65
Sometimes
I think I could smash
every bone
in your body
without a thought.
I feel
like I could
snap
your fragile reality
with a smile.
I believe
that these would be
easy
things to do.
After all,
it was so easy for you
to break me
into a thousand sharp pieces
made of nightmares
and broken glass,
that it must be a simple thing
to do;
breaking people down
and leaving them
in the dirt.
4/1/13
here’s my poem from today because im too lazy to go get my notebook so i just wrote it here and ill probs delete is to make everything orderly but yolo
.
Remind me how to write with my teeth and
Exist like it actually means something
I know that my brain is too strong for my body to hold up
That is the neverending story I was written into
By my own hand
When it decided to leave me for my wrist
Maybe you can cry but I can promise you right now that I can cry better
Don’t pretend that you know what I’m saying when
I don’t even know myself
I am wearing a scarf around my throat to shield my
Softest spot
But you are pulling it tightly
So tightly it is leaving bloody lines near my ears
You can’t win this
I already know how it ends
Rondeau after a Transatlantic Telephone Call
Love, it was good to talk to you tonight.
You lather me like summer though. I light
up, sip smoke. Insistent through walls comes
the downstairs neighbor’s double-bass. It thrums
like toothache. I will shower away the sweat,
smoke, summer, sound. Slick, soapy, dripping wet,
I scrub the sharp edge off my appetite.
I want: crisp toast, cold wine prickling my gums,
love. It was good
imagining around your voice, you, late-
awake there. (It isn’t midnight yet
here.) This last glass washes down the crumbs.
I wish that I could lie down in your arms
and, turned toward sleep there (later), say, “Goodnight,
love. It was good.”
-Marilyn Hacker
Return to Winter - Day 126
That day the starlings didn’t eat.
That day was a sudden return
to winter. In the fields,
snow on a base of ice.
The birds couldn’t bear
to set down except
on the clear face
of the road they remembered.
My husband leaned on the horn
the way you lean on a railing
until they lifted
before the unstoppable metal.
I pushed into the floorboard
as if I were doing the driving,
as if I could halt
the laws of physics,
while somewhere, my brother’s chest
rose and sunk and rose.
So much you take for granted,
like going to sleep in spring
that you will wake in spring.
that the blossoms were right
to push out, there was
no contradiction.
But when we hit the slick
and our slammed hard against
our own forward motion,
the roadbank spun
and the orchard of stunted trees
that had just begun to soften.
- ELAINE TERRANOVA
252
something in your spine
that you don’t know how to explain
synapses, nerves
thought becoming action
placebo effect
you take a small blue xanax
and drink water from a child’s blue cup
and wait for the knots in your stomach to
unfold
the anchor in your skin to settle
this is your cancer but it is benign
(and you’re so fucking dramatic and maybe you should
just fucking
shut up)
you’re ugly but not ugly enough and you
feel
like a fucking monster and a fucking fraud
all at once
waiting for the xanax to kick in
waiting for your mouth to unstitch and for
all those stupid thoughts to leak
through your teeth and tongue like acid
the way your pick at the dead skin
oh lover
but he is across great lakes and you want to be
alone but not lonely, and it’s like
this is your great burden
to feel disconnected
to feel empty
your skin jaundiced and yellow in the strange light
of an alleyway
the princess who locks herself in her own tower
a girl obsessed with fear
think about how wood splinters when it’s broken
think about how permanent marker seeps into
the otherwise invisible cracks of your flesh
do you remember that time that
you drank too much boxed wine
solo cup a deep deep red like fake blood in
a bad horror movie
and you watched lord of the rings with all of your friends
and cried at the end, and they thought
it was so funny
how you get lost in these ideas of something greater
than what already is
because you know there must be more
how sometimes you are so fucking stupid
how you feel so fucking stagnant
there are a million people doing what you wish
you could do and all you can do is watch
like your mind is a prison and you keep yourself
from what you love
and you don’t want to do that anymore, you do not
want to be the girl who is empty
because there is so much more to be
and time is such a silly notion
and we are such silly creatures
talking hunks of meat and blood and bone
on a watery ball in the middle of a vast
nothing
but isn’t that lovely, how it is all so infinite
there is something so wonderful
about being so small
in the scheme of things
You smile a spiders smile with a glint in your eye
A grin, a belief formed from a little white lie
You say there’s really no reason to ask the question why,
A sickly little spider grin, a little white lie.
No harm done and holding up the gun
Saying the war we lost is about to be won,
One where we wonder when we wander past
A web of thoughts that spiral as we last
Longer than you thought we would, silly little flies
You wrap us in a corset made of many white lies
Intertwined, inside, a racket on the outside
Legs wide, mouth sighed, and a chocking laugh set behind
Rewind, get behind, back to where you reside
And we grind and we’re blind with no feelings on the outside.
What would you say if I asked you to scream?
What would you say if I said you could dream?
What would you say if I demanded you retrieve
The last shattered bit of your humanity?
It’s on the tip
Of my tongue
During my morning run
Or afternoon dream
Of flowers and
Petals
And that stuff inbetween
The relationship
Is much the same
As the ribbon
between your teeth
And you smile
To tell me
We’re going insane
We’re going to heaven.
But it’s all the same,
And heaven
Is not
Where I want to be.
THE END OF POETRY 365
Well, Campers -
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it when I started this project of a-poem-a-day-for-a-year on June 1, 2011. I also didn’t realize it was a leap year!
Inspiration has come from many corners, at all hours, in spurts, trickles and bursts. Topics have ranged from nail polish to the Holocaust. Here’s the official tally:
105 haiku (Japanese), 10 tanka (Japanese), 14 limericks (Irish), 7 sijo (Korean), 2 sonnets (Elizabethan), 2 couplets, 1 quatrain, 6 in rhyme, 1 in German, 1 in Italian, 2 in Spanish, 50 poems about friends, 165 free verse = 366 poems. PLUS 58 pieces of original artwork!!
Some of these were first-ever attempts at the form (sonnet and sijo), and some were exercises in refinement and frustration. I’ve learned a lot, loved your comments, and feel that this project has brought me many gifts - including new friends and followers!
I will slow down my posting to once or twice a week, as the spirit moves me.
Thanks for all your support, keep in touch and keep writing! xoxo
Micki
// 33
my bed is emptier than the sound
echoing against the bottom of a bottle
rolling on the pre-dawn ground
drowsy with champagne dreams of you
laughter bubbles through my lips
my imagination triggers memories
and the arching of my hips
reaching toward your phantom shape
lounging, leaning on sharp elbows
the ghost of you evaporates
left with nothing but to-dos and endless tasks
putting on mask after dutiful mask
I dream of days outside of now
when the sunlit canopy filters across my brow
