I want to tell you what I'm like, really,
Through my poetry.
How cooking dinner makes me rhyme
And drinking wine makes me sad
How my reflection rarely drives me to write
But the feeling of my own soft skin
Makes me realize how soothing it is: a pen rolling on paper
How, if I come back to this poem, I'll hate it.
How sometimes I say things cryptically
Because it makes me more interesting to myself

I want to tell you how self-injurous my behavior is--
How inward I am,
And how I talk as not to hear myself.

Here is something about crying:
Silent, deep sorrowful cries are the best
Because you feel them in your heart to start
Because the tears spill over, hot, soothing
When they touch your yearning face.

I don't have time to explain it all, though.

Some girl in the autumn.

Today I step off the bus
And see:
A pretty girl with
Long hair blowing, flowing
Behind her briskly-walking
Thin, jaunty body.
Girl I don’t know hurts me,
Only in her beauty.
Her carefree attitude a color in the atmosphere,
A painting this September morning:
A girl with dark blue jeans, light orange jacket,
And clear, white skin in a town’s crowd—
Still, my eye is drawn to her.

And, for a moment,
I thought I was her, maybe once, some time ago.

I know, though,
I never was a pretty girl with long, straight hair,
Strikingly clothed and a contented look,
With a face another stared at
For its grace and pleasantness,
Walking briskly in the late summer.

And I can’t decide if that hurts,
Or if I like it.

A double haiku that has to do with nature. Or rather, the unfortunate nature of a situation.

Cat, now we both have
Diabetes. Maybe we
Can help each other.

I'll draw up your shots.
But your missing fifth digit
Means you can't draw mine.

A February birthday poem, written in September.

This is a birthday poem
Because you loved to read my poems
And you liked it when I wrote about you

I'll put this on your grave
But your soul's not there
And I don't know how to find it
Still, I hope you will read this

You still have a poem of mine
But I don't know how to get it back

Happy birthday
You bought me a painted sterling bracelet
with arched jumping dolphins for mine
at that festival
next to your house
remember?

I liked how those dolphins jumped in a
continuous circle one after another
Brightly
I liked how it fit my wrist

That was September 10 years ago
And I lost that bracelet
It's gone Intangible

I can't walk through the festival
I see its lights dangling between
telephone poles and I cry
Dolphins dripping down my eyes
And the twilight colors them painted sterling

In my poem to you
I won't talk about how beautiful you are
Because you don't exist
Because you weren't when I saw you
your chest stuffed and your face made up
and they couldn't get your skin color right
so you looked yellow
You looked dead
I was scared to look for too long because I thought your eyes would pop open

I can't see anything but those pretty dolphins
They're unraveling becoming a string
now separating too

I don't want to let them go
They're just a memory
They don't look like a bracelet anymore
I forgot what colors they were painted
I forgot the little things I liked about them
I forgot what the clasp looked like
They fall sadly into separates
Dripping they look like hot tears
I wish they would turn into birds and fly
You died without being ready
So they never will

Angry Poem

I hope you know
When you cast judgement
On someone else
You are saying nothing about that person
But you speak of yourself--
Your bitterness
Your hatred or jealousies
You shine a mirror when you speak such negativities
That have no basis
Except, in your opinion...

I know you know
Your judgement hurts.
Your poison seeps into the air
And into the ears of susceptible bodies with little egos
waiting to grow

A rose does not head the thorns you posess
They prickle my skin like the bare briar
They are as beautiful as barbed wire

Your high horse talk looks like
Weeds under a telephone pole or
Pollen-soaked rain or
Oil in a puddle.
And when these picturesque atrocities
spill from your rose-like mouth

You look like them, too.

Thinking of a friend with a heartache, I decided to post this

This poem is dated May 4, 2003. That would have made me fourteen years old, but heartache hurts no matter what age you are. I really enjoy my writing from this time.

Make it go away

Make it hide in the dust of the stairwell

Away from me, away from them,

The ones who care.

Who can love if it is only a word?

An idea, like the colors of sound,

Pulling at imagination and want.

That which is irresistible, but a wild stab

In your heart:

A beautiful fluttering of butterflies around me,

While locusts swarm in to destroy the golden wheat.

I've always had this obsession with water lipping over...

So the rain never stopped.
And suddenly it seemed to me that the flash flood that dropped
To a bubbly happy brook
was dried up and began anew with steadily rising water blue.
Not gray and angry like last time
Just a deep, unthinking blue, pitter-patter.
Didn’t matter.
I let it rise until again it came forth, but,
Now, you would think it dries—
No,
Just a bit lipped over,
So it rose further.
Drove her crazy, never ending.
No cathartic moments pending. Spending
Every minute waiting, fearful, angry, still
She’s hating those small drops fallen into that stagnant pond,
Once a river.
She’s wishing she could stop the drizzle,
Let it sit and die, a swamp.

Start the process over.

She sees it, what she wants to be:

A deep, gorgeous valley.
With flowers, lush grasses responding
To the brilliant sun
And animals on the run
And bees that skim over the clovers
Across something that once looked damaged
And never too well managed.
But now is firm and fertile and fair.
She envisions herself healthy, unaware.
Just calm and happy and green and plain.
Just drinking that water whenever it rains.
Soaking up life, however it comes.
Not submitting to any inner demons.
Letting the wind blow her hair in her face,
Not trying to know, just knowing her place.