"sunbright" poems
i. when i was a little girl,
i wanted to die on the countryside
my lighthouse eyes straight ahead
and my head laid against the cornfields
to breathe in the daylight and breathe out the mo(u)rn
my mama said that would be
a very long time from now
(i'm sorry to disappoint you, mama)
ii. my house was whisked away to oz
when i fell asleep beneath the cherry-red poppies
i ran and fell down the rabbit hole on the way back
my hair entangled with the willow trees
autumn leaves stuck to my rain boots
as my jacket stuck to close to my skin
and i felt human for the first time in ages
(i'm not a child anymore)
iii. asleep during midsummer
i am sunbright and innocent
(someday, my sweetheart)
iv. little miss sunshine,
i miss your bird sing-song voice
and your bottle-it-up laughter
your macaroni hair and
your sweet acorn eyes
that cheshire cat smile
but most of all, i miss your reminiscence
and the memories we never had together
(now you're sleeping' six feet under)
v. the sun set in your eyes
for the very first time.
i think of you among the sunflowers.
Mar 2, 2014
Mar 2, 2014 at 2:25 AM UTC
I am trying to write poetry about flowers,
The messy, spillingover kind, rioting, too
Bright, so alive something in me cracks like sidewalks
When tree roots push up the concrete like When molars
Erupt from sore gums that time she said when I grew
Too big for carrying, I had to learn how to talk
like an adult. Whatever. Money. Car. *** Pill.
Capitalism. Work. Responsibility.
But something about tangly sunbright flowers still
makes my heart say whee.
Sep 7, 2016
Sep 7, 2016 at 1:34 PM UTC
I’m never sure. it’s sad. I know.
I want to be honest.
sometimes I’m too honest, honestly,
and in the wrong way. the worst way.
I want to be good. good at something
anything, really. I don’t know what.
maybe I’d be a good barista
or a good waitress. I don’t know.
sushi chef maybe? is that even
something that I’d want to do?
I hate when people say they do
“computers”. That’s not even DOING
something. That’s just a noun.
Can I say I do “books”??
Is your job too complicated to
explain to simple old me?
I need to work on being logical
with my heart. I need to start
believing in chances. I have a
poet’s eye, so why can’t I have
her ever-breaking heart? her
softasskin soul? her longing for
cold winters and sunbright lemonaid
her love of love?
I have a bitter feel of love. it’s
twisted into a harsh hatred. It’s
eaten by doubt. It doesn’t smile,
it blushes, it hides. I need to
re-coax love into existence.
so that when it opens up, it
recreates the boundaries
of safety that I so crave.
I want to be the fearless poet
that Frost examines in his woods
I want the flawed sex-ful poet
that Bukowski loves to paint
I want the darkest raven-breasted poet
that Poe tearfully wrote
or I want to be my own poet,
lost in thick dusty second-hand
bookstores, full of soggy stories
too heavy sometimes
to re-tell.
Oct 18, 2015
Oct 18, 2015 at 2:46 PM UTC
the sidewalks are lit up,
sunbright, enough to look away,
into merciful shade
I keep thinking I oughta be using
this time to say goodbye,
soak in Santa Fe, burn with her
if this is my last home
if this is the summer of loss,
I should let it sink under my skin
but I dry out in the sun,
and browning isn't appealing
when I'm outside myself,
beside myself already
Jun 29, 2014
Jun 29, 2014 at 1:52 PM UTC
It's a wide sun
who's light travels
from my silly head
to my stubborn heart
And back again
and back again
it goes in burning circles
and yet never fails to shine
If you look closely
you might be lucky
and catch a glimpse
of my fiery desire to be
Since I have little
but I have as much
as the sun gives in warmth
and I'd as such
give it gladly and settle
to heat up your cold arms
Jul 14, 2018
Jul 14, 2018 at 2:42 PM UTC
let the water
trickle past your fingers,
like memory,
falling through the holes in your
head, cloudy, tattered.
let your head,
as fluffy as clouds,
brush up against stars,
constellations of
legends, of sodium
and potassium hallucinations.
sometimes people lie.
let the air
brush each
and every alveoli of your lungs,
each gyri and
sulci of your brain.
taste the salt --
sweat, the sea, your blood.
let the iron,
stable, sunbright
iron, carry itself
with the poise of
a red giant --
both radient,
striking, bleeding vermillion
and crimson.
stable, like a mountain,
letting rain run
itself over with the gentle
caress of an old lover,
who knows the contours and the
dips of the body,
and yet is getting --
reacquainted with it,
after a long time away.
the sweat of the
maker sticks to
the threads that
weave to make the library that makes
you, that
holds information, holds itself
in letters,
quartets, spirals.
taste the salt.
the wind sounds like the sea,
outside my bedroom window,
when it's too late
for my eyes to have
not made
their coupling of
the night.
imagine the salt-mist,
bright and cold on your
face, like the
splatter of blood,
leaking out of a nose;
like a river flowing
from precipitation, mist,
downstea, rejoining where it once
came from, where it was
always going to end up.
fate is a funny thing.
they say that every cell
of yours gets replaced
every seven years.
i wonder how long it takes salt,
iron --
to rise and to
fall,
like the eight minutes
the light of the
sun follows to get
here, to our
little pinprick eyes,
to our dopamine
and norepinephrine,
the spikes and
dips of neurons, firing.
how many heartbeats, breaths?
how many crashes of waves?
Jan 29, 2025
Jan 29, 2025 at 12:26 AM UTC