In Somnia
they say
a girl can dream
and that’s really
what this is because
in dreams we have
no control, only
mere consciousness
(ironic, because
in sleep we are
unconscious
by definition)
a dream is unlike
a goal or a wish
because it is
completely internal;
an emotion happening
as a direct result to -
nothing.
so I am not lying
when I say that
the world owes
me nothing;
I unconsciously
yearn as the
body longs
to sleep
adolescent
I’ve walked with you
in wet shoes
while nature flexed its muscles
and saw the sun
and its glare over the tops of our
used
cars
and when we sat together in them
there was electricity and
not the kind that people have
domesticated
the better kind
that makes ghosts
and that stamps moments into your
brain
that carries a rhythm like train tracks
and raises and lowers
the moon and the seasons
and our bodies
and I think about you every time I wash
my sheets,
and
I remember you every time I see
teenagers shouting for what
looks like no reason at all
and if I could go back
and do it again I probably
wouldn’t because
I think it would be easier on you
if it hadn’t happened
and before you give me a medal
let me add that there are also
selfish reasons,
reasons that I don’t want to get into
because if you heard them
you’d feel worse about everything
and I would start to miss you again
but I maybe would go back for
one night,
maybe one of the nights
when we
snuck out of our rooms
and lived
the adult life
better than we’re living it now,
one of the nights when
we sped past the delinquent pizza
places and hollow 24 hour gyms
in search of a secluded
parking lot,
some place
off the cops’ radar,
off of the city’s radar,
off our parents’ and
our teachers’ radars,
somewhere that wasn’t
marked on a map
that existed only in that
invisible and fantastic span of time
between 2 and 4 AM
where we could finally
wake up while everyone else slept
where we could
live our favorite
movies,
our legendary songs
where we could
cast off into the deep
end
and almost cut the line…
but the line was never
cut
and here we are back on shore
with places to be
and with reasons to measure time,
with empty glasses
and sinks with dirty dishes
with leases and habits
and mailboxes that are never empty
and
what if we
tried it again,
what if we rallied against
reason and dropped our tools,
our last names,
our sanity and
ran naked back into
empty arms
This is one of the poems I read last night that’s in the collection of poetry I just released, “young”.
collecting wishes in my jacket pocket-
i never intended to wake up-
this feels like dreaming on clouds,
i’ve blown so many eyelashes from
the tips of my fingers,
i imagine them collected somewhere,
little wishes for you piled into cosmic dust.
i never intended to find myself happiest
when i wake up next to you,
thinking this mustn’t be real, it can’t be,
i wasn’t supposed to find this yet.
my internal clock is stuck at 11:11,
the eleventh hour is the only hour i want
to be in, atop broken springs and
wrinkled sheets.
it’s almost as if my superstitious tendencies
were right all along,
i stumbled into a field of clovers, on a
cloudy day, just as it begins to rain.
and you can kiss the raindrops from the corners
of my lips, brush them from my face like
tears, match your hand in mine and breathe.
i never intended to find you here,
of all places,
it’s almost like you have been wishing on
shooting stars and blowing on eyelashes
just as i have for so long.
i never intended you.
i never intended this.
but i intend to keep letting my wishes collect,
not just for me, but for us.
Once Every Ten Minutes
a cube of fluorescent light
exits the center of the earth.
My telescope points downward.
The grass is covered in ants.
My hands are covered in ants.
My knees are two tiny suns
and they are exploding at the same time.
I think the world is getting heavier,
and I cannot afford to buy nice things.
Imagine me being fired from a cannon.
Imagine me after two hundred years of ice.
I want to fold us over each other
like twin drawings of the same hand.
Try not to wake me up yet.
Rub the tip of my antler
with a fistful of salt.
Crack open the fault lines
in the coffee shop next door.
Clone me a new set of circumstances
from the black tar ocean
at the foot of our bed.
a broken heart is nothing new
a broken heart is nothing new,
nothing interesting
or even exciting,
it’s just a thing,
an expected thing
like the weather,
good or bad,
something shiny
to take her hand
and walk her
away
and
god bless you
and your
funny ways,
god bless the
hopeless moments
when you show up at my
door
like a lost cat
or angel—
bad news
wrapped in
some other
guy’s
coat
Church Camp
My first summer away from home
I packed my bags myself.
One-third cargo shorts, two-thirds Sour Skittles.
I kept my toiletries in a blue zip-up bag like my father’s.
His was leather like his facial hair;
mine was neon like my sense of humor.
We drove twelve hours in a white twelve-passenger van.
Painted the windows like children would.
“Honk if you love Jesus.”
“Honk if you love rock music, sharpie minis, or matching t-shirts.”
No one honked.
We cranked the A/C
everyone glistened.
All of the girls were beautiful.
I knew nothing of modesty.
I flirted mercilessly.
Put on weight, frayed the bill of my ball cap, made clothing out of duct tape.
I did not get a girlfriend.
I did not get a first kiss or a sleepy shoulder.
The girls were quiet flirts.
I had never been to Louisiana.
We found the broken handle of a handgun in an open field.
Looked for bullets in the taller grass,
asked the local kids for target practice.
I held it tightly.
Answered their questions.
Did not question the prints I was covering
or the crimes I was now responsible for.
I was twelve years old.
White, upper class, suburban, church camp kid
here helping the less fortunate.
I had never heard a gun shot.
I have still never heard a gun shot in that way.
We cannot mow the grass often enough to keep them playing kickball.
They go back home at night.
Slip out of the comfort we lent them.
Do not ask where the gun came from,
do not question where the barrel is.
We go back to our borrowed dorm rooms,
to wrestle and swear and flirt.
We sleep through Sunday school.
We leave the gun where we found it.
This poem was one of my submissions for round one of the Write Bloody Publishing contest. If all the stars align you will be able to buy a book with this sucker in it next Spring.
A blog for Surrealist writers (surrealist-ave.tumblr.com)
http://surrealist-ave.tumblr.com/
Now open for submissions.
A blog for the writers of Tumblr…
Andre Breton was influenced by Guillaume Apollinaire, the French poet who coined the word Surrealism, and the writings of Sigmund Freud, when he wrote the first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924. Since then, Surrealism has reshaped the world. Yet many forget, because of the academic pressures, that literary Surrealism is one of the most thought provoking representations of the imagination ever devised. All submissions will be read and taken into consideration. When you make a submission, also let me know if you would like a critique. I can’t wait to read your submissions, Ellery M. Hat
A declaration.
I feel most myself when I am a question mark,
A child, roughly 2-4 years in age,
Plaguing you with ‘why’s —
If slightly more advanced,
Wondering why blue has the shortest wave length,
And why chlorophyll is green.
I am at home in museums, with bare bones
And artifacts I don’t understand
From time periods I’ll only be able to visit in theory,
And staring at canvases painted a solitary color,
Or neon words glowing
On blank walls.
I feel most myself when I am a question mark,
When I am in my museum homes,
With you there to play in my rhetoric,
To hold my hand and give me
The only declarative sentence
I’ve ever wanted.
my heart is a mass i don’t know how to stop.
she sleeps in the belly of all of the calms before the storms which lay
mute in the epiphanies settled under my tongue.
my mouth tries to call itself the mother of entropy,
but in reality it comes down to my inability to bow in the face of pretenses.
censorship is not a language i am fluent in.
i have tried explaining this to authority, to all of the officers whom
walked in and out of my life as casually as the ghost of my father did.
i have tried explaining this to my lover, to the ghosts that rest in our bed, too,
but my mouth has a tendency to stop working just when i need it most.
that’s why i have faked this degree from m.i.t. in engineering, just to
unwind the hinges of my jaw and rework the inner mechanisms of
the means to voice whatever reality it is that exists in my head today.
it won’t be the same tomorrow.
lately everybody has been telling me that i have this air of indifference.
i try to tell them the significance of the fallacies in which they live in,
try to explain that it isn’t indifference i’m projecting,
it is that my heart is a mass i don’t know how to stop and
no one is interested in listening,
but i do not need inattentive ears and wary chests in order to
prove that my existence on this earth is valid.
i do not need to prove myself to a generation that is lost in a
conflict of what it means to convince ourselves that we are alive and worthy.
this is the last time i will say this: it is not indifference.
it is the understanding that my mind is light years ahead of
where it was yesterday and i do not want to waste another second
building you a rocketship when you haven’t the heart to
believe in the concept of stardust anyway.
she was broken for her age
barely 15
still knock-kneed and awkward in appearance
but far too grown on the inside
he took her youth
like a yet ripened peach
she wasn’t ready
but he was hungry
and ate through the bitterness anyway
she no longer smiled
or cared
her will was degraded and her heart
her heart
she had forgotten about her heart
