I have memories like broken glass
Fragmented and beautiful
But I'll never forget
How to love, and lose.
This side of December, looking back
At last year's December
I can't believe it's the same me
I don't want to remember-
How awful it is to fall apart
Or how hard it is to pull
The broken shards back together
To remember the jerk of my arm
While driving on the highway
Or the prick of a needle
In a safe place-
A place where cobwebs grow lazy on the mind
And where semis don't drive beside you
And I remember what it's like
To think you're better off without me
Remember, too, the way I left
My writing to your safe-keeping.
And I hate that I played
Such a fool
Hate that I couldn't hold me together
When it mattered most
Now these broken memories
Are in the palms of my hands
Cupped there, cutting-
I bleed little half moons
And pointy crags of thought-
A little more each day.
Until I think that love
And loss are nothing to me.
And when that numbness
Subsides in tears and fears
And the bruises are gone, fading-
I'll remember how much it cost me,
This life of mine
Played in shadows and snowy peaks.
And yet here I am
Alive and dreaming still
Of better things to come
Thoughts that once seemed futile
Have a place in me again.
And I can't help but feel
That I've grown a little older
And maybe a little brighter-
A little- as the year is done.
But I can't feel a great sense
Of accomplishment
No matter how I try
Because I've done nothing of import
For quite a time
And these memories
They take me back
To places and faces of mine
Until I have this mosaic
This landscape of hatred
That reminds me of love
And loss.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Silly Girl with Pen
I felt
Common disillusionment
After the college scene
To preoccupied with lessons
To really learn
The difference between lost and looking
In a world populated with American dreams
Left confused by the world's first big hurt
I treaded water for the fear of a swim
So here I am
Barely begun
Holding kisses in the palms of my hands
For other people's children
But where's my turn?
How do I begin
When nothing gets accomplished
By silly girls with pens?
And I still can't learn to sing
The way poets do
Loud as a whisper,
Full-throated and slim
Am I lost or looking
In this life's dreamscape
Struggling for idealism,
I tread water because I can't yet swim.
Common disillusionment
After the college scene
To preoccupied with lessons
To really learn
The difference between lost and looking
In a world populated with American dreams
Left confused by the world's first big hurt
I treaded water for the fear of a swim
So here I am
Barely begun
Holding kisses in the palms of my hands
For other people's children
But where's my turn?
How do I begin
When nothing gets accomplished
By silly girls with pens?
And I still can't learn to sing
The way poets do
Loud as a whisper,
Full-throated and slim
Am I lost or looking
In this life's dreamscape
Struggling for idealism,
I tread water because I can't yet swim.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Sadness is a Beauty (October 06)
Painted toe-nails make me feel more like a girl. More than wearing a dress or even flirting, those toe-nails shine and shimmer in shades of varying me. My toes are short and somewhat stubby, but I’ve heard them described as sexy by others. Funny how sometimes you have to hear it first from someone else before you believe it yourself.
My feet are calloused from years of marching band and walking around barefoot as often as possible. My ankles hold old nick-wounds from shaving legs that grow hair too coarse, too dark, too often. My legs are shaped by marching and my mother’s genes. They are most often shielded from the sun in a pair of jeans. I am also often found in a long skirt or, if the mood strikes, a short skirt and thigh-highs. I have a healthy mistrust of short skirts however.
Short skirts make me feel dangerous. Reckless. Short skirts make me want to jump off the edge, into a deep blue sky moving a deep blue sea—the kind where it doesn’t matter where you land because it’s all just this beautiful blue. But I’ve tempered that recklessness with experience; skirts are easy access and I am no longer easily accessed, so I tend to stick with the blue jeans.
My hips are wide and give me a swagger when I walk. I have to wiggle when those jeans slip up or down, a sort of hip rolling dance move that has become my own private ritual. Hips don’t lie. This body was made for childbirth, and the little children at the daycare where I work certainly find the curve of my hip to be a perfect fit when I hold them. It would be nice if hip size was any indication of how good a mother you could be. Maybe then a curve of hip could outweigh my fears of losing control under the pressures of parenthood. But they are no indication, and I still get scared.
The tops of my thighs are smooth and strong, while the backs of my thighs show my love of chocolate in pits of cellulite. My butt curves into my back with a crescent indentation, and this crescent becomes split by my spine.
There was once innocence between my legs, between my feelings and my brain, but that designation is long since dead. A part of me I never had a chance to claim was lost to me then, in the frozen hot torture of my first disastrous relationship. It is hard now, looking back, to believe in the depth of innocence I had. It is hard to know, looking at the years of my depression, if there are any memories left that haven’t been corrupted by the haze of sleeping pills, alcohol, and over-analyzation. How is it that you can have something without ever knowing it and then lose it in a fast ride of salty confusion and shame?
That’s what it was, a loss. It was not a communication, or love, or even lust—just a fast spin that left me shaking for months to follow. You think I’m talking about sex here, and in a way I am, but what I really mean is the rape of my self—self-worth, self-identity, self-esteem. I was not raped. You cannot be raped if you don’t say no, if in fact, you don’t say anything. For it to be rape you have to do something to try to stop it—and so I told myself that my actions are my responsibility and I tried not to be a whore in the future. But the future was relative, and not even my paper smiles or my pen miles could disguise the trauma I found myself living.
As you can perhaps infer, I’ve had to be strong or I would have broken, and my back reflects this in wide, smooth slashes of muscle and skin. There is a place on my lower stomach where my skin is a stretch of nerves that makes me respond to any touch. There are a few who have already discovered this and use it against me shamelessly. My belly was once smooth and firm, with a sheet of muscle just under the surface. This was once my favorite body part. You can still feel the muscle under the bulge. But I have yet to find an exercise as good as marching and playing the clarinet at the same time, so the muscle lays unused.
My waist indents at the belly button, and spans up to my rib cage. I love the wide, four finger spread of my ribs when I arch my back to stretch out the stress that gathers between my shoulder blades. My breasts are high and firm, soft and smaller than average, but perfect for me. I enjoy bras and cleavage—two more things that make me feel like a girl. There’s something nice about a good bra. A good bra can make any woman look great. And that knowledge—that you look good under your clothes—makes you feel so much more confident.
I have a surgical scar on the top of my right breast, from the removal of a mole that was never malignant. This scar is recent and both uglier and larger than the doctor had presumed. The scars on my left wrist are not so recent, not so ugly, nor so large. They are like lacework—beautiful and complex, perhaps more memory than fact—and so faded now that only I can see them. I know intimately where each stroke is, where I forced the tip of blade into skin. These scars are spider web kisses of a former blade, from a time when the face reflected in the mirror was not mine, from a time when I held a shallow portion of a lip, a star in the palm of a stranger’s outstretched hand.
The blade of the carpet knife I used to cut into my skin never broke the Y-shaped vein, never spilled my life onto my dorm room floor. Death was never the point. I needed to feel something besides numbing anger and consuming depression. I needed a fierce competitor to the tears and the lies. These red seam lines—ragged and scary looking even now in memory—held me together. I just needed to see what I was made of. I can still feel the cuts now, like how an amputee feels their lost limb. I imagine the seductive pull of that knife as it cuts through flesh, through thick cylindrical vein, through nerves and muscles, to the bone.
It didn’t last long. I graduated to the blade of a pen, though not in the way my friends had hoped. I had been a writer, but after I started seeing shadows in my mirrors and my reflection in those shadows, I was not. I lost the desire to put words to the page, to feed my sorrow with a soundtrack. So instead, I wrote upon my legs with a permanent marker in trance-like states where my legs were left a black, screaming mass of nearly incoherent words. My therapist later called this healthy, since it stopped me from slitting my wrists.
My shoulders are wide and strong, showcasing my collarbones and the indentation at my throat where bones meet and curve. My neck is a neck, not long, not short, just there—a spacer between head and shoulders. I’ll let you in on the worst-kept secret never told: I’m a sucker for soft lips and wet kisses along the line of skin from ear to collarbone. (Shh).
My face is small and round, most of it cheek. My mouth is really the first thing people notice about my face, since it is wide with a full lower lip. They assume I’ll be better at kissing than other girls. (I don’t like to disappoint.) To downplay them as much as possible, I wear little to no lipstick, and only wear Chap Stick as a concession to the annoying trait of my lips to shed skin like a snake.
My nose is short and round and squat. I don’t much like it now, ever since someone said it looks like a pig’s snout. My eyes are deep set, which I regret, but they see much. They are dark brown, nearly black. I have silent eyes. Dead eyes. I wish they spoke volumes and other clichés, but they don’t. They never have. I do tend to win arguments however, because people are disconcerted that I stare with such undivided attention when they speak with me.
I once thought I had a disease. It had to do with my hair. I can’t remember now what it was called, though it started with a T. It involved the pulling of your hair from its roots. As a method of coping with stress, you understand. I have a tendency to align myself with different ailments given the smallest provocation, which I was told is pretty normal for people with anxiety disorders. So, I guess it’s good to know that there are times when pulling out your hair is normal.
I really like my hair too. It’s thick, and has these gold strands that run through it from the sun. But I guess you could say it’s been places, seen things. When I started college, I cut it all off—layered and short. I guess I felt the need to break out of my packaging a bit, become a new person. The problem was that, once I cut it…I didn’t have the patience to grow it out again. I finally grew it out to my shoulders after two years, and started experimenting with color. I have been a redhead, a darker brunette, and raven-tressed. I still like the idea of black hair, though it washes me out too much. This color experimentation follows me even now; my driver’s license still says that I’m a redhead. The lady at the BMV said she had to go with what she saw. So no matter what you think, officially, I’m a redhead.
I think my hair was black when I first began pulling it out. Anxiety attacks were brutal—sucked all the life out of you in shakes and sobs. Fisting my hands into my hair and pulling was the only way to relieve the pressure in my head. Pulling my scalp away from my brain seemed to make the load lighter. Maybe a medieval doctor would have told me that anxiety was caused by my brain being too hot. But today’s modern doctor wouldn’t agree. For them, my problems were because of how I thought.
If anyone ever tells you that teaching yourself how to think differently is an easy thing, smack them. It was the hardest and most gratifying thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. It’s like tearing away flesh, burning it like truth before a flame, until there’s nowhere left to hide. My final breakdown, the one that made me decide to drop out of school, it was a retreat. It was a burning of flesh and a silence bare. It was the sunset of a new day.
Depression is the loss of hope. It spreads over your skin like silk until there isn’t anything left of you that isn’t wrapped up in it. I spent so many days staring. Not speaking, unable to physically say words. Silence was better, with the meaning of nothing hanging in the air.
Those were the moments when I didn’t have the energy to fake it anymore. I had faked it for so long, and for so hard, that I didn’t know what me was anymore. I was done with dreaming. I had nothing left to dream. So I stared, out windows at views that never changed with the passing day, at the ceiling of my bedroom as the night shifted to day. I created my own little island where no one else could reach me.
My intention here, in these last paragraphs, was to go inside my brain. To show some thoughts to illustrate what my thinking was like. But I find that I can’t do it. That once again I do not have the words to describe it. I can’t relate it and having not been there, you wouldn’t understand.
Don’t feel bad about not understanding. You haven’t been forced to spend the kind of time with yourself that I have. You haven’t traveled the same road I have. Even if you know someone who has depression, or have had it yourself, you still haven’t traveled the same road. You aren’t inside my head. No one has ever been able to get inside my head.
I never found therapists all that useful for just that reason. The first therapist I saw I was not honest with. The second was too busy to give me the time of day and diagnosed me as bipolar after talking with me for half an hour. The third gave me a prescription for my mood disorder, which my next therapist then promptly told me not to take. But, the last therapist was the best. I saw this “psycho doctor,” as I called him, for fifteen minutes twice a month, with visits to a therapist in the same office.
He told me once that I could do his job. I thought things out so thoroughly that I was capable of coming to the same conclusions as he. He acted like a regulating force, much as my medication did. He was necessary to my recovery. I said once and still say, that I was self-destructive yes, but also self-aware.
Depression has no cure. It is something you learn to live with. I’ve come to see choice as this all-encompassing philosophy. I make myself be aware of my motivations. Awareness is a self-fed addiction that I cannot live without.
Sadness permeates my skin like mist, even in my happiness. It is a part of my character. It is fused to my bones, comes out in my voice. Sadness is a beauty, though not in the traditional sense. I could write my body with sadness.
My feet are calloused from years of marching band and walking around barefoot as often as possible. My ankles hold old nick-wounds from shaving legs that grow hair too coarse, too dark, too often. My legs are shaped by marching and my mother’s genes. They are most often shielded from the sun in a pair of jeans. I am also often found in a long skirt or, if the mood strikes, a short skirt and thigh-highs. I have a healthy mistrust of short skirts however.
Short skirts make me feel dangerous. Reckless. Short skirts make me want to jump off the edge, into a deep blue sky moving a deep blue sea—the kind where it doesn’t matter where you land because it’s all just this beautiful blue. But I’ve tempered that recklessness with experience; skirts are easy access and I am no longer easily accessed, so I tend to stick with the blue jeans.
My hips are wide and give me a swagger when I walk. I have to wiggle when those jeans slip up or down, a sort of hip rolling dance move that has become my own private ritual. Hips don’t lie. This body was made for childbirth, and the little children at the daycare where I work certainly find the curve of my hip to be a perfect fit when I hold them. It would be nice if hip size was any indication of how good a mother you could be. Maybe then a curve of hip could outweigh my fears of losing control under the pressures of parenthood. But they are no indication, and I still get scared.
The tops of my thighs are smooth and strong, while the backs of my thighs show my love of chocolate in pits of cellulite. My butt curves into my back with a crescent indentation, and this crescent becomes split by my spine.
There was once innocence between my legs, between my feelings and my brain, but that designation is long since dead. A part of me I never had a chance to claim was lost to me then, in the frozen hot torture of my first disastrous relationship. It is hard now, looking back, to believe in the depth of innocence I had. It is hard to know, looking at the years of my depression, if there are any memories left that haven’t been corrupted by the haze of sleeping pills, alcohol, and over-analyzation. How is it that you can have something without ever knowing it and then lose it in a fast ride of salty confusion and shame?
That’s what it was, a loss. It was not a communication, or love, or even lust—just a fast spin that left me shaking for months to follow. You think I’m talking about sex here, and in a way I am, but what I really mean is the rape of my self—self-worth, self-identity, self-esteem. I was not raped. You cannot be raped if you don’t say no, if in fact, you don’t say anything. For it to be rape you have to do something to try to stop it—and so I told myself that my actions are my responsibility and I tried not to be a whore in the future. But the future was relative, and not even my paper smiles or my pen miles could disguise the trauma I found myself living.
As you can perhaps infer, I’ve had to be strong or I would have broken, and my back reflects this in wide, smooth slashes of muscle and skin. There is a place on my lower stomach where my skin is a stretch of nerves that makes me respond to any touch. There are a few who have already discovered this and use it against me shamelessly. My belly was once smooth and firm, with a sheet of muscle just under the surface. This was once my favorite body part. You can still feel the muscle under the bulge. But I have yet to find an exercise as good as marching and playing the clarinet at the same time, so the muscle lays unused.
My waist indents at the belly button, and spans up to my rib cage. I love the wide, four finger spread of my ribs when I arch my back to stretch out the stress that gathers between my shoulder blades. My breasts are high and firm, soft and smaller than average, but perfect for me. I enjoy bras and cleavage—two more things that make me feel like a girl. There’s something nice about a good bra. A good bra can make any woman look great. And that knowledge—that you look good under your clothes—makes you feel so much more confident.
I have a surgical scar on the top of my right breast, from the removal of a mole that was never malignant. This scar is recent and both uglier and larger than the doctor had presumed. The scars on my left wrist are not so recent, not so ugly, nor so large. They are like lacework—beautiful and complex, perhaps more memory than fact—and so faded now that only I can see them. I know intimately where each stroke is, where I forced the tip of blade into skin. These scars are spider web kisses of a former blade, from a time when the face reflected in the mirror was not mine, from a time when I held a shallow portion of a lip, a star in the palm of a stranger’s outstretched hand.
The blade of the carpet knife I used to cut into my skin never broke the Y-shaped vein, never spilled my life onto my dorm room floor. Death was never the point. I needed to feel something besides numbing anger and consuming depression. I needed a fierce competitor to the tears and the lies. These red seam lines—ragged and scary looking even now in memory—held me together. I just needed to see what I was made of. I can still feel the cuts now, like how an amputee feels their lost limb. I imagine the seductive pull of that knife as it cuts through flesh, through thick cylindrical vein, through nerves and muscles, to the bone.
It didn’t last long. I graduated to the blade of a pen, though not in the way my friends had hoped. I had been a writer, but after I started seeing shadows in my mirrors and my reflection in those shadows, I was not. I lost the desire to put words to the page, to feed my sorrow with a soundtrack. So instead, I wrote upon my legs with a permanent marker in trance-like states where my legs were left a black, screaming mass of nearly incoherent words. My therapist later called this healthy, since it stopped me from slitting my wrists.
My shoulders are wide and strong, showcasing my collarbones and the indentation at my throat where bones meet and curve. My neck is a neck, not long, not short, just there—a spacer between head and shoulders. I’ll let you in on the worst-kept secret never told: I’m a sucker for soft lips and wet kisses along the line of skin from ear to collarbone. (Shh).
My face is small and round, most of it cheek. My mouth is really the first thing people notice about my face, since it is wide with a full lower lip. They assume I’ll be better at kissing than other girls. (I don’t like to disappoint.) To downplay them as much as possible, I wear little to no lipstick, and only wear Chap Stick as a concession to the annoying trait of my lips to shed skin like a snake.
My nose is short and round and squat. I don’t much like it now, ever since someone said it looks like a pig’s snout. My eyes are deep set, which I regret, but they see much. They are dark brown, nearly black. I have silent eyes. Dead eyes. I wish they spoke volumes and other clichés, but they don’t. They never have. I do tend to win arguments however, because people are disconcerted that I stare with such undivided attention when they speak with me.
I once thought I had a disease. It had to do with my hair. I can’t remember now what it was called, though it started with a T. It involved the pulling of your hair from its roots. As a method of coping with stress, you understand. I have a tendency to align myself with different ailments given the smallest provocation, which I was told is pretty normal for people with anxiety disorders. So, I guess it’s good to know that there are times when pulling out your hair is normal.
I really like my hair too. It’s thick, and has these gold strands that run through it from the sun. But I guess you could say it’s been places, seen things. When I started college, I cut it all off—layered and short. I guess I felt the need to break out of my packaging a bit, become a new person. The problem was that, once I cut it…I didn’t have the patience to grow it out again. I finally grew it out to my shoulders after two years, and started experimenting with color. I have been a redhead, a darker brunette, and raven-tressed. I still like the idea of black hair, though it washes me out too much. This color experimentation follows me even now; my driver’s license still says that I’m a redhead. The lady at the BMV said she had to go with what she saw. So no matter what you think, officially, I’m a redhead.
I think my hair was black when I first began pulling it out. Anxiety attacks were brutal—sucked all the life out of you in shakes and sobs. Fisting my hands into my hair and pulling was the only way to relieve the pressure in my head. Pulling my scalp away from my brain seemed to make the load lighter. Maybe a medieval doctor would have told me that anxiety was caused by my brain being too hot. But today’s modern doctor wouldn’t agree. For them, my problems were because of how I thought.
If anyone ever tells you that teaching yourself how to think differently is an easy thing, smack them. It was the hardest and most gratifying thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. It’s like tearing away flesh, burning it like truth before a flame, until there’s nowhere left to hide. My final breakdown, the one that made me decide to drop out of school, it was a retreat. It was a burning of flesh and a silence bare. It was the sunset of a new day.
Depression is the loss of hope. It spreads over your skin like silk until there isn’t anything left of you that isn’t wrapped up in it. I spent so many days staring. Not speaking, unable to physically say words. Silence was better, with the meaning of nothing hanging in the air.
Those were the moments when I didn’t have the energy to fake it anymore. I had faked it for so long, and for so hard, that I didn’t know what me was anymore. I was done with dreaming. I had nothing left to dream. So I stared, out windows at views that never changed with the passing day, at the ceiling of my bedroom as the night shifted to day. I created my own little island where no one else could reach me.
My intention here, in these last paragraphs, was to go inside my brain. To show some thoughts to illustrate what my thinking was like. But I find that I can’t do it. That once again I do not have the words to describe it. I can’t relate it and having not been there, you wouldn’t understand.
Don’t feel bad about not understanding. You haven’t been forced to spend the kind of time with yourself that I have. You haven’t traveled the same road I have. Even if you know someone who has depression, or have had it yourself, you still haven’t traveled the same road. You aren’t inside my head. No one has ever been able to get inside my head.
I never found therapists all that useful for just that reason. The first therapist I saw I was not honest with. The second was too busy to give me the time of day and diagnosed me as bipolar after talking with me for half an hour. The third gave me a prescription for my mood disorder, which my next therapist then promptly told me not to take. But, the last therapist was the best. I saw this “psycho doctor,” as I called him, for fifteen minutes twice a month, with visits to a therapist in the same office.
He told me once that I could do his job. I thought things out so thoroughly that I was capable of coming to the same conclusions as he. He acted like a regulating force, much as my medication did. He was necessary to my recovery. I said once and still say, that I was self-destructive yes, but also self-aware.
Depression has no cure. It is something you learn to live with. I’ve come to see choice as this all-encompassing philosophy. I make myself be aware of my motivations. Awareness is a self-fed addiction that I cannot live without.
Sadness permeates my skin like mist, even in my happiness. It is a part of my character. It is fused to my bones, comes out in my voice. Sadness is a beauty, though not in the traditional sense. I could write my body with sadness.
I Remember Europe
A Starbucks on every street
Even in Canterbury
Where a man was once killed for politics
And thus twice shy for life
How morbid the imagination
When you stand in the spot
Where his blood once pooled and
In the crypts, home to the old
And then the bright sunlight--
Would you like a postcard?
And some coffee to go
Before driving to the white cliffs of Dover.
---
My pictures of Paris
Look like you could blink once, twice
And then step into them.
Even in black and white
The light shines brightest
On water and air,
Reflections only.
But the land in between,
What sacred ground
Covered in gargoyles
And wondorous sounds.
Notre Dame is the name of the place
But the river, with the reflected light,
It catches the eye. It wins the prize.
----
Vivid turrets in a turquoise sky
White against blue against white
Until the air itself is a shining thing.
City walls cage in stones set in heaps
And a statue of a former king,
Perched on his horse, sits astride.
My memories are shadows
Snapshots of window frames
And time-old stone figures,
Asleep against the turrets
That line the turquoise sky.
Even in Canterbury
Where a man was once killed for politics
And thus twice shy for life
How morbid the imagination
When you stand in the spot
Where his blood once pooled and
In the crypts, home to the old
And then the bright sunlight--
Would you like a postcard?
And some coffee to go
Before driving to the white cliffs of Dover.
---
My pictures of Paris
Look like you could blink once, twice
And then step into them.
Even in black and white
The light shines brightest
On water and air,
Reflections only.
But the land in between,
What sacred ground
Covered in gargoyles
And wondorous sounds.
Notre Dame is the name of the place
But the river, with the reflected light,
It catches the eye. It wins the prize.
----
Vivid turrets in a turquoise sky
White against blue against white
Until the air itself is a shining thing.
City walls cage in stones set in heaps
And a statue of a former king,
Perched on his horse, sits astride.
My memories are shadows
Snapshots of window frames
And time-old stone figures,
Asleep against the turrets
That line the turquoise sky.
Ice Castles
(written December 1, 2007)
We held hands and walked around campus
As though careless was a game we played,
But we both lost when the tie broke.
Now it's freezing in the snow and I wear half boots on the ice,
Treading or falling at will.
I am being careful.
I don't know how to get back again
To that place where happy and sad mix,
To holding hands in the summertime glow.
But the spirit will change
Again, and then, again.
I am anything but constant.
Maybe I'll wear myself thin on the ice,
Ice castles where the waves crash
The ebb and flow of an inconstant beat
The only thing in me that beats,
Beats in meters and rhymes
Until nothing but those beats make sense
And I don't know how to fix it anymore
How to float that ice castle
And still want to live in it
The beats are beating a soft stacato
A sound heard in the dark,
Can you hear it?
I can't.
A shallow breath in a caged heart
A rickety step to the future...
These are things I'm careful with
Things that only time will break, or mend
But careless, it's a game I play.
We held hands and walked around campus
As though careless was a game we played,
But we both lost when the tie broke.
Now it's freezing in the snow and I wear half boots on the ice,
Treading or falling at will.
I am being careful.
I don't know how to get back again
To that place where happy and sad mix,
To holding hands in the summertime glow.
But the spirit will change
Again, and then, again.
I am anything but constant.
Maybe I'll wear myself thin on the ice,
Ice castles where the waves crash
The ebb and flow of an inconstant beat
The only thing in me that beats,
Beats in meters and rhymes
Until nothing but those beats make sense
And I don't know how to fix it anymore
How to float that ice castle
And still want to live in it
The beats are beating a soft stacato
A sound heard in the dark,
Can you hear it?
I can't.
A shallow breath in a caged heart
A rickety step to the future...
These are things I'm careful with
Things that only time will break, or mend
But careless, it's a game I play.
Violet
(written July 8, 2007)
Lazy Sunday Morning
Glowing Golden on The French Terrace
Seat of God
Begotten Sorrows on Pillow Shams
of Tears and Trials
Wake up to lavender and lilac
Scented dreams of smiles
And stretches like arched
Time stitched across the
Back of an old
Pillow born emotion
Rain drenched curtains
Hanging from the
Ceiling rafters like
Cottage white
Encased in Show glass
Thicker than a Cut
Another day to be
Forgotten in the
Pressed people
Dressed for Mourning
Church-ridden for
Other souls, those
Not lost to perdition
But tradition calls me on
And I turn
To close violet eyes
To sleep
Lazy Sunday Morning
Glowing Golden on The French Terrace
Seat of God
Begotten Sorrows on Pillow Shams
of Tears and Trials
Wake up to lavender and lilac
Scented dreams of smiles
And stretches like arched
Time stitched across the
Back of an old
Pillow born emotion
Rain drenched curtains
Hanging from the
Ceiling rafters like
Cottage white
Encased in Show glass
Thicker than a Cut
Another day to be
Forgotten in the
Pressed people
Dressed for Mourning
Church-ridden for
Other souls, those
Not lost to perdition
But tradition calls me on
And I turn
To close violet eyes
To sleep
i-love-you-lies
(written May 12, 2007)
a little lost girl
a little scared girl
i know you
i know your lies
your i-love-you-lies
but if i could write you a love song
it'd be the beat of my heart
the sound of my breaths
if i could drown, i'd drown in a sea of green
i lied to you
i didn't think i was, but i am
i found the proof, written in my own hand
so here i am, lying again
in a bed of reds
in a sea of soft
i never remember how bad it was
until it happens again
unless i read the anguish on the page
i'm a mess
in a messy bed
in a sea of green,
or was it red?
a little lost girl
a little scared girl
i know you
i know your lies
your i-love-you-lies
but if i could write you a love song
it'd be the beat of my heart
the sound of my breaths
if i could drown, i'd drown in a sea of green
i lied to you
i didn't think i was, but i am
i found the proof, written in my own hand
so here i am, lying again
in a bed of reds
in a sea of soft
i never remember how bad it was
until it happens again
unless i read the anguish on the page
i'm a mess
in a messy bed
in a sea of green,
or was it red?
A Strip Search
(written March 16, 2007)
A strip search
and two bruises on my hands
one for the crook in my elbow
and too late for me, too late
i can do anything at all
and that includes getting out
i've proven it now
i can do anything at all
praisethelordjesus running up and down the halls
a roommate crying over problems
i can fix(it's always easier for someone else)
clothes locked up, luggage in storage
a key for every lock and a lock for every thing
a survey at the end, how was your stay?
Fine, i say.
A strip search
and two bruises on my hands
one for the crook in my elbow
and too late for me, too late
i can do anything at all
and that includes getting out
i've proven it now
i can do anything at all
praisethelordjesus running up and down the halls
a roommate crying over problems
i can fix(it's always easier for someone else)
clothes locked up, luggage in storage
a key for every lock and a lock for every thing
a survey at the end, how was your stay?
Fine, i say.
You're always wary of the places you died
(written December 2, 2006)
You practice caution when entering a situation or place where you once died. Or where you were once happy but the happiness has been replaced.
You walk up the stairs differently, look at the walls like a foreigner.
You stare out of the window at a lake that doesn't change and remember how you changed. You look up at a tree and remember writing about light. You hold a friend while she talks incoherently and bleeds from cuts on her legs and you think about a turkey you both nursed through the night, only to cook it together the next morning.
You lay next to another person and when they put their arms around you like nothing has changed you try to convince youself that nothing has. You try to act like you're okay with being touched when you want them to take it back, to take back time and acts and places and faces.
Or you sit on the couch next to a man you thought you loved and wonder how you ever thought you really knew him. And it makes you wary.
The growing I've done, it has hurt. But I'd rather grow than stand still. I'd rather die a thousand times than be standing in the face of the first big hurt.
Have you ever held a little baby and had everyone in the room think how natural you look with that baby, and know that they're all feeling sorry for you. That they all think that should be your baby. That you should be the one married and pregnant and perfect?
The places you die. They're the places you live the most. And they're shadows of memory. And a hot tear like blood, dripping onto the floor.
The places I've died.
Can you handle this much hurt? Can you deal with this much damage?
Can you hold me without holding all my memories?
Neither can I.
You practice caution when entering a situation or place where you once died. Or where you were once happy but the happiness has been replaced.
You walk up the stairs differently, look at the walls like a foreigner.
You stare out of the window at a lake that doesn't change and remember how you changed. You look up at a tree and remember writing about light. You hold a friend while she talks incoherently and bleeds from cuts on her legs and you think about a turkey you both nursed through the night, only to cook it together the next morning.
You lay next to another person and when they put their arms around you like nothing has changed you try to convince youself that nothing has. You try to act like you're okay with being touched when you want them to take it back, to take back time and acts and places and faces.
Or you sit on the couch next to a man you thought you loved and wonder how you ever thought you really knew him. And it makes you wary.
The growing I've done, it has hurt. But I'd rather grow than stand still. I'd rather die a thousand times than be standing in the face of the first big hurt.
Have you ever held a little baby and had everyone in the room think how natural you look with that baby, and know that they're all feeling sorry for you. That they all think that should be your baby. That you should be the one married and pregnant and perfect?
The places you die. They're the places you live the most. And they're shadows of memory. And a hot tear like blood, dripping onto the floor.
The places I've died.
Can you handle this much hurt? Can you deal with this much damage?
Can you hold me without holding all my memories?
Neither can I.
Gradually, and then Suddenly
(written November 21, 2006)
when people write, do they write for someone? How long is the day in the dark? forever, and a blink of an eye. Shadows and that dry feeling your eyes get when you forget to blink. but then you remember. when i write i write you. and i write me. and i write us. What does cold feel like? like a tight control, holding your hand over a flame. i write my body and it writes me.
I need you to understand. I need you to understand that it isn't about dying, but about living. It's about not being able to live like this. It's about needing to feel a focused, phsyical pain to match the abstract pain inside. Why do you define me in terms of you?
when i write, who do i write for?are you inside me? when i cry, are you the salty taste on my tongue?
Will it ever be enough?
I wrote you a letter that I will not send. But you'll read it anyway because it means something to you. You will read the words of my pen as though they came from your mouth, and the sounds you make will sing. And you will understand.
And you. I talked to you for an hour. Emotional integrity. I value that and will give you nothing less. So do not worry for me. Do not fear. Fear will only bring you down, and I'm down enough for the both of us.
Fear not the living shade in her gradual dance to the grave...
Someday...
Someday will be sudden.
when people write, do they write for someone? How long is the day in the dark? forever, and a blink of an eye. Shadows and that dry feeling your eyes get when you forget to blink. but then you remember. when i write i write you. and i write me. and i write us. What does cold feel like? like a tight control, holding your hand over a flame. i write my body and it writes me.
I need you to understand. I need you to understand that it isn't about dying, but about living. It's about not being able to live like this. It's about needing to feel a focused, phsyical pain to match the abstract pain inside. Why do you define me in terms of you?
when i write, who do i write for?are you inside me? when i cry, are you the salty taste on my tongue?
Will it ever be enough?
I wrote you a letter that I will not send. But you'll read it anyway because it means something to you. You will read the words of my pen as though they came from your mouth, and the sounds you make will sing. And you will understand.
And you. I talked to you for an hour. Emotional integrity. I value that and will give you nothing less. So do not worry for me. Do not fear. Fear will only bring you down, and I'm down enough for the both of us.
Fear not the living shade in her gradual dance to the grave...
Someday...
Someday will be sudden.
Elijah
(written November 13, 2006)
i hold lonely in my heart.
i lie empty and feel absence, looking down from above.
and i hold you in my heart, a treasure chest without a key.
but there's room for more than you and me
room for more than lonely.
i hold a baby boy in my heart.
sometimes he is a little brown boy,
sometimes he is a little carbon copy--
not of me, but of the composite of my family.
i think he is elijah, but i can't be sure.
my empty shell holds all this and more
holds empty meaning
holds lonely in tiny grasping fingers
but i hold other things in my head.
things i can't let go of.
i hold dreams in my head,
and realities.
cold possibility or warm mediocrity?
when i was little i believed i could do anything.
i wanted others to believe it too.
now i sell myself to others so their lives will be better.
and i'm so empty, i'm overflowing with it.
overflowing with the years, with the lonely.
i do what i do because i do it the best
i do what i do because i know not how not to
i am in the pursuit. the chase.
i am the woman in white, i am the woman with the mouth ripe.
are you my angel? are you my stake?
i believe in emptiness now.
i pursue it, and happiness.
happiness. meloncholia. i hold both. i am both.
you should committ. you should own it.
if you don't lay claim to the lonely, it will claim you.
I am in the Chase. Is weakness and metaphor my destruction?
Is that red stain seeping through the floor from me?
Don't tell me yet. I can't bear to see.
I turn. I sleep.
i hold lonely in my heart.
i lie empty and feel absence, looking down from above.
and i hold you in my heart, a treasure chest without a key.
but there's room for more than you and me
room for more than lonely.
i hold a baby boy in my heart.
sometimes he is a little brown boy,
sometimes he is a little carbon copy--
not of me, but of the composite of my family.
i think he is elijah, but i can't be sure.
my empty shell holds all this and more
holds empty meaning
holds lonely in tiny grasping fingers
but i hold other things in my head.
things i can't let go of.
i hold dreams in my head,
and realities.
cold possibility or warm mediocrity?
when i was little i believed i could do anything.
i wanted others to believe it too.
now i sell myself to others so their lives will be better.
and i'm so empty, i'm overflowing with it.
overflowing with the years, with the lonely.
i do what i do because i do it the best
i do what i do because i know not how not to
i am in the pursuit. the chase.
i am the woman in white, i am the woman with the mouth ripe.
are you my angel? are you my stake?
i believe in emptiness now.
i pursue it, and happiness.
happiness. meloncholia. i hold both. i am both.
you should committ. you should own it.
if you don't lay claim to the lonely, it will claim you.
I am in the Chase. Is weakness and metaphor my destruction?
Is that red stain seeping through the floor from me?
Don't tell me yet. I can't bear to see.
I turn. I sleep.
And the truth is a hammer
(written October 27, 2006)
A nailed in coffin with scrawled words on the top, to read with eyes that no longer see. A bendiction for the poor and a colorful coat that doesn't keep you warm but teaches you the value of coldness. Do you ever wake up next to me and wonder how you got there? Or lick your lips and wonder how the taste on them is mine? Salty sweet surrender is a keepsake in my heart and in my lungs. My voice screams and I cannot quiet it with whispers, though i try. I try.The devil's in the details, the god is in the rain. emptiness is nothingness and nothingness is everything and everything is god. i want to be empty. i want to shed this skin and find a new person underneath, one that is empty of god, so that i don't have to feel the pain of nothingness anymore.It is friday. rejoice in the good news of the lord, because the bad will call its time and haunt you til it's bored, hibernating until it rears up again. so rejoice in the days and the hours of contentment. pray for rain.
A nailed in coffin with scrawled words on the top, to read with eyes that no longer see. A bendiction for the poor and a colorful coat that doesn't keep you warm but teaches you the value of coldness. Do you ever wake up next to me and wonder how you got there? Or lick your lips and wonder how the taste on them is mine? Salty sweet surrender is a keepsake in my heart and in my lungs. My voice screams and I cannot quiet it with whispers, though i try. I try.The devil's in the details, the god is in the rain. emptiness is nothingness and nothingness is everything and everything is god. i want to be empty. i want to shed this skin and find a new person underneath, one that is empty of god, so that i don't have to feel the pain of nothingness anymore.It is friday. rejoice in the good news of the lord, because the bad will call its time and haunt you til it's bored, hibernating until it rears up again. so rejoice in the days and the hours of contentment. pray for rain.
Fanfare for the Dead
(written September 15, 2006)
If I am a poet, I am a double-edged sword with no handle and you are at the tip of my blade. If it hurts enough to bleed, then it hurts enough to taunt you with it. A blank eyed stare and a quiet desperation in laughter is more of a sign of Nervous than holding a loaded gun. The road to my house is a quiet desperation. It circles around the round about and spins, urging you to speed up the hill, but if you don't turn the wheel...a fanfare for the dead, if you're lucky. But if in that split second before you hit the pole (cost: $2,500) you start to turn the wheel, you'd hit on the passenger side and probably only damage your car. I try to guess as I pass this pole each day on my way home from work which I would do. Hit or turn the wheel? Let's play a different game. One where you end up brain damaged and talked about in whispers (oops, too late for that one) and remembered as the one who pushed up speed bumps. I think I'm a bit too attached to my brain, even on bad days, to want that. What guarantee does one ever have of death?I have a morbid fascination with death, rather, with my own death. I don't fear it, but it still fascinates me. Perhaps it's better spoke as a fascination with quiet desperation. I've researched ways to die, and tried a few. I've researched ways to live, and tried a few. Still researching I guess. I need the company of sailors, to tell me where they've been. I need a cafe in Praha where the food is mostly American. I need a bridge over a murky river and a clock older than time. I need a ruin of a church and green green grass. I need out.
If I am a poet, I am a double-edged sword with no handle and you are at the tip of my blade. If it hurts enough to bleed, then it hurts enough to taunt you with it. A blank eyed stare and a quiet desperation in laughter is more of a sign of Nervous than holding a loaded gun. The road to my house is a quiet desperation. It circles around the round about and spins, urging you to speed up the hill, but if you don't turn the wheel...a fanfare for the dead, if you're lucky. But if in that split second before you hit the pole (cost: $2,500) you start to turn the wheel, you'd hit on the passenger side and probably only damage your car. I try to guess as I pass this pole each day on my way home from work which I would do. Hit or turn the wheel? Let's play a different game. One where you end up brain damaged and talked about in whispers (oops, too late for that one) and remembered as the one who pushed up speed bumps. I think I'm a bit too attached to my brain, even on bad days, to want that. What guarantee does one ever have of death?I have a morbid fascination with death, rather, with my own death. I don't fear it, but it still fascinates me. Perhaps it's better spoke as a fascination with quiet desperation. I've researched ways to die, and tried a few. I've researched ways to live, and tried a few. Still researching I guess. I need the company of sailors, to tell me where they've been. I need a cafe in Praha where the food is mostly American. I need a bridge over a murky river and a clock older than time. I need a ruin of a church and green green grass. I need out.
The Lonley March On
(written September 11, 2006)
I am more than the composite of everything you will ever know. I am a dead weight of immobile fear lodged in the pit of my belly. I am giving birth to a nameless fear I know all too well. My heart is heavy with the blood sitting silent in depths and pools of anticipation. Will you hear the artificial quality of my voice when I create a truth from my lies? Only for you. I lie so well only for you.
I will sing! I will sing and I will whisper, until only the raw rasp of breath is left in my lungs. You like me to breathe. My head aches with the recriminations of things left unsaid, throbbing with the force of life trying to escape the veins. No escapes. Not this time. No spider web kisses of a former blade lay upon my wrists. I never. I promised, so I never did. But the scars, so soft, so faded, are evidence--beautiful and momentous. Only I can see.
The only death you'll ever imagine will be the one you never see or see too late. Such is the quality of life...
I am more than the composite of everything you will ever know. I am a dead weight of immobile fear lodged in the pit of my belly. I am giving birth to a nameless fear I know all too well. My heart is heavy with the blood sitting silent in depths and pools of anticipation. Will you hear the artificial quality of my voice when I create a truth from my lies? Only for you. I lie so well only for you.
I will sing! I will sing and I will whisper, until only the raw rasp of breath is left in my lungs. You like me to breathe. My head aches with the recriminations of things left unsaid, throbbing with the force of life trying to escape the veins. No escapes. Not this time. No spider web kisses of a former blade lay upon my wrists. I never. I promised, so I never did. But the scars, so soft, so faded, are evidence--beautiful and momentous. Only I can see.
The only death you'll ever imagine will be the one you never see or see too late. Such is the quality of life...
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