Poems, Plots, & Random Thoughts

Many moons have shown their faces 

since I have last seen yours

but I still know the shape of your body:

the crook of your arm around my waist,

the flare of your nostrils,

and the sunken treasure of your eyes.

It is quite likely I could

study the surface of the night’s watchful eye 

and never know it the way I know you

and your most crooked smile.

“Their Girl”

I tried to write a poem called

“My Boys”

Though they were never mine.

They were their mama’s boys,

and their father’s sons.

I’m still trying to write it now

“My Boys”

they’re the lost boys,

that found themselves,

discovered me.

So I guess 

this is really called

“Their Girl”.

And at this point in our lives there are some things we just can’t talk about anymore, so we don’t talk at all.

Autumn Leaves

So surely as the leaves are banned

from the heights of their branches

by the trees of autumn,

the days on the calendar will peel,

so slowly,

but seemingly instant in retrospect.

They say this is where life begins

but I’ve been breathing eighteen years

some six thousand five hundred seventy odd days

and I don’t intend on restarting now.

Many miles I have traversed,

many lessons learned (though few from textbooks),

dreams fullfilled, wishes trampled, goals achieved…

but yet they say I have not lived?

That I have simply reached a marker, 

a road sign on my journey,

reading, “Life- next exit”.

I have seen so little but heard so much

and they will tell me I have not yet lived?

As if I had been incubating all this time,

preparing myself for this “real world”.

Every past encounter reduced to a cheap, insignificant nothingness.

That the day my father abandoned me was just a pretext,

a hand on a foreigner that took no part in shaping me.

That feeling a longing, sharper than the sting of one thousand knives,

is meaningless, 

if I have not yet sat in a room full of so-called sophisticated individuals 

working to shape themselves into perfectly identical non-dimensional figures.

So surely as the crumpled leaves of fall have lived,

I have too.

Goodbye

No one says “goodbye” like I do.

It flows from my tongue like water-

water that simultaneously drips from the dreary ocean of my eye

like a boat following the path to its dock.

No one feels “goodbye” like I do.

The familiarity does not lessen the sting-

tenfold worse than that of a jellyfish,

spreading its misery through the rough ocean current.

No one says “goodbye” like I do,

cause no one says it more.

Home

Home is a drive along the shore.

Home is a cuddle buddy.

Home is re-read book.

Home is a text message from far away.

Home is grey over sized sweat pants.

Home is a song sung at the top of your lungs.

Home is a dented guitar.

Home is a piece of used paper.

Home is a person, thing,

but not a place.

Home is a noun.

We Are the Animals

We are the animals. 

We are the hunters of prey.

Carnivorous.

Cannibalistic.

Courageous.

We are the humans.

We are the weak.

Hunted.

Haunted.

Heartbroken.

A Summary of Recent Events

Bubble milk tea,

new technology,

and a side of teen debauchery.

A girl in an attic,

Monday isn’t the only day that’s manic,

trying not to panic.

Which words are worth a life?

A Marine and his new wife?

Overwhelming college strife?

Clutch in, off the brake,

This girl is far too weak to break,

decisions, too many to make.

I thought of you today and that beautiful thing you did.

Because

Because of you, you were my first.

Because of you, you were not the last.

-

Because of you my hands were warm.

Because of you they were mostly cold.

-

Because of you I sang love songs.

Because of you I still do.

-

Because of you I believe in unconditional love.

Because of you I cry watching The Notebook.

-

Because of you I smell your scent on your shirt.

Because of you the smell is gone.

-

Because of you I analyze.

Because of you I’m forced to lie.

-

Because of you I can’t stop talking.

Because of you we do not talk.

-

Because of me we have a tale.

Because of you it’s tragic.

An Oxymoron

Warm,

more like hot.

A comfortable sting.

A happy sadness.

An oxymoron.

Steam escapes as the first drop rolls

dampening the path

blazing the trail 

to the lips that once 

knew the back of your neck and

the words on your tongue.

Like wearing your t-shirt.

Bittersweet,

a longing complacency.

An oxymoron.