Tinnitus

When you opened your mouth,
speaking just above the sound
of the fountain crashing in the background.

It was loud.
Too loud to speak,
but not loud enough
to cover up the sound
of you not wanting me

Not loud enough to cover
the heat in my cheeks,
My public rejection,
My public solitude.

It was only just loud enough
to leave the ringing in my ears
For years and years
and years.

Print Temps

I have been many times in love.
but never quite like this.
Where falling for the world feels like falling for myself,
and I thought I loved me then...
When suddenly every beautiful thing feels close enough to touch...
like spring is happening inside my chest-
the creaking of my skin, bones
flesh- expanding- let more in!

Oh world, I can not hold you close enough
so let me stamp out little red lines across your heart,
and they spell out
I
  AM
        HERE

But though I left to prove that
once
I existed.

What I found was
My own footprints fade and blend with countless others.
No,
I will never change your face
with my feeble footprints
but you never needed to change,
it was me
all along-
My substance has shifted for knowing you better!
Surviving your misery,

like winter waits for spring,

gives me new life.
New strength
One that waits frozen
for the sun.

The brave crocuses who poke first, through the frosty fields
and die
brave soldiers, pioneers,
martyring themselves
for the rhododendrons and daffodils
who will follow in their footsteps.

My Brain Feels like Scambled Eggs

You

send hot and cold shivers

down my spine. 

My heart pounds,

My head swims,

My palms sweat.

You 

make me want to stay in bed all day.

You change the way I dream 

and make me slightly nauseous

You 

make me sneeze a lot

And I can't stop coughing,

so I'm taking lots of vitamin C

The flu is the worst.

Emily

Emily doesn't like poems that rhyme
which is good.
Because I have to write poems,
and only she reads them.
and magicing words
out of the air
is simpler when I don't have to stop
and... [air... bear? bare, fair.]

Why would I talk about those things?

I would rather write straight out of my fingertips
and off the top of my head
and then say, quietly,
"Emily, I wrote a poem.
It's not very good, but it doesn't rhyme".

A New Year

I’m listening to The Wailin’ Jennys and it makes me miss my hometown.

No one in their right mind should ever miss North San Juan. 

It was a no-horse-town, covered in a powdery layer of red dust. Its citizens all hippies, cultists, or methheads. Most of my friends were hippies. 

We were cultists. 

There was a lady who worked at the gas station who only had two teeth, and she always gave the biggest ice-cream scoops. 

Because the gas station was also the ice-cream shop. 

And the Yuba river, which accidentally wandered into this little town by no fault of its own, was always that same clear crisp green-blue, no matter how many dirty diapers floated away down stream.

On Saturday nights, the kind of summer nights when the sun didn’t set until midnight, we would sit in folding chairs in that wild jungle garden and listen to “A Prairie Home Companion” on a battery operated radio. Swiveling the antenna until the crackling stopped. 

The invention of poetry

I never liked poetry.

Frustrated
by rules
and precision.
Tired of sitting
and thinking
what rhymes with my last line...
am I coupletting correctly?

Who made these rules?

Not poets.

We, The Normal People,
so in awe of your word magic.
We dissect.
We count syllabus.
Trying to find the science behind the trick,
the slight in the hand.

I never liked poetry.

Until I read some
and wrote some
and realized:
I am not a scientist.
I am not the normal people.
I do not dissect.

I make the rules.

So go ahead
Count my syllables.
Measure my voice.
Analyze my worth.
Someday, you will imitate my structure.
I invented poetry.

Saint Edna spoke to me,
carved her words into my skin,
Like lined paper,
always where they were meant to be.

She sang about the wide open spaces.
About the girl who sang colored pebbles.
About fog so thick, it swirls as you move through it.
About loving someone so much it breaks your heart to look at them,
and about the loneliness that comes from walls like ours.

I read books about childhood and adventure,
books that had plot and point,
and then I read about a little girl
who lived in a house,
on a street named after fruit,
about how aweful it is to be young.
How beautiful and horrid life is.
And she was like me, a red balloon.
She sang in my key.

Sarah writes about food and love.
About messes and remembering.
about sisters and forgetting.

These are my saints.

Edna sang about sadness.
Sandra sang about sadness.
Sarah sang about food and sadness.
And I harmonized,
with my snap crackle voice.
It's broken notes and misplaced vibratos
Sobbing songs that we feel in the hollows of our chest,
like chocolate bunny hearts, that shatter when you press your thumbs in.
That same hollow breaking
mutilates the form and figure
and anyone lucky enough to not know
will look at it and ask,
what is this supposed to be?

Blue Ukelele

If you are going to be this
radiantly--
gloriously
beautiful
could you please do it somewhere else?

I have spent years cultivating this brain,
with books, education and careful synaptic pruning,
then you walk in
with that smile,
and it is all reduced
to a twitching,
soupy,
electric
puddle.

The thrill of just a few moments
-not even with-
simply near
you

and I am undone.
A school girls blush
is so unbecoming
on a full grown woman.

And
there is the slow decent,
in your absence,
back to sanity,
rationality.

But still,
there is a constant craving.
You are a vixen,
and it is cruel of you to exist
if your simply going to leave.

January's Peaches

There are moments that bruise.

Like rotten splotches on pink fruit;
all firm,
Interrupted by brown squish
thumbprints.

And you
survive, ripen, evolve.
But sometimes you run your hands
over sore spots
and feel that tender sting;
the embarrassment-adrenaline of people you have been.

In moments of quiet security,
you remember
her,
the she who you were
and hold her close.
Soothing bruises,
washing wounds.

Clucking, "You're okay."

Goodnight Finals

Hello wind
Grey sky
Sweet-nearly summer,
Not-quite-storm

Hello trees
Swaying in the tempest
paper thin leaves
fluttering like friday

Hello paper.
Due in 3 hours
not half written.
Fly away in the wind.

Goodbye career,
goodby grades,
Goodbye...

I'm going to take a nap
and plan a theoretical pinterest wedding
and sit,
sipping tea by the windy window.

I have readers block,
And I couldn't possibly
elaboratively process
one more
potential essay question

Who needs success anyway?
I can be happy
In all things:
Flipping burgers,
waiting tables,
filing papers.

You say "B.A."
But I say Bah!

Doctor

I tried to get my blood to flow for you
but alas,
it was all in vein.

It's not fancy, but its true

Sometimes
I look back
and blush
at the pages
and pages
I've filled
with poetry for you.

But sometimes
a body comes along
and all you can do
is write them poetry.

Mixed Tapes

Today, I heard a song that you gave me;

The soundtrack of falling for you

And those songs still exist.

But...

I remember lying on my bedroom floor

Blue piles digging into my skin,

And with every song I was sold.

But...

I miss you,
like I always missed you

When you weren’t around

But being together
was never quite what missing you was

Always trading stories.

Always waiting our turn to talk,

Our turn to prove how smart we were.

I’ll never stop missing you

And I’m so grateful.

Missing you makes me better

And while we were together,

I missed missing you.

It’s all broken now.

And maybe I like that better.

I crave the sadness

I crave the loss

And the songs still exist,

But they play in a different order
And they don’t play for me.

Alice, Escaped.

She is so refined and delicate.
You could pour her whole soul
into a thimble
and not spill a single drop.

But not me.
I will yell
and flail my arms
and roll on the floor,
laughing, unladylike,
too loud,
at my own joke.

I will stamp my feet
and cry
mouth open, eyes shut
gushing.

They say
in whispers,
into their tiny, frail hands-
"Shrink, shrink, shrink."
Till there's nothing left.
"Disappear. Less."
"Less."
"Less."

But not me.
I will be Bigger.
I will fill the space I'm in,
and push my shoulders back
break the roof,
shingles shattering,
and roll blissfully
in the sunshine.

I will fill multitudes.

And when I die, they will say,
"It's quieter now."
But somewhere, a frail women
sitting at her window,
will see my rib cage, skeleton,
and stand up
and smash the glass.

Boat

I would trade you my boat for a life jacket.
A life jacket.
A life jacket.
I would trade you my boat for a life jacket.

This boat on the sea.
The boat with a hole.
A hole so the water rushes in.
Water rushes in from the sea.

A boat
on the sea
with a hole
where the water bubbles in.

I would trade you this boat,
This boat with the hole
I would trade you this boat,
and the hole
and the sea

Trade you this boat for a life jacket.

Hot Pocket Lips

His lips, 
like two Hot Pockets® 
on the plate of his face.

Hot, cheesy, convenient goodness

But he is empty calories;
Distilled monoglycerides, corn syrup solids
Imitation, artificial. Over processed, barely edible. 

He'll give you heart burn.