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.

I hate

how everything painful is magnified by like...a million now. What is going on with me?!

Reading back on old poems brings surges of emotions that I'm not accustomed to having just over reading something I've written...

Uhg. Even writing is a painful experience as of late...

Such shit.

L.