October 2007

 Lilith

She is wrapped in earth now

Blanketed in rock and darkness

Nothing grows here

Except her anger.

 

Still, it is better than paradise ever was

–        The Garden of Oppression

Lilith had refused to become an inferior

By believing herself one.

 

Rather than submit,

She walked naked into the rain

Never looking behind her.

She would not be the one to invent regret.

 

And she is more beautiful here

Than Adam will ever remember her.

Lilith has found all of her voices

And she has taught herself how to scream

 

Surround herself with her own sounds

As they grow to become her children

Echoing off the stone

In a glorious cacophony.

 

And what else does a women need?

She is complete – she always has been.

The noise is fast and furious around her;

She is breathing it,

 

And dancing with

Ocean waves pounding the backbeat.

She hardly misses the touch of another anymore.

She rarely thinks of what she left behind.

 

Until she tires, thinking of sleep,

And the echoes fade into empty nest.

Then Lilith is grateful for the steady sound

Of the ocean waves against her walls.

 

Because although there is very little that she fears,

There is always the silence,

And the silence

Just might end her.

March 2007

 untitled draft

I don't have much to give you.
I can only offer soft hands,
A patient tongue,
And ears that will never tire of your voice.

But I'm not deep,
Not complicated.
I am nothing more or less
That what you see
But I fear
You think I am hiding in plain sight.

I can't share with your any
Tales of adversity overcome
I cannot reciprocate your sacrifice of secrecy.
My closets are full of cobwebs
Not skeletons.

No, I don't have much to give you.
I don't think I have anything you need.
Go ahead,
Unwrap me down to bones;
I doubt you will find any stories worth telling.

I have had time to grow into my skin.
There is no evolution left in me.
But you, so like the caterpillar,
Still have yet to settle into
What you will become.

So, no
I cannot indulge you in a game of
"My Pain is Worse than Your Pain"
Because I know I cannot win.

Because you are fragile and precious
And I am already far too close
To being in love with you.

Because I know that the compulsion
To pull you into the tight cocoon
Of my tired arms
Will be too strong
For me to resist.

There, I will hold you close until
You emerge
Whole and unblemished,

And then you'll be gone.

I only hope you'll pause long enough
To whisper one last secret
To my broken heart.

I need to know
If the butterfly can remember
How it felt
Before it could fly.

April 2007 (from the thirty day writing project)

 Destination (rough draft)

I want to believe that all things are possible.

I want to believe that
there is some sort of design to this
crazy world, that all around us,
possibilities are dancing
around every moment, every breath.

I want to believe that every dream I've ever had
is just one of a
billion possible futures.

That my every desire is
accessible if only I make the right
choices at the right instants,
and even if I don't, there will always be a
back road that will get me there.

It'll just take a little longer, that's all.

I want to believe.

But I fear that each of us is
limited by a finite
number of chances.

That bad decisions are like
black marks on our
permanent records.

That sooner or later we all use up
our quota of possibility; that
happiness might be
forever elusive because of all those
times we tried too hard to hold onto
something we never knew
we never wanted.

If there is always going to be another
opportunity, then I can stay silent until the
proper moment arrives.
I can be patient.

If I knew that I had the right map, I could
stake out alternate approaches,
confident that I will get there
eventually.

But if this web of possibilities is nothing more than a
pretty illusion, can I afford to spend one more
day lying to myself, pretending that this too
will fade away?

Can I afford to waste another chance?
Another breath?

I want to believe that there is
somewhere that every one of us belongs.

I want to believe that there will always be
another road I can travel
that will lead me back home to you.

April 07

Timed writing: Ashes

the aftermath is simply this:
dirty puddles, the pervasive
smell of smoke,
the obliteration of whiteness
by ashes and soot.

this is when you begin to fear
that nothing
will ever be clean again.

when everything you've ever loved
ceases to exist,
it's hard to remember
who you are
really.

take away the protective veneer
of things
and maybe
you feel small enough to be
lost and easily forgotten

easily discarded

something so insignificant
that it's a wonder
you ever existed at all

there is no time to dwell on loss
there are treasures to be discarded
trash bags to be filled

there is starting over that
needs doing
and tomorrow isn't going to stay away
while you mourn

maybe somewhere in the wreckage
there is something
salvagable

something you can clutch to your breast and say

yes, this is mine

something you can rub
between your palms,
staining your skin black

something tangible and unbroken

the aftermath is simply this:
everything you thought you loved
is now ashes

everything you thought you needed
is gone

the sun will rise tomorrow
and still
nothing will be clean

but if you're lucky
there will be one shard of yesterday
you can polish up
and you will whisper

yes, I remember

Spring 2007

 This Crush

I'm kind of nervous about telling you this
But I guess I should just
Come right out and say it.

You see, I totally have a
Crush on you.

And I know it sounds silly
'Cause we're both adults now but
This crush
Makes me feel like I'm fourteen
All over again.

This crush
Makes me long for
Faux-origami folded notes
Slipped into my locker
Or passed behind teacher's back

This crush
Makes me want to
Wear my hair in pigtails
That will tempt you to pull them
Whenever I'm not paying attention.

Yeah, this crush
Makes me want to be your girlfriend
Just 'cause I think you're
The cutest boy in school.

With you,
I don't want to have to worry about
Compatibility or common interests
I don't want to date you;
I want for us to be "going out"
Even if that means we never actually
Go anywhere at all.

Now, I wasn't sure how to tell you all this because

This crush
Made me want to tell my friend,
Who'd tell her friend, who'd tell her friend,
Who'd tell another friend who'd, finally,
Tell you that

I don't just like you
I like like you.

And maybe, you'd hear that
And maybe, you'd think that
Maybe, you might like like me too.

Maybe you'd decide
You'd want to be my boyfriend
(Meaning we'd hold hands whenever
We thought that no one else was watching...)

But, I decided to go this way instead
Because no matter how young and giddy
This crush
Makes me feel
I haven't forgotten that we're
Too old now for games of "Telephone"
So this is the only way I could think of
To tell you that

This crush
That I have on you
Makes me want to build a treehouse
Just for us.

We could waste lazy afternoons
Up there together
And forget every mean thing
That's ever been said to us
Forget every time our hearts
Have been broken.

This crush
Could make everything feel brand new.
When we finally kiss for the first time,
We'd be fresh & unspoiled
Fumbling our way through
The tender exhilaration of becoming
High school sweethearts
Years too late.

I know that nothing is likely
To ever be that simple again,
And that you probably think I'm foolish
For trying to hold on to
The idealism of young love, but

This crush,
Has made me talk too much.

I've said everything I can and now
All I can do is wait
For your response to this
Rather adolescent declaration.

Wait for you to decide
If you can believe that
This crush
Can take us to that treehouse,
Remind us what it was like to be
Carefree.

Wait for you to tell me that
you see more in me than
Just a silly girl
And that you want to hold my hand and
It doesn't matter
Who can see us.

 

 

angry breakup draft from 2008

I have never been good at goodbyes,

And because I believed
In true love, meant to be,
And the power of promises,
Watching you go was like
Grinding broken glass into my palms like
Crawling on shattered kneecaps like
The last gasp of air before drowning

I have never been good at goodbyes
And when you left
You took not only my today
And my tomorrows
But you took the shine off of
All that time when we said
That we loved each other.
You left me feeling like an accomplice
To your fraud like
An accessory after the fact.

But now that the hands of
Another man have cleansed
The residue of you from my skin,
I am banishing you from my sense memory,
Already forgetting
The sound of your voice on 2 a.m. phone calls when
You believed I was asleep,
The taste of harsh words left to linger
Too long on my tongue,
The scent of cheap liquor and desperation.
Already forgetting the feel of your
Teeth on my neck, and your
Fingertips sliding across my body,
As you played me for a fool.
I guess I never was tuned quite right.

Now, I only believe in the things I can see,
So I am determined to hold onto
The look in your eyes when you lied when
You told me you’d love me forever.
And I refuse to let go of
The shadow that stained your face when
You understood just how badly
You fucked up this time, when
You realized that
Everything we were, all our potential
Had fallen victim to your irresponsible
Irrepressible urges, when
You knew that
My shoulder would never again be
An appropriate repository for your tears.

I have never been good at goodbyes
I prefer see-you-laters or until-we-meet-agains,
But this time, I hope you’re never inspired
To crawl back to me, pleading
For forgiveness that was already granted.
The thought of allowing you to be
Reckless with me again
Is almost too absurd to entertain.
But although I know that I am strong like mountains,
You are persistent as water,
Able to wear away at my every surface.
Now that you’ve made your choice
I hope you stay gone.

You have showed me what a powerful tool
Self-delusion can be,
So I will comfort myself by imagining
That every time you take her in your arms
You die a little inside.
I will tell myself that you regret
Taking my love and filling the empty spaces
With anger, doubt and fear.
I will keep believing that there wasn’t anything
I could have done to prevent this.

I have never been good at goodbyes.
I always have to fight the urge to repress the truth;
To tell you only what it is I think
You want to hear.
I wish I could say that I hope she makes you happy
Instead, I will say that I hope together
You find everything you both deserve,
And if you think I just said the same thing
With different words then I know you’ve become
As good at lying
To yourself as you always were
At deceiving me.

full of very dated 2005 references, such was the way of slam...

TW: Hate speech, US politics

Insanity/Inevitability

I’ve heard insanity defined as
Repeating the same actions
And expecting different results.

If that’s true, then I must be a little bit crazy.

Because not only do I believe that
all people have the capacity for change,
I believe that it’s inevitable.

And maybe that also makes me more than a little naïve,

But, in my lifetime, I’ve learned a lot of facts
And a little about the way the world works.
I haven’t always liked it, but I’ve learned it.

My heart and my head don’t always communicate clearly
So I manage to keep the things I know
separate from the things I believe.

Because, I know…

I know that a boy who,
At fifteen,
Only considers dating a girl
With two all-important qualities –
A tight ass and a great rack –
Will still think that way
As a man of twenty-five,
As a man of forty-five
And until the day
His cock stops working
Which, thanks to the miracle of Viagra,
May never actually happen.

I know that a little girl
Whose mother tells her that
She’ll never truly be happy unless
She marries a rich man
Will crush the hearts of nice guys
Under her stiletto heels
While she searches for a sugar daddy or a pimp.

I know that every single one of us
Has some fucked-up definition of what
Happily ever after means.
I know that forever rarely means forever.
And that it’s my own high standards
And less-than-perfect body
That have led to me spending the last four years
Sleeping alone.

But this is about so much more than just me.

I know that a man
Who uses words like
Cunt, nigger and fag
Will never understand
That equality doesn’t only apply
To people who look and act just like him.

I know that we live in a country
Where half the population
Believes that giving marriage rights to gays
Is a bigger threat to the American way of life
Than poverty, war or terrorism.

I know that the so-called
“Leader of the Free World”
Is nothing but an overgrown child
Finger-painting death and destruction
All over the map
Trying to impress his Daddy.

I know that priests are protected
and pop stars are crucified for identical crimes.
I know that the head of the Catholic church
makes the sign of the cross
with the same hand he once used
to salute Adolf Hitler.

I know that the whole world is a mess
and there’ll never be enough Merry Maids
To even start to clean it up.

if things keep going
The way they’re going
That it’s all going to go to hell
But we’re going to get there on a Concorde jet
Instead of in a hand basket.

But I can still believe.
Because, I am a little crazy
And I am more than a little naïve
And because my heart and my head rarely ever communicate clearly.

So I’m going to keep right on believing
in karma,
random acts of kindness
and happy endings.

I’m going to believe that,
While it’s nice to want to fuck the outside,
It’s even better to love the inside,
And that I’m not the only one who believes that.

I’m going to believe that
If you still have a few bucks left
After you pay your bills and buy groceries
Then you have enough money because
Having more isn’t actually going to make you
Any happier.

I’m going to keep believing that
equality
is more than just a pretty concept.

And I’m going to keep believing that,
In my lifetime,
I’ll be able cast my vote for someone I believe in
Rather than merely choosing the lesser of two evils.

I believe that if enough people
Remember how to believe
And keep nursing this collective optimism
It will grow large and strong
And we will make the world a better place
With words just like these.

But most of all,
I plan to keep believing that
Not only do all people have the capacity for change
But that it truly is
Inevitable.