Cocoon

I dealt with my cocoon:
Birthed from the ancient alabaster columns
Of a long lost civilization;
Draped under a star-spangled banner
In a poppy field;
Encompassed by city lights
In every which direction—
Bound by the size of the bills
In my neighbor’s stuffed pockets
And chained,
At the end of every day,
Under a blank name and face.

Yet such a cocoon served me well,
Kept my arms from spanning wide enough
To tug too hard at my heartstrings.
I was situated just right
So that I could pluck them,
To itch that scratch—
Scratch that itch that was fed
Every time I had nothing
To cradle
Or be cradled by.

“Play for me soon,” they cried,
And I would. I’d play anything
To hear the slightest of empty sighs
Escape them,
To feel the faintest skip
Of a heartbeat or two
Disrupt the gentle sway of the room
We stood in.

The transience once fueled me.
It asked to persevere;
It wanted the single instance in time
When a specific note I played
Was a little prettier than the rest
To sit quietly at the bottom
Of an underground box,
Awaiting revival—
A time when my blank name and face
Became beautiful
While I tried my best to explain
The ugliest things
I have ever seen.

I used to deal with my cocoon—
When the claps drove me past the poppies
And the frayed flags on every
All-American wrap-around porch.
I dealt with my cocoon
Until the ugliest things
I had ever seen
Had nothing to say to me anymore.

Duchess Falling

I can’t sleep when the bed sheet fights
Its way back to your side
And you’re not even there
To pull it over you again--
But that cannot keep me
From tiring of the tireless nights
You grant me,
Or the dazed days when I want
Nothing more than to know
Who you are,
Or the dawns that make me smile
With the golden rising orb
You love to hate and
Hate to depend on--
Setting at dusk
When your prideful moon rises;
When I can watch, breaking,
Knowing you will never be
The duchess to rise
When all else goes black,
Or the woman to stand straight
Just because she wants to,
Since you’re no woman to thrive
As a transient nomad,
But the only one I know
Who tells me she can
While laying cradled
In stronger arms.

Gift

I would have, and would still
Give anything to catch you.
I would fold the sky into my palm
And place it in your pocket;
I would chase the sun
All the way to the sands
To be the one to hear your heart
Palpitate
To the sound of the sea breathing.

I would dance for you,
I would change for you;
I would weep in the glory of
Giving the tiniest star your name
And flying you there,
Where it won’t seem so tiny anymore.

I cannot move earth
And heaven:
The Great Ceiling is boundless
With not an edge to fold inside itself;
The sea holds in her hands the
Bewilderment
You cannot yet face;
The tiniest star might just be
Not
Quite
Tiny enough.
I'd leave more on your doorstep
Than a heart and a head
If I was more than that myself.

Please, as you wander now,
Often watching me wander,
Seeing every bright streetlight
As the newfound Northern Star—

Know that
I will still dance for you,
I will always change for you.

Whenever you wander,
Maybe watching me wander,
Remember that I can always
Write for you.

Bonne Hiver, the second chapter

I look at you now and hope with all my being that you’ll remember me, even when you get distracted and could easily forget to.

My stomach couldn’t quite find the energy to churn while I sat next to you, arm pressed against arm. It should have, given the circumstances. It was unbearably difficult for me to comprehend that you actually followed me into the dark just to be given the chance to pull me out again. Yet, we listened and we learned. You looked at me every once in a while, scanning my face for any signs of unease that I could have told you didn’t exist. I was, after all, with you, arm pressed against arm like we were. I could smell something in you that I finally could breathe in with my eyes closed, taking in nothing but the glory of experiencing who you are.

I wish you knew how much it means to me, how glorifying it is to be able to look you in the eye and claim that I know you. You don’t like making decisions. You prefer to cross your right leg over your left. You hate yourself for your fervent love of dependence. You like to write notes on your left hand. You work very hard to suppress your cynicism every day. You’ve had the same haircut since high school. You love debatably more deeply than anyone I know, but you don’t express it unless you genuinely trust someone and even then, you make it difficult to decode.

In many ways, it is safe to say that I know you. I want you to want to know me. I pray every day that you sat next to me that night for some greater reason, that you felt so inclined to walk me through the fire only partially because the fire once burned you.

I want you to love me. I promise I will love you, that I will make you feel useful and appreciated. I promise I won’t have to use words to tell you. I will just let myself grow overwhelmed in your presence and you will feel it somewhere in the corners of your consciousness, and that in itself will be enough.

I want you to know what it feels like to be needed. I want you to need.

I look at you now and hope with all my being that you’ll remember me, even when you get distracted and could easily forget to.

An Ironclad Life

I once could laugh at the worst moment
Of a porcelain life,
When sourgrass stung
The scrapes on my ankles
And I was free to seek
A siren’s song.
I could tilt back, aglow,
Spinning in this chair of mine,
While laughing at the sound
Of laughter
Until the porcelain cracked
And made webs out of me,
And soon, a porcelain life was shattered.

I tried to laugh at the worst moment
Of a copper life,
When I savored the
Deepest of solitude
and dreamt of drinking in
The years deferred.
But I would curl up, ashamed,
In this same chair of mine
While sighing at the sound of laughter
Until the copper corroded
And made rust out of me,
Leaving you to find
My silent grievance:

I cannot laugh,
I cannot sigh
While leading an ironclad life.

The Day I Saw Star Clusters

Once,
I skimmed both ends of the world
With brazen fingertips
And somehow reveled in knowing that
I could never grip both sides,
Nor get the chance to
Flip the earth in midair and call
Heads or tails.

Yet somebody whispered in my ear today
That there’s a Soviet flag on the moon
Where ours is supposed to be,
That cathedral bells will swing at noon
Because a timer told them to,
That the look on your face when you laugh
Hides a person more empty than those
You laugh with.

I could have seen star clusters in the daylight
While underneath my roof, under layers of linen and lace.
I could have rolled that globe between my fingers,
Personified life and death,
Made a heartbeat and a steady breath
Finally within grasp.

I firmly held the earth between my hands today,
And held less between my palms
Than I had in either of my pockets.
I’ll learn to let the earth fall free from my hands today,
And remember life chose me, after all.

The first of typewriter ramblings

TO BREATHE THE FIRST LIFE
,one step two step
;maybe, just maybe a spoken word
of seesaws and trombones
(is it just me, or do they shrink
?/grow)
the pacifier between your lips --
a dress size every year
;then the stop.

i can count the stains now
#one beer two beers
TO LAUGH AT THE WORST
MOMENT
of a (porcelain) life
;i try,
;i tried

i see no maybes
.infinitely.
"quotations dont matter,"
"i don't matter,"
That
.infinitely.
matters.

i try,
i tried
TO LAUGH AT THE WORST
MOMENT
of a (copper) life
;rust lingers
where you can only feel
the -green-
where the -green- only matters.
Rust
.infinitely.
matters.

i cannot decay
before sinew hands && hollow
bones

i try
; i tried
to live an(iron) l i f e
.

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession."

Lately, I've realized that I've become a person whose constant exterior battles have outweighed what I consider to be the most important battle one will ever fight. I have lost the overbearing need to chafe away at my thoughts and values until I am left with a raw form of self wholly fit to criticize and reflect upon. I have lost the sense of urgency in my chase to improve and more fully understand what I have found to be "me" and I've come to realize that it is solely due to my lack of writing lately.

Therefore, I feel like it is more important than anything else to restablish both my appreciation for literature and my own application of this expansion of the written word into my own writings. The following quotes have truly sculpted my reliance on poetry and prose, or at least clarified my assertions of it. I'm not quite a "poet" yet (although I pretend to be one), but these quotes revive all faith I have in becoming one. I'm only posting this on Facebook and Blogspot to remind myself that I CAN'T BACK DOWN and downplay writing's significance in my life, especially now that I've publicly declared it. Also, I know there are so many of you who understand the introspective power of literature and need the reminder as much as I do, or who might need the push to see beyond the intellectual and into the emotional.

_________________________________________________

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.
- Eli Khamarov

"I've been know to say, 'Oh yes, I do want to be in love. And yes I do want to be a loving, loving person. And yes I do want to be the mother of many children.' But at the same time, there is part of me that says 'I am also Lillian Hellman and I want to write the great novel of all time.' I want to go on the beach with my silent typewriter and I don't want anybody to bother me... because I want to enhance this planet. I came here for a reason. I didn't come here to be a mother. I didn't come here to be a nun. And I did not come here to be a cleaning lady. I came here to be a poet."
- Stevie Nicks, 1983

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings with form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."
- T.S. Eliot

"Poetry is all which gets lost in translation."
- Robert Frost

"A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: 'Sing for us soon again;' that is as much as to say, 'may new sufferings torment your soul.'"
-Soren Kierkegaard

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."
- Dead Poet's Society

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
- Rene Char

Bonne Hiver, the first chapter

I want to bask in
A beautiful winter beside you.
Walking with our minds
Interlaced
Like his and her
Fingertips brushing
In their first contact,
Blushing
in some type of
Reverie
Even the greatest of loves
Never knew.

And you,
You're like a
Beautiful Wisconsin winter all
Over again
As I step inside from your doorstep
and regain feeling
In those fingertips.

Because I saw you as
Black ice
from the moment I met you
and God,
How I want to misstep and
Sweepingly glide
Across such a magnificent terrain.
Maybe I'll get lucky and
Slide across a crack, and
We'll plunge headfirst into
Liquidated darkness
Where its impossible to discern
Why such a beautiful person
Froze over in the first place.

If you let me in,
I might
Swim towards the surface and
Amidst the shiver
And the fear,
Bask in the chance
To see the light emanating
Under the wake
To see through the same eyes
You do.

Coffee Talk

I looked her in the eye that evening and spoke some of the only truly honest words she'd ever hear out of me. This time, there was no intricate detail I'd thrown aside and no implication curved out of the corners of my mouth. I was ten times smaller than her for that instant. I slowly crumbled into the remnants of blueberry scone that had fallen from her lips moments before. She didn't notice it then, like I doubt she noticed me all over again. She wasn't staring at a body across the table anymore, but a soul: save of expanding lungs and that void in my right eyebrow, of scars.

The words had escaped me: "I am not a strong enough person to throw my cards in and settle for a polite handshake and coffee talk for the rest of my life."

Oh, and of course she told me that I was wrong, and that I was the strongest person she knew. Of course she jabbed at my ribs and reminded me that I can hold my breath until every last molecule of oxygen inside me has been robbed of all its worth. She brushed her fingertips along the scar underneath that faulty eyebrow and quietly requested to hear the story behind it again. She remembered hearing about glass, she whispered. There were so many things I wanted to whisper back.

I left her at that table and frankly, I wanted to believe that I'd made some huge mistake and being a survivalist really was the ultimate test of self-empowerment. It wasn't a matter of weakness, I told myself, if I continuously held that lighter to my face, or even just kept fighting like the senseless warrior I had became. I, after all, am a survivalist.

She'd know strength if she would stop looking for it in every action I take, or lack thereof.

I'd know strength if justice meant nothing and happiness meant everything.