(no subject)
The first candle I bought is worn down.
I still light it for the smell, but its syrupy now.
And I don’t mind it at all. I know it’ll catch fire
before it burns the house down.
The first time I thought about traveling, about living somewhere else
I also thought about hair brushes and record players.
A few things one needs in a home:
cutlery, bookshelves, photographs, and yeah, maybe a bed.
But you could go on without it.
It would be the last thing I’d save from a fire.
Think about it, what does the poem want to be?
a song, a story, a painting, a line of prose?
I don’t know but I can relate,
the self is too confusing. It doesn’t sit still.
The first thing I lost was a hairclip.
Sure, before that, there were other things
but to actually lose something, to have it one moment,
and have it no where the next,
well it would have to be the pink hair clip I grew up with .
Who could imagine every persons “room of all things”?
The place that collects every item to disappear in one’s lifetime?
Earrings, books, socks, keys, hair, quarters.
Mine would be full of accessories and boyfriends.
The first time someone who wasn’t my mom yelled at me I will never forget it.
I cried, and cried and I did not fake it. There are still some things I hold sacred.
Only a parent should tell their child that he or she is not right,
That he or she is somehow wrong. But you know,
one does what one has to do I guess, what one has to do to survive, to get by.
Is it true that red is the only color?
It can be everything it is not at any given moment.
Red is endless. Red is the marsh on the way the beach.
I hope I never fall too hard in the mud.
Who could forget the imprint? The shape of your body that is always foreign
until it is laid out in some silent muddy stencil
I still don’t know what the point is.
I only know the facts:
I’m thirsty, twenty-three minutes ago I went to pee.
Anything more than that is uncertain, and changing.
We still don’t know what happens after death,
we still don’t know the meaning of these wild dreams we have.
What I am interested in is temporary
and personal. And I really don’t care if you read my poetry,
though it would be nice I guess: sunlight over an ocean,
crickets louder than a can in a trash truck, an individual drop of rain,
the word for it. How many ages until anyone has it figured out?
Does it even matter? Everyone’s idea
is still everyone’s idea.
And I still feel alone, and I still believe in a love that doesn’t end,
And I still believe in God. None of it means anything.
Until there is this moment. This swelling in my chest,
the way it is for someone who writes, when any word could make it on the page,
the surprise in that, the way it makes my heart beat fast.
It’s the unrest I feel when I’m hating winter, then hating spring,
hating Philly, then hating New York, then hating DC.
It’s all in looking for the poem, the beauty in it.
The deepest voice you have ever heard whispering down a hallway.
Checkerboard floors, every misplaced item from my lunchbox,
every combination I forgot.
My room is a hallway. It piles and piles.
It is rusty, and blond and full of milk cartons and straws
from where I can remember every face my brother has made,
my mother weightless on a boardwalk in the same way astronauts are.
I remember the breeze, the lingering heat, the cigarette left on the sand,
someone’s flip flop dying on the beach.
and, won’t you just call on me, baby?
I really cant stand to be alone.
I still light it for the smell, but its syrupy now.
And I don’t mind it at all. I know it’ll catch fire
before it burns the house down.
The first time I thought about traveling, about living somewhere else
I also thought about hair brushes and record players.
A few things one needs in a home:
cutlery, bookshelves, photographs, and yeah, maybe a bed.
But you could go on without it.
It would be the last thing I’d save from a fire.
Think about it, what does the poem want to be?
a song, a story, a painting, a line of prose?
I don’t know but I can relate,
the self is too confusing. It doesn’t sit still.
The first thing I lost was a hairclip.
Sure, before that, there were other things
but to actually lose something, to have it one moment,
and have it no where the next,
well it would have to be the pink hair clip I grew up with .
Who could imagine every persons “room of all things”?
The place that collects every item to disappear in one’s lifetime?
Earrings, books, socks, keys, hair, quarters.
Mine would be full of accessories and boyfriends.
The first time someone who wasn’t my mom yelled at me I will never forget it.
I cried, and cried and I did not fake it. There are still some things I hold sacred.
Only a parent should tell their child that he or she is not right,
That he or she is somehow wrong. But you know,
one does what one has to do I guess, what one has to do to survive, to get by.
Is it true that red is the only color?
It can be everything it is not at any given moment.
Red is endless. Red is the marsh on the way the beach.
I hope I never fall too hard in the mud.
Who could forget the imprint? The shape of your body that is always foreign
until it is laid out in some silent muddy stencil
I still don’t know what the point is.
I only know the facts:
I’m thirsty, twenty-three minutes ago I went to pee.
Anything more than that is uncertain, and changing.
We still don’t know what happens after death,
we still don’t know the meaning of these wild dreams we have.
What I am interested in is temporary
and personal. And I really don’t care if you read my poetry,
though it would be nice I guess: sunlight over an ocean,
crickets louder than a can in a trash truck, an individual drop of rain,
the word for it. How many ages until anyone has it figured out?
Does it even matter? Everyone’s idea
is still everyone’s idea.
And I still feel alone, and I still believe in a love that doesn’t end,
And I still believe in God. None of it means anything.
Until there is this moment. This swelling in my chest,
the way it is for someone who writes, when any word could make it on the page,
the surprise in that, the way it makes my heart beat fast.
It’s the unrest I feel when I’m hating winter, then hating spring,
hating Philly, then hating New York, then hating DC.
It’s all in looking for the poem, the beauty in it.
The deepest voice you have ever heard whispering down a hallway.
Checkerboard floors, every misplaced item from my lunchbox,
every combination I forgot.
My room is a hallway. It piles and piles.
It is rusty, and blond and full of milk cartons and straws
from where I can remember every face my brother has made,
my mother weightless on a boardwalk in the same way astronauts are.
I remember the breeze, the lingering heat, the cigarette left on the sand,
someone’s flip flop dying on the beach.
and, won’t you just call on me, baby?
I really cant stand to be alone.