Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Overlyemotional


Overlyemotionalmelodramatic

Take the train
fly off the handle
I don’t care how you do it
Just get here
Now
Everything is so important
I’m telling you to fucking do it
Now
because the years make gaps
In my teeth
Spaces
Indelible
Marked with poison ivy
I have random heart palpitations
I’m not sure if any of this is fair
Pains in your chest
Go see a doctor
Life is too fragile
Seventeen
If I could do it over
I wouldn’t
It was perfect then
But now is a has-been
Have I ever tried to be less temperamental?
Have I ever rode the back
of a white horse
down to the court house
Perhaps in dreams I said, “Let them eat cake”
A real B-movie version of Marie Antoinette
But mostly I cried
Because every bump in the road
Was the apocalypse
Every chip in my nail
Was a chip in my shoulder
Every highway sign gave me
A panic attack which could later
Be traced to my time-of-death
I’m sure no coroner would even bother…

In the living room—
Yellow light shines
On cigarette stained walls
You click click click
With your thumb…
Joystick your way to
Beating a level
As I thumb my way to your heart
Click keys with the precision
Of a typist at an ad agency
But what I write is even
Less important
Days slide into each other
Gloomy or grey
At times I have contemplated
The inevitability of everything
The scenes I can unfold
Like origami and remember
Just how to fold it the same way
All over again
The scenes we play out
The roles I have memorized
And the lines like Hersey wrappers
Like gum wrappers with some girl’s
Name and phone number written on
Them in loopy cursive
We unfold and re-fold again
Three-fold is the rule
I’m not sure the religion
I have folded many holy things
On days other than Sundays
I am also very superstitious
But basically just a snot-nosed kid
Who gets overemotionalmelodramatic
When things don’t go my way.

I took a class on grammar and punctuation.
It reminded me about important issues
Such as the proper use of a semi-colon
And a dependant clause.
I still don’t know how to punctuate us
I’m not sure if it should be a comma
Or a conjunction…and….
Or maybe just an ellipses
You …
I wish sometimes that you were ugly
So I could make less shallow decisions
Your eyes paralyze me
You are my wet dream from when I was sixteen
And my regression at 25
And now I’m just trying to get tough:
Leather jacket, red nailpolish, drive-fast,
All night, smoker’s voice and the body of a
Stick-figure
But who was that girl in the graveyard
With the blue balloon
And is her voice fading to a
Hussshhhh
Whisper
When you were inside me
I was thinking about a center
Opening up
Not all the fake façade shit we
Pretend is important
No one cares if you owned 12 pairs
Of Nikes when you are dead.
I know my voice, a chalking hallow
Of a steel drum,
The perfect needle scratch against
Parchment
The thread that follows the needle
The blood which precedes
I need more than this language to get through to you
I need more than syllables and
question marks and
subjects and
predicates
I need more than Freudian memories
And fatalistic delusions
I need more than fear to light a match under me
A certain roar from the tongue of God
I need to drive far without remembering where I am going

Without the sense to turn-back around.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Unafraid


I don’t believe in 25

The magic happens at 16 and possibly 17

a quick flash from a  disposable camera and then it’s over

left-over Chinese food and spilt milk

this is what I will leave you with

when I leave your house

the crumbs on your fire-escape

a trail to nowhere in particular

 

If someone had warned me that I would wake up

And suddenly feel old before my time

In a car in the middle of the highway

Bumps and clanks me around

And I am so far from the womb I came from

So far from the shrill cries of teenage angst

And whatever it is you people do nowadays

 

Once I wondered if I’d grow up to be a brighter bulb

And platinum bombshell queen of the underground

I grew up scared

Instead

I was a tiny scratch on your record

A whisper in the trees

A voice so hoarse and soft

Only your flesh knows the words

Your mouth cannot fathom

 

I told her that she’d begin to grow up

Just like me

If she made all the right mistakes

The ones with boys in cars

And the ones where she picks up the wrong thing

Smokes something

Anything

I knew there’d come a time

Where she’d wake up with a buzz

In her ears

Electricity

It would  seem

But the flicker is gone

And the static remains

Adjusting the bunny-ears on an old television

Nothing makes sense

Everything would fall like white snow

On a black screen

One day she’d wake up—thirty

With bills to pay and an unclean kitchen

One day she’d learn to pray

Hard and fast

Wake up in a pant—

“God grant me the serenity…”

One day she’d wake up in a haze of

Soup cans and one word answers

But nothing can be explained

Or solved or fathomed with one word

 

I was always my mother’s daughter

Her skin- alabaster white

I’d always aim to please

Bend and twist to suit her needs

I’d lay flat on the floor if she needed to walk over me

 

Once I wrote the melodies

You play on repeat in your heart

An over-used music box that knows the song

Slightly off key and a little bit delayed

My mother is magic and too big to fit inside a poem

Or a hallmark card

She is black boots and eyeliner

She is brash and spectacular

She knows all the answers

And she is nothing like me

Scared and shy, pretending to be

Unafraid.