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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems not about any particular person: 2009

here on the brink of 11:11 and I’ll give you some words ripped out of my palms like flowers, cast across plastic held, cusped close to my petal ears and silvergold jewelry as if there were any sunshine to be had in June, where Frost’s leaves subside and seconds trickle down trees see, now it has passed

July 01

and with this shock of a month I will start pouring down daily, throwing off edits and perfected phrase. summer is for a new poem with every sunglimpse. haunt me like a hollowed tree, this is my time. evergreens and oaks, I slip into the stilled skywater and breathe throughout.

July 02

or maybe I will write when it happens to spill out

like light particles or communism. lenin needed trotsky but didn’t always want him, and they split

into history like old pages of a novel made for nothing

but they took death into their hands during the mad whirr of their lives, and spat on it reverently

Wild, with respect to Mary Oliver

The Human Body: rhythmic to a fault

Clasping to some cacophony, forgetting the silence and mountains that made it. Touching the timpano, restless flesh..

We settle into requiems.

The fade of an electric note, set to highest reverberation; some prayer. We have only our tragic bones and skin,

tender muscles, burning nerves

to hold up before us. The gentle space between our limbs, cradles between fingers, messiah of our spine–

our palms alone sustain us. The grime of music caking our soles, and that’s it. We tread on your ballads, your minuets, folk ditties, we swim through symphonies, and shake on the shore.

We save nothing, but are formed of residue. We touch

but don’t mean to touch. We forget to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves, lungs forgiving oxygen. Unspoken treatises of the skin.

Roam your animal with mine, and disregard inherent pulse. And if you must beat, syncopate, remapping my tempo and strapping me to the earth.

Where Have My Mountains Gone

What is it about language that picks me up, fragile and egg-like, with giant talons of desire and places me in nests I didn’t know I belonged But if I’m here, I must, in some way or another, or another, or another

and this home isn’t the one I left- I may not even be here now, elsewhere, a rest. Strange familiarity, as if I planned to get lost, mapless, questing to quench the driving thirst I pack into my lungs by the fistfuls, breaking fresh habits with my fingernails, swollen ravines in the flesh of the face of every enemy I touch gingerly, some dangerous intimacy of A B C Pressing my face into the palms of everything I can’t, don’t, won’t stand for falling down like Elvis, tapping my feet to a page of prose Never forgetting that I’m the only living boy in New York, but that says nothing to what I will be as a man. Half of the time we’re gone, but we don’t know where, we don’t know where.

Tripping

Who’s that girl with the tired eyes and the red, red lips? Tell her, I’m sorry I fell asleep with my penis still inside of her. Tell her that when the werewolves come, all they’ll take is what she meant to say anyway, so she doesn’t need any guns. Tell her she is as rough as a woollen scrub brush, and that’s why I screamed when she kissed my ear lobes. Tell her we’re gravity. Say that I don’t need anything from her but the things that she knows I don’t want, so my beard can grow long and she can sigh as loudly as she wants to, but I’m never pulling out. Tell her. - “I hear words I never heard in the Bible.” Judas turned to Maria and he hummed through his teeth. She understood the difference between solitude and sacrifice.

Scribbled Thoughts

With every jab of the needle she swallowed deeper and begged harder to be released from art. She didn’t put on these boots to sit in a room all day. He moved down her back to Africa. Golden thread under her finger nails. Like she wasn’t just touching herself in a bathroom stall, like that wasn’t art. - The last time I told you to be quiet you didn’t blink for five minutes. I’m sorry. Let’s fit in closer. I never meant to do anything to your breath. Should I touch lower? How do you want me to use your arms? I’m sorry. Take off your sandals. I’ll rebuild poison ivy from your childhood expectations, unreceived presents and prison visits.

but it’s known in this town that he walks upside down

I’m not tired in the way I should be but I promised a friend he could sleep next to me if that’s enough for a singer, it’s enough for a thief

My Empire of Dirt

Dried royal mud stretches up thighs, an armor of grass, water, dirt, bacteria. Streaks down her back from where her soiled hair rested, now cropped close, sawed by stone. Nothing clothes her breasts. Leathered feet dip fearfully into pure water. Cleanliness means nothing. It is the eternity I have brought you here for, animal. Close your feral eyes. This is the ocean, marshland queen.

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems about stefan going forward in time

sonic youth

it was 2:45 in the morning sunday morning it was two songs nestled in my ear, beat & struck with the chord of time that I keep curled inside my seventeenth rib cage, this year’s molecules. it’s east out here, but i see in every direction

eternal sin sky eyes again

falling or rising to this, the sun is broken on a mist beam… kindred, what a word, just like people who are made out of clay or something else you would use in elementary school muse

I’ll teach you to sleep

She said into concrete, baseball field lights singing at trees

It’s meditation, really Air for skin, feathers replacing hands to brush- you could be from this same bird

Who sang up that we should love each side equally, with sleepless bedroom eyes Buddhism aside, this is gentle suffering

body blue as toes, shriveled with moisture but glowing bursting out with skylines and horizons on your shoulders shuddering through daybreak, clutching to nothing jump the fence undress

using your eyes as lungs

breathe-blink, breathe-blink, breathe-blink skinned by the second

The Way We Get By

Another dappled late summer afternoon with papers in hand, golden sound waves beneath my fingertips, rising and falling with the leafy pressure of my palms- hoping you will taste like this air, nothing shining, whistles, cicadas, cigarette, honey bees braided through my clean hair, like the stillest, tallest branches of every tree in this circle of a day, tugging at my morning lily terraces like a gentle reminder of how I used to lean my arm out of the window and count each breath in french, un deux trois quatre cinq six sept huit neuf dix onze douze treize quatorze quinze seize dix-sept dix-huit dix-neuf

vingt Just waiting in the most being way possible, purple glow across parking lots, lettuce climbing out of garden beds, rustling light. End everything and begin again, remembering to stretch afterwards I can receive anything from here forward Tender sky, flailing grass, feather tucked behind one ear and pure lungs, melting ice, blue dictionaries, the way we get by firmly in hand, freckles and nothing and no one, but everything. Smooth skin fresh like soap, childhood whispering away and your eyes a song 5 minutes, 41 seconds long. Clouds beginning to realize to fly, airplanes made of twigs–

leave all your treasure behind, you need only oxygen in your lungs to float.

Your Debutante Just Knows What You Need, But I Know What You Want (a head full of pesticides)

and

old river way

silent amongst thunder, rustles in its creaking waves and breaks through every one

I can use my words my way. ambivalence no more

Red wine makes me suicidal/ Blood in glass/ My mind grows idle/

and I curl up beneath and I hold my breath and I hold yours in and I cup each hands, a Dickensian prayer

And I touch the Mona Lisa. and like a fool I mixed them and I have no sense of time. Bun nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh Well I see

Honey Please Don’t

Soaring through the keys, I sit on blankets and know what he really loves you for. But she breaks just like tiny girls, enter Saxophones

From now on I will call you Cellar Door. So touch my hand and my shirt and swallow down every liquid cure you can find.

Another 11:11 on Another Sunday Morning (a description of a surreal, visually intoxicating dream I had last night)

“When do you have to leave?”

“Oh, you know, after,” those widening eyes, the knowing giggle of rainstained grass I lead you by the hand through my mountain home, the sun ricocheting through yellow green rooms and sheds, moss beneath bare feet, like therapy.

Your fish-blue eyes darting, feeling everything, content in your five senses, your biology, softly giving the laws of nature your small redeeming glance. You know already that we will be sleeping in a Spirit Ditch. Small talk with my father, and we explore into a basement reminiscent of trashy middle school fantasy. Subtle hands, featherless, at my waist, my neck, brushing and gone, some salvation across a Western-set sun, and a kiss beneath my ear.

Has-been fireworks strewn on sidetables, tumultuous furniture; we immediately acknowledge an abandoned silence in this space, with the soft impact of hand on hand.

Becoming a force beyond a presence, your arm turns my body in place. We in your motion turn and you may move us. Three words released, convictionless, significant, searching, bare, unexpected.. Not out of the blue; some warmer color: “I love you.” Your words like a rumbling resonating electric guitar solo soaring over highways, cathartic, a blanket or sheet of static and pounding, threading nothing and I think of songs as you press in, a rolling pin without a coat of flour, pulling me in your motion, moving me, Gentle Brother “Will you still mean that in the morning?” Because that is the mark. Some movie-scene answer of always meaning it, and I know exactly where you are. You have adapted to the mountains, with so many places left to go. You have forgotten your restlessness in my little shoulder touches, my kingdom.

We will never show sleeve but for when we show arm, because we are good men and Luciana is lost.

I brought you to this house as a partner in crime, fellow renegade, to dip into lakes and leap down stone thousands of miles high. We sit in the bright, lampless basement of broken glass and blue mattresses, and then you are somewhere else, but this makes every sense. A girl walks in and suddenly she shows me television in the absence of your eyes of blue; I wait for the men who want to rule the world. She needs to record something, and I direct her towards the box of VHS. Her pixie hair and sullen face suggest she’s not alone; soon enough a party seeps in. I only wanted moss. You return looking for me, become spellbound by the lights and heroin, and watch with an arm melting into mine. We stand in real-time together as the party becomes color streaks around us Buzzes to us: Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak; Lay open to my earthly-gross conceit Smother’d in errors, feeble, shallow, weak The folded meanings of your words’ deceit. Against my soul’s pure truth why labour you

To make it wander in an unknown field? Are you a god? would you create me new? Transform me then, and to your power I’ll yield. We are princes in the galaxy that spans from where they are to where we are now. And then we return to light. In a simple country room. “Will you still mean it in the morning?” But I crawl in. It is thyself, mine own self’s better part, mine eye’s clear eye. Gently, with the minutes, we are air, too real, everything I knew was beneath and above.

as though, if you touch gently enough, you’ll believe you don’t have fingers tendrils of nothing seeping out of sea silence evaporating

like haiku is breath (marble binocular eyes) like you are exhale my palms melt to milk I feel your quiet shaking me awake; last touch.

“im not concerned with Love and law. im not saying these words to impress you. i will die alone but that in itself is destiny. i need you to Know.”

Honey & Gravel I laughed and I don’t care I love sin

the fact that you are married-

sleep

I burn to touch everything with a heart of darkness

but some things make me pure (the one I really need) Linger on because what the fuck are we here for anyway

but to feel that emptiness, but to convince Somebody that we are nothing. Don’t forget astronomy, honey, please don’t. As if we are here.

I don’t care about any destiny What is is is is and destiny doesn’t care about me, daytripper, nighttripper, mindsoul nothingness

WHAT are mirrors made to do, and why does my mouth crave everything So who would I be if I didn’t want you inside

I mean that with incredible writhing warmth

is is is pure pure pure Children of cathartic silence, soar across me

feel me into earth I will never Know anything but mountains so give me nothing that is not green and touch touch touch touch no, shhhhhhhh Jimmy the strings of everything, and destiny on a wheel of Jesusblood

my entire network of matter is there already the way you should be held Nobody Has Eyes so I do not care except for the muscles throughout my frame who remind me to crawl in Crawl in like something that once learned to fly

FLY

everything I knew was beneath and above crawl inside me

fly inside me if you have a voice (I am the sun, I am the air) You can break your molecules apart by sheer will.

Let Me Play It

When morning is like the sugary sensation of wing-bone ripping the delicate flesh of my shoulder bones, there is a readiness, a readiness to let me in, let me be here, and count the curvatures of my spine into the cigarette-strewn robin blue paneling beneath even water

My Sweet Lord, somewhere nowhere eyes, parting hands and lips, wounds, wing-membrane and tender ginger headaches sprinkling spices in my hair, sandalwood oil between my fingers, sex and absynthe and disfiguring, luminous heroin like levitation and you the patron saint of travellers, or the first Catholic martyr stoned to death, but who would not feel so alone if everybody must Palm to palm, you breathe nothing like I do, a separate anatomy and chemistry: I a bird You a feather, borne out on nothing, brahman nirvana heaven darkness making pure even sorrow, granulated and unadulterated, white opium of mutual understanding, two bird cages wired together, doors swinging wide open

hear me make a noise I have felt your ears and know they received sound once

choosing not to hear is just to break me, is just blue swirling forget

you felt everything in the pale whites of your eyes linger on, hear me

There’s the part that loves, and the part that still loves

There’s the line folded, twisted, the möbius strip, the breath

Color flowing with shape, sound, taste interchangeable guitar strings, warming air, pain unacknowledged, and being pulled by my center to all the things I would like to be a part of.

There’s whom we love, and whom we still love

One the heart, one the hand

My lost muse below the blanket of chemicals, I remember you The pure messiah, a field by the road, a man-made lake We jumped the fence and took off our clothes Songs of honeysuckle and time desperate hopes in rhyme It broke me in two my fickle prophet My salvation, the one

from days long gone

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems about greg going forward in time

My father’s pouring wine down the sink As though if he pours faster he won’t need the drink And the look on his face is the furthest from grace While my mother’s warm breath murmurs slowly to rest

The world’s on a chain round my wrist I fall to my bed with a radio kiss And if you can hear through the static veneer I’ll come to your home But from there I will roam

summer faded into fall and we laid in the grass hidden by the tall trees but illuminated by street lights. on the edge of the woods but at the beginning of a vast asphalt parking lot. marginally placed residing in our own purgatory. on the verge of a new beginning a new life we were alone but together. nothing else mattered. i was broken. damaged. destroyed. but for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, i felt some flicker of hope. in reality i knew nothing of you but small superficial pieces strung together hastily in those two months from when we first met

but in my heart i already felt like i was a part of you. i had spent every moment aching to just know a little more about you. i was completely consumed. you captivated me. and when we laid there together …i felt whole. i was safe. we talked of nothing, we talked of everything i sat there and listened just appreciating the sound of your voice and how comforting it was i looked at you and wanted to remember every curve and freckle. in that moment

in that beautiful consuming agonizing moment

i saw a glimmering spark of love

for the very first time.

First

Searing pain, piercing, invigorating, soaring, pain pain pain, oh

Yes, I’m sure

Quiet eyesight, pupil in pupil, irises strewn like light across arched spine

Pain, yes, pain, yes, I’m sure. I can’t breathe, but I promise you I like it

I like it

Ah ah ah Ah you, you, you are the gentlest. Are those hands? Deep, soft, hard, searching, they are sparrows You are flying inside me

Love, an inadequate word for this honeyed everything. Velvet daggers across my internal organs, evaporating through my skin

You are the gentlest, you are the gentlest, I’ve never been so scared in my life

I’ve never felt so free, I’ve never been so safe. Let me relax

I am ready to receive, I have always been waiting to receive you, I have always I have always been here

Yes. I’m sure. I like you inside me. Even if it never stops hurting, we are flying.

You are moving velvet inside of me. You are blue shirts and parting mouth. If I find my wings I have to breathe them into something fused to bone and outstretched. Shake them out. Remember the shaky, emanating movement and the devastating pleasure-sky of leaves and light and absolute resting, flying Oneness. There was no time, just rock podiums, crying into leather jackets that think on themselves, blending film and yellow holy trees. Deer that run and joggers that don’t care. Velvet body and crawling, carpeted stairs. Laughing cartwheels, tangled limbs, unbuttoned contact, eyes like a deer I will trace the length of. I brought you to the tree that made me a woman, or whatever you have felt me be. Let your tongue roam, let my body sink into soil and rise into something you can see move when it’s supposed to be STILL. Move time.

Moth-wing eyes draped somewhere between waterfalls and sunflowers; you where nothing else exists. Dragonfly whisperer

Some sort of inside never imagined. Involuntary movement, eyes ubiquitous. Hands made of quietest flesh, taut, a leap of doubt and faith. Perfect lusting fire as everything

If I take your hands, from them I will make boats and cities.

A body of incomprehensible presence. How you are here. How my hands become the perfect, rustling shape for searching. Trees, balconies, honey, pistachio, Italy, blue sheets, water, nothing dark, everything purposefully broken, a grin like sugar tea. This time, only poets on cars, palms on my spine, breathable air.

Fire

you seep

tree-wise, soft delicate flesh stretched over bird hips, nectar tongue

every color, sound, scent follows your hand in a shaky ripple as you move

I am how you will

graft into tree bark, run for fields, tear branches, like we planted

your fingertips and the energy streaming out of them together

WWT

If I strapped you to the garden soil with music like wild animals, where do you propose we go next?

If I planted morning seeds and waited til sunset I’d have lost a world of germination in my dirt-tipped fingers, tapping rhythms into the mint plants.

This is how it works. Don’t let the silence.

Miles from where you are, trees still grow like pilgrimages, flowers are still a hajj to sunlight. But the question is how anything operates with sunlight without your skin.

Supernova eyes, kayak heart, bicycle feet rollercoaster hands

WWT

Outpouring of thought because there is something that has been hovering over me and I’m not sure if it’s loneliness or a silence or anything else that has to do with exhaustion and not knowing where to put the snow that has entered the fields here and red buckets sit gently on wooden planks like a william carlos williams poem, simple but not knowing anything but knowing everything, and I have grown to like any part of you that I never expected to like before but what about when I reach and there is nothing to touch and the piano man plays to the screaming women who need to hear of distant love to prove that even the beautiful feel pain. examine what you believe and what you fear and see if they are the same and if there is love there for black holes and nebulas, star clusters and come home to me. a man who wanted to love me is picking up the cocaine and growing plants in his room and stealing pool cues from stores and I am never going to be with my father, who is thoughtful in many ways but helplessly self-destructive, and his eyes were beautiful but he was my father so I had to let go. but it’s okay it is all right it is okay and all right because I have found the one who doesn’t make me silent in bunk beds and turn away from a kiss, he is all gentleness and understands the things I am trying to say, understands I am not human, but his body loves the chemicals and I cannot end up in that position, I am not going to be with my grandfather, I am not going to be with my father, I am not going to go through that process of being helpless in the face of addiction, not with my lover, not when I can help it, but can I help it, but can I help it, I can’t help it, ah

There’s the part that loves, and the part that still loves

There’s the line folded, twisted, the möbius strip, the breath

Color flowing with shape, sound, taste interchangeable guitar strings, warming air, pain unacknowledged, and being pulled by my center to all the things I would like to be a part of.

There’s whom we love, and whom we still love

One the heart, one the hand

WWT

There will always be silence because love is for everyone. I have been in love with you for what feels like years and months and decades and centuries and seconds and loves of my life, but it has been trees and plantlife. no not a but a silence a love a word a cord a dance of silent butterfly children living in a dark tree branch that sways in every thunderstorm and shakes the children down like stars into the moss where they grow into the underbrush and become a different species, a quieter, gentler, softer species, until they eventually soak into the soil and become everything. in about two hours it will have been 365 days since we first kissed and I feel like I loved you then as much as I love you now but what has been growing inside me has not been the love for you, it’s been the ability to recognize and understand and know that love for you. it has been there all along, but you We have been teaching me to hear it from a thousand miles. you are flannel bedsheets, you are an orange by the lake, you are an ice cream cone by the water fountain, you are a green woven blanket in a private property field, you are the far away city lights, you are the gentle, the tender, the quiet, the love. you say you can’t play the guitar but I am a guitar and you write sonnets with me like shakespeare on the wall in a used book place with a wheelbarrow in the center and you pick up a book on the silly couch and fall down beside me and sink in even further into the folds of the cushions and I tell you my pin number and you get money for me from across the street so I can buy you a present and you buy me a donovan album and you read kant while I make mixes and rub your back and we kiss every kiss like it is our last one and our first one and I love you greg you are the one true love, the one who has cared for me as much as I have cared for you, you are the one who taught me what love can be and how it doesn’t always cut my flesh like the eyes of those before. your eyes mend. milk-eyed mender. I love you, greg. I am forever your blueyellow bird and wildflower of the field. happy anniversary, saint francis.

I got two sets of headphones, I miss you like hell. Won’t you come here and stay with me?

The peace that the cigarettes gave her was the closest she could come to how she used to feel when he held her. They burned ominously at the end of her life, eight minutes of old age lost per stick of tobacco. Each drag was a conscious choice; her health traded in for thirty minutes of not missing him.

It was exactly a month since they had kissed and she was driven away, a month of him being happier without her. Happier without her–it felt as though every pure moment between them was being pushed through the shredder even as she cried out. At her job she was all smiles; she had a nickname and bantered with coworkers. Every evening she took her ten-minute break at sunset and went outside. She lived in the sky, but her wings had been clipped. Maybe if she spent enough time looking up, something would happen.

Sitting naked on her bed, music swooned across her skin and her breath took in nothing but the notes. She wore her headphones like a chinstrap and drew with colored pencils an abstract story of loss. Across the room, on the floor, lay her second pair of headphones.

At the beginning of their love, he had always corrected her pronouns to “we.” We will travel the world. We will find ourselves. Together. They were traveling partners on individual journeys. She was in love, and she was happy to be loved.

They made each other feel more free than either of them had in a long time. Until four months into their relationship, when he drank so much alcohol he blacked out and put his tongue in the mouth of a girl he knew. He sucked on her neck and left a mark. This was when their relationship truly ended. She cried and she changed. The absolute trust she had naturally given him from the moment they first kissed was gone. Alcohol in his system made her sad, and he resented her for this. Nine months later he was happier without her.

In the past, she had longed desperately for people. She had ached, she had cried, she had kissed, she had touched. She had never been loved back.

As a child she wanted to be an astronaut, then an astronomer.

Now she wanted to be a farmer. She was realizing who she wanted to be. She wanted to work with the earth, she wanted to live close to nature, she wanted her own home, she wanted to live self-sustainably, she wanted to take care of animals, she wanted to make art, she wanted to have a lover, she wanted to have a child. Once, thinking about him, she had started to cry with happiness at the idea of bearing his child. It felt like the ultimate expression of love, to make a person out of their bodies.

His love had propelled her blood cells. Now they felt like malnourished Japanese soldiers pitted against Soviet tanks in the desert wasteland of Manchuria.

A large box of the debris of their relationship sat on the top shelf of her closet, save two items she couldn’t bear to remove from her room. A photograph of their shadows against the earth from one of the most honeyed days of her life, and a model of a red airplane that he had made for her with popsicle sticks, construction paper, and cardboard. They had agreed that they would get married when they could afford to rent a little red airplane for flying to their mountain wedding. She proposed to him in crayon on a children’s menu. He said yes.

He had been with her when the only house she had ever thought of as Home burned down. He had cut her hair when the cat she had loved her whole life died a terrible and painful death. He had held her as she cried after bullies at a summer camp raided her. She had loved him close when he was angry and disappointed with his sexual performance. She had rubbed his back when it was hit by splitting pain. She had held him when he cried on a dark street in Philadelphia because his cousin was dying. She went to the funeral and fought back her desire to hold him the entire time, and tried to give him room to mourn. They gave each other the best orgasms either one of them had ever had before. They ate the best meal either one had ever eaten in a small town in Vermont together. They both said, I will always love you. They both said, You’re the One.

They started replacing new words and phrases for “love” when they told each other how they felt. The simple word just wasn’t enough anymore.

Turning up the music, she pulled the covers over herself and looked at her extra headphones. They looked lonely without ears to rest on. One of the first things she had said to him was that she wanted to kiss his mind. This mind was happier without her now, unburdened by headphones, by love. She had two sets of headphones and she missed him like hell. He hadn’t stayed with her.

She turned it up louder. I was in a train under a river when I remembered what What I wanted to tell you, man What I wanted to tell you, man I got two sets of headphones, I miss you like hell Won’t you come here and stay with me? Why don’t you come here and stay with me?

Maybe

“I’m so attracted to you right now.”

He undid the buttons on her shirt, biting her nipples, pulsating his hips rhythmically against hers with deathly sensuality

“I love you,” she said, eyes holding his

He lifted her up and they moved together like heat waves

She took off his shirt. Her hand reached below and touched his velvet skin “I love you,” she said again. He looked at her fondly.

They launched at each other, she slid down his chest, his pants came off, he moaned

Grimacing in pleasure

He gasped out as she swallowed “I love you,” she said again. Something would change now Something had to change now

“I love you too,” he said.

Nothing changed.

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

Text

poems about miscellaneous romantic interests for whom I did not write many poems

a terrible poem

a balmy december afternoon, two days before christmas guilty chemistry and a particular awkwardness we decide to just walk until we find our exit

you are an apple found, seemingly not poisonous

without taking a bite or cutting in I will never know your parasites what I will not do is waste you; you will not be still-life, you will not be compost you may not be anything the question is, should I wash you first, and how would I even do so?

kiss like

you speak like an actor kiss like an explorer I have been to India and back, worn flowers eaten them, and not been afraid

Something is off I watch the dashboard Waiting for you to kiss like you’re looking for something.

Sun Eyes

Invisible eyes form rings of liquid perception but how can you see? When I want my eyes to be especially beautiful, you said, I look at the sun all morning to soak up the light Personally, I think you just breathe

Park Closed After Dark

You are shy not entirely unexpectedly I sit still when I don’t know where to move in a dark forest under a pink sky we listen to passers-by discuss killing a man and taking his soul; they think they are alone. “Do you believe in man’s immortal soul?” one asks jovially, pulling his sniffing dog along on a leash A yes from the man in the black cowboy hat “Good.” The dogs run ahead pulling their own beasts of burden. We are not allowed to be in the park after dark. But who gets to decide exactly when dark is?— this is our defense. this is the music I gave you You were wondering when I would notice.

“you look lonely .” I am. distance again. love - r you may be if you really do want loneliness or something else easier to lose.

July 29

your hair was long when we first met regina spektor reminds me of this, although really my world runs backwards she is correct in saying, though, that I can’t even remember what your ears look like

Because

Because the world is round, it turns me on Newfound glory, it was your soft rest that made bliss of a sweet rainy city night, draped in the shadows of purple trees Your breath on my neck, conscious enough for shifts but little else–so small, yet endlessly spanning Because the wind is high, it blows my mind

Collapsing into my space, I held your presence with the care of a scientist, letting hands brush and knowing nothing Love is old, love is new Love is all, love is you Waking in the morning together, rising to make tea for the three of us–you, me, and your guitar, who sang to convince me of my existence–, I watched your movements with the silence of a lover Because the sky is blue, it makes me cry We found something, complete strangers, because the world is round.

En cours

Il faut être l'été, because I need to write a poem And I can write one about you, can’t I? It can’t be that tough You’ve got eyes, hands, quirks and whims, anything and everything necessary to be poetic muse

But what why won’t you, pourquoi won’t stanzas come? C'est comme, you’re a bright spot- There’s no shadow from which to spin out les mots

Nothing dark to aid my craft. Which sounds bon mais si tu n'as pas mes mots, tu n'as pas mon cœur, and I couldn’t take it if there were nothing of you inside of me. If none of your blue

held true significance. Parce que, so far, où es-tu? Pas ici, dans mes mains. Ni dans les mots. Attends, peut-être

Attends

So I don’t know who’s supposed to break here,

but I have trees and water and can last a while

without human contact. Hold, hold hold hold hold

me. Only take what you need from it.

Reality bites- enjoy

You want to make me love you. The most honest thing.

Optimism in the gamble.

A hand where it shouldn’t be. Lips

You are not the one

Deserve

Time should only serve to help

you were aggressive tenderness touching in an idling car

first glimpse in a field rain racing towards us across the pavement raw music humming into me pushing too far

I loved but not how you needed I loved but not how I needed

I had felt free with you “releasing from need” but it twisted up screaming out a car window that night, losing control I remember the rough of your face and your smell and how angry I was

you were beautiful but couldn’t save me you weren’t a messiah and I didn’t feel glory, just ache

you were fucked up

I was broken and needed transcendence with someone who would help me emerge and not swallow me

I was swallowed by him anyway; he was salvation at first, then the ache

I was fucked up

I still remember the dream in soft, bright bursts

it still hurts to think of you and if I hurt you

I fucking hate you & I fucking love you

I don’t know why I didn’t need you and I’m sorry

april 3

I drowned in your potency scratching your back like a lover a lifetime of seeping you in

unyielding need broken stems

I would break anything for this

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems not about any particular person: 2008

a poem for Lincoln’s birthday (Feb. 12)

there is entropy growing in alwaysgardens needing only soil and water and air. Sunlight’s irrelevant to photosynthesis breaking out of haiku, loosening all form, casting aspersions on carbon dioxide, our favorite exhale

down

the soil needs Sunlight too (ultraviolet cravings and a tendency to ask for solidthings). we are moving towards chaos, leaving glucose as our only trail of rebellion

prosetry

There was nothing in her eyes to feed his heart. He looked at her. He always looked at her. She was always standing next to him, looking away, mouth hanging slightly open. Every light fixture in the room strained to illuminate them.

Inconsolable, his heart was made of plants that grow only when spoken to. He blinked as her silence withered his body. He was a man who was tired of feeling worthless. He began all his sentences the same way. He wrote so slowly that his typewriter had begun writing ahead of him. He. All of her sentences varied, and she never blinked. Blue eyes never need to be moistened, as they are already water. Fruit trees grew in her apartment; their branches and vines were cruel and wonderful, growing out of her occasional words. When she would laugh, all the lights would flicker, straining to hear the soft sound. He wanted to be her light, but she was a woman who promised nothing but erasure.

Summer Rebellion

Looking at love that is stranger than mine, memories of sweat dripping down to a place Really, the reminiscence is soft, like the light we would bathe in, feeling nights on northern streets, flying out of cars out of breath into stores for liquor or for old, used things we never needed But God did we want Lying on cement, tar beneath our backs, hands close, we were Awake like owls in a lightning storm There was a river that June night you whispered away the fog; we tore off our clothes and swam until it was morning and we couldn’t ever go home again. That afternoon the guitar strings broke. You wore thinner clothes and asked me to hold you less Rolling stolen cars into lakes, practicing escaping, practicing holding our breath and looking in each other’s eyes through water and moonlight, as though we were made of universe. As though we were in love. When really we were just musicians. Real artists kiss with their eyes open, you’d say quietly firmly transcendentally touching the red tired space beneath my eyes opening your mouth for a last breath.

June 20

so there’s this fear

swallowing the strands of our color but we never

ask it to calm down

to slow the trickle, no we only

breathe in and feel the burn,

and say thank you like good children

as if we have no right, no birthright to honesty

But hey, this is how the world turns

and those who grow cacti shouldn’t complain

about prickles,

you know?

June 22

there’s a cold storm rising on the mississippi river pulling out its tendrils to the mist it washes up the ocean whales and seaweed vanished letting us drown in our own piss there’s a sad way you look when you smile at your mother as though you know she never wanted this there’s a sweet little flavor dusting o’er the hilltops as though it could find the way to my mouth or some other orchard dust on, old mother dust on you have found your own boundaries but they do not exist

July 7

the ocean that reaches out its hand to feel out the features of my face as though a blind man lingers in its waves will find itself also my bed, my home, my landlord fingernail shells and seaweed tongues promises against my ankles in and out, a tide of words and purpose.

July 13

In a storm, the car can be the safest place, they say - All that rubber underneath you. I disagree

no lonely place can ever be a safe place. Purgatory’s the word.

Purgatory.

July 14

once I found a weeping willow asleep by the side of the road it was weary yet nascent, drooping into its beginnings cradling each branch, I picked it up and gently silently set it down in the back of my truck I took it home with me, fed it some sunlight (which was really all that I had to give) and asked it, please, to wake

if it must weep, understandable, but to lie so listlessly? no, it must open its eyes

I told it, Oh you are just becoming you have so much existence to look forward to, I promise the next day it awoke and humored existence for an hour, before . . I would have cried, but salt water wouldn’t save a weeping willow

July 15

so I hear that you’ve been raining in santa monica,

little cloud? the sahara will be so disappointed in you

July 28 (Rollercoaster)

I find this innate bursting forth from every living thing.

Even the trudging existences seem to inevitably flow from a center of energy beneath it all.

It’s not so much the thrill of the risk as it is the appreciation that you are hurtling through space unscathed. One doesn’t enjoy happiness just because the alternative is death. There’s a moment for existence and you don’t refuse. That is the thrill of such a giant machine.

July 30

little lies turn into pavement on my tongue, furnishing this purgatory highway, rain-strewn and sullen, like a teenager doesn’t have to be. let me taste morning dew, let things run their course. each person to their own mistakes. fly. I’ll hold you.

July 31

Each knuckle of my spine clenches with the road, ears quiet as horses underwater. The most comfortable the world has ever been. For once, on this hope-strewn highway, there is no need to be anyone else.

At peace.

August 2

It’s like the difference between jam and jelly– one with pieces of its origin–one smoothed–purified–cleansed of its form– broken in a jar by the porch–green, ephemeral rain lifting each leaf–above the mountains, mist warns (it will not always be so gentle)– there once was a time when spiders spoke and mountains disappeared.

August 3

Like seahorses, an incredible delicacy– Wings of tinderdust–they make love like pendulums. Rewarding our silence with gentle alighting, these neon fish of the air.

August 4

Each quiet is its own. Opening my eyes underwater, a different sort of clarity brushes in ripples across my vision. For every silence that we hum into being, a loon rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the lake.

August 5 (a haiku)

the mountain has left but in the moss you can find other ways to breathe

August 6

fields of corn off the side of the highway condemn any person who says that there isn’t beauty in the every day

August 7

Who would have thought that I could find New Hampshire in the middle of Virginia? A hidden portal pocket takes me back to my peaceland, but now I am with two gems, curled up in my hair like phosphorus. I have always found the semiprecious stones to be more beautiful.

August 12

Work. Try to complete. Try to succeed for this new bursting forth? Try.

August 13

This old shaking. Listing the people I have loved

I come to face with this sadness I have mostly

expelled. I remember the ancient need to reach

out. A rainforest mist of good intentions

keeps a constant dew of uncaring hands at my waist.

Songless prophecies.

That first saffron love pirouettes between your

legs. Many people set up butterfly nets for love,

but I have begun to just fly with it.

August 29

sliding through the sky cracks of the school summit I am faced with an absence of familiarity, and my ankles feel naked without grass licking at their skin- i am weighed down I am weighed down before I even sat upon the heights of new adventure.

September 3

I saw you brushing your lonely hair today,

outside the locker room. There isn’t much

a person can hide. Hold on to it. Let

everything else roam.

a haiku for you

it’s been a long time since I sat down and spelled out one of these flowers

lost and disconnected

This is not your year, the turquoise water informs through the rusted iron fence, luring into a sinking sort of dance, each forlorn creature floating with a lassitude unfortunate and inescapable. It is mine.

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems about phil going forward in time

shadows grow with our words

he sees in videos with a confidence in motion and breaking things apart she sees in photographs a flicker of an image and their world is defined by film

unintentional guilt trip

taken out of context, you mean just as much as you always have, but there is no incentive, no pressure out of (platonic) love to reciprocate these feelings.

So if you could just change this, this situation, before it falls on someone else’s shoulders to move us around, to make lives function again?

wreck

out of every word written in these books, the one I see is scared, like a convict who sees policemen everywhere. looking across the room with sadly smiling eyes and knowing that it’s wrong to, because what if you see? I was so scared. These books are full of someone’s sentiments, but absolutely no explanations for what shouldn’t have been said. Scared and all there is to do is think and sing your songs.

and the walls of jericho come tumbling down isn’t this exactly the way it happened last time? is it horrible that I remember every thing about every time I was with him, but with you I don’t? stop thinking. Grape vines lead to wine. earth leads to intoxication? natural leads to manipulation? This is what we can learn from vineyards. Sodium Na Iron Fe Silver Gold Magnesium Susan B. Anthony, Sb Antimony. Keeping me pushed aside, I guess, is the way you are handling this. Oh, never. never, never, never. Love

Your throat is loud as you swallow during the quiet moments. and throughout you lay your hand next to me, wanting me to hold it but I do not. But if you reach out for my hand I do not resist It’s not the same as when I dream of ties and button-up shirts. I gave you a book, remember. when you were out of my realm of possibilities. I felt safe when we ignored you together. The sound of the door, is it that loud when I come in at night? And now I must be civil, and try try try to stop running to you, but still visions of cold days and hands on arms and mouths on mouths and movies under blankets haunt me, what is this?

nails all painted black

maybe if I turn the water up hotter and scalding it will melt each part of me that is here and feeling when you looked at my hands and remarked on my nail polish and how it reminded you of some song, except you thought you had the lyrics wrong in your head and said that I would fall in love with a lot of jerks, well, maybe not love, you were right: I fell in love with you well, maybe not love.

tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié…

you are not going to get love from me if you are going to drink yourself away. you are not going to get love from me if you are going to make the alcohol your means of dealing.

if that is all you have to go on, then so be it.

the human guitar

each determined strum shakes the seat where I sit perched watching

your hands as they press on strings make music your eyes have been steadily glowing brighter I move towards you slightly, then fall back to hear your song your hands don’t differentiate between my back and your instrument you play my shoulder blades as if notes should come rising out of skin like water vapor and for a moment I think I hear them rise

all I know

some sort of warmth Spring in my hands and under covers twined between your fingers like strands of my hair Spring is upon us, the air pear blossoms open at night as you cannot retain warmth I paint you as an artist does a canvas pull the blankets over us curled like a song the tips of my fingers energy wings planting flowers under your skin while undoing shirt buttons, butterfly hands pressed against you love Springtime comes in like a lion goes out like words whispered against my neck a kiss becomes a crocus bursting out of soil and your skin, well-

all I know is living

June 23

falling silent is the way to cure the mountains not to get anywhere

June 24

so when it falls on your shoulders you’re going to pick up and go?

admit it, you’re floating just as breathlessly as I am and no experiment will yield

the data

a break

A safety net you may have been, but in what way is that negative? Without it, trapeze artists around the world would fall to their deaths. It is not inadequate to be the support someone else needs in order to fly.

The clowns are in negotiations over whether it’s time to remove the net. The elephants, older and wiser, wish to leave it, but you know - You know the charismatic will win every time, rainbow afros set on the table and briefcases full of rubber red noses. They’ve got spunk.

What have the elephants got?

It’s hard to see across this tent–is there someone there waiting to catch me? What a time for hazy air. When negotiations are over, I’ll know. Will every swing be a midair russian roulette? Or will you stay fastened down, one of few comforts?

Keep me safe and I won’t rip through you. This is all I can guarantee. Trapeze artists don’t stay in one place for very long.

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems not about any particular person: 2007

Restart

let me break expectations so all will seem new and i can excel. and when it’s Nothing that you see past those ridges of your fingers you can restart (with a little caffeine) and i promise you won’t be decoration. no more Tinsel You. so solid and cement. elicit contrition but let me Sweep it away like the needles that lie dying or dead. no more Main Attractions.

inhibition

with all the threads holding us (too Fragile) back from the cement walls, tangles are inevitable but just Lift off and they may snap and bite your skin but You won’t mind because exemption can come faster than Light.

like a lightbulb!

you can’t Jump through the glass. Measured Success is made of behavioral patterns, and we could hear you break the mirror.

a character

swallow the prickles burn and temptation you might expect of a city girl, but not a belle like me and my bonnet may shatter sooner than you thought to reveal a head of snakes.

high alert

there might be a thunderstorm, so it isn’t safe for you to be up there Alone letting the wind excitement thrashing water short our working circuit or— the hope of one. Come down to where it’s safe to where the danger lies only in yourself. Because, my term of endearment, this is all a lightning bolt and if you don’t protect yourself who will? Certainly not I Certainly not your words not the coast guard or God not promises or Understanding. realization is a light bulb, so is possible mutual Love. if the power goes out we are in the dark and that is when we will see too much.

ghost of a chance

the ghost of a chance is moaning I can hear its chains rattling marley! and it is ethereal and above and nothing more than cobwebs take one last chance before you fade into the candle light oh marley, good bye I think maybe I could have Loved you.

yoga

the thinnest comfort let your breath protect you can you feel this it’s the rain, you’re evaporating do you feel weightless? Just let your hips move, breathe louder and lift I am a praying child in my calmest moment.

it’s not you, it’s your DNA

even if this is the same mistake I have made most of my life it is new like a child when all people are the same and, like a child, it will grow make a difference and won’t ever please everybody.

We swam through the lake and pushed ourselves up on the bank, through the mud—it dripped as though it could not bear to leave our bodies. The trees were not dry yet, we couldn’t feel rain drops on our backs, for the leaves caught them and kept us from being attacked by the wind and eroded. I have no idea what turn you took in the forest, or if you fell. Watching you would have overpowered me. It’s clear now that you must have left me somewhere because the weather is louder than my heart.

Remember that day when it snowed and we tried to break through the ice and drown but we couldn’t go through with it in the end? There are days when I feel like that all of the time and the only thing keeping me from getting the chisel is you, so I breathe. Air rushing down through my lungs reminds me what this is all for and what I have yet to see and know: everything.

Unless you cry out I won’t know where to look—it’s getting dark and I have no sense of direction. I know that you hate to make a scene but sometimes it’s okay, and I’m the only one here.

Your hands smell of ink and your heart smells of wine, I forget the difference, they both always smell like mine, because that’s what you are. Try to find your way back by the morning or I’ll have to go, I work in an office and they don’t know what this is. My mind clings to you like the mud that you never wash off.

These feelings aren’t exactly regulation.

A flare escapes from the wire extensions of trees that are scraping the sky until it bleeds—the explosion is peaceful. Trickles of white falling off from the gold center, this is some metaphor for hope but I don’t see you, only it. The ground is covered with grass and my hair. Dark strands look like seaweed in this light, growing from the dry soil, which I know is impossible. So is this.

My watch does not work anymore, it could almost be day or it could be the beginning of night, there is no way to know. I could run towards the flare but it’s risky and there’s so much to lose. The closer I get to you the farther I get from the road that leads to the city, a reminder of my past. We don’t like who we used to be, and I am still unsure. But you, you’re a man.

And in a way I hope that you never come home.

A word in my mind is the same as the word on your mouth, so it’s not hard to think and agree that we’re over. There’s no point in touching, we’d only feel mud upon mud, and my skin would recoil from you anyway. Know that you’re stolen by thoughts that have not yet been said. And thoughts are just thoughts until you give them a sound, then they swim in the air, evasive and new. Just try to be silent, it’s not difficult, it just takes some noise.

You are quick to be slow when it comes to smiling, and that’s why there’s no warmth, that’s why your eyes are not eyes.

Who really knows what can be said to a ghost made of tap water, needles, and plastic grass? In all this reality such a ghost is practically whole. And that’s why we need all this mud, why my hair is so long and why this needs to break.

close your eyes

Distinctly, I see the gates descend, the eyelids close Only in this does closing create more openness. shutting out images, true, but Close your eyes, and there are new ways to see.

often when she speaks it is not her voice but the nervous swallow of God when He is sitting close to somebody in the dark, arms unsure and hands like butterflies across skin. And if this somebody reaches out and touches ? then He will touch back with the fingers of her laugh, all warmth, as if she never cries.

two people

why does it seem like you are incredibly sad? Unfurl and there is filth a break from worry is time with you, and unbidden smiles You have become defensive and distant, despite your protests

jumping thought to thought and silly to silly

What kind of goodbye was that?

stepping in puddles that are portals to another world, you are happiness, however momentary

I want to save you, but I am afraid to even ask if you care, and I do not trust you will be honest.

Upon Belatedly Reading Your Valediction

“Meaningless and used” is frighteningly accurate; those words were a prophecy read too late. On the couple of cold days that you are here, instead of dialing your number I’ll remember when your brother said he didn’t trust me because you didn’t. And he drove you home. You’d had too much and kept saying how green I felt, and how all my words were like velcro. When this paper is lost and you think you’re in love with some boy from your linguistics class who has never gotten you drunk, the kind of boy you have to call to tell me about and I pick up because I deleted your number and don’t know that it’s you, I will repeat those words to you. I hope I leave you feeling meaningless and used. But I will say it in a warning sort of way, in a loving voice, which will confuse you. Then you will ask if I remember when I slapped your best friend. We are going in triangles, cyclic but with sharp turns.

summer, the converted pacifist

on days quieter than expected, when the swirls overlap the leaves brightly fading flowers of an end to discontent each backwards word beneath the unparalleled blue lends to a nihilist who has only just discovered evolution in a textbook that is decades old, and drinks in iced tea like it is the world.

promise me a few things, he cupped his hand around his mouth and breathed. wake up for my birthday, and try to remember our vows. Here, I’ll read them to you. You can hear

me, right? The doctors said— yes, you said she could— listen, do you remember them? Can you hear—just listen. Julie, we are above everything today. Today we are forever. Do you remember this, Julie? It’s not very good, I guess I thought it was better back then, he laughed papers. It really was a long time ago. white papers sheets faces white, he noticed the white.

Julie, wake

maybe break away

how recent was it that thoughts of no regrets swirled where they so wanted to be? change from a comfort that was self-induced but not delusional to a paranoia, a saddish hell is just the kickstart eveything has been asking for. without excuses, paths become evident, to self-destruction, or weak enlightenment. if only we could choose our beginnings. if only the end did not throw memory off-balance. regular laughter infused with watery eyes, no longer by mirth, how does one apologize when no one needs them to besides themselves?

subliming in air

I need to write

biting out from my fingers sharply sinking their teeth into the page, my words. there is a bubbling that begins in the bottom of my stomach and rises, rises crystallizing my lungs and opening my chest and turning my throat solid and carbon dioxide, the dry ice of literature. my breath, I suggest, is the gas rising off from this undeniably atmospheric pressure.

colder than ice

accelerate me, submerge me and as things lose clarity, you dance faster to a gaudy nightclub trick, and my words have mixed their metaphor. please tell me my enthalpy of sublimation— how much energy do I need to reach sublime?

I am angry

but it is that kind of silent angry that no one notices, or if they do they mistake it for sadness or confusion, though that is not entirely incorrect. it the kind of anger that comes from everywhere, can’t be pinpointed, leaving you wondering what you are angry about, even though you know you should know. because you do. but what you are angry about doesn’t seem bad enough to make you feel such horribly containable anger. the worst kind of anger is the kind you automatically contain. Am I angry at myself or am I angry at somebody? I think there should be a different word for this.

tomorrow will be tiresome

let us kiss when it is cold enough to see breath. And let the exhaustive rendering of our day be lost there, in the pillow of floating carbon dioxide. Let us flicker on flashlights at dusk, when it is dark enough to see the difference between our beam and all else existing but bright enough that if we were to hear a noise the silhouette behind it would be revealed upon searching Let my exhale be visible on your neck and shoulder, while other things become less, in this dusk, this final dusk below zero.

words out of dust

mornings of silver draped over dusty chairs, the filmy layer broken only by the imprint of a recent body. A body, and this is mere imagination, that walks a little tilted, brushes its fingers against its sides as it moves forward, with new eyes and dust on its back every day, really, because it only wakes every thousand years or so— though it is just as likely the body fills up an office with its size, buttons popping; unseemly. This body could be ashamed of this, already, so why remind every day like an alarm, or obligatory “I love you.” And that is why so much dust is gone although, like rodents, some people move constantly, sliding on the seat, wiping away the eye-sand the air has gathered over years mornings of silver, disturbed— as though it is that mindless to make something clean.

poem

under the covers, nothing but your skin can so perfectly seep, strengthening boiling water adding aching flavor, you are the tea that i drink in dark spaces to calm and rejuvenate and so slightly spill out on the black floor of scratches and history, but soft the covers will contain, immortalize i will keep some of you, you see, saved for a cold day where my mouth slips over air, the ice wind breaking teeth like porcelain, filling and rounding the shards with just a sip of your lipstick-stained thermos and when there is nothing left of you save the whispers of water inside my lungs, the covers will grow old threadless and bare around your naked sleeping body.

solid as words

and how is it that your skin is made of atoms? questions pressing past mostly we are empty, you teach, and I say But that is not how it feels, your skin can’t be mostly nothing it is knit so tight If we were truly made of such nonexistence couldn’t we slide through each other and walls, they being just as empty as we? And how can you

tell me these things and then prove

yourself wrong to me with your skin solid as words?

of course you feel like this

it is not okay and you are not okay that is never the word I just want someone to open their voice up when they are not allowed to speak open your voice up people choose how to live and consequently forget. The mistakes I make are the ones I know I will. I have to think about which way my head is turning. things do not seem to be plugged in you cannot ignore your mold, your basic that from which we all come we are all made of the same stuff, only some are not aware, or do not want to know these are not questions coming out My mold has warped I have realized how everything works more times than there are answers and so we stand, telling the time, holding in our hands the mold, the original mold we have just found under the bed we are shadows telling the time we are shadows making shadows how thoughtlessly to speak it would be better to rise higher above before letting go and falling back inside I don’t think you have the answers.

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

Text

poems about friends or family, going forward in time

drop the cable

pass me there’s no neon sign no string or leg to pull no conductor with your best interests at heart, just varying sights and sounds you could replicate and technology could duplicate, but how long would they resound, your reproductions? You’ll miss your stop looking for the Repeat button, “baby.”

Nakupenda

Pain and of course there’s some pity but mostly there’s love I’ll try not to deny you a shoulder a voice to rely on for silence. Swallow and this will burn going down but I promise you, baby, it’ll make you stronger yet you seem to know that— You would, it’s you after all and I’m just listening I wish I could be there and it’s not a fault nobody’s but the World’s that you’re going away and my dear you are filled with sadness that may be endless.

fun is up to you

Realize how awkward you make me feel you’re almost a man it’s strange too interested and no banter what do you expect? loaded questions really aren’t fair, you know he means more I can’t make decisions and you need answers I don’t think we should. Oh god why can’t I just say things simply ?

this is?

you start your endings with This Is so often that I can feel your want to know how to

define

so this is loneliness, he said. you don’t remember I am here? the girl who was younger and loved his words although he never heard her asked.

He didn’t hear her.

so this is loneliness, as though he did not know. And she smiled as he ignored her because there wasn’t much left of the english language and it can be easier to be detached.

He never heard her but she woke up last week from a dream where he cared and remembered she was there, and warmth. But reality’s like filth upon waking: so this is loneliness, he said. it can be easier to be sad.

Would you go out on a date with me

fuck you

I hate confrontation

something said at 11:11

doesn't have any more finality

than something said at 8:07.

oh these things that come out of my mouth

you tell me

“Possibility 1

you say you want me”

I honestly don't. why can't I bring myself to be blunt?

probably because I want

Something.

Your eyes make understanding out of warm October afternoons With sleepy thoughts like mine and an empty foamy cup between us. Flooding with words, explanations of situations fill the coldly white store As we drift from shelf to shelf, looking for a way to organize, to make sense. Last-minute turns on busy streets, warm hands touching We careen and share how in our love lives we are also careening,

directionless. Your unexpected real night, the kind we think never really happens With the boy you’ve watched and discovered a little late, so beautiful, shows there is always more to find.

a poem for marisa

i’m looking for a boy with curly hair to plan the unplanned step out of the rain and find my someone to lean on.

On the threshold

Is it funny that last year as it grew warm I detached from you and this year it is growing cold again? Is it funny that this winter I will not be in love with you? Is it funny how long ago a year feels? Is it funny that I let myself get so thrown around? Is it funny that probably I never fell out of love with you? Is it funny that no one ever falls out of love? Is it funny that those thoughts of you aren’t in my head anymore, because I forced them away and buried myself in others? Is it funny that I still think that was the right choice to make? Is it funny that it’s hard to tell what is funny and what is just sad and cold like the last winter I loved you?

pastime

you feign stealth, but the smoke pours out from your lungs, the air made toxic by each breath’s release each one a tick of that always-clock towards death you hasten inside to lie in charred wait, until people are less forgiving of self-delusions (you are weak) and I am left noticing long trips to nowhere, the guilty burning nowheres where health and respect are furtively lost, as though hiding from love hides you from death.

Atmosphere Through His Fingers

He is carrying pieces of the moon with him little geodes in his pocket the earth in front of me scattered with pebbles that have fallen from his clothes; a jealous little dusting of the moon

The first man to walk on Jupiter will descend into the gas no quaint craters or moondust flying up beneath his boots a planet is a very different thing He has always carried pieces of the moon with him, but somewhere he has found a piece of Jupiter So he reaches into his pocket and lets the air run through his fingers— he has no need for the moon anymore. He will let atmosphere run through his fingers.

Tonight as I walk the streets of the city and touch the sleeves of you I will sleep. Tomorrow I will wash your shirt and give it back to you as though I didn’t love it black and careless.

July 4

i can’t shake this feeling of gunpowder

crackling where we can’t be found empty lakes and fields fireworks under umbrellas, french fries past midnight and the two of you independence

July 10

this is friendship at its best rolling around, laughter tears in and out of each others’ consciousness it’s really absurd how nice life can be once in a while

July 11

it’s okay if we don’t get married,

just turn up system of a down and break the speed limit

July 12

free on the road, hours away we are independent for a day spontaneously resting, avoiding your empty house, my night is filled with you my day, my night, thank you for buying me that lemon bar.

July 25

I wake rested, despite having barely slept. Did you sleep for me?

August 1

Blue-tinted fields kiss our midday journey, Handing us something we could never find without peace.

A sort of exclusive land, nestled in water, Establishing a hierarchy of meditation. Take a blueberry in your hand and break it, Unbidden purple liquid dripping down your wrist.

Wipe it across your breast. There are hidden deer Here, but they have nothing to say.

August 27

a kiss to your metal wound and you’re off !

it’s dangerous out there, beautiful.

come back in only a few pieces

Love the sorceress, love the storm.

I see everywhere that you are going, and I will even draw you a map

to help you get there.

Sprawling lines of blue, shades of wandering green for your feet to know where they belong— moving, roaming, with purpose, over scribbled mountains and highway numbers until the edges of the map curl and you are ready to drop into the sea, into maplessness, into the free.

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changingbirdpoems · 7 years

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poems about Julian going forward in time

aimed for what i hoped i wanted

but fell short and your shadows and your shellshocked morals drew me a picture of new Wanting impossible to escape.

first kiss

I don’t feel weird

I don’t know how I feel about it

All I know is I can still feel your tongue on my tongue

you taste so sweet

I want last night back

it’s difficult to say what is mine

your breath your words your heartbeat

your thoughts your smile in the moment?

I take what I don’t know and make it mean so much.

you have not been mine

and contrary to popular opinion

I understand and accept that

you will not be mine

and contrary to popular opinion

I know and expect that.

but

in the moment?

I swear you were mine and I was yours

and our breath our words our heartbeats

our thoughts our smiles were for each other

so fucking fly far away

because you’ve not going to leave here

after that night I’m more unsure

close the window I just want to feel your breath soft softly softer

there is too much fear of you caring a little of you never having been but not as much as with him and Different because you have a touch and a smile

Oh so different

I hold myself back from intimacy when it’s possible

Wistful is an understatement when I think of how much more that could have been, But I didn’t know, I was too unsure I lost myself but not to the moment. This is what you have left me with.

unexpected

After something that should change me I find myself cynical Where is my afterglow?

Well, it’s here only when I’m not.

mating rituals isolate species

There is so much we could make of this as the leaves are dripping with a ruined night my mouth has begun to taste like his the flavor in the transparent black is a discovery of bright.

There is so much we could take from there his hands are rougher than your words I didn’t know what to touch but his hair was mussed like my mind—we are not free, we are not birds.

There is so much we could remember car doors are wings but we are rooted in the moment clipped wings, in a sense, or frosted by December and unable to fly, but we can be wistful and we can lament.

I am here in America and I am in my room

pens a notebook a bed a door four walls

(not you)

I am missing something

it is very apparent as I feel alone and as if

it has been whole country since you touched me

I am here in our state and I am in my bed

sheets a comforter a frame a me two pillows

(not you)

something is missing

it is very apparent as I do not feel this empty

when you are here and you touch me

I am here in my town and I am in my mind

personalities confusion images words and imagination

I am thinking something

it is very apparent as I exist and your name is constant

and memories swirl like your breath when I touched you

I am here in my home and I am in my heart

arteries a muscle a strength and a life

there is so much here that changes

(like you)

oh god

the end

is in sight

where are my safety goggles

welcome back

A month passed much more quickly than expected How to measure? inches of rain, dying conversations, wasted time but not in minutes, this isn’t a fucking season of love and time is relative anyway.

mutually noncommital and more

no promises at all, but I am already looking forward. it feels like a memory, I have imagined it so many times. There’s an empty parking spot and it’s waiting for you. Silent, I am tremblingly careful to make no noise, and then your presence. parks at night, secret, dark, our habitat.

it is unclear now what is real and what is hope

I could make you fall

The harder I try to push you down, the safer I feel, the more I am enclosed by your arms: a feeling I long for of late. My laugh is strange in your mouth, but you are perfect on me.

let’s get lost

there is a taste to this spiderwebs, pinecones, trees, and wire fences? spiderwebs are reflections of what is always being created and how you cannot control something fragile. pinecones are just artsy observations, it’s all a laugh like the leaves against the sky that look like pools of water. trees are the only walls here in this forest of five roads collapsed in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel all. wire fences are filled with the curls of ivy and your fingers as you support this connection, so close that I rise with your breath.

texting is silly

it is funny how waiting for the vibration makes me insecure

see (the quiet in everything before summer is over and you are again too young for this empty quality of freedom we dance to and call escapism) you (who are here only to water your plants and kiss girls and wax philosophical and other such chores) later (a promise one learns to not trust).

early on

me, with my papers and you, with your high laugh and magnetic mischief

Desire rises and falls

behind classic novels and tiring worksheets, I emerge

our bodies know

For a few days, you are near, and for a few hours, you are close against plastic and barely hidden. My breath is so much more nervous, shaking with every freedom. Resounding against my palms, your heartbeat’s slower and instinct’s faster. This is me holding back. Daylight and deadlines hinder the progression of this that we want, but I realize that our bodies know it’s still summer.

third wheel

when kissing becomes a necessity

(almost a commodity)

there's little that can be stolen.

on a night when everything's contagious

and distance is in short supply,

words can become a solo effort.

if you aren't careful

you'll begin to care

and then when it's stopped being easy

your incompetencies will come out of hiding

and comparisons are inescapable

sick of hearing about, sick of seeing the face of who I hunted once this is nauseating while everyone else flutters around longing has passed but sadly I admit it will return as it did before, inexplicable

an apron dusted with flour, the dough is condensed and sticky air, chemistry really, molded by your hands. a flick of a tail and the whole building of ice has shattered, there is no time to melt. And if you ask me how I’m feeling, don’t tell me you’re too blind to see. Never gonna climb these stairs of appreciation when there is nothing at the top. I should have said something other than “happy,” although it did elicit a smile. The box of cracked wood is eroded by hands, the oils and pressures of years of being opened wearing down its engravings. There is a sound outside my window, like bells in the dead of summer. Shakespeare said it best when he said “Now, away!” Sometimes what looks like a spider is a hole on the wall that has been there for years. A mark in my house I should know, but still makes me look twice. Are you that spidery mark? Please do not come back in the snow and tell me that it is nice to see me. Grass survives everywhere, it is the most versatile and durable organism. an accented voice makes me think this, on my television with Never Before Seen footage that everyone has seen now. A slow day for the newsroom when my heart is spilling open. I thought about you on the way home today and how I am a fast learner. I thought about you and I thought about the work I had to do, and I thought about how I learned you faster than I did this equation. Learned you in a way that doesn’t matter. there’s a reason pretension is made up of “pre” and “tension.” Tension always follows when people are pretentious. sometimes the pretty ones do not win, and sometimes it is unclear who anyone is. Goodbye, my lover, goodbye my friend, James Blunt sounds like a horse all shaky and ridiculous like your breath Rolling to lie by your side, mask me, last chances. I have given you what you wanted from me. is that it.

Crawl in with me. I remember when that locker with pellet-like streams of light fit only me, and you kept me contained with musical instruments.

Upon Belatedly Reading Your Valediction

“Meaningless and used” is shatteringly accurate; those words a prophecy read too late. On the couple of cold days that you are here, instead of dialing your number I’ll remember how you think I’m too young to love but old enough to get you off. My silence will be the close. But it won’t and you’ll pull the door open every time because I’m weak and the way you want me is a drug. Sometimes there is nothing but the truth of how much I want you. A night spent sleepless and quiet thoughts of rhymes that bruise and separate you from caring. That’s it. I hope I leave you feeling meaningless and used.

A Sprout In Your Wake

What I hate the most is that you stole from my willing hands, And what clamors the loudest is that I do not regret,

after thought, the highs and lows of your enabled theft, because there are no treasures I have lost— they have simply been replaced;

As you ran, a seed fell out of your pocket, a creeping vine that I watered, enriched with my exhales and lost days within, enfolded.

With the progression of time the leaves will mold to my shape, stealing my breath in a way that is reminiscent of a past someone, with eyes quick to break and arms that swallow up.

some haiku in an absence

at least now I am aware that there is nothing that could feel like you in body and thoughts you will be the only one to have held me first and my hands will keep you imprinted in their grooves like my empty mouth calls out noiselessly as though there were ever a person who listened.

analyzing

unsure if I have been used or not define used; a simple concept but when attempting to pinpoint spins the grid, beep beep beep this alarm falls dangerously into the background of everyday sounds not perpetual, occasional pulling back into place, I once knew how this would go and prepared myself for both of our restlessness, approaching dauntingly like the law, which we aren’t exactly abiding by, although it’s a faded line that separates us - this is not something planned upon, it just breaks out claws reaching hungrily, maybe gentle if I stepped into this I have not been used, I suppose but still my mind switches to body heat

my first semblance of a poem in a while

i find myself to be the strangest colors raw brilliant curving under my fingernails, fending off contracts, handshakes, and other ways to bind one person to another. even the oldest books were written for eyes and hands, but my throat, will it see what lies just beneath veils of colorless, irredeemable noise? noise, which is only really air expressed it is in love with somebody it wants to change; that is where aches arise.

Half of what I say is meaningless But I say it just to reach you, Julian

I see the sidewalks lined with him, and I

place my foot as though a monster's in each crack, leaping like a child; I am a child, and so is his name Julian the child I envisioned as a child There are ferris wheels passing, and in each one Julian sits in the topmost car He is smoking and wearing that expression that disturbs me—the one that is almost loving and kind, the one I hate for him to make, the one he wears when he thinks he is being romantic.

Julian, Julian, oceanchild, calls me So I sing a song of love, Julian

And I jump back to how he is done, how he hopes he has left this place, how he has had the same Chemical Brothers album in his car for months and months Julian, in cadence with a Beatles song I sing a song of love to Julian, Julian does not blink because he thinks he's been around so long. He does not have the answers, he is still a child working things out. Oh, he is a man Julian, seashell eyes, windy smile, calls me So I sing a song of love, Julian

Asymmetrical eyes and the smallest spot on his shoulder where he can't feel my touch, or anyone's there was once a day where he said he just discovered he was not going to die, and I had so many questions but instead I only gave him a drawing I had made for his eighteenth birthday. Julian, windy smile, he calls me, and so I sing a song of love that he hears but is done giving energy. Julian, Julian, morning moon, touch me So I sing a song of love, Julian

His name hurts to hear and see When I cannot sing my heart I can only speak my mind, Julian

I have gone on standing, his thoughts vibrating into nothingness, as each time I decide that he can't break what isn't his half of what I say is meaningless and used, like what lies in his wake, as he hoped I remember how whenever we were out at night he had to pee in the woods, and how I always laughed, Julian! but I was speechless when he stopped kissing and hung suspended over me, asking How do you feel? Julian happy? When he came back from Europe and caught me unawares, in a store, with his little message, I smiled a loaded smile loaded with the friend I kissed when he was gone getting high, telling his friends the things that we did, and how he was my first, isn't that rich that's good, I wouldn't want you to not be happy. Julian, sleeping sand, silent cloud, touch me So I sing a song of love, Julian

he met me at the door and held me gently in my living room, with his arm in a blue sling and the construction worker in my kitchen How he made me want to touch until my hands fell apart I think I do not really hate that expression, it's just that it strikes me as a little insincere, and I wonder if it is the one he made for the girl he loved He did not go past my boundaries, I did, and I did not ask permission so I sing a song of love to Julian, who never called me but to say he was on his way or that he needed a place to park. He used to think of me, that's the thing calls me So I sing a song of love for Julian, Julian, Julian

and those eyes on me and those conversations turning night into morning He had his own taste—I was wrong to think everybody tastes the same. It is something I used to taste on command, but now it's gone Half-meaningless, I write this just to reach you, Julian still my cravingly remembering mouth must be satisfied with not his own, but his name

Julian

My mouth does not miss you. I am sorry, but My lips twist in remembrance and they know who you are, and when I am cold sometimes a flicker of something alights them, and your wandering, unsure smile is still there in my mind, but no, My mouth does not miss you.

Inherent

It would be a lie to say I no longer think of your skin-

subtly sticky on humid nights

Your chin rough, a few day’s growth sweetly jarring in contrast with soft shoulders

and soft mouth.

It is a memory- I decidedly make you a memory

of skin that was never close enough.

I will never touch you again- I cared, against you, with more than my hands.

I don’t want you here. Not in this garden. These plants weren’t grown for you, rather grown away from you– like sunflowers grow away from the dark. I don’t want to hear your voice, despite how the plants love the carbon dioxide of your exhale. It is a fading exhale.

3:23 in the afternoon and I am caught unawares, watering can in hand, warding off what could be called your thorns.

You are a human being, not a plant, and I no longer want to be touched. Save your poison. I am not on your side.

June 21

It is only a moment into the moment

but still I have this tremor, this

knowledge of the night unfolding

although all I am going to do is sleep and wake

and sleep and wake again

as though you weren’t pulsating through me

as though I didn’t shake in every moment this is the process to all things

you wouldn’t know you never close your eyes you never really open them, either.

It’s okay. We all find our way alone.

June 25

kept alert, I speak to you and you speak to me and I write this poem lineless because I don’t feel like putting any effort into shaping you

June 26

As if people were machines that could be oiled

Who do you think you are? We all waste What does it say about human nature that the beautiful ones are the loneliest? It says that we need more

than empty validation, a point you seem to never have gotten I can only hope that my hands don’t fall apart

July 1

Maybe I don’t want to operate within your metaphor. Not the page that you were afraid of, but a different page than yours.

Yes, that sounds right.

You were all there too. “Adorable.”

A string of thoughts, like the world

then set aside.

July 2

our heads can float forward as though underwater, when really they have just been resting on a car seat, music the only tide pulling us apart the sudden memories that you can’t shake the feeling of, and that keep you up past tiredness finding the right melody to sing the right song for the moment finding the Right in general

July 5

it was really my thoughts that were messy right then

so strange-

give me some air

July 6

defragment me the key is hidden in my properties give me blue space I don’t care how long it takes; I can run all night if I need to

but I am tired of being spread so thin because you can’t remember to press a button

July 8

raised skin blurred sky lights and human instruments we lie as far back as the chairs will go and try to become fluid fighting with headrests, you take my hand but there's this inconquerable ingrained wariness and a floating lack of trust above the music lighting matches with empty fire you blow mechanical cigarette vapor into my mouth the earth is expanding beneath us, you say, so slowly- the only way ancient gravity makes sense

your explanations are truthful, yet still disingenuous

July 16

this is really getting

frustrating

I don’t need you, I just need to know the reason for the radio silence.

July 24

even if we light all of the torches, i want you to keep your clothes on.

if this is made to decay, it’s all right;

i will compost with you

Someday, maybe, you will treat me fine

but for now, I feel comfortable having nothing.

July 27

if indeed there is a god whose attention determines activity then I am in his peripheral clinging to the flurries of life, dreaming of book jacket biographies dreadlocks and cages of birds. you have these theories, which I enjoy, and pocketed eyes that once (but no longer) rested on my skin, but now there’s a net below the trapeze. I am what I love and not what loves me, nicholas cage whispers unabashedly. there’s a sequence to each sparrow.

August 8

stereotypes aside, you really are very gentle.

August 9/10

You’re scary.

I find it all the more calming, this unsurety of yours in the face of my serenity. You want to know my thought process? I am doing what feels right, and I am releasing from need.

August 11

I must confess I’m glad I returned to this. The softness of stomach on stomach. I’m glad I don’t need to touch you, but I can.

August 15

nighttime rebellion, the boston tea party of sensation, leaves dropped one after another by indians into the unsuspecting harbor, laughing around the foreign substance as water tends to do your fingers unstoppable and determined to claim. a post-coital cigarette perches out the window, matching the moon with its fire as I nestle into your body with fingertips like graveyards, inhaling

I will let you treat me like this because I like to be pulled around by my hair and held gently, if uncaringly, vagabond hands pressed close. broken breath at my touch as I set sail for new zealand, your skin in storage and your moans tossed overboard.

Your Name is the Only Word That I Can Say

Your skin should have been named Laika, making love to the Arcade Fire like this, tucked away in a neighborhood, silently screaming your touch through my veins, the gentlest brush of tongue, painting the songs all over my body.

Addressed

I’m buying your music - building off your ruins. You burned down what never existed, I construct without materials.

Loveless and striding forward

Past

Why is it YOU who makes me want to quilt words? It’s like my fingertips were lying in motionless wait to be let down by you again. Not that you let me down; I wasn’t trying to change you. It was you It was you, just how you were. It was your disregard, it was the way everything was thoughts. There were fewer questions than I imagined, and a quieter ache. And when you lit And when you lit, I was tumbled over down the mountainside. The log sliced my leg but I went on. You don’t have time for Hallelujah but you have a lovely peace. We had this connection

We had this connection that wasn’t what you needed. Just like every one before. Just like every one before. But this one

But this one touched your back. I will never be sorry for how important you were to me. You released something. And even then I knew there wouldn’t be wildflowers.

words without thinking

quiet this is a place where promise is rain and nothing is ready for what it craves it begs for quiet for nothing for what I want from you as if the song I smiled to never settled my soul as if that rainy ride wasn’t a promise of peace as if there is ever a promise. you are candy apples and succulent flowers, ephemeral and sticky and not pure but dirty with meaning to me dirty with what I see in your asymmetrical eyes. you are rain spattering on a wooden deck, you are wooden popsicle sticks I bite on purpose you are wooden you are metal you are earth you are nothing that is good for me. helicopter pollen and my throat hurts but I sit outside in the yellow dust because I can reject the earth but it can’t reject me.

sleepy orange peel eyes cat fur lilacs the stench of a flower the ache of the grass. chocolate with lemon and ginger and black pepper you are the ache in my arms and legs, you are not you, you are everyone I ever wanted; I don’t want you I want to be wanted in return for all the desire I stockpiled and stored away but fills a room that could be open windows and air and sunlight.

if you could listen to music like I do you would collapse with the sorrow of it all–if you could love like I do you would be a blade of grass or a beetle crawling on its belly through the rain. you wouldn’t know anything, you would be denim and canvas and quiet.

inside me is a pear, too ripe and breaking apart with fluid too sweet to swallow too much syrup for what you can want for what you can be a plum apricot any fruit a burst of sweet in the back of the mouth and if berries the seeds in your teeth that want to be in your throat and planted inside you. rain-swollen leaves heavy above and dripping like my eyes are frozen like they need to melt like your hand can break the branches like your fingernails are tree bark.

why is it when I think of your hand on me I think of swollen raspberries in thickets of thorns and sticky sweetness that I could break through and run through with blood marks across my skin why do I think of blood oranges in my palm and want to clench and let the juice run through my fingers into the grass why are you the heavy haze in my heart when I don’t admire or trust you why do your eyes and crooked smile break my back and fill my spine with need and hunger why are you such dark honey that never washes off why are you a strawberry that stains why have I always wanted you

now that my mind is less fire I can see the quiet in you and the kindness that is peach honeysuckle music volume car seats essential oils and cotton. I can be the soft glory of my longing without it being you, without you pulsing through my veins–now you are a soft glow warming my mind towards sublime glory of feel, apart from you. you are a wicker bookshelf, a music box, a paper crane, a poem on a wall, not a punishing ache. you are, that’s all and nothing more– you are you are you are

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