A Little Poetry...

I used to write poems as a way to deal with challenges I faced in my life. Words poured out of me, phrases and snippets of a full thought, and I would sit for hours at the computer perfecting my emotions. As a result I have a ton of un-read poems collecting metaphorical dust in my computer. I think it might be time to air them out..

Most of these are about love and death, the least cliche topics ever... Through these poems I worked out a lot of issues I was having as a teenager and taught myself some valuable lessons. These words are still very powerful to me and ring true even now. I hope you see a glimmer of yourself in these verses...


Folded

You carried my heart in your back pocket,

A reminder before you began each day

Sweet words to be cherished forever

You folded it up and kept it close

Your gift to me was receiving mine

We found a new verse for every moment

And drowned ourselves in the words

Floating on a sea of expectations and false hopes,

We devoured time and made it empty

The years passed as the days passed

And slowly we lost our luster

You carried my heart in your back pocket

You folded it up and kept it close

It began to grow heavy with time

Soon the creases wore thin

We began to come loose

My heart fell to pieces

So where will you keep her heart?

Will you fold it up and tuck it away

Let its creases wear thin and watch it decompose

A reminder of what you could have done each day

Sweet words to be cherished for the moment

Or will your heart be the one to bend?

- February 2005
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Of Glass

I’m sliding, slowly sinking

Transparent and no one can see

Strong against the storm

Absorbing cold and warm

Rattle, the wind shakes me

Throw me up, force me down

Your shield, your source of light

Pull back the curtain where I hide

Stare through to the other side

Status symbol, out of sight

Pulling against the sides and top

Getting thicker at the base

Waiting for something to break the pane

Something to relieve the strain

Framed, sealed in place

Slowly, sudden strike and then

Fall to shards upon the floor

Piece me together but never intact

New way of seeing, distorted, cracked

Look through me no more

- Spring 2006

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Coffee

You are delicious

No, I’ve never had you on my tongue

But when I inhale your scent

I taste you; I soak in your ‘ness’

Your voice through the wire stirs something inside

A memory is expelled and you are in my mouth

You’re running down my throat and warming my chest

My cheeks glow red with your tea

Your touch is cinnamon on my skin; a sweet spice meets salt

But you smell like wonderful; like real, like the reason

Bottled, you’d be called ‘Come Home’

I swallow and suck at you on my lips until it’s gone

My pallet is cleansed until my thoughts escape me again

Or until I can truly inhale your scent

Taste you; soak in your ‘ness’

No, I’ve never had you on my tongue

But you smell like wonderful; like real

The reason

You are delicious

- Spring 2006

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Light Blue Scrap

This is the sweater

This is the sweater you said you loved

Because it brought out my

Eyes

The light blue sweater that fit my ever-growing form perfectly

You said you liked the color

And I knew

I knew you wanted me to make you happy

I wore that sweater when I wanted you to look

And you looked

I got what I wanted and you got yours

And now as the fabric rips I remember how tight this sweater fit

This sweater you said you loved

But it wasn’t my eyes you were looking at

And I know

- August 2005

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In My Grandmother’s Gloves

I hid her carton of Virginia Slims in the antique chest

When I was a child

It wasn’t there yesterday

They cleaned out old scarves and hats

And I swiped a pair of off-white gloves

Moth-eaten and singed between the pointer and middle

She’d wear them on the back porch, hiding

They still smell like her

And as I exhale new life upon them

Long, slender, white and mine

I hide them away

So my mother will never know and

I’ll smell like her

One day my grandchild will take them for herself

And the promise will never be kept

- February 6, 2007

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2012

A lifetime of family, worship and labor

To spend eternity in a brown cardboard box

Raised high in honor on a shelf along side

Hundreds of ancestors

Bones ceremoniously rested on styrofoam blocks

Undisturbed

Offerings to the Gods carefully placed in sterile containers

Pulled from the ground to be glorified by strangers

Mapping out a history that’s not theirs

Passage to the next world

Detoured

Layers of tradition peeled back and placed horizontally

Thousands of years of joy and pain categorized

The afterlife displayed

Appreciated at a price

Items made invaluable with time live out their sentence

In limbo

With secrets exposed for no purpose other than

To preserve what always was

Living, breathing texts survive

Past existing in the present

The mystery solved but the search continues

Civilizations scattered across the globe

Under glass

Predictions of the end printed on a postcard

Mass-produced replicas of patience and skill

Deserted cities silent with the voices of educated ignorance

- 2007(?)

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Seconds

And I cry because there really isn’t anything else I can do

Search through the photo albums a thousand times

Try to read the faces and place them in your history

But nothing can convey the person you were like your own voice and

Second-hand stories can only take me so far

It could have been different

I had the time to ask the questions

To pick up a phone and have that conversation

To let you tell it like it was

But in my mind there was always another day, another year, another chance

But like you said, we’re only here for a minute

With no time to spare you told me

And you said just because you had it didn’t mean it would have you

Maybe it was just the end of one minute

And the beginning of another

But when the second hand reached the top it wasn’t the cause

I’d like to believe it was just your time

It was your time

And I can only hope that your next minute is spent in good company

- 2006 (?)

--------------------------------------

Roll Me

Roll me

Press up against my back and stick like glue

Keep my spine straight and move me forward

Lift my hands, my voice, my eyes

Balance me out and raise me higher

Float me over the mess and bring me down

Dancing as you swing my limbs

Loosen my hinges but keep me tight

My neck collapses with my eye lids

You hold my chin as I roll

Shove me in and heave me out

Grip my tired hands and force them up

Rock my hips spontaneous

Roll me

Feel the weight of my body and fill me with air

Turn me sideways and bend my vision

Wrap yourself in me and strut

Take me off, put me on

Carry me left, right and center

Twist my breath into fragments and wait

Watch me sway and linger, drop and crawl

Guide me back to neutral and roll me out

Roll my shoulders past my knees

Roll my smile to the small of my back

Flatten and inflate

Coax me to my feet and stay

And just above my shoulder hide

Until I roll away

- (???)

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There are many more but I think I've shared enough for you to get the hint; I'm f-ing crazy. At least I was, but thank god I worked out all this crap on my own. Saved my parents a lot of money on therapy!

#15- 7 Years Bad Luck

Today, January 13th 2012, is my seven-year anniversary... of being single. WAIT! I know what you're thinking, but this is not going to be a "take pity on me" sort of thing. It's not even going to be self-pitying, because I don't pity myself. I'm good. I just have some thoughts on the subject...

Seven years ago today, my ex-boyfriend and I broke up. I know I should have forgotten the exact date years ago, but my brain won't let me. I remember lots of weird stuff; I still remember my preschool boyfriend's name! (That's so me by the way; boyfriend at 4, single at 24. Funny how these things work).

Anyway, those seven years have been filled with all sorts of adventures in love and dating; unrequited crushes, drunken hook-ups, flings, awful first dates, amazing fifth dates, guys who disappear after the fifth date....What? Did I break a mirror in 2005? Because it's certainly been seven years of bad luck (ba-dum-ching). Oh so many failures, on my part and on the part of guys who missed out on a great thing. I mean, I think I'm a pretty okay person. I'm mildly attractive, fairly smart, funnier than most, creative... The list goes on. I get it; I rock. I just don't understand why guys don't get it. But maybe it's this, exactly what I'm doing right now...

I am so aware of my singleness.

All day, every day, in the back of my mind there is this little voice that's saying, "But you're single..." Ugh. What the hell is that? How can I get that voice to shut up? It's like everything I do somehow has to do with the fact that I am alone and that needs to change. And I know that I'm only (almost) 25 and I know I have SO much time, but the stupid voice doesn't accept that. It's like, "Alone now, alone forever!" Grrrrrrrrrrrr...

It doesn't help that right now I find myself single and all of the people closest to me have a significant other. Literally everyone. It's kind of incredible. But this happened to me before, during my junior year of college; my six suite-mates had boyfriends and I was the unlucky 13th wheel on the bus-o-love. I've gotten really good at talking to other girl's boyfriends in a way that is friendly but not too friendly, so that the guy feels comfortable around me but not so much that the girl feels like I'm a threat. Yeah, it's a skill, a survival tool even.

And I have heard all the advice, every cliche thing mothers and friends say to the single girl, like "No one will love you unless you love yourself," or "When you least expect it..." BLAH BLAH BLAH. Don't you think that after seven years I have kind of stopped expecting it? I expect nothing. I expect to meet someone the day monkeys come flying out of Wayne Campbell's butt, and he doesn't even exist...

So what do I do? Nothing I suppose, just keep trucking. I do think it's fitting that my seventh year of bad luck comes to a close on Friday the 13th, the unluckiest of days. Maybe all of that bad luck in love will cancel itself out, and tomorrow I will wake up next to Heath Ledger, alive and well, ready to devote his life to me... Or maybe I'll just wake up, and I will get out of bed, and I will venture out into the world on my own once again. Either way, I'm good, because after seven years I know that on my own, I do pretty well for myself.

Happy anniversary Maggie. I love you, and I always will.