"kindergartner" poems
WHEN I WRITE ABOUT YOU
I WANT TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS
BECAUSE YOU ARE MOMENTOUS
AND EXCITING
AND WORTH SO MUCH MORE
THAN LOWERCASE LETTERS.
YOU ARE THE SUN BEAMING AT NOON
NOT LIGHTLY ON THE FACE
OF DAFFODILS AND CHERRY TREES
BUT SCREAMING THROUGH WINDOW BLINDS
OF TEENS TOO BEATEN DOWN
TO CLIMB OUT OF BED.
YOU ARE FUZZY CHRISTMAS SOCKS
AND HEAVY QUILT BLANKETS
NOT BECAUSE OF YOUR WARMTH AND SINCERITY
BUT BECAUSE OF THE WAY
YOU ENGULF EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH
AND MAKE THEM A PART OF
A SEA OF COMFORT AND REMEMBRANCE.
YOU ARE 3 AM EPIPHANIES
YOU ARE THE END OF A STORY MADE OF PROMISES AND BUMPY PLOT LINES
YOU ARE A BOUNCE CASTLE AT A KID'S BIRTHDAY PARTY.
YOU ARE CREAM CHEESE BROWNIES,
STARS SPRINKLED IN THE SKY,
THE FINGERTIPS OF A KINDERGARTNER IN THE WINTER
TOO STUBBORN TO WEAR GLOVES.
YOU ARE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD
ANYONE COULD HAVE ASKED YOU TO BE
BUT YOU ARE MOST DEFINITELY NOT
LOWERCASE LETTERS.
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 1:23 PM UTC
you know that is nothing old school about this love
im a kindergartner when i'm in your hug
you shrug, you get smug, you speak ****
leave me, lost the game, ego just popped like dig dug
fingers crossed i am no one to trust
i teach women to lust
than i let their brain think its smarter then us huh
funny i joke
wishful thinking cost's
and im broke
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 8:30 PM UTC
in the warmth of winter's afterglow
that humid calm before the storm
our bodies felt the lightning form
& in your eyes a spark absorbed...
i kissed you with the timing of
a kindergartner finding love
& the timid hands
of past romance
that never measured up...
so you became the frightening thunder
& i became the windy breeze
you battled with the lightning's wonder
i fiddled with the spinning leaves
you roared across the blinding tundra
i whistled while spreading seeds...
calm returns with a violent burst
i'm climbing clouds & counting birds
& measuring the mountain's curves
just to watch you mouth the words
my starving ears have never heard.... .. .
May 8, 2010
May 8, 2010 at 3:29 PM UTC
Twenty is a number of perspective
To a kindergartner it is old
not "really old" like thirty
but still old.
To a man in his nineties
it might seem young, a long-ago-young
a time through which many of his friends,
Americans abroad,
didn't make it through.
Twenty dollars is a lot to a man
in an old coat
sitting on a bench in DuPont Circle
being handed a bag from CVS
containing a toothbrush
some soap and
new socks.
To a woman standing in line
at a Starbucks
glancing out the window to admire
her new Range Rover....
Twenty dollars is nothing
pocket change
she'll spend it here in this line
over the course of the day.
And what of me?
Of my perspective?
Twenty is measured in years
Hard ones
Not quite as hard ones (face it, it's never easy)
Years filled with laughter and watery eyes
Of jubilation and anguish
But years through which I can not imagine another path that I could have taken
to get here
to this point
this moment
with you.
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 8:19 PM UTC
im a bag of meat scraps.
you know, that **** they throw to the pigs,
so it becomes a sick scene of hog eating hog
animistic cannibalism
i'm the girl with cobwebs in her hair
and the bruises on her ankles that she claims
she got from "falling down the stairs"
the kindergartner whose valentine box is empty
and starts to expect a life without love.
all the things that go wrong in the world, all the mutations, and outcasts,
i become them all.
i am a breathing mistake
and i am what the artists paint.
i and you and we
are beautiful
May 12, 2014
May 12, 2014 at 9:43 AM UTC
And then there’s something tantamount to this sunbeam in these bleary times—
the wildflowers, which grow everywhere in their own paradise;
a kindergartner running by herself even a few feet away from her friends, picking dandelions,
still with a sunny smile.
The ray of light shining through the window of isolation rooms as a sign of hope from heaven.
Sparks will still flow within our hands.
To still feel the everlasting warmth of sunshine.
The light we needed to surpass this cloudy shadow of our current circumstance.
Apr 17, 2020
Apr 17, 2020 at 9:49 PM UTC
Although I wish they were,
Your eyes were not made
To drink in my presence
Like a kindergartner with a juice box.
Your hands were not created
To touch away the pain I feel
After a day that crashed around me
Has taken away my hope.
And even though ours fit together,
Your lips were not crafted
To press against mine
In a spur of the moment thought.
And you were not invented
To love me.
Mar 20, 2014
Mar 20, 2014 at 9:08 AM UTC
isn't it just hilarious how I don't even know how mentally old I am like not in a haha i'm a kindergartner type way but more of a i still haven't found myself type way like the fact that i need a kind of alone version of hide and seek to find myself but i'm still not done counting off yet and i don't know when i will be because things keep changing and flurrying around my head like lost and gone and happy without me and happy before me and four years and seventeen hundred miles and razors and flowers and drip drip drip i don't know where i'm going i don't know where i'm steering and i told myself i wouldn't panic *i won't panic I WONT PANIC I WONT PANIC* but i do anyways and the culmination of all of this is just the beginning the beginning of the end and i can't even see past my own breath and even that escapes me and i just wish you were here you with your hugs and you with your whispers and you with your comfort but you three aren't and i'm stuck in the middle of a mud puddle a mile long and i don't think it's ever going to go away so maybe i should just resign myself to sinking
Jan 30, 2017
Jan 30, 2017 at 8:06 AM UTC
When the room was clear and stage was dark
I felt a pang inside my heart
As I looked to where you used to be
I sighed a familiar sigh
The sigh that knows your name
But does not need to utter the syllables
Because even if it is not said
It knows that I sigh for you
I cry for you
I'd lie for you
But I hide from you
Every song I sing, I sing for you
Every love song, in soprano
Serenades in smoky rooms
With low voices whispering in your ear
Soothing you into a trance
If you come closer, you can hear
My yearning voice for you
You can almost feel
My light touch across you dance
I compare stories of every love
I have ever heard
To our tale, in my mind
Like a kindergartner trying to cut out a picture
Based on a pattern held with stubby hands
I line the edges up just right and see what fits into us
Oh, I look around and hope you are there
To notice me
To think of me
To dream as I do
As if I were the only girl you had ever loved
The only girl you are capable of loving
The only girl you want
But what can I give you?
I've waited a long time
And I'm pretty sure I'd wait again
Because I'm your fool
A jester
That's performing only for your applause
For you to admire from the first row
To clap your hands and shout "Bravo!"
Jun 19, 2018
Jun 19, 2018 at 12:12 AM UTC
It’s a blank white slate with the entirety of human achievement inside of it
A way to talk to billions, to drown myself in enough entertainment to make me sick
It’s an echo chamber
It’s an echo chamber
Each night I scream into these walls
Beating myself into a vagus nerve induced frenzy
Slap these thighs and pull out wiry hair
Snap my fingers, my rough knuckles dancing as blows rain down
Like so many rainy days locked away
Seething meat blasted into oblivion
Because you have to do it don’t you?
Despite all the words
All the reassurances that you aren’t a liar
You want to do it
You want to think you want to do it
You are so confused
Cut the meat
Punch the beef
It’s an echo chamber
With occasional melodies belting out from underneath the door frame
Little moments when you collapse
No beauty in the death of the ugly ways
A cracked ceramic mask
Made by a kindergartner
Because I never learned how to paint my face
I never learned any language other than man
It’s not a matter of how I feel
It’s a matter of can I always feel this way
It’s a matter of whether or not I’m still riding on the echoes of a voice that only brings to mind the haziest of memories
It’s a matter of who looks back at me in this prison, this room
Who will greet me in my nightmares tonight?
Who will look back at me in the mirror?
When did those stop being two sides of the same coin?
I pound and beat and mash pale flesh against the steamed surface
Please, take me out of this two way hell
This two time place
Oct 8, 2018
Oct 8, 2018 at 7:08 AM UTC
They say a mother’s love is the best love,
But what’s the best love when she doesn’t show you love?
Because when you make a mistake she doesn’t want a thing to do with you.
That’s when you seek love in other things,
Drugs, alcohol, boys, people that don’t want you.
You slowly change into a person that you know she won’t like,
You start lying to her and to yourself
Because no matter what, you are still that little kindergartner
swinging on the swing set with a juice pouch in her hands
Pony tails in hair while you giggle about something silly.
But now when you giggle, you are too high to know what you giggling about.
Instead of having a juice pouch in your hands, you have shot of *****
You start smiling less and start crying more
You aren’t the person you were meant to be,
You are the person you promised you’d never be…
May 31, 2017
May 31, 2017 at 7:12 PM UTC
A kindergartner in his bed
a man outside his room,
his face against the foggy glass
a stormy night… no moon.
A lightning flash within the dark
the boy sits up and cries,
the hooded man with dripping nose
looks straight into his eyes.
When morning comes his mother’s there
her eyes are mean and wild
“You pee’d your bed, again!” she said,
“you stupid little child!
You’re much too old for rubber pants
but what else can I do?
Now put them on and go to school
I hope they laugh at you!”
Some fifty winters later and
the figure still appears,
where once a hooded human
now a demon in my mirror.
He’s not afraid of being seen,
the man I am now knows
his presence here is absolute,
I live the life I chose.
He comes to see me every day
when noontime hour is near,
a surging angst from deep within
my fifty years of fear.
My closest friend since way back when
my mother said I lied,
I could have said I was afraid
but never even tried.
She wouldn’t have believed me anyway….
I met my demon as a child
at midnight in the rain,
I swear I saw him smile at me
from through the window pane,
with water dripping from his nose
and eyes like burning coal,
a flash of light revealed his greed
and then he took my soul
May 18, 2023
May 18, 2023 at 11:14 AM UTC