Category: my favorites

4/04: error: page not found

i was reborn, like a phoenix
but without all the glory.
i didn’t set the hospital on fire; i struggled
to pull myself from the ashes
of a former prodigy,
one entwined with madness
in all the right ways
laced with misery like a noir heroine,
so sexily depressing-
whereas now i am just empty

i did not emerge unscathed, no,
not like the fledgling, i
am covered in scars and faultlines from where
the sorrow tried rip itself
from my sorry body
and the crimson glue holding me together
replenishes itself more diluted each time

before i died
i swung through technicolor
episodes of scarlet, rose,
ecstatic white, and the
sapphire blue to haunt my dreams
waking and at night
but the color leached away,
the antiseptic began to pervade, refilled my veins
and purged me of everything but grey.

before my death,
i reigned over the darkness, banished it
when it did not suit me,
manipulated reason, lived in a waking dreamland,
in complete control of my life-
but now, when i am fragile as eggshell,
it’s the only place i can hide,
a haven where i can act like the lack of light
masks an imagined vivacity and not a skeleton in flat black and white,
disguises and emboldens me,
allows me to be whole again,
to forget the borders, my limitations
indiscernable in dusk

i used to cast my own light-
now i am my own shadow
and in the dark i fumble for
what i used to be,
reconnect myself with the world
throw myself from the cliff
and hope to find my wings again

–

written w10oct2012.

the 4th april 2012 marks the day i first was hospitalized- the day the doctors realized there was something critical missing from my psyche. 4/04: error: page not found.

i’m not embarrassed to admit this. everyone has issues, especially during the teenage years.

–

brain freeze

he was nearly twentynine and he still hadn’t figured himself out,
still dedicated nights to the process of tearing up his moral ground,
laying his foundation, caught up in vacillation
between acts of possible valor- the ones to turn his life around.

he knew he would know somehow when he finally got it right
he was looking for that one sign-
the one they talk about in movies and
all the books which leave you shattered at the end,
the ones no one else has read
but those who do
swear upon like they’ve never heard of the bible,
try to imitate the main character,
stumble into chaos and think they’ll end up all right,
like in the movies-
a lucky plot twist and they’ll own the night.

he wandered aimlessly,
up until the sun came out and the vampires went to sleep,
accompanied by cigarettes and the sound of his own head,
burned dirt and the cold of the city,
until the time of night where his words stalled
brain froze
and the space in his head became suddenly visceral,
paralyzed by feeling until his tongue and the roof of his mouth
sought each other out, pressed in a warm embrace
until the pain went away
until he closed up the wound behind his eyes
forgot the torment of seeing
until the night tore him open again.

–

written t9oct2012.

wrote this in ten, fifteen minutes during broke starving writer’s club back when i was in university.

you know, the best way to cure a brain freeze is to press your tongue against the roof of your mouth to warm it up.

of glorious plumage

i. descend

i’ve lost weight since we last met
we fit differently from before-
bird-thin, the both of us-
but this hollow in your feathered chest is
still where i feel most at home-
your jade eyes
a nest, to cultivate my happiness

i’ve been betrothed to the birds
you stayed back, earthbound
i fell, a cataract, from the red cliffs
you watched me sink, earthbound
i was ripped to shreds in the tundra
freezing and thirsty
and you listened instead to the flowers,
drowning me out as i whispered for help

they told you sunlight stories
when i was trapped in dusk
i was an inch from the edge of night
and you fled
so as to not be consumed.

 
ii. unpend

i know what i told myself-
i said i shed my mourning veil-
but i still weep for the morning lark,
your lightening song
haunting my brittle nightingale

i write you letters every night
with a fountain pen slathered in red ink
saying what i never could,
spilling my regret on the page

(wake up with bloody hands)

i should have known
you were no one to trust
you’re just a fledgling

we’re all so naïve.

 
iii. the end

i take flight, for brave is the man
who would leap from the bluff
to prove his worth;
for i can take action now-
i can say this now,
where before i sat on the sidelines

i will not wilt
in your arms
just for a moment
i will hold you tight
my prisoner

thank you for keeping me alive
i don’t need that anymore
thank you for staying by my side
when i had eyes set to kill

thank you for helping me to ascertain
that i’m no phoenix
thank you for participating in
my stupid guessing games

you were the match
to ignite my nicotine habits
but now i’m the one who’s
decided to spark and fade

green-eyes,
i’ve made a decision
and this time i’ll stick with it-
featherlight now,
i will make my escape

–

written t15may2012.

i love this one so much. and judging from the number of favorites it’s gotten on other sites, so do my fans.

–

shallow breaths

the sun comes down a little earlier around here
a hemisphere away and winter’s setting in
but i stopped feeling the cold
a while ago

it used to sting, stickily fresh
but now the wound’s healing
knitting together with paralyzing heat

with suffocating heat
just let me breathe

just
let me

i unzippered my chest the other day
let out the butterflies behind my ribcage
spilled sparrowsong from my wrists
good god, i’m finally free

you guys
are all
just
shallow believers

you guys are all
just

–

written m2apr2012.

another favorite of mine and my fans.

i like writing stuff about dying.

–

dosciertos

one.

i sound like a violinist-
look at me, just look at me-
i’m anything but pleasing
but even unwilling,
you’re the closest thing i have
to an audience.

forgive me
for spilling my guts,
i’m making such a mess.
we can go home and in the morning
none of this will have happened.

let’s take our mistakes
and pack them neatly away,
put in little boxes
in the back of our minds.
take the string
from your finger
and forget it all.

two.

i wish i could set fire
to the things that have been plaguing me
but metal doesn’t burn,
and neither do memories.

–

written f16mar2012.

i and a lot of other people are really fond of this one.

–

beale street

the night beckons just beyond the door, sending in tendrils of crisp air every time another reveler joins the masses packed into the club, but those by the door barely notice. our collective body heat keeps us warm, and the group i’m with is convinced it’s summer. up north it’s below zero; here we wear shorts and tank tops while the natives, sweatered, stare.

the evening is just starting. though it’s a thursday, barely-adults teem in the streets outside, perfumed in alcohol and smoke, faces adorned with masks of neon light. the streetlights add to the scene, bathing the night in bright colors, bringing out the inner children they’ve barely abandoned as they whoop a drunken war cry. the spirit of celebration is strong, and though there’s nothing specifically worthwhile to cheer about, their enthusiasm is contagious. right now i’m beginning the most influential journey of my young life, surrounded by my friends; and we care naught about what’s waiting for us at home, care about naught but the music pulsing around us.

i’m running on sensory overload, surrounded by sweat and salt and something else, something unnameable. it smells like… teen spirit, i whisper to myself, and immediately bite back my tongue for laughing at the reference. five days, i had promised. five days to simply live through and not bother to think of anything else, and here i am on the first of them, laughing at a joke that belonged two decades back, back with grunge- reality, and actual emotion instead of synthesizers for hearts, instead of metallic replies and lovers who taste like circuit boards, who run on batteries and die when their cell phones do.

this isn’t what we’re used to, tinny and filtered through cheap speakers, butchered by electronics until the soul is gone. this is beale street, this is jazz. the man on the stage has a heart, and you can hear it spilling through into his words, raw yet sonorous. it’s the perfect mix of strain and skill, of capacity and of yearning. it reaches deep into me until it finds that small, scared muscle fluttering in my ribcage and squeezes until i cry out- perfectly in tune with the music, because first and foremost i am an artist; even instinctually i prefer aesthetics to ease, and my body will wrench itself to hit the right note instead of simply letting go. distraught, i clench my teeth. i taste pain, and my vision blurs, turning the club into swirls of eclectic greens and blues.

the boy next to me is a smudge of red, an impressionist’s last-minute decision to add to the canvas. he’s holding a video camera as a favor to a friend who wanted equally to film and to participate- she’s dancing below as the two of us sit, detached, in the balcony. i said i was here to keep him company as he distanced himself through the screen, but we both know that i said it as an excuse to keep from dancing. i wipe my ego clean with a finger under my eyes and try to blink the rest of it away. he sits oblivious next to me.

when we were told memphis, we imagined something more. we didn’t think we’d be going to a club you could find in minneapolis, we said. the back of my throat is bitter with regret, sour and metallic like a bit tongue- i know now how wrong we were. i wish i could take the words back from where they hung in the air, a plaque displaying my accomplishments in regret. i immediately hate myself for thinking it, because it’s so clichéd, but if i knew then what i knew now-

the north had never seemed so cold to me, not when i knew nothing else. the cities were ripe with young artists, children who had never learned to fear, and their joyous cries lit up the weekend streets, but never had i heard anything this heartrending. never had i felt so much emotion. up north, we didn’t share ourselves like this. we bluffed our way out of showing our souls. we were sheep in wolves’ clothing, pretending to be better than we were, pretending we weren’t human.

there are no cold shoulders here. there is no steel besides that which is being played on, and we are not wintry. we’re as honest as we will ever be, sitting lonely, lotuslike, bobbing on the tide of sound as it washes over us.

–

written f17feb2012.

for creative writing- we had to write a descriptive vignette about somewhere we’d been, or somewhere we found interesting- so, of course, i wrote about the best night of my then-recent life: a night at a jazz club during my school orchestra’s trip to memphis and new orleans.

i still consider live music one of the best experiences i can find.

–

the bomb drops: rewind

and i don’t want this wasteland
but i’d rather here than home alone

 
this isn’t who i want to be
but i’ll take what i can get
if it means i’m with you

 
i knew my moods were caustic
but i never thought it would come to this
everyone else dissolved to bits
and you in your bulletproof humor
curled up with me like nothing’s changed

 
we slept for days
and when we woke up everyone else had passed on

 
we nestled under the maple in my front yard
i played our song and
 

–

written s8jan2012.

small me had this to say about this poem:

“chronologically backwards. read it from the last stanza to the first now.

i like how it ended on and. it felt like it ended in the silent moment right before everything blows up.

which, for me, should be soon. i feel a bit like a rubber band right now. exciting!”

inspired by a line from alkaline trio’s “i remember a rooftop” https://youtu.be/BHSxM9QbQIs

i was imagining a cute little hazy post-apocalyptic romance.

i suggest pairing this with dillinger four’s civil war https://youtu.be/b7cWq0G-ADQ

–

are too

and i’m not afraid to fight
and i’m not afraid to die
and i
am
not
afraid.

[actually, i am not
much of anything right now]

 
and i.
 

there are days when i find it
immeasurably
desirable
to just rip my organs out-

-just rip them
right fucking out,
i never knew nails could dig through flesh like
that until she did it-

-blood spattering all over that painting i
just finished, dear what a waste i was
going to get an A on that.

maybe i still could.
 

there’s a hollow right behind my heart
that i can’t feel until you leave
i feel
incomplete without you,
i think
that’s what love is
but i don’t
can’t
love you
because if i did
i’d feel too guilty when i hurt you
and believe me darling i can hurt you.

 
[ icanhurtyou ]

 
there’s the kind of girl you don’t want to love
because she doesn’t care
[about you]
at all and that is me.

there’s that girl.
sitting on the rooftops
like she
gives a
damn
about her image
she’s not vain she’s just conflicted
and she’s sitting there
like she
gives a damn.

there’s a war going on
in my head and it’s
bloody gruesome.
the doctor diagnosed me
with self-induced apathy
and he was
so right
i
ripped my
heart
out-

i hate my emotions
so much i
tear them apart
and keep them
like secrets
in the pit of my stomach.
they’re better food than the lies she told me

and so much sweeter

and i [.]

lied too; forgive me,
dear.
forgive me for not wanting to feel.

i
am
too
afraid.

–

written f9dec2011.

late at night. manic and anxious.

–

the thing about music is that it eats you right up

there’s this little hole-in-the-wall joint down in the heart of the city, nestled between a bakery and a law firm- squeezed right in there, just one door in about ten feet of wall- and you can tell the owners were tired of fliers falling off the door because they just ended up spray painting their message right on there: food. music. just those two words, like, what more do you want?

you’re not quite sure how you got here, case in one hand, drenched from the rain, but you don’t really care. you just got done with practice but your ears aren’t bleeding yet, and you’re not ready to face what’s waiting at home anyways. [you swear, that five-letter word gets you every time-]

inside the place there is crammed much more than should be physically possible- not that there’s a lot, mind you, it’s just that the place is tiny, barely big enough to hold a stove and two employees, much less the near-dozen people watching the kids in the corner play.

when you say kids, you don’t really mean kids- but they are barely older than you, barely in their twenties, and you’re a geezer at heart anyways, so you have the right to say it. there’s three of them, doing some sort of melancholy song that fits the rain oh too perfectly, not to mention your mood, and if it wasn’t so hollow it might’ve just ripped your heart right out of your chest.

but although it’s feeling a little achy, and cold from that downpour outside, your chest is perfectly fine. perfectly normal. your mind drifts back to something the doctor said to you once. people naturally are more apt to be affected by the bad things in life. and then he said to you, compassionate eyes staring right through you like laser beams- he said, you’ve got to try to just ignore whatever gets you down, and focus on the good things.

and there’s no room to put your stuff, so you just unsnap your case right there on the counter where you’re supposed to be asking for coffee or something else bitter and acidic, something else angsty, and then you actually take the advice of your elders for once in your life and play a major scale, right there in the middle of their song.

listen up! it says. there is enough sadness in the world without you adding to it.

the three kids stop and look at you, dark- eyed and confused, like, what else is there to play? and you blast a couple more notes at them from there across the room, and they look doubtful, but then the youngest one, with blond hair which seems to have fallen in his face almost by accident, starts playing some chords. he looks at you with expectant eyes, eyes that you can tell from across the room are the strangest silver you’ve ever seen, like the moon just decided to plant itself right behind his eyelids. you can tell that he doesn’t trust you- and yet he’s doing this anyways.

they stare at you, keeping the pace with wary eyes as you tell them the story of when the girl from down the street just showed up at your house that one summer afternoon. you barely knew her name at the time, but you took her to the park and skipped rocks on the lake. the sun highlighted your faces like you were angels, like you two were the best thing that had ever happened. you were both fourteen but felt younger, felt you had more life left. [and now, just a few years have passed, but you feel so old.]

so one of the kids, green-eyed as a jealous cat, ventures a little, spells out a melody-memory about young love- and no, it’s not all wilted roses and accusations, like you expected, it’s the horse races, it’s the two of you running through town, tripping up because you don’t know how to slow down yet and you’re betting it won’t happen soon. his shaggy hair keeps getting in his face, but he flicks it back so he can make eye contact with you. somehow you’ve moved towards them, now truly a part of their circle, drawn in by the story.

the second one, sitting somber in the corner, takes the melody and starts twisting it until you realize how truly tangled everything else is. it’s not you that’s at fault here, it’s the rest of the world. [if they weren’t so malevolent–] the song shifts a little bit into a minor key, and it’s starting to look bleak again, but he’s playing with his heart. this is what he does, you can tell that it’s simply in his nature, but he’s taking way too much risk, because if this breaks now he’s going to be gone forever. it’s something you’ve never done, putting all of yourself into something, and it makes your chest tight just watching him.

and then moon-eyes takes the lead, starts playing, and you swear every hair on you is standing on end. it strikes you so true that you wonder if there was anything honest before it. the notes nip at your ears like discrepancies, and he sings it out like there won’t be a tomorrow, and that strikes you true, too, so true that before you know it you’re backing up so you won’t get trapped here. stuck in the middle of this ecstasy may be the best way to die, may be the way you want to get out, but not now. not now, because you have things waiting at home.

you just about trip over a table as you stumble out of there, and just before you open the door, not even bothering to take your case, they all look at you with hollow eyes, eyes alight with nothing physical. and those eyes scream so bitingly you’re sure they have teeth, scream that you were their savior and how could you leave now, when you’re taking their life with you. it’s greedy. they’re hungry. you wrench yourself from it and bolt out of there.

none of you had even spoken one word.

–

written m14nov2011.

my head decided to tell me this story right as i was about to fall asleep.

i hadn’t yet jammed then, but now i can confirm this: if you ever get a chance to do so, take it. don’t let your embarrassment hold you back. a good jam is one of the most euphoric activities you’ll ever take part in. and it probably won’t end up with you being killed or eaten.

–

sinner

i.
caren forgot about her morning. caren forgot it was wednesday. caren had an event and she was not there.

caren is a shadow. caren is an absence of space. caren is a gap that people shy away from, women in black dresses sidestepping past her memory.

caren is a woman with a streetcar. caren is a woman with an office job. caren is a woman with a social network. caren goes to functions. caren is no longer a function, but a product of her own actions.

caren forgot herself.

ii.
shattered windshields. broken glass like triangle teeth. more monsters lurk in mirrors than in the recesses of the closet. behemoths wait by water coolers, demons sit in sweaty three-by-fours. the devil wears a motorcycle helmet and caren hasn’t learned from her mistakes.

iii.
run a red light. it’s december and she’s egging on the new year. frosted features and blinkers hide hot flashes. she’s impatient for her age, a businesswoman at her best.

a shift in gear. a change in mood. road rage, road rash. a few words from a dark knight on a whinnying bike.

iv.
lane changes and unintentional nudges. motorcycle launches the devil like a dove to heaven. caren stays earthbound, blood spilled to nourish the ground. fertilizer runs through her veins, and vampire trees in city parks drink it up. bystanders drink it up.

v.
caren is a casualty. caren is the victim of her own habits.

caren is a corpse in a coffin. caren is an elephant in the viewing room.

caren is to blame in eyes and minds. caren is condemned in whispers, but caren is lamented out loud, so caren is proud.

caren got shit done.

–

writen r13oct2011.

another one to jump out of my pen in a singular frenzied eruption.

–