[2011] Ceramic

March 24, 2011 at 6:11 pm (Poetry)
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After setting her in the kiln,
they left her to burn
bald and bare and alone.
By herself she felt

searing dead-white flames
lick her slender fingertips,
so new at knowing touches;
By herself she heard

stifling crackles, only
to realize that it was her
skin hardening over
for the last time.

They won’t call her a girl,
not quite yet, not until
they dress her as they please,
do her hair as they like.

For now, she waits in this round
belly kiln, listens to the fire
tell her about things called
bloodshed, bread, and beauty.

Fire calls her a thing of beauty,
that a bigger girl will hold her
saying the same thing, and
mean it even more.

“Even when you break,
reduced to just pieces
of what you once were,
you brought happiness–

is there nothing
more beautiful than that?”
She had no eyes to cry with,
so she smiled, eternally.

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[2010] Goodbye

December 27, 2010 at 11:26 pm (Poetry)
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Sinking downward, a child’s raft. It
drifts from the surface to the grasping tendrils
in the underworld, in the river bed.

It opens and thirty siren-girls escape,
singing words so tragic and so kind.
The child sent them outwards, these thirty
drops of silver blood, crying melodies
not meant for human ears.

So they gurgle in E minor,
and ripples gather at the surface.
The children playing stop to listen,
start to shout their songs anew.

The end is not a bang or a sputter,
just a fading.

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[2010] Cremation

December 26, 2010 at 7:42 pm (Poetry)
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For us, I found the road to daybreak,
Orpheus, sound your harp for our sakes.
Make the flames grow higher, profound!
Now stake my soul to that grave in the ground.

My soul, that I fashioned of fallen leaves,
the ashen lips of those who grieved,
now seeks the end of all the clashes
and reeks, it reeks, of gasoline scratches.

Watch it burn and entice the end–
my god, it hurts too much to mend!
Send the botched and make me churn,
Rend the splice between dirt and urn.

Now split me once and again, so thrice,
and kill me, as I’m being nice.
Scar me now and scorch me well;
for now I’m gone, and love you still.

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[2010] Talking to a Dead Guy

November 9, 2010 at 8:14 pm (Poetry)
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I.
The sky offers nothing and yet gives all the love a mother could.
Or all the hate, or all the pain, or all the fear.
But mostly it gives love, day by precious day.
I look up and embrace the silence with arms outstretched.
I think I can hear you telling me something,
that details are obstructions
when we grow blind to the greater light
hiding from us in the shadows.

II.
There is a difference in what comes out of your mouth and what goes in it.
Likewise, there should be some diversity between what goes into your soul and what comes out.
Wisdom and knowledge are not one and the same.
They can make one; yet they are never quite the same.

III.
I take the bristling of my pores as they cry against the heat of the autumn sun,
like how leaves must weep at all the love the rays give, how they can only take so much
before they start to hurt, and die.

IV.
What would I “trill” for democracy?
Honestly…how great, exactly, is this democracy?
Is she the perfect girlfriend?
Never going to leave us in the dust,
never going to die and leave us to fend for ourselves,
right, right, right, right, right?

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[2010] Falling Asleep

October 31, 2010 at 9:22 pm (Poetry)
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The shadows shift, shimmering,
(simmering)
ready to enter their graveyard shift
as audience. Contortionists,
they elongate their shapes
and fold on top of one another.

Ventriloquists meander within the tent,
the eardrum,
although they also work as clowns,
squeezing their nose
but it’s yours,
throwing their voices out
into your airways.

“Come one, come all”, they say,
but you hear
“Someone, some fall”.
and the trapeze artist reaches apex,
weightless and beautiful,
looks down into the crowd,
the shadow crowd.

A shadow girl stoops over from the hips,
picks up her eye
and asks where your hands are.
Yet you are the trapeze artist,
you are the spotlight,
and you cannot find those hands,
or the net in which to fall.

So you plunge downwards,
not into darkness
but into lucidity,
that which evaded you
when your eyelids refused
closure.

——-

You know, it’s kind of odd, but ‘Dreaming’ and ‘Falling Asleep’ are companion pieces. I didn’t realize that when I wrote them. Then again, I always work on the poem and then I assign a title, but I just find it strange that they fit together like that.

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