Category: Writing

I Haven’t Written In A While (A Love Poem For D)

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Well, I have.
In my head.

But you don’t know this
Unless you could creep around
In the Squoosh
And Mush
Attempting to make sense
of the scattered bits
of mangled paragraphs
half-finished words
let alone
mismanaged punctuation.

Make your way through
my glow worm caves
dangling luminescent
thoughts
pooling into the collective
goop
which I will eventually
strain into something
formative.
Maybe.

But I’ve “written”.
There are essays
and strong opinions expressed vehemently
sharply jutting out
haphazardly
here and there.
Gardens of prose
jagged brambles
and the sickly sweet scent of dying lilies
intertwined
making a mess…

The bees have been happier.

I suppose
I just wanted you to know
That I have been keeping up

And every thought of you
Incites inspiration

You make me want
to bring order
to the chaos
mend and organize
my fragmented parts
and pieces

I am
motivated to
light a trail
leading out of my darkness
exposing
the shards and
skin slicing edges
(though I can’t imagine
not getting a small cut
*bound to happen*
especially if you’re
walking barefoot)
so you can better make your way
deeper into my soul

There I can tend and tame
the prickly burrs
Not an easy task
But
Better for the bees
who will be keeping busy
with the new buds that have blossomed

Because of you.

For Daidria

“Your glance scatters seeds.
It planted a tree.
I talk
Because you shake its leaves.”

– From Letter of Testimony Coda by Octavio Paz

Driving South 2011

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I found this saved in an old folder – I decided to move to San Antonio, Texas in March of 2011. I made the ridiculously long drive from Chicago, Illinois. Sharing is caring – don’t stay at the Ranch Motel i.e. plan ahead. Always make sure there’s gas in your car. Stay away from late night Waffle Houses.

The Drive…In short.

Every state is the longest state when driving alone southward and the only radio stations being picked up by the scan button are either A. Country B. Christ related or C. Classic Rock. You might get lucky and hit that ONE station that combines two of the three, but let’s not get your hopes up. MAYBE if you’re going through Arkansas.

Hitting a Waffle House at 11:30 at night in a po dunk(sp?) town of Oklahoma is a wonderful idea for women traveling alone who happen to be height/weight proportionate and possess all of their teeth… if they desire to be potentially followed by swarthy, unshowered trucker type men who look like the ONLY place they’ve ever eaten at their entire lives has been The Waffle House.

But know what? Oklahoma ain’t too bad. One billboard simply read “thinkimpregant.com”. H’m… okay. A mile later another billboard stated “Need to talk?” and held below that a suicide hotline number. Awesome. Yet, not nearly as brilliant as the giant sign reading “Going to Hell?” Um. Not sure – haven’t checked my mail lately and I very rarely ever check my voicemails. And if the notification went directly to Spam in my junk email account – well, I just don’t know! However, I’m not pregnant and have no suicidal intentions, so I think I might be in the clear. Let me get back to you on that.

Lastly, after becoming slightly confused, I tried to take the US-69 route only to find that it was a looooong stretch of unlit country road. After checking my gas gauge and seeing that I only had a quarter tank left, I began to panic. There were NO gas stations in sight and I began to fear being stranded on the side of the road with an Ed Geins kind of person waiting in the shadows to rape me/kill me/skin me and use my dehydrated flesh as his new kitchen curtains. While I think I’d make a lovely set, not really how I wanted to end up.

Obviously, I found my way. (yaaay…)

The Arrival.

Due to obscene traffic in Waco and Fort Worth, I arrived late. That’s okay… the boyfriend was supposed to have rented a room and I could use a shower and a comfortable bed.

Wrong.

Spring break/Musical festivals/Conventions – every decent affordable place was booked. The place we ended up deciding on out of sheer exhaustion and exasperation was called the Ranch Motel. I’d like to skip past this part. Still traumatized. Think the movie “Vacancy”. Only dirtier. With worse lighting. Minus impending torture and death… for that night. But on the bright side, there was a nice hole next to the bottom of the door in case rats or snakes wanted to get in or out. How considerate.

Current Status.

I’m here. I’m alive. Going through job lists… and I’m not freaked out. I thought I’d be more of a wreck. Normally, I’d be in a situation like this and be mortified, beside myself with anxiety and planning my escape posthaste. Yet, I am strangely at ease in this new environment and have met with little to no nervousness when evaluating my future prospects. After voicing my concern over my lack of unease to my cousin Venus, she said, “That’s just a sign that you did the right thing. It means you’re supposed to be here.”

I can live with that.

Everything turned out okay – 4 1/2 years later, the drive back home North was MUCH better. Next time, I’m flying.

Smeared

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how wretched this predicament and how stinging the pain wrenching deep down into the place where i would run to be happy – to find an escape from the seduction of agony and her silky wiles of indigo blue dank

she follows it follows
and i might finally be done

not yet

i convalesce

how gorgeous this spot becomes – i just never before noticed the velvet of the violet hues – so vibrant – and how strange that this isn’t really my place anymore…. it has transformed into something completely different

in the corner a crumpled mass of sorts – what a marring sight to the dark beguiling magnificence of my secret grotto – beige and malformed it taunts me with its ugliness but i am too distracted to approach

besides
i don’t want to know

how completely in awe i am that i begin to spin and spin and spin until the blues and purples become nothing but a hazy canvas and i am the center or maybe the circle on the right – perhaps the ? on the bottom left

i am everywhere and anywhere – nowhere – and i collapse into a pool of crimson that i soon realize is nothing but a deep puddle of my perceived and actual failings which have collected into a quicksand pit around my feet and i begin to sink and sink and

the beige mass – crumpled deformity raises what i think might be its head but i can’t see past the thick of the deep maroon

all i hear is silence and my breath as it rasps swallowing my gargled delirious sobs

i am
home

Note To Self

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I’m not fond of it. And it’s something I can never put my finger on. I can be having quite the innocuous day – somewhat pleasant, fairly uneventful, nothing out of the ordinary will have occurred – when I am just dealt the most sucker of punches to my emotional sternum. I feel my mental legs buckling beneath me, slipping into the wash of melancholy, muddy and oppressive.

I am hit with the Sad.
A Bushel of Blegh.

You could lay at my feet all the smiles and laughter that had just been bouncing about, deliver happy chirps of well-meaning pick-me-up cliches, wrap me in the Tomorrow Is Another Day positivity that you keep handy for occasions such as these…

They will all be shunned.

Not because I don’t want any of those and more.
Not because I enjoy the depressing descent into Debbie Downerville.

No.

I will ruin every last bit of bright and shiny you give me. I will dejectedly demolish every grin and chuckle with my clumsy clompy feet. Accidentally muffle and strangulate the once vibrant twittering of good intentions. I will shred to pieces the shawl of optimism, never a chance to warm against the shivering dankness of the dark.

I would rather you keep those bits to yourself. Keep every last piece intact. Protect each one from my awkwardly ambling slippery with the Sad self.

I may be a dumpy mess, but I am not a monster.

don’t mind me

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Just ignore me
No one likes the moody woman cloaked in silence and a hard lined grimace.
You won’t ask me what’s wrong
Because you’re afraid the answer is You.

At first… No.
It isn’t.
The world in all its ignorance upsets me,
Time with its fast paced stroll
Just short of sprinting past me and my memories that are lagging behind in a different era
Yeah.
Time angers me
People in general
Not completely happy with their lives
Tolerable of their friends
Disgusted with their occupations
People … make my head hurt.

And while I am morosely curling into my shell of quiet,
You ignore me.

Content in your bubble colored oblivious
You’ll never ask me what’s wrong.
So with each passing second
It becomes
You.

The Musician

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I found
old correspondence
from some years ago
between my former
self and
you,
the always on the road
wielder of stringed instrument
and debaucherous exploits

Former paramour
partner in deviance
and infatuation
What a pair…
Addicted, lustful
heathens
we were
Two moths
Two flames
Destruction was
inevitable,
Of course

But still.

Bemused, I
shook my head
Reading the
To and From
Slightly aggravated
by my own desire and loathing
Your seemingly sincere
yet
apathetic apologies

“You may be crazy, but I am weak. And that’s worse. I don’t know what else to say.”

Clearly.

Our combustion
while not spontaneous
still surprises me
Yet,
After some years
the flames
have all but turned to
simmering, dying embers
in a growing
pile of ash
which along with
the charred
and disintegrating
bits
have been
flying and
flaking
away
to somewhere
not here

But I wonder.

Nowadays,
have your messages
of remorse
to Her
Become any better
Than what they
once were?

Maybe…
you should invest
in a fire extinguisher.

Random Thought of 2008

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Found this while cleaning out folders… Yep. Still one of my faves.

Obviously, pulling a rabbit out of a hat is related to magic. So, when it became transformed into “pulling a rabbit out of my/his/her/their ass”, we come to understand it means that someone did the impossible when needed right that moment – Voila, MAGIC! However, my mind being the cesspool of ridiculosity that it is, I began to think of a completely different scenario.

One guy says to the other, “Hey, bet I can pull a rabbit out my ass.” The other guy thinking the first guy is either clowning, high or crazy, says “Sure you can.” So first guy (we’ll call him Bob) throws his arm to his back and it becomes very clear to second guy (eh… George) that Bob’s hand is, indeed, reaching up into his butt. After grimacing, grunting and some gathering of a minor amount of forehead sweat, Bob pulls his hand out and presents to George a hand full of feces and says, “Ta-daa!!!” George, quite disgusted yet somehow stuck on the fact that Bob just did what he did, says to him quietly and very matter-of-fact “That’s not a rabbit, Bob. That’s a handful of shit.” Bob looks down at his hand and then at George. He asks, “But it kinda looks like a rabbit, huh?”

And I wonder why I am still single. This is GOLD!!!!

Self-Delusion – A Short Essay

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9/30/10

Starting again. There is never a brand new fresh start. Reincarnation may exist for a select population of the dead, but for the living we are all still the same leopards hoping that a few coats of dye will change the fact that we have spots. We train ourselves to walk on two legs instead of four, fooling ourselves into the thought that it might make us seem more civilized than our previous state of being. Alas, we are the same animals chained to our basic natures, our basic natures be damned.

I try every day to maintain self-honesty, but no one is perfect. Truth cannot be its abrasive thorny self when twisted into a pretty bow of a lie. And I’ve such a low threshold for pain, especially of the “harsh reality of it all” kind of anguish, so sometimes it’s nice to fool myself with logic because after all, logic has some sort of actual righteous standing, right?

So, knowing that a scorpion will sting the back of a frog even when it promises it won’t, I’ve thrown myself into the same situation thinking that perhaps the tail has run out of venom… maybe the scorpion finally got tired of drowning along with the frog – but unsurprisingly, no. Scorpions sting, the frog drowns. Leopards cannot help their blunt and bold spots wearing through the fade of cheap dye.

There is never really a Fresh Beginning. Not for those who have had the misfortune of having their hearts irrevocably broken. That kind of pain is carried for too long and it seeps in so deep it becomes a natural part of the System. Blood cells, check. Arteries, check. The emotional and psychological stain from the agony of betrayal and unrequited love, Check.

Self-truths… half-truths. They still love me. No… they love knowing that you’ll roll over in an instant just for the chance to spend a night in their arms, for any opportunity to feel their hands roaming across your body once more. They love that you refuse to pursue any other person because you are still under their spell and you just can’t seem to break free. They still want to be with me… They just need time. No, they want you when no one else is available or desiring them. They need time – time to find someone newer, younger, better, etc. You are a convenience, a rest stop, a layover until they reach their final destination.

It’s a horrible thing to be aware of your actual place and meaning in someone else’s life perspective. What is worse is to continue on with a blinding self-deluded belief that perhaps you and that person will start anew, all past altercations and dysfunctions magically erased, smiling faces, hands joined, Happily Ever After smeared across your consciousness.

Apologies to the hopelessly deluded. Reincarnation is for the dead. Repeat that daily and maybe you won’t be too blindsided when they finally find the better option that they had been holding out for.