Autobiography

Life is a harried confession
Told to no one and everyone
So how does our own narrative get away from us?

Tell me, are we not responsible because we looked up
Before we ever thought to look down?

When we fell, and we did,
Were the sounds we made a quiet anguish
Or did we rejoice that we no longer had to talk so loud?

I think life is a story,
Lies we believe to be truth
Truth we take for lies

And that is how we lose our own narration--
When we open our mouths to share it

Dreamsong

I'm afraid to dream
Because dreams have a way of disappearing round here
I'm afraid to try too hard because trying leads to disappointment
When all I wanted was a lucky break

I can't push past my limitations when it's comfortable here

Yet comfortable is scary when your future
Relies on new frontiers

So I try a little harder
Until the blood drains to my fingertips and into the pen
Where I write my words in the only red ink God ever made

Hoping poetry can prove that there's life to be had
Beyond the one I've disappeared into

Sometimes I think I write when I dream

So I write a little more, dream a little dream.
It's practice for the real thing.

The Places You Died Are the Places You Lived the Most

**This poem is a composite of some 2006 rant-writings, so if it sounds familiar that's why**

I am more than the composite of everything you know.
I am a dead weight of immobile fear lodged in my belly.
I am giving birth to a nameless fear I know all to well.

My heart is heavy.

Will you hear the artificial
In 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)

Salty sweet surrender is a keepsake
In my heart and in my lungs.
My voice screams but I cannot
Quiet it with whispers, though I try.
I try.

My head aches with words unsaid,
With life trying to escape the veins.

No escapes, not this time.
No spiderweb kisses of a former blade.
But the scars, so soft, are evidence
Only I can see.

The devil's in the details,
The god is in the rain.

Emptiness is nothingness
Nothingness is everything
And everything is god.

I want to shed this skin
Find a new person underneath, one 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
So rejoice in the days, the hours of contentment.
Pray for rain.

Pray for that slow liquid pull to the ground
Pray for a day in the dark,
For forever and the blink of an eye.

I need you to understand
It isn't about dying, but about living.

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.

Can you handle this much hurt?
Can you deal with this much damage?

If I am a poet,
I'm a double-edged sword
And you are at the tip of my blade

If it hurts enough to bleed
It hurts enough to taunt you with it

Because the places you die,
They're the places you live the most.

Weekend Pursuits

Silky Sweet Abandon
Lying in bed again
The Great Nothing
Sharing my sheets

And how wonderful it feels
To indulge in Nothingness
The Weekend game--
My favorite pursuit

A Writer's Fate

I write in golden dreams
And teardrop reams
Of failures big and small

I meditate on spoken word
Translating it to the page
In fits and starts

Nearing the age of no return
I sit, expanding, decompressing
Until tears well in my eyes

And there is no room to turn
Once I've gone forward
No way to go back

The future is scary
One fat teardrop after another
And the world gives no slack

The New Year

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.

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.