Old movies used to tell me that childhood for a girl was trying on your mother’s make-up, sitting next to her at a vanity while she reached for tubes and bottles and unfolded their secrets on your little face. With long, slender arms she would sling ropes of pearls around your neck and hold your hand, leading you forward, forward, until you grew into the clunking pair of heels you loved to steal from her overflowing closet.

I had nothing to steal, though, but an obligatory jade bracelet from Grandmother rattling on your thin arm. I could have stolen the ring from your finger, your fingers that could make a piano sing and made your daughter cry when she missed a note, but the diamond would have turned to a pocket full of stones weighing down my young fantasies of a husband until they drowned in the reality of the broken marriage I watched each day. My feet slid helplessly in oversized shoes you bought because they were on sale but you never helped me grow into anything but a fear of my femininity. When I sat next to you at your desk, I was asking, pleading, but you unfolded pages of math problems instead and taught me I should never let my face subtract from my brain in case I added up to something a boy would want. The birthday gifts from friends of glittery make-up and nail polish went into storage until you could give them to my girl cousins for their birthday presents. Silly, girly distractions for silly girls—not for smart ones like me, who should be as much like a man as she can if she wants to be taken seriously.

You made me rewrap the very things I wanted to tear open and decipher. You made me bind them tight in ribbon, like the hint of breasts that I bound in Scotch tape to hide how much I could never be your prodigal son. I only wanted to hold your hand and have you lead me forward, forward, towards anything. And you slung a rope without any pearls around the neck of all my questions and locked up the secrets of womanhood in an empty armoire.

It starts with a spark

From the heart

To the head

Departs

And it spreads

To pen

To paper

And then

It stays there

Offends

It’s maker

It’s wrong

Once more

He hunts for

The feeling

The fable

The feeling’s

Unstable

Notes scattered

Across the table

It’s wrong

Begins and ends

And starts again

He grins, his pen

Is far from him

Amused

A muse

Makes amends

He finds his pen

It’s perfect

Write

Write your love

And write your fear

And write it all out crystal clear

So you can then reread your verse

Traverse a written universe

Enshrined inside your poignant words

It matters not how long or terse

Your pensive prose will one day birth

Progeny of love and fear

Depicted candid and sincere

Thus you may know what’s in your soul

Know it all and know it whole

So all that peer upon your prose

And stop to probe what you compose

And forgo all they know

Can freely read beyond the ink

And comprehend what poets think

And thus they may then understand

The feelings of an unknown man

And learn to love all unknown men

Regardless of their speech or skin

And begin to mend the world again

To quell the swells of spite and sin

And defend against spells of despair

Resolving resentment here and there

Resolved because you dared to bare

Your soul which through your prose was shared

And swear to make the world aware

Of how to love and how to care

And ensure that none become ensnared

In all the hate we must beware

Through motley words and rhymes declared

In pedantic prose you’ve pruned and pared

With all your will withheld within

Conveyed through heart and mind and pen

This poem and more are available in my poetry collection which is currently free on Amazon at the following link:

https://www.amazon.com/This-Death-Love-Travis-Liebert-ebook/dp/B079WN6GPK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519240172&sr=8-1&keywords=travis+liebert

The Madness

I have a confession

I have an obsession

A mad obsession with words

I have an obsession

I have a confession

That many will find quite absurd

I confess I am obsessed with this mess

But I’m blessed

This madness is spurred by mad words

Confession time. You know what I hate with a burning passion? Social media.

You know what I use on a daily (hourly) basis? Social media. Excuse me while I attach a “I AM A HYPOCRITE” sticker to my laptop. Or, maybe I’ll post the message to my Snapchat story.

Social media is a drug. I click on the Instagram app on my phone before I realize what I’ve done; I close the app but instead of putting down my cellular device because truly I have no further need for it at the present time, my finger habitually taps on the Snapchat icon.

Social media has no real use in my life, but I use it anyway, and for what use, I have no idea. If that sounds like a contradiction, it’s only the beginning. My life is a compilation of contradictions. I’m confident and insecure, laughing and depressed, jumping up and down with excitement and exhausted to the point of collapse (perhaps the jumping is at least partially responsible). I’m driving down a highway, speeding way over the speed limit and totally lost. The street signs are posts on social media; I see them, I read them, and sometimes I remember them, but I pass them without slowing down. They aren’t even useful for navigational purposes because I’m using Apple Maps. The signs watch me and I watch them. I keep driving.