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Summer
Summer is warm days and nights
Sun beating down
Making cicadas buzz
And your soda sweat
Summer is good food
Barbecue smoke and checkered picnic blankets
Ice cream dripping stickiness down your chin
And lemonade pitchers with clicking ice
Summer is different places
Road trips down highways that go on forever
Burn-your-feet sand on beaches
And tents in the green woods
Summer is being with family
In the back yard playing ball
Marco-Polo in the ice cold pool
And taking a long hike with the dog
Summer is making memories
Tanning brown by the water
Gooey s'mores by the fire pit
And sweating buckets as soon as you step outside.
The result of that crisis I had three months ago
Go where you wanna go
And do what you wanna do.
It's not about them, no it's not about them
But you, about you, about you
Don't let others keep hold of your life
Take back the reigns because they have their own.
Those who lead their lives, as history's shown,
Those are the game-changers, ground-shakers, dream-makers.
Words of others aren't poison in your veins-
The antidote's your spirit; the vaccine is your brain.
Societal lies will leave you to die-
Let your conscience speak up; let the real truth guide,
Because you are not words and you are not stats
Like skin is not clear and stomachs aren't flat,
So if you dare believe that you are less than enough,
I will shout reality; reality is tough.
You are watched by God and you are made from stars,
The universe is here for you; the sky holds no bars,
Do not stop breathing and beating and beating,
For you seas are churning!
For you worlds are turning!
So don't waste your monumental soul when it's yearning
To fight for its right to walk in the light!
For clouds are not there for you to sit in and stare,
But for you to wake out of, break out of, take out of
Every hardship a new kind of truth,
For this is the point of, the point of your youth!
Not the point of your youth but the point of your life:
To make every day better than the one dead at night.
When you're in the ground with a headstone above,
Your birthdate and deathdate will not bear your love.
The dash in between is what matters alone,
With sights you admired and kindnesses shown.
So what will it be? Will you waste your days?
By then you'll be free from the cultural gaze.
You can die with the tide or find freedom to ride
And find favor in the future of history's eyes.
Or at the very least, you'll enjoy that dash,
And hear every second of life's clamorous clash.
Closing the Distance
I am distracted, sitting in the library,
by the smell of a girl
on my fingers. If I went to the bathroom
and opened my pants I would
smell her there as well.
We will never see each other again,
we never even exchanged numbers,
but I cannot do anything
in that moment but smell her on
me and remember the way our
bodies collided, our hips cracked,
our parched mouths met, our sweat
mingled on a mattress on the floor
in the sunlight, our hairs matted.
She is not the girl I will wake up
beside for years, that I will
race across town in the dead of night
in the rain to find an 24-hour
pharmacy for because she got
food poisoning at her cousin's
wedding and spent hours throwing up,
that I will end up sewing with needle
and thread the gash in her knee from
when she tripped running up the stairs
to tell me she had been transferred
to Portland, that I moved to Portland
with because the idea of not being
in the same bed, in the same shower,
eating off the same dishes, our dirty
laundry not swirling around like
cotton candy was a thought akin to
letting cancer win. Eventually, of course,
it did, and the chemicals and hope
we poured into a finite bowl of ourselves
proved insufficient, and I went back
to the library, and sat in the same chair
and held my hand to my face and inhaled
deeply, a different scent filling my head,
making my vision swim, the smell of
rhododendrons in the arboretum
in Portland, where I took her for her
birthday, and where I looked out and her
in the green fields surrounded by pink,
white, purple blossoms, each one vulgar and
tawdry beside her, each one a crumpled tissue
on a stem, and the sunlight coming down
and the birds singing, and every little thing
in this miserable unheaven was perfect
and thought, So this is love.
The Atlas of My Beauty
Where should I begin?
No one wants a world tour where you see all the ugly parts
So this won't be much of a tour.
But let's pretend that in this world -
Me -
There is no ugly.
We will just call it all beauty instead.
So Look.
Look at me.
I am afraid, I will not lie.
I fear being fully seen.
I am constantly reeling
And feeling
And stealing from my wells of confidence
And pouring out the water
Until they are all run dry
And then I wonder why
I cannot look others in the eye
Without thinking "wow I
am so much less than they are."
But this is a lie.
I will not eat the tainted food I give myself
Because I am more
I am more
I am more
Than the roses left on the stage after the show
And the breath of air before a scream
And the glass shards from a broken figurine.
So it's time
for me
to begin.
Where shall I start?
I will start with the reflection in the mirror
With her little nose and soulful eyes
With her perfect hips and perfect thighs
And stomach that should not be labelled as fat
Because remember, I'm a woman, and we are made like that.
My hands are made for creating
For elating and relating.
My lips are made for loving
and telling and welling
with words of truth
And this is why
I will not lie
About me to myself.
My surface has scratches and scars -
the results of a natural disaster.
Every world has those, right?
Those matter but
they are not everything.
Just as clouds are not the sky -
Stars are.
I am painted with stars
And oceans in my veins
Roots of life grow through my brain.
A wise man once said:
"I don't know who I am but I know who I'm not."
And I'd say I have to agree.
I am not clean-cut perfection
but I know that I am me
And that is a different sort of perfect
Less clean
Less clear
Less cosmetology
My etymology is derived from
The way the wind feels filling your lungs
And the sound of songbirds
And the breathy hum of a record player
And the woodsmoke smell in hair
I am all these things
Constant perfection
Fear of rejection
Continuous projection of
Evidence of living and trying and breathing and needing
Because that is what it is to be me.
I am beautiful; this is true.
I think I look an awful lot like you.
Put the Bang in Interrobang
I write dirty broken clean and a lot of poetry about fucking, but the rules don't say poetry about fucking.
So here I am, essays and mini prose, a bit crude and sweary, while everyone else remains trying to impress, dress clothes and dress manners, hiding the stains and smiling. It's that fake smile where the eyes don't smile, because the focus is on the impression being made.
You'll have to excuse me. I'm the girl that will not only tell you the direct honest unwanted truth in a nice way, but I'll show you the bruises under my skirt and exactly how they came to be.
Captain Mustard in the bedroom with some wooden spoons and a raging hard on.
I digress. On to the main event. I'm content being the little circus sideshow. I'm over here, in the dark corner, waiting.
☆☆
Little Wild Girl
There once was a wild little girl who could spit fire and tame dragons. She spent most of her Itty bitty years in the company of all adults. Adults who didn't know how to be real boys, only puppets at the whims of others. Puppets don't make very good protectors and wild girl became prey to pederasty and pain. Puppets don't know how to take care of hurt little wild girls but you bet your ass hurt little wild girls know the art of self preservation.
Wild little girls are forced to go to school, to learn in the stepford kitchen rather than the hearth of baba yaga where their wild is encouraged. This wild little girl found words and nuance and expression. Her stepford world became the jungle she needed, in part and for the moment. Circumstances prevented the puppets from having any knowledge which wild girl craved with ferocity. A wild girl on her own was forced to read dictionaries to fill her head with words to describe things she knew but couldn't say. Puppets don't talk much and when they do, they parrot dumb ideas because their brains are sawdust.
The words opened her soul and her mind, gave her flight where she was earthbound, courage where she had frozen into flight. Fight became her mantra. Wild little girl had crossed over. But wild little girl found herself away from the puppets, alone barely in school. Foster they called it. Predation she called it. Ignorance and religious push she called it. Wild little girl learned to read and scan, predators who like to eat little wild girls not for food but for their fear and fright. Long nights spent, clutching covers, masking fear, being shown parts on sleeping daddies that wild little girl wanted to bite. She watched and learned to sleep light, with a scream in her throat.
They returned her to puppets, but she had already been in the jungle with the predators and scavengers. She had run with other wild girls, away from predation and away from sharp teeth. They taught her the signs and they taught her the dance to attract, and the spells to keep away. Wild little girl had returned to the puppets but she knew she wasn't one of them. She had always known her heart ran free and her soul bayed at the moon every fucking chance it got. She learned to trust other wild little girls and spot those who could spit fire and tame dragons, because those were her tribe. Not that they couldn't soothe babies and mend clothes, not that they couldn't sweep floors and make crafts, but because their wild couldn't be tamed and that was a gift to keep.
☆☆
Answer My kik, You Dik
Kik is my bitch. I fucking love it. Self deleting posts, quick easy way to send pics and group conversations, and don't even get me started on video chat. heart eyes
However, there are some major differences to kik with girls and kik with boys, barring da fucking stuff.
Women will multiple text, 4 in a row, and end that bitch up with a gif.
Men will reply lol. To a six paragraph story. If it's really really funny, all caps may be used.
LOL
ROFL
That little reply is there. But we don't always read it that way. We're used to extrapolating. Expanding upon. Communicating.
I'm working on a Hemingway thing right now. He wrote sparsely, believed in taking out the "very's." Breaking it down to basics.
Men seem to do this on the whole more than women, and it's redirected me when I speak to men. I see that response as a response, not just a mandatory response.
It's an ingrained thing, I think. It's something I don't get. But I'm trying to get it, so be patient.
Maybe this contributes to further discussion about inbox messaging. There's a philosophy that suggests we not consider the smooth, articulate one as so much better than one who has the iniative and not the communication akills.
Nervous men are invested a little. They care about the results.
Don't get me wrong though, I still love a smooth motherfucker.
OH AND NO ONE TOLD ME THAT AIRPLANE MODE STEALTH READING SHIT DOESN'T WORK ON ANDROID!!
☆☆
Newports
I used to smoke. Maybe a pack a day. I'd quit a few times, always surprising, I guess, for the trailer trash I was. Broke and young and smoking menthols.
I quit for a long time but just as I was coming off a 7 year denial stretch, which I change all the time. Sometimes it's 6 or sometimes it's 7. 5, 8, and 9 year stretches possible also. It's like a bad dream. When you've walled yourself off enough thst that part of you is literally absent consciously.
But subconsciously it's always there. Just under the surface.lying in wait, camouflaged by your own mind. So when I started smoking again, near the end of that no smoking stretch, I'd fantasize about putting a cigarette out on my tongue.
To this day, i still inhale deeply even write that. I taught myself how to do it. The first time, I held the lit cigarette out, just a tiny butt, still lit, the smoke curled around my fingers. My eyes closed and I swallowed, hard. That breath one takes right before they undertakes something?
And I slowly let my hand down. The taste didn't come in til later but I felt the heat, the warm. I hate burns. The sizzle, the deep insistence thst stays long after, unlike impact.
I couldn't stop.
The warm ash hits my tongue and it's a tiny pssssss. I start to smile an fudge my words as I type because that's my tele, when my words a snd my punctuation s d goes.
I come back by opening my eyes. Eyes closed is sweet, but eyes open is fully grasping it. Like answering questions must be powerful and difficult while being so stimulated and yet remaining fully present? That's tapping into a well of brain chemistry right there.
I learned how to not hesitate, swift and sure. Grinding it into my tongue. Enjoying the ash in my miuth. And then I'd cum. I'd make myself cum. Repeatedly. Over and fucking over.
But I digress. I don't smoke. But I like the taste.
☆☆
WIP, public mantling
Salt in her pocket
steel in her step
jawbone of an ass hidden,
to the crossroads
She went to seek,
trade, and bargain.
Years of sin eating
finally added enough dark mass
to offset sins of omission
and negligent acts of kindness
Weighed down that soul so that
damned scale wouldn't betray
I. She tendered her request to brimstone's flunkie, first level djinn trainee. He accepted.
Over the course of a year, it happened. She knew things wouldn't move fast because she strongly suspected Hell was a bureacracy.
The first? She died of cancer. Alone. Her intro to goodly bad fun.
The second? Of a broken heart, while waiting for his 3rd kidney transplant. He ignored her requests and now she knew that he knew his limits. What he wanted from her was what she wouldn't ever give.
The third? Didn't die. He, master of the lie and dodge, was claiming homeless, jobless, and broken hearted. But when he told her, it was still all woe-is-me.
Threes. It's all in threes and monkey's paw logic. She had used her recon shot on exes, because there was no one she liked enough to spare. Win win, she thought.
II. pending.....
☆☆
The tree, the shed, and the India boy
She was a keeper of stories, blank palette, willing ears. She could blank out her eyes, make them drained of all but compassion and interest, and ever since she was small, people have been telling her their stories. She liked to talk and have the kind of conversations when you whisper and furtive glances abound
People never tell their good stories quite like their dark and deep, but not the really dark stiff stuff. That's saved for poorly lit bedrooms and basements. This is their socially acceptable but still deviant if I enjoy telling it because I should really be shamed kind of shame.
_
'So there's this boy in India whose belly button burst. They can't fit. So the blood just keeps coming out. Like in the movies, when it looks like a hose? That's what it's doing. And it's flooding where he lives. Like his house, his yard but he's poor so they don't really have a yard."
High cheekbone high bred native American living mobile home midwest. Another one that climbed under the covers to see what she could do. Stay still stay silent and let my brother. Maybe my cousin. But he wasn't as bad as the other.
He had held her smaller hand in his as he led to the shed, a small dank place where he made her do the things that made her a bad girl and not him a bad boy. He said he'd tell her mom, too prescribed and busy to care, and her dad, too angry and too gone.
She doesn't remember much of the shed. Except the back door opened up to it and rarely would one of the too two look for her. They were content to leave her, content to think she, square root of twenty-five, would be safe with the prime number.
The division became clear when she would make snowmen a la Calvin and Hobbes, using all of too prescribed's red food coloring. Too prescribed was too tired to bake much anyway.
Two weeks later, funny how cheekbones ended up in a tree. Funny how someone told her she should jump. Funny how the girl who make smowmen tragedies with food coloring should be the voice of reason when you're two stories up.
_
Too prescribed was still tired when she took all of her brother's anti seizure, too tired herself to seize anymore. Because that's when too prescribed told she that prime number had been arrested. That's when she told too prescribed.
☆☆
Real Tears
He told her he was mean
He said he was bad.
Warned her over and over and over.
She knew he had bad tastes, bad thoughts, and wanted him to show her just how bad he could be. She ached for it, yearned for it, burned passionately, tossed and turned, bit both her lips and her nails.
He pulled the choke chain tightly around her neck, like he said he would.
He forced her to her knees, like he sad he would. He did all the bad wonderful brutal violating things he said he would. Then...
Open your eyes, girl. I want to take you out. Put these on.
He made her cry, just like he said he would.
It was the crocs and blue eyeshadow that sent her over the edge though.
Tick Tock
Dusty window panes of time
touching the quarter moon
feeling subtle sigh of the breezes
sparring with years past
filling life with counted stars
Dusty window panes of time
hiding souls that time forgot
falling in unstaunched rain
nights threatening no tomorrow
life sailing by, waving goodbye
Dusty window panes of time
eras hiding behind cover of clouds
witnessing loss in lingering time
vacillating shifting of wind
until days seal weary eyes.
Dusty window panes of time
holding tightly hands of destiny
life carved on a tree forever
words written on parchment
will survive for all time.
C’mon Baby Let’s Do the Twist
Twisted him in pretzels
around neck – what the heck!
It slipped to his middle,
deflected his spleen
because of tight jeans -
wonderful vessel
to tremble and wrestle,
attempt not successful -
it sprang back in shape.
He couldn’t undrape
damage I wrought.
I tried to reshape
but all was for naught.
Rich dough of pretzel
coiled up in soft shell
wafting yeast smell -
never ends, never dispels.
I need to discard
what’s left of the pretzel
in my backyard -
it’s not my fault
that he still resides
in the pretzels’ insides.
XXxX xxxx
Really just means nothing good
Which is infuriating
Hits this internal trigger
Makes me want to
Stomp my feet and throw
A goddamn tantrum
Force you to stop me
Make me force your hand
To force my hand
A show of force
That forces me to admit
And I type even now
Wet as hell
Biting my lip
I fucking hate it
The way it makes me want it
Just like the other phrase
XXxX xxxx
Melancholia
Some poems
Are made out of
Sunshines
How for a second brief
Through the meadow it peeks,
The warmth it gives off
Melting cold hearts
Some are made
Out of drizzles
Its reverberating sound
As it first touches
This cold grey land
Where, in each others' arms
This biting chill, we melted
But this verse
Which I made out
Of thread and needles
A stitch to the heart
Out to unforgotten memoirs
Of a sullen past
—a closed wound, opened
All over again.