Thursday, December 12, 2002

exchanges


I watch you when you're too busy to notice that I am
You make me wait for those moments of focus
And when they come I know your silhouette
and I've never seen my own face in a
picturesque, Victorian sort of way. You have.

You have seen me as I cannot see myself.
I am a cynic, rugged and tactless
I am your bark not your leaf, your leather not cotton
But to you I am soft, a rough milled silk
Only you own the thought of my touch on your skin.

And as for you, and how you smile on my soul,
I want to reinvent poetry for you, and love
And let people see how my mind has changed
How the dreams are now too much for me
So I must share them, and you welcome them.
this exchange being only one of many.





this is why


I knew I loved you when I rolled over in bed last night and felt your glasses nestle into my right shoulder.

You finished the crossword puzzle with me and ate ice cream and listened to my fear and fascination with what is yet to come.

Then I got tired. We both got tired.

And in the holiness of the school night, I walked you to the door with my eyes closed, avoiding any and all light.

And when I rolled over, many hours later, and felt the cool of framed and glass on the warm of my skin, I realized.

You left your sight with me.
You left blind and drove blind and parked blind and slept blind alone.

I love you because your glasses have found a new hom beside my bed, atop my air-conditioner.
And you haven't asked for them back.





a dance


Staring at the clouds
twirling in a windswept sky
I am reminded of
the hairs on your chest

I see them while you lay
on your back and I
propped on one elbow
let my fingers swirl while you smile

And the hairs dance
with each other like the clouds
Like you and I before
we became still; before the bliss
Where we could think of nothing
but our own private waltz





mother


My supposed greatest fear

I am turning into my mother
In no small way

I order sweet tea in restaurants
I call to hear people’s voices
I cried at a Hallmark commercial yesterday

My alleged greatest fear
And it flows like ink through water
Not red, but a light casual blue
Spring skies and worn in jeans





on sunday


I’ve wanted to be the kind of girl
That’s too good to know
What everyone else is so wrapped up in.

You watch your own sitcoms
And hum your own lyrics
So you have no obligations to me
Or their networks or BMG,

But my greasy hair isn’t
Politically motivated
And the super-cool T-shirt;
It isn’t mine, but at least it’s clean.

That’s how to get through a day
Read Cosmo for the sex articles
Sing on your own terms
Smoke your candy cigarettes
Write horrible papers and
Talk them up like some
Shakespearean-metaphorical-pseudo-genius

Because after all, it did take time
To make the first letter of each line
Spell out: I bite my thumb
At this ridiculous pretentious world.






ernest

When I wake up tomorrow I might be a great writer
but chances are my gift of trite phrasing
will still be my best selling point
... editors rarely drool for me
or my religious hangups
or my endings that never quite HIT

But when I wipe the drool off my face
and taste my stale salty breath
I'll remember the dream I had
Went a little something like this

Hemingway was fourteen once
and his mom walked in on him masturbating
I know she did
And the first words out of his mouth
could not pass (to any well-trained eye)
as stark
brilliant
dialogue
So the next time, after I've woken up
that someone comes hurling criticism
I'll look them in the eye
and tell them
that to make the sun rise
you need more than a typewriter
and before you can lay there and die
It's best to get some living in.




work

sylvia plath was in my kitchen yesterday
baking this or that and this and that
while I typed away
frittered and corralled line after line
with the smell of chocolate chips flirting with my nose
I could hear her muttering
not once trying to whipser
about this wrong or that wrong
someone somewhere had done her
but we had both found our havens
mine, with broken sentences and hers
nestled
somewhere near a wooden spoon
and my range
and I’m sure my copy of the bell jar is about somewhere
to tell me that this is a dream
but I know it isn’t
because she never came back to my study
to offer me a treat
she is just that kind of woman.







Swirls


Perfect beautiful
Not yet steamy
Is that what we share?
This thing desperate to be
Labeled as something
We know nothing of


And maybe now we do
Someone handed me the cliffnotes
On my way in
But we won’t be led astray
By other people’s
Highlights and underlines


There are too many things
Words on the tip of my tongue
That aren’t yet written
Into our script in progress
Wouldn’t we be fabulous
On Broadway?


So come to New York with me
Bite my tongue
In the backseat of taxis
Let me buzz you up
To my fifteenth floor apartment
So you can warm my sheets


But, shhh, don’t say that word
Perfect beautiful
Not yet steamy
Passionate creeping
Just lay here and hold me
‘cause the next line’s yours
and that’s not what it says.





Your Cinderella


To think it all started so innocently
I suppose everything of the type does
The phone rang and I let you in and it was as simple as that
Katie thought you were cute. Remember that?
And you sang and won me over and I think
I can’t be sure
But I think I loved you from that night on.

But it wouldn’t stay that simple for long
You had demands and wishes
My work could only fill the most meager of your expectations
And you stayed as if god himself had given you the right to be
there
Balled up in my brain and my heart
Knowing which screws and gears made me cry
And how much
That’s where your love came from.

I didn’t know how much I could give to one person.
That’s what you taught me.
Because surely by now you realize I gave everything I had ever had
I gave my grace and my pride and my vocabulary quiz answers
All for you, whatever you asked, because I was so caught up
And didn’t I ask one day to be
Your Cinderella?
I don’t recall you ever giving an answer.

So where was it that you carried all you took from me?
Is it locked away in a trunk somewhere?
Do you keep it stashed next to your grandfather’s Rose Bowl ring?
Just as I stowed away all our notes, the signs you gave me, none real
That you were real, but you couldn’t be
No one ever taught you how
And I can’t believe how long I went on using that as my excuse.

Maybe it was because he hit you or because he drank too much.
Maybe my mother had conditioned me to look for something, anything to save.
We were both in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And I question what we have to show for it.
I can give good head and can cry without making a sound.
I can still lose sleep for no other reason but the realization
that there are things I can’t ever be.
You hear my name one day on the street
Someone speaking it that you’ve never seen, never heard.
Do you know her, they ask
Yeah, curly hair, kinda plain?

So that’s what you took with you.
That is what you claim to have to show for it.
When your wife asks, you’ll never admit to remembering what those kisses tasted like
And when you see my face on a book jacket
And the words true love cross your mind
You’ll never admit it to anyone
Not even yourself.
Because it was all a game
And the prize was simply to see
Who could hurt the least.
So take that with you. Plant it in your garden.
See if anything grows.





Yes mom


Yes mom, I’ve been sleeping enough
and I’ll have plenty of dirty clothes with me on Friday
Yes mom, I think it’s really over this time
and I wasn’t the one that slammed the door
No mom, it wasn’t my fault this time
and I promise it wasn’t something I said.
No mom, that was really his only reason
guess I just don’t do it for him like he wants it done.
Yes mom, I promise I’m really trying not to cry
and you need not remind me to just let it out.
Yes mom, I will cry with you when I walk through the door
We lost something big this week, we both know that.
And yes mom, I’ll move on and I’ll let you help me.
Know you don’t wanna see your baby girl lose
Four more years.





Nativity


Indian summer
in December
with forsythia forcing out
bursting yellow buds
throwing pollen
into the air
into my nose.
And we sleep
with windows open
promising ourselves the will-power
to not turn on the
air-conditioning.
shoving the down
back into the closet
and recovering
our thin quilts with
grandmother stitching

But sometimes
we still wake up
drenched in sweat
with our hair clinging
to the backs of our necks
and a line of
dampness across
my waist where
your arm
finally came to rest
last night.
and through the
spring morning fog
you notice
we always wake up
before the neighbors
across the street
with dark windows
and faintly gleaming
plastic religion
on the front lawn.

"Look baby. . . "
you begin, knowing
I do well to hear
half your words
in my own
spring morning fog,
but I flicker
my eyelids. movement
like a faint breath
on a candle flame
and you take the cue
to continue.
"Their savior ;
he has dew on
his little molded forehead"
And I mutter
I've always preferred
my salvation
covered in frost





road

sixty miles an hour
reflectors perched atop
concrete barriers
one two three four
i let it go
mind swirl and tumble
sixty miles an hour
seeing pictures
other than the road
hands lips eyes
i could die now
sixty miles an hour
if it weren't for
kisses passions
that still await
sixty miles an hour
no brakes





DRIFT

Drift
from thinking you are a dream
to knowing you could be nothing less
until you show up
at my door
when I didn't expect you there.






When You Know

Slow, creeping pain
won't admit it to yourself, though.
You give it all the poetic imagery it deserves.
Dark gathering clouds
Unmailed letters
apologize
beg
Candles lit in attic windows at midnight

And you can't sleep, not ever
Because that part of you,
that revealed everything in the first place
is an insomniac
and has pitched a tent
with poles beneath your eyelids.






ICE


We should stop this here
Let the water drip from both our fingers
And forget it ever happenned

I should find my bra
Lost somewhere under your roommate's sheets
And stop letting you touch me.

You should know better.
Leading on a hungry girl with those eyes, hands
And admitting to your soul you enjoy it

God should change the things
Leave behind the laws of Chemistry for us
And remove the "drip, drip" from our pleasures

or maybe we could just let it m-e-l-t






Unwritten Yesterday

I realize I don't know how to make decisions
follow anything through to its conclusion
set up a dream, an original thought
and leave it long enough to become
part of me

So when I saw two guys, digging in the dumpster
I couldn't help but wonder why
I never take the time to go through other people's trash
and find something to bring home
put on the mantle

And when the boy stopped me for my concert t-shirt
asked me if I liked the show, I'm left,
to wonder why I didn't buy more CDs
I should have known more lyrics
sang louder

Sit down with some homework. Nothing in particular
Flip pages and read every other word
because I'm too busy thinking of a way
to establish myself as the "one and only"
damn it, paper cut

Eat dinner with the one person who knows me
Sees me as the torch and not just as
one finger of the flame. We talk
with food in our mouths and settle
into ourselves






This is going to be the home of my new poetry website. I'm transfering all of my old poetry into the site, so what shows up with today's date will range in age from four years old to a year old. None of it is the least bit new, but it needed a new home. And now that I have a poetry page, hopefully I'll feel that little poetic tug a bit more often.