Let Me Throw This At You

My voice

calls out to you from this stage.

My voice

raises itself like a dragon rearing its head

and it falls 

it falls like the world trade center,

casting rubble out in waves

millions of paper

millions of annotations

of margins

of love notes

and millions of voices

crushed

but not silenced

voices smothered and beaten to a pulp

yet still they rise.

From the dust, from the ashes,

from the millions of love notes

my voices come through

like smoke

and they suffocate me

and they choke me

and they cloud my view

but I keep talking and pushing my words out 

tearing, and crying out,

animalistic

like a woman in labor

pushing and groaning and losing control

and pushing some more

until something new is born.

and this something is the embodiment of a new passion

this is new life and it has new life

it is shriveled, purple potential,

growing, stretching, scraping its knee, climbing trees into

a potential of energy

through scarred arms and stolen hair dye

to become potential of power

and beyond that to a power in its own right.

This voice is my right.

It is my right to project and thrust this

voice out

to meet its destiny

though it be shaking 

though it spends its nights alone

though rocks scape against it

paring it down,

sharpening its switchblade

slicing through this and that, person and opinion

the molten vocal chords of my throat

spewing across this crowd and burning you too,

burying you in your own ideas

burying you like Vesuvius buried Pompeii,

buried in ideas only to be discovered 

a thousand

maybe ten thousand years in the future

if hence the future still exists,

and all of this, I find, 

is still in my head.

and I found myself screaming at the top of my voice “i can’t do this. . . 

anymore”

an you said “you were never doing it. you have to start, you can still start - your life depends on it-, even now, especially now, because you are here and you are now and most of all you are.” 

you are you are you are. 

I am. 

[This is my first attempt at slam poetry.  I might post an audio presentation of it at some point.]

Uncertain Grace

She is the soul of a gypsy, 

a feather, blown in the wind

wandering alone

choosing to be lost.
Soliciting solitude 
as one might solicit company.

she is a rarity

undiscovered but highly sought after

a star, burning through her mortality

Her radiance sears my eyes 

but I cannot look away.

She is an idea of brilliance,

the thought of a thought

An unsteady light.

In January,

a spark of static on a dark sheet.

she is a mother wearing her child's face

needed and unwanted

she must be an apparition

moving, as she does, with uncertain grace

leaving, in her wake, a power she does not know.

Caught, in her halo of light,

she is an everyday angel.

[Photo cred: TheSartorialist]

Phobia

At eighteen, I have passed my peak.  I am over the hill and running full tilt down the other side.  I have sped up time on my own and have honed in on the light at the end of the ever-shortening tunnel.  For fear.  For fear of staying in the dark.  The darkness of life.  For fear of becoming.  I am an old woman, I am decrepit.  I am senile.  I have become so to avoid becoming so.  I am afraid of becoming my mother, my father.  My grandparents, their false teeth, their hearing aids.  Their used tissue paper skin, transparent, covering a soft web of congested purple veins.  My grandfather’s shaking hands, my grandmother asking me again and again who I am and where my mom is.  “Where is your mother, Molly?”  No point in telling her I’m not Molly.  She’ll only ask again, in thirty seconds.  Five, four, three, two. . . one.  “Molly, is your mother here?”  

I am haunted by the nightmarish image of myself sleeping on the couch, toothless mouth hanging open, a drawn-out nasal snore emitting from my withered head.  But the vision doesn’t end there.  No.  It gets worse.  Underneath my stained, mint green, highwater pantsuit, my swollen, neckless body lays in an unsightly state of disarray.   Lacking proper support, my sagging tits droop on either side of my body, falling to my elbows.  My puffy shoes have the velcro opened up in order to give my varicose feet some extra room.  Shitting the bed and doddering about, food falling out of my muscle weakened  jaw, I am merely a vast embarrassment to everyone about me, even if I don’t belong to them.  

I am scared of reverting back to diapers and bibs, of store clerks patronizing me with dear. “Would you like some help with that, dear?”  Sometimes it seems that the only difference between the very old and the very young, is that the very old know what’s happening and they are growing into it, rather than out.

I am afraid of subjecting someone else to the sickness part of in sickness and in health, but I’m even more afraid of finding out there’s no one who would take that vow.  I dread well meaning but snobbish twenty-somethings explaining life to eighty year-old me.  My children trying to pass me off to one another like a useless family heirloom that sits about collecting dust and only represents sentimental value.  In other words, no value at all.  

I couldn’t survive living long enough that my only remaining friends are frumpy african violets or elderly cats with skin diseases.  Having already reached middle age, it is a relief for me to never have to worry about carcinogens or crows feet or saving for retirement, since those things will never touch me.  Afraid of caring too much, I have become careless, preferring the feeling of wind in my hair to the security of the helmet.

I don’t want to go on living so long that the world’s insanity overcomes any trace of youthful optimism and innocence and I become embittered or loony.  I have chosen instead to live fast, die young and leave a good corpse.

Fearing too much life has me scared to death.

Spike.

I was planning on writing this in my usual free-verse style, but I decided to try and put it together in a more organized prose-like fashion.  It still feels kind of staccato, like it should be set up the the line-break pauses of poetry.  But just read it slow and take it for what it is. Maybe a little of the quality can be sacrificed to break out of a comfort zone? Or maybe I should just stick with what I know I can already do.

Children's Story

Hi.  I'm a total dry well right now.  BUT! I had an assignment to fulfill. . . and I never disappoint. Yeah, right.

I like kids, okay. I have a three year old and a seven year old brother who are my best friends and they're pretty much awesome.  But I'm not "good with kids." I don't know how to cater to their interests. I was a wacko child (heck, I'm still wacko), so it's not like I can just reference my own childhood.

But the assignment was Write a Childhood/Bedtime Story. Do It.  So. . . I did it.  Just kidding. I put it off. For a long, long time.  And then I did it.  My perky creative writing teacher is editing it for me (hopefully) and maybe we can turn it into something less gross. I'm being hopeful.  It's a blessed trait. You're welcome.

I will post it. Judge me. Judge me hard. Mmhmm.

Young and Free

“Look at you. You’re young. And you’re scared. Why are you so scared? Stop being paralyzed. Stop swallowing your words. Stop caring what other people think. Wear what you want. Say what you want. Listen to the music you want to listen to. Play it loud and dance to it. Go out for a drive at midnight and forget that you have school the next day. Stop waiting for Friday. Live now. Do it now. Take risks. Tell secrets. This life is yours. When are you going to realize that you can do whatever you want?”


My best friend sent me this quote on facebook. She found it in Stumbleupon- from "Four Short Plays" by Louise Flory, and it completely sums up our feelings right now. We keep talking with so much excitement about the future.  This is the time when everything is going to change and we can do anything we want and there's so much to see and do and feel and there's really no other time we'll have so little holding us back. It feels amazing to be young and alive (always, but especially now) and there's so much to look forward to.  It's one of those times when I feel like I'm getting high from the pure joy of living and being happy and free.  Whatever has gone wrong in the past has no hold over my beautiful, untainted future.  Maybe I'm seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, but I'd rather err on the side of beauty than the side of doubt.  The world is always a great place to be in the springtime, but especially when you're eighteen years old and you are wearing a sundress.

In Good Form

I feel so uncemented. Yeah, I made that word up. But really. I so rarely have a real form in my writing.  It seems always a combination between poetry and prose, kind of like free-verse, which I love, but honestly, I just feel lazy. Lazy because my poetry isn’t poetic enough, or flowy enough, or enigmatic enough.  Lazy because my prose isn’t structured enough, isn’t solid enough, isn’t fast enough. I like writing when it all just spills out of me, but I’m getting slack about technical things. And I don’t care about having all the technical things right for only their own sake but for what they truly contribute to the piece. It’s high time I clean up my act.  There’s a great deal of improvement to be had and I don’t want to be too chicken or too lazy to face that because of my own laxity. 

I’m working on a prose piece, and this time I want it to be in legitimate, unquestionable prose. It isn’t there yet. Wish me luck.

Crawl Space

A dull, fractured thump

is heard.

The curtain wavers, ruffled by a zephyr

shot through with electricity.

tension.

Voices with strands of 

a furtive excitement

speak quickly,

hushedly.

Lights flicker,

then fade.

The voices dissipate.

A moment of blackness

before the red drapes part

and a light

warms your face.

Your face is warm,

your hands restless,

feet relying

on muscle memory

to propel you into place.

But your back is straight -

the breeze has stilled

and it waits;

expectant.

Trusting.

I hold my breath as you take in yours.

With the sound of your voice 

my arms and the back of my neck

crawl

with the tingled shiver

of beautiful refrains,

of misty sunrises.

Your voice grows louder,

grows strong

and passionate.

You hook my heart up with

yours,

beating faster 

and faster, and,

in a pinnacle,

stopping

short.

I climb the ladders;

I know each portal; 

I recall the hours;

yet the magic is no less diminished 

in my eyes

than if I was 

immersed 

for the first time.

The Voice of Truth

The billboard messages
come to life
as I draw near.
There's no throwing this train.
The menacing faces reach out
at me -
I only recognize
them for what they've told me
they are.

I run to them.
I choose them
in my insecurity,
in my lostness.
I am brought in
and torn apart.
Even what I don't know that I have
they take away from me.
Into my emptied player
they put their soundtrack;
the soundtrack of hate.
I thank them,
relaxing,
as the familiar sounds
break me down
and build a million new pathways in my brain.
Every day,
every week,
the sound of the wrecking ball
grows louder,
more soothing,
until the explosions
consume every other sound
as they wear down,
down,
and down
rendering me shredded
pulped and bloody,
unable to feel anything but
this death.
Unable to hear anything
but these lies;
the ones that sound so much like
truth
to me.

If The Whole World Was One Color

“if the whole world was one color,”

you asked me,

“which would it be?”

at first i thought green.

definitely green.

because green is the only one

that when gone,

is missed.

and green is a mixture of two,

so it can be three.

that is true.

but it’s all wrong,

green is not the answer.

green is sickness

and the veins of only half the world.

green is always the color of 

that bitch’s mood ring.

snot-nosed and jealous

of all the greener beauties and

their green love.

the sea is green

in its cold deception.

all these things,

so not green.

but there is another color

that loves

green like

a mother loves a son.

her last son.

blue is a peace wedded

to fire.

blue is the drunken orgy

and the confessional the next

morning.

blue is what i know

and what i know that 

i don’t know

and that i have no idea.

but blue is the one 

that when i shut my eyes,

the others may still arise 

in succession.

ironically, 

always ending with purple,

so it doesn’t hurt to open my lids 

again.

Kindred Spirit

I know, how presumptuous of me to be so possessive of her. But really. . . I want to talk to her.  I wish I could be her friend, but I'm sure I'd end up just soaking her in my worshipful drool.  And she'd be grossed out. And she'd be like, "Hate to tell, but your writing sucks. And I don't actually hate to tell you." But, yeah. A girl can dream.  About being friends, not about what she'd say.

The instant I graduated from juniordom and embarked on my pre-senior summer, I began my AP lit summer work.  The reading part, that is.  That included Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid's Tale.  I tolerated and appreciated George Orwell, but I fell head-over-heels in love with Margaret Atwood.  To the point of drooling.  Almost.  Just imagine the kind of person it takes to write a book like that.  So overwhelming, yet unassuming, so complicated and grand, yet casual.  (I love paradoxes. Or maybe just contradictions.) The kind of book I struggle between being so enthralled as to finish it quickly, and knowing once it's done, I can never read it for the first time again.

And then.  I read The Blind Assassin. And more drooling happened. Seriously, maybe I'm just dumb, but I didn't see the end coming.  Those are the kinds of surprises I like.  I loved the lovers. They were like crack for me.  Reading that story gave me some serious inspiration (does it count, like that?).  I'll post the inspired-by piece sometime.

Now I'm halfway through The Robber Bride, and even though it may have disappointed others, it doesn't seem like it's going down that road for me.  There is this character named Charis (with a hard k sound), who is a young hippie with an old soul.  She's all in tune with people's auras and the colors of pain and feelings and taking care of living things.  Margaret just continues to awe me with her characterization and the way she makes people deeper and wider then even what she writes about them.

This may seem a bit over assured on my part, but I feel like I have a connection with her, or at least I think in a similar way.  I recognized my own thought pattern in her writing and although my work is far from the level she's attained, I imagine she didn't start out where she is now, either.

Do you have any writers that you particularly feel a similar connection with?  Not just ones that you like, but ones whose style you sometimes emulate or who you feel would be great to talk to?