08/2010

The pump is broken -
poisoned.

It crept in and seeped through those hallowed passages to the core...it corrupted her. It's no use, calling maintenance - she already tried. In truth, the poison must have started there anyway. It's all in the attitudes, the habits, and neither of those are like suits that you can put on and take off easily. They both form and crystallize over time, and it's time it takes to alter them.

They wanted to dump chemicals into her, to make her better, but chemicals come in, wearing shiny hats and gadgets - impersonate their predecessors, kick them out, create dependencies...and she wants to depend only on herself.

So the pump is broken. She - the pump, the maintenance ... and the cure - is broken. For now. Just for now.

7/26/2010

Weight.
This poison is spreading,
through my chest,
my head...
Muscles contract,
seize,
tie themselves
into the heavy,
encumbered flow of my being,
and freeze -

This weight is taking over everything. I can feel it in my chest, my head, my neck ... I can feel it in the way the light strikes through my eyes and pinches at the nerves - needle-sharp. Everything is slow. I can't seem to drain this poison from my body, lift this dumbbell from my chest. So I'm suffocating...and splitting in two, all at once. One of these things alone would be enough to bring me tumbling down. It's overkill, but hey...so is the world.

1/5/2010

You're gone
and I should be sad
but I won't,
because i have already shed
rivers
for my loss -
It was a long time coming.
Yeah, I know:
you fooled me -
but what memories
you
left me
with
have either been
burned,
discarded,
or tucked away
in a place i don't care to look
any more.

Why, buried deep within the blackness of your being,
are there these spiders -
you hear them creeping, scittering -
bent and angled and grotesque -
on the verge of
self destruction.









(for my papa)

Grains of sand are falling down, speck by golden speck, leaving infinitesimally small scratches on this broken pane of glass. A million pieces shattered everywhere - no one to pick them up, to glue them back to solidarity. People will walk by and carry tiny shards away on the bottoms of their naked, padding soles. And will they pull them out? Or leave them bleeding and throbbing - let them burrow deeper and deeper until they themselves have absorbed that little piece of the looking glass? And does the answer even matter?

We live and die to be broken down, to pieces, composted, masticated, absorbed - picked apart bit by bit by those who want some parts of us, but not others. Picked apart bit by bit by insects that want some parts of us, but not others.

Not others.

the sky has shattered--
fairy tale stardust
and schrapnel--
all is painted yellow-red.

no, you say you're coping
but the truth is falling down
in fragments,
a little secret clinging to the back of each.
i want to wake you up.

make you feel
alive
make you feel
at all...

if i pry open your eyes
will i see white?
like nuclear divinity...
or will two empty,
unfeeling orbs
stare back at me?

sometimes,
while you are busy
(not living)
i tell you how much you deserve
not to be here.

You stand there, glorious,
like a Goddess of Destruction,
hair flowing around your porcelain face,
a moat of blood pooling at the shattered feet of your castle,
the gleam of victory in your shallow gaze
--and what have you won?

Metallic barriers rise and fall about you,
close about the corpses of those
unlucky souls
ill-fated enough to have had your favor for any short amount of time
--and I have to ask myself,
Are you really satisfied?

Are you content, in your solitude,
to have nothing to fear save the
(inevitable)
collapse of your own formidable defenses?

Once you said to me that you were glad to have loved,
to have felt as deeply as the darkest depths of the ocean,
to have felt
at all.
Once you said to me that you regretted nothing.

And now I behold you there,
beautiful and broken,
withdrawn from this world
--untouchable,

Unattainable--

and I have to wonder,
Was it really worth having loved at all?

Toxic _ 12.20.2009

Why

can you not 
see me?
I am standing,
here,
among your refuse...
clouded by your judgement--
drowning in the dark.
I am breathing you in--
you're toxic.
Waste.
Shame.
Fear.
Solitude.
Neglect.
A burden that
should not be 
mine.

How can I tell you
that I love you?
When all I want
and all I need
is to leave you
here
alone...
because you have captured my flow--
bottled my essence,
broken me
with your troubles.

So tell me
Why
can you not 
see me?
Shrinking
beneath your weight
and your disease,
after all this time...

Or has your sickness blinded you as well?

You are toxic.
And I need 
to be let go.

Adaptation

It's cold here,
in my pseudo-skin.
I hear the walls cracking,
crumbling away;
the hands of the clock smashing,
shattering glass;
white noise crashing down like a waterfall,
tossing about pieces of the wreckage at the bottom
with nonchalance.
I feel wave after wave roll in,
hastey and impatient:
I'm waiting to become one of them.
With my eyes glazed over,
facial features askew in a grotesque arrangement...
the left limb telling the right not to look,
the head telling the lungs they're not drowning...
They're not drowning...
and in the event that they are, indeed, drowning
and in the event that they are, indeed, on their last leg
and in the event that they are, indeed, out of breath,
tired, suffocating, collapsing, struggling to survive...
and in the event that they are, indeed, drowning,
the head will tell the gasping lungs not to fret,
not to panic,
it's all in the head.

ghost child

sometimes i miss it--
waking up to see you standing there in my room,
surrounded by the darkness,
your hair golden-white,
snowflakes frozen on your eyelashes,
...smile frozen to your face,
a frosty heat permeating from your body...
like cold breath on a winter day.
sometimes i miss that girl...
the way she used to haunt me,
lure me back to whence i came...
but most of the time,
(no point in lying)
i don't.

To call her my own

Brown—I sink back into this Earth that gave life to me,
surrounded by moist soil and roots trailing off from green
_to yellow to white as they
_stretch their dirty fingers down,
_down to the depths of their nourishment.
I do not claim to know much about this Earth I call
_my Mother, my Home, my Resting Place,
But I do know that she comforts me:
_I hear her sighs in the Rivers and Streams that
_flow in a melodic symphony from here
_to only She knows where.
I feel her footsteps like a drum in my chest as I go
_racing through these forests of time and no matter
_what day, what hour, what minute it is—
_no matter what face I happen to be wearing—
She welcomes me,
spilling endless amounts of warmth from her own fiery,
_molten core
into mine.
She glistens with the eternal youth and fertility of
_a thousand mothers,
_a thousand fathers,
_a thousand lovers,
So that I may allow that same verdant fertility to absorb any troubles
_I may have brought with me.
Brown—I sink back into this Earth that gave life to me in an array
_of her most brilliant colors…
_and I do not have the Audacity
_to call her my own.

time to let go

jaded vines grow thick,
running up my spine,
black and green,
teal running to my fingertips,
drops of fear and anger tainting the blood-pool
(she isn't yours, or anyone's)
--out of control and 
frothing from the inside,
stretching, strangling,
suffocating and seething
(the voyage isn't yours to take)
--so let her go,
free-falling through the ashen sky--
the fall won't take her life,
the dive can't take her ambition:
her roots run deep and tangled
...she will always be grounded,
in her own sense--
she will always be grounded…
(she isn't yours, or anyone's)
…so let her go.

Sometimes I think the world is spinning out of control...and that at any given moment I might find my feet unglued from this earth beneath them, my body flung from the planet--like a child from a merry-go-round--to go free-floating through the universe...

I find it hard to imagine sometimes that the grass could ever be greener on the other side...that better catches await me in more fecund seas, but I look around me and I realize that we are all growing. Life has so many more surprises and joys and sorrows to offer me and my generation in the years to come, provided we take responsibility for this world we live in.

I won't pretend that day to day events and long-term pains and frustrations don't get me down now and again, but I will say that I look around me in the faces of those growing up right next to me and I realize now that I am not alone. We are all learning, trying to get our bearings...spreading our feeble wings and diving down to meet our fates, or soar with our ancestors.

I wouldn't miss it for the world.

Black,
your face is hidden
in the shadow of a promise,
too strong to keep,
too feeble to survive the fall
from your whispering lips,
too eager to be free.
I feel your breath coming in gasps
and heaves
as I lay my head
against your chest.
It permeates my very being,
swallows me whole,
consumes...devours:
I will lay here forever,
if that is what you require
to be well again.

...

the original version of this was much longer, but i can't bring myself to post the rest. maybe one day, after some editing and revising, i'll put it up. also, for some reason i did not date this when I wrote it, but I'm guessing it was some time near the end of 2008.

Learning Curve

I'm sitting here, and I'm watching you slip slowly through my fingers as though every little piece of you were a tiny grain of sand, and I've been holding on too tightly. That old '80s song has been playing in my head:

"Just Hold On Loosely, but don't let go
If you cling to tightly,
you're gonna lose control"

Over and over. I think I'm learning something.

7/17/08

I have a feeling that this cliff is over a thousand feet high, and that impact with the water below would peel my flesh from my skeleton. So while those around me are diving down at leisure, I am here...hugging this rock of ambition and purposes greater than thrills and risks on a whim--hugging me. I'm not ready to dive and risk the possibility that, upon impact, my spirit would be stripped from my core and my core would be split in two and there would be no me to defend myself against the impending pleasures of the world...hovering just above the murky waters smelling of red clay and a good time.

Anathema 10/18/07

She stands there, dark hair glistening in the stark moonlight...and she's beautiful. She is always beautiful. She is real and honest in a world that grates against her like sandpaper and labels her an outcast. She is real and honest in the face of hypocrisy and powdered noses. She is Ana, with bobbed hair and a quirky smile that plays across her gentle face and tells me that in the face of everything that is false and ephemeral she will always be my everlasting Halley's Comet...my never-ending sunshine, northern star, ever-bold Anabelle, Ana, in the face of the world, my Anathema.

sun-kissed shadows

dance
in the fading
haze
of a moon-lit night.
she
is only so bold as the
sandals
on her feet.

however,
when she
calls
my name i am
compelled
to gravitate towards her.

she is my
blazing
oblivion, in an
endless
expanse of infinity
leading
to a land i'd rather
not
call familiar.

baked.

i seep back
down
into the crust of this
earth
and find myself thinking it was
better
left unsaid.

sacred--

i guess i
could
dig deeper,

into the
soul
of things:
brave and without
fear
of what

i might find

d i s i l l u s i o n m e n t-
let us
not
delve into that
darkness
just yet.