
barrier of flesh and bullet-ridden hesco
skin off of my bones. it’s okay, i would
love to be eaten: i want the bites to crawl
up and down my fingertips and tiptoe
in zig-zags up my spine until all i can do
is sing and cry and listen to the
insatiable beating of my ink-swathed
heart. i have only ever loved literature
until these moments but now i have
made you into a book and will
tattoo your words at the crook
of my elbow and in the soft
craters of my chest;
god, i will read you for eternity.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 8:27 PM UTC
I found myself siting in the sand, my back against a Hesco bastion, writing on an old familiar note pad. I imagined myself at home, sitting against the old oak tree that grew in the back yard, grass tickling my bare feet in the humid summer breeze. The old cheap pencil I was using had bite marks on it and the eraser was long gone but it wrote just fine and made a scratching sound against the grain of the paper that I found soothing as I filled the page. It was my escape after all…writing. It took me away from the day to day stress of southern Afghanistan. I thought about that as I wrote…how people needed a way to escape. I’ll admit to thinking about all kinds of things, that’s just what writing does for me. It makes me think. It makes me want to tell stories of love, pain, sorrow and joy. It makes me want to abuse my notepad with doodles and tear stains long after I forgot what I was doing in the first place, which wasn’t the point anyway. It wasn’t important “what” I was writing. It was important “that” I was writing, because the joy is in the doing.
Dec 14, 2012
Dec 14, 2012 at 8:32 AM UTC