Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Summer Loving

That summer: I was seven, he was nine.
he had auburn ringlets and sunkissed cheeks,
He was rough and tumble, dirty, and mine.
We loved enough for a lifetime, in just weeks.

We skipped stones in the river at sunset,
we danced barefoot in the street after dawn,
We held hands under a mosquito net
and dreamed of together in his back lawn.

He walked to my house all alone at night;
he broke my window with a bat and ball;
he didn't understand his wrong from right,
but given the chance i would relive it all.

We weren't yet ready but where passionate
He was the only love, i don't regret.



***that's right, i try sonnets for fun.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

thunder and lightning

She taps her nails on the cedar wood of a table that would be ideal in a dinning room if she had that much space.
It thunders.
She takes a drag off a Camel Blue, even though she promised her six year old she wouldn't smoke inside.
It lightnings.

He rises his right knee, calf, ankle, foot on the pedal of a mountain bike struggling through the storm on a sidewalk.
It thunders.
He slides, he falls, no one is there to hear him scream.
It lightnings.

She climbs into bed between her parents, and her innocence replaces the stench of adult talk that separated them before.
It thunders.
No one wonders if the bills will be paid anymore tonight. Her daddy holds them both.
It lightnings.

She puts her her ballet flats.The ones that make her bleed.
It thunders.
She takes them off, and goes outside in the soft grass. it's cold and wet, but she can't ever remember feeling as much as she does now. She whispers "this is ballet"

And somewhere the sun is shinning.

Tracy

She had dreams, you know. Like, big ones. Ponies for her tenth birthday, a car for her sixteenth, and a prince with an accent eventually. it is too bad things ended up the way they did.
He had dreams too. Crazy ones. He was ganna run away at ten, be an actor at sixteen, and clean up and settle down as a prince one day. Same goes for him; it really is too bad.
She works at a fast food joint now. Her long cedar brown hair can be seen only as far down as seven weeks without a root touch up on the trashy blonde allows. Her hair is thinning, like it shouldn't be at twenty-nine, and those drugs she cant afford, they are keeping her teeth pretty fragile too. She wanted a convertible, and she gets to drive the '96 mercury three days a week now to her part-time, minimum wage job. If she's lucky, and feeling wealthy, she can sneak in a stop at her dealers where she's reverted to paying for her addiction with flesh and favors.
He isn't any better. He works at a gas station, four days a week. They make him park that mercury in the back. His freckles look like a disease, his blue eyes are empty and blood shot. We all used to be into his smile, but it's better if he keeps his mouth shut these days. He smells like they shut his water off (cause they did) and like he boozes it up in the back room, (Cause he does). He'll get fired eventually, by a nineteen year old manager or something, and the girls paying for gas at the counter when he walks out with that nasty polo slung over his scrawny shoulders, they'll giggle.
And when he gets home, the neighbors will suspect he's hitting her. They won't call anyone or anything though, it isn't there place and it would put them out even further then listening to it would. Sometimes we think the sadist in 'em likes it anyways, they feel like she deserves it or something; maybe she does. last week someone said not to worry about her crying and what not, cause it wasn't like we'd notice if he knocked out another tooth. Then one of 'em will drive away in that car and the other will just sit outside and chain smoke. We wonder if they go back inside at all, cause they are there when we get kissed goodnight and there when we drive by in our 4X4s on the way to church. We judge 'em in our hearts, with the gospel on our lips.
We were watchin' her out there on the porch this monin, and something different happened though. Mom turned her head, smiled, and told us - "I think her name is Tracy, or maybe Terry, but i think it's Tracy."

Tracy huh? We'd always just called her Trash.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

beloved Dreams

 I hear it is romantic to dream of a beloved.
So label me with an adjective, because I can’t sleep without thinking of you. I can’t eat anything without wondering how much better equipped for you I would be if I were sixty pounds skinnier. I can’t hear a song on the radio without wondering if someday it could make you think of an us that could someday exist. I never get out of bed until I’ve checked to see if I’ve heard from you. I never run without thinking that if I manage to accelerate I could build up enough stamina to get beside you. I never hold hands with other boys because they just don’t fit the same way. I never say your name in populated conversation because that just riles up the butterflies inside me. I always turn away to refrain from the blushing and smiling when someone else brings you up. I instantly think of you when someone mentions a “plus one” or a “date”.
But don’t dare think this is about you,
And don’t dare fell too loved; because I never, ever, dream about you.
                                                                                                                This is way too conscious for that. 

Monday, April 11, 2011

Yellow Lines on Poetry.

Listening to poetry,
is listening to beauty.
It is watching someone steal
watching words trot and stretch about
hearing words make sounds,
hearing the laughter from the sound of a sob.
I see somber smiles
see thoughts i never finished thinking dance.
heartbeats and life in rhythm
noting the sound of fact and fiction
and their discrepancies.
I watch reaction,
watch people move each other,
and people become a temple-
devoted to the worship of art.
I am reaching down and picking up the double-meaning
spit by the mouth's of thieves.
If it were up to me,
I'd make them take a test on road rules,
before they gain poetic license.

Love the Distance

Your chest smells like distance,
your hair curls like disagreement,
and still-
I want you closer than a human body allows.

Each time you exhale here
My face presses into your shoulder;
and i understand suddenly
why this is called and embrace.

And maybe it's your heartbeat,
but i can feel you're so worried about,
you're so jazzed about,
so ready to take on-
the topics i only touch-slide by,
when i am looking for the weather on my phone.

you want to take on the world,
and boy;
i just want to take on you.

I want to put you on like a blanket
and wear you like armor.
I want to become so familiar with your smell,
that i can't tell it from my own.
I want to put you on as my best friend
and wear you as my boyfriend.

We could run away together,
or we could just stop for coffee.
We could ride, run, love,
we could teach each other.

Boy i will teach you to hold on
and you can teach me to let go.

You may try and teach me all your theories,
and they can dance above my head.
And in return i'll trey and tell you
how much i love you-
because that's a concept,
that proves equally difficult for me to grasp.

You will smile like sunrise,
when i compare you to a summer's day.
and then the butterflies in my stomach,
will take off again.
You can hush them up for me,
with carbs and caffeine
and in eating, breathing, and living there with you,
i'll be comfortable in the most exciting way.

I'll learn to love and leave it all,
and it will all end do simultaneously.

I'll watch you spin out onto the street-
waving goodbye, for the next however-long.
and i'll smile to the sunrise-
because your passenger's seat smells like me,
but it's become so engraved
that you don't even notice.

Kitchen Princess.

Once upon a time, in a land nothing like the ones in fairy tales, there was a kitchen cook. She was no princess, she was not wealthy, and there was nothing that made her particularly likable. What she lacked in paper and status she made up for in lies and ridicule.She was no boss, she was no authority; she was just growing old, and growing bitter. 
And in that kitchen where she worked, there were many younger women. Younger women with dreams deeper than the biggest soup pots they'd seen and broader than the longest sheet pans. A nurse, a teacher, a lawyer, anything. 
The woman was not nice to these girls. she ridiculed their aspirations, and belittled their desires. Perhaps it was envy, perhaps she wanted them to be weary of what reality can feel like, and perhaps that kitchen cook just needed them. She swore at her girls, she called them names, she critiqued their work and she wrote complaints. She threatened to leave them, swore she'd find better. 
Truth is, she's teaching these girls that they're just as far from a palace as she always has been. And those girls, are working hard as they can to get on the long road out.