8/10/12

Are we simply treading water? Or would our love, as oxygen to me, rush to meet the surface of this stagnancy like a spinning orb of air from the deepest parts of us? Would it be our embolism? Would you punish my vanity and self-righteous heart that pulled me from you with clenched eyelids, my teeth as bits of gravel? Are we holding our breath, rubbing tongue to palette, to to savor a new beginning? Or are we mute, our lungs deflated from heaving our separate cries to the nature of young love? We never chase what is impassable. We never reach to touch the haloed edge of orange clouds. We kiss the soft skin before us and turn down our eyes in doubt. Would we look up and smile?

7/ 14/12

I cried the day I murdered you.
Like a broken bird I spread my arms wide to embrace the free air
and tried to endure the pain of flying.
I cried the month I murdered you.
Like a diamond whore I wore my shining smiles to greet each eager customer
but dropped them clattering like chains as I stole up the stairs to my bedroom.
I cried the year I murdered you.
Like a salted wound, my sluggish heart ticks aching with the loss of you.

When I saw your ghost on a sunny Friday at noon, it was as if you'd resurrected me along with you. Since the moment my eyes left yours, the thought of you has been my flight, my smile, the strong beat of my heart, and my own suicide all at once. We float together as ghosts in our secret world.

6/30/12

Her body shifts gracelessly in its soft lining of bulging, pale skin as she takes off her dress. She plucks bobby pins from her tangled hair and wrenches it from its black elastic band. She plops down at the edge of her bed like a drooping eyelid. She misses so much and fears so much more that her tired mind becomes the knotted gray metal of the shiny necklace he gave her for Christmas. Her heart becomes a time capsule of letters and snapshots and funny little phrases with a belly laugh in a second floor apartment. She shifts the focus of her autumn eyes from this to that, and finds that everything reminds her of him. Like the color green or kindness, a chalk-drawn menu, a red bra, addiction, a shameful cigarette, the Intro to an album or Lou Reed, Coma White or Chinese food, or anything that has to do with meth, or Pennsylvania. She sighs and looks at her hand as it reaches claw-like to clutch a blue permanent marker. She writes herself to him as if he lives inside of her journal, and blots her sorry state to the white door that he'll never answer. She closes his pages, closes her eyes, lays back on her empty mattress and moves her left leg in little circles like she's riding half of a bike.

Student Body

She sits between her sentences with troubled eyes and an ache between her elbows. She breathes in deep. Her ribs crack in three places. She places her hands on the folds of her face and whispers to her palms that she's sorry for everything. I sit in her head with a pen and paper and scribble down notes like she's giving lecture about how to behave improperly with a broken heart.

Wasted

I made a cloth doll from my favorite shirt. I wanted it to be soft and beautiful. I stuffed it with the fluffy organs of my favorite pillow. I wanted to know its heart. I sewed my favorite buttons to its face so its eyes would be happy and familiar. I unraveled an old friendship bracelet to lace its body together. I put the doll in a box and can't bear the sight of it.

Five Lines (Untitled)

She laughs like a secret that nobody knows.
I give her money and she spends it on me.
She lies often and gladly and without hesitation.
Her eight-limbed bed creaks with animal music.
She cries like a secret that everyone knows.

Hot

His eyes make me think of pornography. His mouth makes me think of his tongue. His arms make me think of stained wood, and the tight tension of his muscles, creaking and shivering as he holds his weight above my skin. His voice makes me think of admissions, confessions whispered in a deep and rattling bass in my ear wet with his kiss. His hands make me think of my breasts. His neck makes me think of the taste of his sweat like honeyed salt on my curling tongue in the dark room that we will never share. I hate pornography.

Cruelty

I can't write about you. I can only think of you with my lip in my teeth and stare wide-eyed at the world with the terrified awe of an old woman with too many cats who lost all of her cats. I would have kept you with me always. Setting out dry food and water. Holding you close to my chest and telling you my heart like no one could hear me. But as much as I needed you, and your comfort, and your love, you would have ended up getting sick and hiding under the porch to die.

Reason

You said you don't believe in souls, and when my deafened ears heard these words I realized how different people can be. I've seen souls. I've kissed them and cooked with them, rested my head on the heart of a soul. I have loved a soul. When the timber of that soul's voice told me the blindness of your eyes, I knew you couldn't see the heart of me.

Unrelated

She can't relate to other people. Slouching in a creaking rocking chair at the top of a plastic slide. Balancing little copper pots of boiling water on her collarbones. Sewing flannel patches into sweaters without holes. Pulling close the dirty clothes from yesterday that smell like sweat and smoke. The secret things she leaves on her bureau aren't secret at all. The memory she clutches is a fleeting moment when setting sunlight filters through a green iris. She can't sleep without the blinds open. She can't relate to other people.

Simple Rhyming

I pluck the berry from the vine
and rinse my heart in turpentine.
I twist my neck to hear it crack
and shake a shiver down my back.

No word could comfort or console
the gray I daily swallow whole,
as from inside, it swallows me
and every color I should see.

Stinging Sand

My hands are sticky, sliding in sweat over the faux leather steering wheel in the stale, burnt air of my car on the highway. I turn the radio off as I pass Akron because the radio show host has a shrill and cheesy voice and too many opinions. The rattling metal cage accelerates and I press the rough pad of my foot harder into my sole, watching the dials before me spin with the self-indulgent smile of the destructive. I relish the sound of my poor little car straining under my control and the irritated faces of passengers passed. When I get to 95 I release the little foot-press and let the car rest as it slows.

            I want to stay angry. I want to curse love and God; curse life most of all. I want to hate the choices that I never thought I would have to make. I want to hate the person that I never meant to be. I want to hate the enlarged and hollow heart within that let my goodness and love leak out from its thick walls like an oil spill to poison me. Yet I can’t hate the soft flesh of my sadness. I can’t hate the truth and beauty of my broken heart, flagging like the lost, shrinking, purple balloon caught in a maple’s unfeeling arms. Like its ribbon-string I let him go.

            Thinking of him is like remembering the day that my baby bunny was eaten by an orange tabby. I was seven. 

            The little broken bones lying bloody and still were reflected in a full length mirror. Every step closer dropped another heavy rock in my belly, and as the warm fur of the cat pressed into my leg with affection, the hot ropes inside me wrote the rabbit’s name in a cramping cursive. I cried for hours, but my tear-stained face smiled wide and sang with a dimpled falseness onstage that night. I cried again at curtain.

            I carry on driving through the thick traffic and wonder why there are so many people in the world and why everyone seems so weary but never wants to talk about it. When I talked to him about my weariness his gentle green eyes were crystal serving bowls of flooded peas. The ocean flowed from us in a car hot like this, on a day like this; in the same year, same month, same breath as I take now. The salt blended on our faces as I let him kiss me one last time.

I run my fingers over my paper chapped lips as I grip the steering wheel tighter and blink my swelling eyes. I light a cigarette and pull the explosive poison in waves that fill me with the blackness that I want so badly to become, as if hate would cover my sadness or bend my guilt. I think of him. I think of the bunny. I think of the play and the false ease of being someone else for a while, before warm lights and darkened faces and realize that I’ve grown. I sigh, sliding my sweaty fingers through my greasy hair and refocus on the road and the rocks clicking in my belly. I am sad. I am angry. I am honest.

Dinner with Mother

This morning she cried. Now she sits calmly, staring over our endless tabletop. The clear pastel of her eye carries continents, oceans, eternities. Their blue hides a vast and lonely space, punctuated by the light of old thoughts; turning. Her lace sleeve graces the dirty green tile as she stirs her cup of ocean. Brushes the feathered freckles from her cheek with her eastern hand. Plucks the heads from broccoli and drops them on the floor. She sighs like an apology and runs her cool hand against my face. I wonder why she wants to paint the walls white again. Why she shivers when she’s angry. How on earth she breathes so deeply. Yesterday at breakfast, I asked her. She smiled warm and wide with yellow teeth and said nothing.

Flush

Like a feral cat in the sticky heat

I stalk the gritty pavement.

My bare toes, as Maraschinos,

paint their sweet cherries to its rough face,

gushing and red.

Like the pounding beat from the flesh-filled bar,

I’m distorted in the humid haze.

Its skin tastes like the dripping sweat

of the Mayan chocolate melting in my pocket,

peppery and rich.

Like the bruises bared on my tender wrists,

The blue night encircles and pulls me.

Its wet mouth spits blood to my cheeks

in the air like syrupy medicine,

intoxicating and strong.

Like an arching spine on a basement bed,

my parting lips curl slowly

to kiss the shoulder of my cigarette’s slender arm,

drawing in the glowing combustion he clutches,

fiery and quick.

Exchange

O p  e    n

ing the entry,

 I pass over its margin.

The door leans close to observe its wooden frame.

The flat, stained tree swells beyond its binding root;

it barely fits. The lock

sets in its tarnished hinge,

closing me in with my own. Art-

ful hands glance the doorknob,

Brassy and Loud. My paintings glower

down with hot resentment formed like a string of volcanic islands or

children of neglect. Full mother

To each I lay        dormant        in my

fresh

crumpled sheets. Loose paper

winks at me with the wrinkled face of the old man

who orders a large coffee with extra coffee

and tells me my dimples make me look

like Shirley. My temple dances

with the soft

beating

      dying,

old

rhythm

of my youthful offer-

rings. Around the roses,

dried and tied with a worn shoelace, gather

dusty memories of their bloom and the young, painted hands

who tied them to their beds. Of wilted petals

my room is shaped. Like the forgotten

sculpture set to dry atop my lonely

piano, quiet

and cracking, my fingers

arekissed

with ink. Bleeding colored phrases

to this fresher canvas,

my pen draws

C   l  o se.

Opening

I am saving frilly words for future posts. This blog will be the outlet for my creative writing. I will first post my latest and favorite work, which may consume an overwhelming number of posts in a short period of time, but first things must always go first. I have always loved to write, and I dearly hope that you will love to read.

Merry