every time I sit down to write
the words come out angry and sad
like all the poison in my heart and my head
is leaking out of my fingertips
staining everything it touches
and I feel like nothing will be clean again
poetry
the things that we carry
I’ve been lugging around a ton of rocks.
The boulders settle solidly in my stomach and my heart,
the smaller stones weigh down my cheeks
making it impossible to smile,
and pebbles grind together under my eyes,
blocking tears that are desperate to fall;
How do I keep living
with all this wretched weight?
All I can think to do
is tear myself apart
digging with cracked fingernails
through muscle and organs and sinew
until the last offensive chip of stone
lies in a bloody puddle on the floor
and I am wholly bared, naked and free.
Joni Mitchell was right
I wanted to write something nice about Christmas
but this year was stranger and sadder than any I can remember
and despite bright decorations and cheery holiday music
it just doesn’t feel merry at all
and I wish I had a river, too
to skate far, far away on,
to try and find some of that peace and joy all the songs speak of
so perhaps next year
will be brighter.
the politics of 2020
tighten your purse strings again and again
pull those velvet cords until they bruise the necks of those beneath you
choking the life out of your unwanted poor
and then find yourself standing atop a mountain of blood money
with no one left to pour your seven dollar iced coffee.
now I lay me down to sleep
we are all so tired
the collective exhaustion of the world
peeks through my windows every single day
wheedling its way into my body
and settling itself in my eyes and mind
we are all so tired
it’s impossible to shake, this indominable fatigue,
because we know there is a better way
we are sure it is possible to live life
without so many unnecessary struggles
we are all so tired
and even though I have faith-
in people, in the world, in the universe,
in my absolute certainty that, one day, things will be better-
there are many days I want to lay myself down
and let the morning glories in the yard overtake me,
so that my body becomes one with the earth
and my mind can finally rest.
what do you know?
sometimes you think you know something
anything
a little
a lot
everything
more than you did yesterday
in the end,
even if you did nothing but learn,
you know very little,
almost nothing at all
and that
is just fine.
waking up
it has been easy to be lost, lately
to slip in and out of days in a haze
running on autopilot
breathing, speaking, eating, being,
while thinking and feeling nothing at all
but now, for the first time in years,
I see the sunlight
and want to bask in it.
elusion
i am not a person who cries
i watch ten hours of tv in two days
read three different series of books
write forty poems
play the same videogame for four weeks straight
i am not a person who cries
but this is a thing i can’t avoid
and the tears come at odd moments
at the sink getting water
walking to the bathroom
picking a sock up off the floor
i am not a person who cries
but nothing else is enough
to escape this
heartache
i am made of glass
and my fragile heart has shattered all over the floor
if i bend down to pick up the shards
more of me will break
and soon
i will be nothing but pieces
A little bit of shine
Sometimes I am a riot of color
and other days a mottled grayscale
with dashes of slate blue
But most often I settle between the two
a melange of unsaturated colors dotted with radiant hues
the weight of my fears and sorrows
fading beneath shimmering pockets of joy
