Sunday, December 20, 2015

Disease

I look for you among the willows
Hunt you on the breeze
Hold your hand tightly
Plant on your lips disease
I'll capture you every moment
Leave you on your knees
The hounds are there watching silently
As the withering completes
Listen for me as a siren
Catch your breath as I pass by
Hold in your scream
Honey I'll show you the best way to die
Confuse you with paradise.

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Mortem Aestas



His hand wraps round her neck like a sultry, sharpened drape
Lycan fingers clasping and counting
Each delicate vertebrae
 Gently stroking the exposed ivory 
Lips close
Teasing
With breath frost aquamarine 
He has her little humming bird heart
On harlot knees
Emerald pines bare witness silently
To summer's setting in her opaline eyes
Ask for mercy
Pray
Diminishing shrouds of vibrant pride 
A darkening rush
Of snow flaked breeze 
And suddenly find
The forest lonely. 

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Still Here

Hey guys, I wanted to make sure everyone knew that I hadn't dropped of the face of the earth. Grad school and my work schedule have made it really challenging to write but I've been working on a creative piece, so if anyone is left, I'll soon have something for reading and feedback.

<3

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Peace and Other Things

"You'd think with as many as I already have that I wouldn't be nervous!"
"Hey, that's okay. I get nervous too."
My hands are clasping and unclasping on my chest, forced breathing in and out calmly.
"I'm just going to use the q-tips to feel around and then I'm going to mark it."
"Okay, is it going to hurt a lot?"
"Um, some people say it's the same as a nostril piercing."
Cringe.
"That one hurt, except my second one. I was drunk in Greece when I got it."
He chuckles and makes a mark on either side of my nose.
"Alright? Are you ready?"
Breathe out.
"Yes."
"Breathe innnnn, now out."
On the breath out I feel it go through the center of my nose so accutely, involuntary tears running down my cheeks.
The metal slipping through in place of the needle.
"Wow. I'm really happy with that." he says, smiling wide.
"You look like your'e trying to be like every other girl." he texted me.
I don't think so.
Because I'm smiling too, and it's been a while since I've done what I wanted without inhibition.

He is lying next to me, quietly now, leaving me to the gentle epiphanies of the night.
"I'll only be gone for the year. I'm serious about you. Where you go, I want to go."
The coquettish smile is what I know how to do best,
But in the night, when he is fast asleep, I push his arms and legs from their smothering embrace.
Cringe at the soft kisses on my hair and shoulders.
I was cautious, dragging my heels and promising I could only look out for myself right now.
Couldn't be in another relationship.
Then we were a rush of skin.
Loneliness dressed up as self-empowerment seeking refuge under the awning of my friend.
In the morning I look at him as I get up for work and turn away.
The warm feelings of watching his smile as the dog runs around the park abruptly fading.

I almost said your name in place of his.
Biting back the bitter poison before it left my lips.
Still etched on my heart.
They say you shouldn't carve your name into trees because it scars them.
But they say a lot of things
And the scar is still there, throbbing.
Somehow my thoughts always turn to you...

It was a double date with a coworker that she set up and ended with
His lips on mine,
breath infused with beer and courage.
Hands in my hair.
"I have to ask, what are you looking for?"
There it is.
Heaving the eternal internal sigh.
"I don't know, to be honest. I recently got out of a relationship so I'm not really looking for anything right now. What are you looking for?"
"A relationship. It's been about a year and a half since I've been in one."
I didn't text him back the next day.

"Sunshine. blue skies, please go away.
My girl has found another and gone away.
I know to you it might sound strange
But I wish it would rain."
I didn't cry when you said it was over, not much.
My arm hung lazily from the open car window,
Frankie Valli telling me that big girls don't cry
And the Temptations singing about their girl
All of us wishing it would rain.
To wash away those things that you say...
"I think she's the one."
"I still love you and you're both amazing women."
"I can't be in a monogamous relationship. It makes me lie and that's not who I am."
"I miss you."
"Love you hun."

You are the winter.
You are the fall.
The sunny days when the trees bend and sway,
Light reflecting a million beams and the clear blue sky a translucent array of veins.
The hope and promise of warmth and serenity only to feel the scathing death of cold.
Beautiful, misleading, lost.
I wouldn't call you a storm.
Those are majestic.
Honest.
They only promise the driving rains and rolling thunder.
All those pass through the destruction stripped and cleansed.
You are the season of death.
Conspiring.
You are death and I wither under your gaze.

Thunk and clink go the weights on the Olympic platform.
Rhythmic vibrations
Taught muscles strain at their sinews.
Break me.
Make me anew.
I haven't passed through the fire.
Yet yielded ice.
A gentle glow melting from the inside.
Not yet.
Don't thaw yet.
Don't come back yet.
"I wish I had never met you."
"You don't really mean that, but if you do, that really hurts."
But I think,
I think I really do.

Or do I?

What would you say if I told you I was no different than anyone else?
I rip my stitches out early too,I
Feel the pulsating of my beating heart and the words uttered in haste.
The ones we should keep to ourselves
Drunk on sunshine and pain
And indifference.
"Just because he had to come back for school it doesn't minimize the summer or change what's happened. It's not like that. I don't think I have to tell you that, but it's important that I did."
I guess we are the insane as we ignore the mirror's truth
In Flames on the Itunes que and the sidewalk scorching my bare skin.
How long can you stand the flame and not be made ash?
Find the exit sign and disappear.
It doesn't take long, in case you were wondering.

I'm guarded and therefore I can endure
A little bit more 
Just a little bit more

Sinner or saint?
Does it really matter in the end?
How we all choose to live our lives,
Does it really matter?
This summer I learned that maybe it doesn't.
I think in the end it's only if we are happy and don't needlessly hurt
Or allow ourselves to stay caught in someone else's crossfires.
I smile for those that are in love
Genuinely mean the congratulations of good news for others.
No matter what, it always comes around.
Something like the ebb and flow of the tide
And other over used metaphors.
Know thyself
Wishing on the heads up penny I found.
Get up and try another day.
It's all going to be okay.
And that
That brings me peace.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Empty

There is a certain feeling that nestles down in your heart when you enter an abandoned house.
An unnatural emptiness that seeps through your scuffed twelve-year-old sneakers, 
Causing you to pull your jacket closer. 
Carefully touching the deep brown varnished hand rail. 
Wincing at the creek of old protesting stairs,  looking around to see if anyone heard. 
They hadn't. 
Touching the bubbled white with tiny pink flowered wallpaper at the door jam. 
The gravitation to the lit,  empty room is necessary, 
But the clouds are black and the trees bend and sway in the wind. 
The kind of wind that it takes only a glance from curious eyes out a window to chill. 
This time I pull both jacket sides close. 
Cornfield a dull tan with the poor shaving of the combine razor leaving scraggled roots of stalks. 
And the old tractor trying to quietly sleep under the protesting trees.
Its so still. 
So still compared to the picture displayed by the window that I must go to the next room, feeling dread prompted by the dark space to the left where you enter the attic. 
I can't pull my jacket any tighter around me. 

We had gone to my grandfather's house for Thanksgiving,
Now filled with us and my new grandma's married in family. 
It was so difficult to remember this additional cousin's name. 
Landon.
But everyone giggled as I loudly whispered,  "What's lingerie boy's name?" to my aunt. 
Not that I knew what that meant, 
Not that anyone knew how I had concluded the two sounded close. 
Kids sticking olives on their fingers and sucking  them off, all laughing. 
My new older cousin Cassie had said "shit" outside. 
And my mom looked tired. 
Then one day she couldn't take it, the meanness that didn't take leave when the alcoholism did. 
Grandma, now not my grandma,  promising to call. 
She didn't. 
And there I was, visiting the empty home. 
Except, it wasn't empty, just my grandfather downstairs. 

There are some cacophonous stirrings so loud that the heart screams until the prefrontal cortex vibrates with every beat.
It's there, subtle
Screaming
So loudly that my neck and shoulders hitch up into the base of my spinal column
Until I crumple into sleep.
"I have feelings for her. I'm breaking it off."
The phone is cradled in my hand, illuminated from being pulled away.
The ceiling is that damn popcorn texture.
"Are you there?"
Clearing my throat, "Yes."
"You abandoned me."
"I thought it was best to stay here for the summer and work on myself."
"Why couldn't you have done this last summer?"
"I did what I felt was right. What I thought would make me a better person and better girlfriend."
"You abandoned me. I gave you my whole heart for two years. She wants to be as committed as I do."
My head rolls to the side, I need to take the damn dishes to the sink.
A tear rolls onto my pillow.
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah, me too."

What made his house feel that way? I often pondered.
Absence of soul or self or love?
Order.
Chaos.
Rinse and repeat.
The choices of upheaval and bonding that turn endlessly.
Key turning in the lock,
A dog wagging himself side to side in greeting.
Darkened familiar doorways and a screech of sliding windows.
Summer air.
Rough concrete underneath and smoke curling to the sky.
"This place is kind of depressing, no offense."
I nod.
It is.
And I wonder, is this what empty feels like, from the other side?

It  was finally the day. 
The day that I hung my head and arm out the car window,
Dissolving into air, beauty, and infinity.
It was hour three of the trip,
The mushrooms leaving my neurons awake and a light of dry,  crackling existentialism.
"Can you see it? The worst is over."
We had driven to the ends of the city and back with a soft glowing cigarette between our fingers.
Music pumping and throbbing through blasted speakers.
"The monsters in my head are scared of love."
I'm so happy...
"Fallen people listen up! It's never too late to change our luck."
My friend grabbed my hand and squeezed and smiled at the power lines wizzing by.
My other hand softly moving my bangs from my face, also smiling softly.
I could see myself in my apartment, sad and chained to the expectations of someone that didn't love me.
Then casually closing turning a page with the scene displayed until I could no longer envision it.
No more use for it.
"So don't let them steal you light."
"Don't let them break your stride."
I pitied him then, for the cruel things he said, for the things he needed to do because he hurt inside and so hurt others.
"There's a light on the other side, raindrops falling behind."
Lighting another cigarette I sunk lower in the passenger seat, alive with the knowledge that I loved and was loved
Even if some of the other things hurt with a dull, invasive ache,
This was the most beautiful moment.
"It's a revolution."

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

...

It was a little brick building
With an overhanging tree that never had any leaves in my recollections.
Clouds overcast, windows projecting vacancy
By the stained glass fogginess.
I don't remember the evening they did an exorcism,
But I see myself in my dress and frilly white socks, coloring on the floor,
Sheltered between two pews.
"Mommy, why does Delores want to kill everybody?" I asked her.
I can see the spine  shivers she gets when I ask her about that story,
The otherworldly voice
And the six men it took to hold her down.

... 

My name in green marker,
The outside edges bleeding slightly,
Like the soft, fuzzing memories of childhood
My stretched hide tambourine clutched by tiny hands.
Tiny eyes looking up at the dim ceiling of the Sunday school room.
"The cabinets are so high." 
I thought as he asked me to do something my tiny understanding could not comprehend.
"No. "
This is wrong. 
I have to get away. 
"Where is mommy?"
Some memories are not that fuzzy
And the bathroom door hung open,
Pale window beckoning.
But it was so dark...

.......... 

"Sometimes I feel crazy."
"You keep saying that so I want you to write down what crazy means to you."
Her leg causually crossed under a tie dye skirt.
Mine hanging over the couch side.
Her office was softly lit, inviting
With stones you find at hippie stores
And lots of plants.
I felt like I was wasting  her time.

... 

"You haven't changed. It's been two years and you're not any more confident than you were when I met you."
"Yes I am! You just can't see it because my thinking is different! I don't worry about things as much as I used to."
"Are you still jealous?"
"Everyone gets jealous about things."
"You're deflecting. And you haven't changed."

.......... 

"Good morning! How are you three today?"
Looking up between them to see quickly pasted smiles on rigid frames.
"Fine! How are you?"
Handshakes and hugs.
"Mom and dad fought the whole way here."
I volunteered.
Looking away from laser glares.
Amused laughter following us as we walked back to the children's Sunday school room

The jello was a beautiful turquoise with gummy fish suspended in a Noah reenactment.
Mom bent over each of us to add the whip cream.
Sea foam,
Or something.
Mostly I think she knew what we liked.
"Do you have to be perfect for God to love you?" she questioned our little class.
"No!" we all shouted in unison,  giggling and diving into the tumultuous sea.
I think I turned to see her eyes brimming with tears,
But memories are fuzzy.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Dandelions


When you're a kid 
And the spring sun lays its gentle rays 
On your tensile strands
They always tell you to make a wish.
On stars
On a time
And dandelions.

I grabbed a whole handful tonight
Blowing hard
Anguish constricting my heart
Wishing desperately 
That you were mine again.


Friday, January 30, 2015

Turmoil



“I want to talk to you! I’m sorry I interrupted!”
Hand to the doorknob and twist without a budge.
Sigh and look at the soft light of the street lamps peer through the gaps in the living room blinds.
The knob twists under my fingers and the door opens suddenly, his figure emerging in a rush, arm sliding easily around my neck
Pushing me into the room, turn, let me down, then abruptly rough drop to the floor
Arms pushed above my head
His face is so close that I can see his facial hair, up to the glowing white skin, to his dark brows and brown hair falling over his eyes
“You stupid fucker!”
“Don’t call me names!” I try to firm my resolve, left leg shaking.
“Shut up you stupid fucking cunt!”
It was hard to hear what he said then because I was oddly aware of the way the carpet felt rough on my lower back where my shirt was pushed up
And the mist of saliva as more words ripped out.
My lips and eyes scrunched up as two fat tears ran down the sides of my face and I began to cry.
“Why are you crying!? Are you hurt? Did I hurt you?”
“No…It hurt my neck a little bit…I was just scared…”
More tears.
“You are so mentally weak!”
Continues on saying something that I vaguely know hurts.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks again.
His breath is warm; I don’t know why this surprises me.
Stern features looking down at my tear stained ones demand a technical answer.
Quiet inhale, face turning to stone.
“No.”
“What?”
“No. I’m not hurt.”
The hot sticky feeling and the throbbing in my nose makes me think that somewhere in all this my nose ring bumped into the bottom of my nose.

There was a end to the argument, which was forgotten the next day. 
Fingers that kept smudging black mascara tears as I recalled the things he said, that I hovered and was a burden, making him miserable, a coward, that I tried to change him and thought I was better than I was...
"Something wrong?" he asks when I get home.
Quick smile, "No, I'm just tired. Long day of school." 
Things smooth again, 
Thoughts bouncing in my head, "I'm so ashamed of how I've behaved..."
"I shouldn't have been such a child..."
"He gets it more than I do..."

I'm not hurt, but it still makes me alternate between tears and chastising myself.
Self-doubt.
Questions.
But I love him...
How?
Shame.

And then

I can't believe this happened to me....