untitled

I don't feel much older
the steps I take towards old age
seem childish
and fake.
But I'm growing older
and I suppose I'm getting wiser
along the way.

stranger

i want you, yes
i want you to wrap your arms around me, stranger
and be safe within them.
stranger, yes stranger
because that's what you are, a stranger to me
do i know you?
does anyone know you
are you a stranger
to yourself?

haven't felt
these feelings
before

they are
strangers too.

suffocation

words and words
and plans
and worries
and fears
and love
your best intentions, like octopus arms
strangle and constrict me
until I am squeezed dry
of compliments.

I'm being surrounded, backed into a corner
and made to smile.

one more best intention
and I just might
suffocate.

infinite repeat

play that same song
you know which one I mean
the one that you think you wrote
in your dreams
put in on infinite repeat
and let it play forever
because it's the only thing
that will last.

Beauty-a slam poem

You see me, but you don't see me.
What you see with your eyes means nothing
because beauty lies
lies underneath a microscope, makeup can hide blemishes of the skin
surgery can fix a nose or double chin
but it cannot fix an ugly soul.
Beauty, they say, lies in the eye of the beholder
but nothing I'm being or holding matches
those magazine starlets
glossy picture queens
who let themselves be air-brushed
tucked, snipped and pulled
as six year old girls see themselves as ugly
and pine, for a body no real person can have
and buy, things they don't need to look like someone else
because they think that they are not beautiful
they need to be someone else
to be enough.
Enough!
Enough of the lies, lyin about beauty
and the pain of not having
and the crying
and the cutting
and the eating
and the not-eating
counting every calorie and gram of gum
and deciding it isn't worth it
because no one wants to fuck someone like that
someone who is fat.
Fuck it!
All of this for beauty
all of this misinformation, exaggeration, trepidation.
Beauty is a construct, baby
and they'll make you feel good about yourself
for five easy payments
of self-esteem.

progress?

The moving, brooding machine of progress
it churns out ideas and processes
crushing opposition, cementing over the past.

The future is progress
but what is the progress?
What can you do better?
Faster? Stronger?

We are no longer a race of people
but automated robotic machines
Ones whose sole goal is to finish the objection
know how to limit interaction
to a nod or a wave.

We are each alone
Alone now more than we ever were.
Our material things will only comfort us
because our real lives cannot.

I am more than the sum of my parts.
I will not be harvested for them
like some junkyard car.
I am more than the sum of my parts.

I will not be happy today

I will not be happy today, no.
I appreciate the nice things you say and you will say them, I'm sure,
but I don't want to hear them.
I will not be happy today.
I need to feel and angst and moan and gripe and complain
I need to mope for a while
so let me spend the time doing so.
I will not be happy today
so don't try to stop me
let me brood and mood
in peace.

nyc

you are alive
your lungs cough from the black smoke
of nearby commercialism.
your eyes
awake in the lights that light up the night.
your heart
beating, moving, people everywhere
pumping life into a city
a city that does sleep
but only on the odd hours.

silence

you are not lying
but you aren't telling the truth either.
must I fall? spilling the pieces inside of me
as Black Friday shoppers rush to pick them up.
I want to tell them
they are only buttons, noise makers, candy,
scraps of ideas, long treasured dreams
and maybe some pocket lint.
they shouldn't waste their time
they'll soon grow tired.
you won't speak
I won't speak
the world won't speak
and I will fall apart
until I have nothing left.

go back to sleep.

early morning dust
awakens my senses
dull reminders and remanants
of dreams
ideas forgotten.
go back to sleep.

"we"

we walked in long dresses, with blue ribbons on our backs
painted with gold and sewn together with good intentions.
we faced the cold
either we refused to face it
or we pretended it wasn't there
but it was.
our future was endless,
we wrote our poems on backs of old essay questions
we did what we wanted, raised a fire next door
our lives meaningless in context.
our love was riddled with inconsistency
ever-changing ever-yearning ever everything.
we were young once
we were simple once
we were ourselves once.

i

i never want you to know what i know
because what i know is nothing you should know
and everything that i should.
i never want you to feel the way i feel sometimes
knowing things i know
but knowing these things i know
is not always why i feel the way i feel
sometimes i never feel at all.
i never want you to see yourself the way i do
because i do see you
knowing the things i know
and well, i see you the way i do
and you don't feel
but sometimes i never feel at all.
i never want you to believe what you believe
because i see you the way i do
and i know these things i know
and i know you will believe what you believe
know what you think you know
feel what you think you feel
see yourself how you think you are

but it's all horseshit.

untitled

from the skin of souls
you create your words
you scrape together pieces
of life energy
of buttons and notebook paper fragments
to patch a landscape
and you won't stop
until they start crying.

one day sunshine

one day I'll tell you
that I count the spaces in between your words
and hope that someday
you'll pay attention to mine.

one day I'll let my insecurites go
and tell you what exactly I meant to say
that one time
that one place
you remember?

one day I'll tell you
the minute I knew I liked you more
than I had felt before
the minute your words started dancing as you talked
the minute my heart leaped at your name

one day sunshine
but it's still not that day.

uncertainty

i am awake
awake
in the arms of uncertainty
fondled by grief and unreliability.
my nights are cold
sweaters and blankets
cannot be bundled
cannot be rolled.
i will not fall asleep
not give in
to close my eyes
and fall into the deep.
if i close my eyes
i might
just
fall
asleep.

months

times time times new roman font
staring across a computer screen
the only light I see
the only only company...

my days now turn into hours
hours spent in between pages
written about dead white men I could care less about.

the hours in between pages
swiftly turn to weeks
weeks to months
months of knowledge
months of paper
months of so-called learning
but only weeks
of creating.

no title

pumpkin spice is nice
with cinnamon scented dreams that will certainly follow
but I find happiness
buried somewhere deeper
than in your cup of coffee
or swirling in my cup of tea

to live & always dream

frantic music behind sad bare sky
sweat & rust summer
what delicate shadow
I read beneath eternity
my forest bed
say only as beauty is
you are love

the night air breathes
courage into my lungs
life within my breast.
the future around me
swirls like the clouds in my coffee
ideas and life
flitting and flirting in and out
of consciousness...


i am awake in the arms of circumstance.

to my daughter, if I ever have one

someday you will be beautiful, daughter
beautiful not only in outward appearance but in inner depth
beautiful in words and speech
beautiful in your thoughts
beautiful in what you dream
everything you are will be beautiful, daughter.

you will be strong.

you will be unique.

you will be everything that your mother cannot be.

your toys

I am not a toy.
If you bend my arms and legs
I do not stretch like Gumby
my bones will break.
If you throw me
I will not bounce back
I will fall.
If you hold me too close
I will not remain still
I will pull away.

If you treat me
the way you treat your things...
you will soon realize

that the only reason you have them

is because they won't run away.

what do I say now?

words
slip
like syrup
sticky sweet
but the watery substance
slips through
my fingers
with nothing left
but reminders
staining my hands...

What do I say now?

Autumn

Autumn leaves fill the trees
a flurry of brown, yellow and green
hanging on by an inch, swaying precarious...

The corn seasons in bloom with a sea of stalks
bright red sweaters tangled with hay
apple cider-stained lips, stolen puffs of breath
into the chilly air.

Pumpkin spice dreams and golden brown patterns
etched in the mind and blood red stitched quilts
covering young children, wrapped and swaddled tight.

Crunching leaves and frost ground underfoot
tramping a journey of a changing season
where the air feels alive
and so do you.

untitled

i am no stranger to darkness
although some believe i am in the light
life is more like shadow
and everyone falls
somewhere
in
the
middle

lost

she lost herself
in poetry
and words said
by faux prophets
and she made her own conclusions
piecing her life together
the way she felt it belonged
because the pieces
didn't fit right
and maybe
these people
would understand
like no one who was real
could.

Am I awake?

I am the habitual floating plastic bag
upwards, downwards in and out
across abandoned supermarket parking lots.

I am the steady second hand
counting down to the next minute
forever and ever.

I am the deadbeat dreamers lullaby
of golden age and quiet eyes
I blink awake.

Blink.

Am I awake?