you’re worth more than i’m worth
so many of the things i want to say
you already said first
the kids know your lines, they’re better than mine
and you’re worth more than i’m worth
they’ll watch your back for you
cover your drink at the bar
the girls will always come back for you
cause everybody knows who you are
you curl your toes in your socks in your shoes on your stool
catch my reflection on the whisky glass
you wonder how i’ve been
but tonight you’ve got too much pride to ask
from here you look empty
do i look empty too?
a water drop to your bottom echoes
did you know your walls are see through?
your breath makes fog
on the orange-lit sidewalk
my breath retreats back into my throat
tying my tongue so it can’t talk
the best way to find a person
is through thickly awkward silence
so keep fidgeting
until your entourage finds us
they’ll parade you back to safety
but you’ll leave something behind
your breath’s footprints on my neck
i’ll pencil them in, prove they’re mine
and when you go home and write tonight
you’ll write it better than this
you’ll make it so much more beautiful
than it actually is
but you fight wars with your words
you stop the earth in its turn
you hunt down bridges to burn
and i listen and learn
because you came first
and you’re worth more than i’m worth
What do I do with you
Ghostlover
Have you got something unfinished?
Tickle me with tension
Watch as I sleep
With another man.
He turns over grinning in morning light
Pleased with his night before
We fall back to sleep.
When we wake, we go for brunch.
We dine over jokes and stories
And champagne.
At 1pm on a Sunday.
And it doesn’t matter
Because we’ve got the life
So, ghostlover
Are you watching this unravel?
We are running away, your scent is heavy
Like machinery and foul like a basement
I know you’ll follow me, ghostlover
I know you’ll sink your stench into my new linens
At the new house.
I know you’ll come at me like the breeze
And swing me on my hammock
Like you did in a past life
I know you’ll be there, ghostlover
Waiting and baiting me
But you are dead.
You are flattened on a sidewalk, lifeless and listless
You reach out for my life
But only to supplement your death.
Filed under: 2008, FREE FORM | Tags: adultery poetry, cheater poetry, mistress poetry, poetry
A mother is condemned to tears
Prisoned in her room, chained to her diary
Adhered to the phone, begging for support
From anyone.
There is a mistress.
Who is she? How old is she? What does she look like?
Tears.
Does he love her?
A mother is shaking as she pours the pasta in the boiling water
Telling the kids she just had a stressful day.
She scrubs the kitchen counters
Diligently.
She presses her back against the bathroom door when she enters
And sinks to the cold tile
A mistress like a wrench in their family’s wheel.
Her daughter grows up to be a mistress
Seeing the world from eyes she was taught to hate
The daughter is
Condemned to her tears, prisoned, chained, adhered, and begging.
She only wants to be loved.
But he will not leave ‘her’
Who is she? How old is she? What does she look like?
The daughter is a mistress and she cries.
She shakes and has no kids to talk to.
She scrubs but has no one to stay clean for.
She sinks to her cold tile.
The question of who came first
buries itself beneath the pain
Of the man who consoles both crying women
Separately
Ensuring them of his love.
And devotion to change.
This day is special and I can’t precisely tell you why.
There may have been a lottery pick in the heavens last night
That gave someone new control over this day and this day only
And he is going to run wild.
The spook of fall is casting itself on the shadowy sidewalks
Whispering something faintly
No one else on this block seems to be listening but me.
And since I’m the only one listening, I’ll listen harder
God forbid we’re cast down the apocalypse today
For shits and giggles
Because a new artist was given the canvas
To paint this day and this day only.
So I listen intently. Unlike everyone else, I’ve got nothing else to do.
I spend most days wandering my neighborhood
Listening for voices like these
“Hi, what are you up to?” the voice spins itself around my left ear lobe
“Just living” I respond, patting myself on the shoulder for my correct response.
“Or are you dying?” the voice asks.
I am silent.
“Living and Dying are synonymous” I tell the voice.
I was a philosopher.
“So what are YOU up to today?” I ask the voice, ignoring the people
Who pass me by and squeeze the hands of their children tighter
Picking up their pace past me
“I was given the universe today. I won it for this day only.”
“That’s quite a prize. What are you going to do with the universe?” I ask
“I might destroy it. I think it’s flawed.”
“And have no regard for those of us living?” I snapped at the invisible voice
“You said yourself that living and dying are synonymous.”
Filed under: 2008, FREE FORM | Tags: drunk poetry, love poetry, martyr poetry
I got drunk on a week day afternoon and stumbled back to Astoria, miraculously in one piece. I smiled at people on the train who, undoubtedly, pinned me as crazy or drunk. (Because you don’t smile at people on the train in New York unless you’re crazy or drunk.) I took deep breaths and noticed my heart fighting for its life, racing toward the sky like a scuba diver just out of oxygen. You are that oxygen. You take yourself away from me and this is what I do. I sing out loud to my ipod and don’t check to see if my eyeliner has smeared. I count steps past European cafes and Hookah bars and look at my jungle of keys when I reach my door. There are so many of them. Why do I need so many keys? Love is the emotional version of being drunk. And I never get drunk with just one of my friends.
If I were meaner, it’d be better, I’d have honor, I’d have grace, I’d have numbers to count, I’d have expectations you’d have to meet, I’d have a reputation to protect, I’d have a tongue to bite, I’d have legs to close, I’d have people to blame, I’d have reasons to save money, I’d have flowers in my hair…I’d have talks with your mom. But what would your mom ever want with me. I’m just not holy enough for you. I’m not perfect enough. My friends say I idolize you. That’s true, but I idolize everyone I love when I love them. (They idolize me later when I don’t shift my weight onto my foot when it rests on their deserving necks). Martyrs are sometimes the most selfish of us all. Martyrs are sometimes the least humble of us all. You should think about that and then meet some of the people with whom I’m related by blood. They’re better than Jesus at dying on a cross.
I’d rather you be Jesus. I’d rather you be wind. I’d rather you be anything beautiful which I can watercolor paint in my mind instead of a the prison guard who winks at me and passes me cigarettes secretly, knowing the trouble I’d be in if I smoked them.
We want to learn. and they need to make sure we learn exactly what they learned. They need to make sure of it because the things they learned are all they know. How powerful we would be to possess so many secret answers to questions that they hardly even know exist. We would have them then. We could get them. We could barge into their homes and demand their underwear drawer cash stacks of emergency money and we could drink their iced tea and chain them to their own bar stools. And we could tell them that we were able to get into their homes because we invented a machine that could do so without proof of intrusion. And they just didn’t know. We must learn what they learned. Look at the awful things that could happen if we learned something new, something different. One of them would come into the kitchen where we drank their iced tea, with a rifle pointed to our heads. Ah, he would be something we didn’t know. And the art of the gun is something they know. The sound of shattering glass would ring like a church bell to their hopeful ears. The iced tea would be all over my toes. They would tell me that I asked for what was coming to me and I would tell them, “I know”.
Filed under: 2008, FREE FORM | Tags: bottom, hitting rock bottom, poetry, rock bottom
I walked into your bedroom and turned to catch my reflection to the right of the room’s entrance.
this is where your mirror had always hung.
the poorly painted white on the dry wall glared back at me, as if to ask me what it is was I wanted or expected to see.
I expected to see nothing.
I sat down on your bed and bit my bottom lip. I bit down gently at first, but your walls started to melt together and it was so surreal that I had to bite down harder. And harder. I didn’t mean to draw blood, and I was angry at myself when I did. It stung and I knew it was gonna really fuck up my later dinner plans. But blood is always such a powerful reminder of life. And for whatever reason, we always call life ‘reality’.
Your bed, in reality, was so thin and hard. How did you sleep on it for so long? When you came home each night, seeking nothing more than reprieve from your day, how could this be the place on which you sought that reprieve? What kind of satisfaction could such an underwhelming bed give you?
If it were me I’d stay up and curse the night. I’d consider only sleeping in the day. There would be more comfortable places in the day. I could go to the park and stretch myself out in the field. I could cat nap in the library with a book open on my lap. I bet no one would dare to wake me if I did. They’d look at me and recollect their own days of old, spent wandering in worlds created by words.
But you chose night. And you never bothered to change your bed.
I grew sad sitting on it, looking at your poorly painted walls. The bolted chain nailed into the door told me one of your secrets. The chain told me that you had lost your mind and that you’d been using the chain as an accomplice. The chain told me he never wanted to be a part of your insanity. Then again, I doubt you ever had a conversation with a bolted chain.
But I wished suddenly that I could have a word with every moth caught in your lamp. Did they all burn to death? Did they stave to death? Or did they just quit living because they’d acquired the embodiment of their lives in that light? Did you burn to death? Did you starve to death? Or did you just quit living?
You told me recently that you’ve hit your rock bottom. You told me you’d hit it quickly. I imagine this like a cave. And if this were like a cave, you would be right. People who slowly downward spiral don’t count. I think they are looking for the rock bottom. They are spelunking their way into hell, totally aware of the trip down. And when they finally get to rock bottom, they don’t hit it. They just sorta hop down onto it. It doesn’t snap them into surprise. They were, after all, on their way down.
It’s the people like you who I count. The people who were just walking through a sombre forest and fell to the rock bottom of a cave unintentionally. The bolted chain might be right. You were maybe crazy. But you were walking above the earth crazily-you weren’t on your way down.
I found some of your drawings. All of demons and devils and other Halloween-esque figures, skinny with fangs and overly sexualized in the most grotesque of ways. Your signature, pointy, just like a witch. You may not have been on your way down, because you hadn’t found the spot to start. But you knew you wanted to go there.
And so, I think I’m happy that you did. But you should be prepared not to recognize yourself when poorly painted walls start replacing your reflection.
Filed under: 2008, RHYMING | Tags: after life poetry, death poetry, legacy poetry, poetry
I realized today that you are so many years my elder, that I’ll probably be the one to have to watch you die. You’ll sink your way into that black I envy smoothly. And since you appreciate your life with such delicacy, your life will be looked up to fondly by others. And I will shake. You’d think my forethought on this matter would indicate how well I bullshit my existentialism. And I agree with you. But what will I do with those years of my life? Who will be my source of reason? I will maybe turn into what you have these days, a being serving a purpose, an artist always painting. Yet you comment on my youth, my ‘old’ soul, my housing of recklessness that only the detached can tolerate. You say these things with pity for me. And I don’t blame you.
Your bedroom is empty, with the exception of the lovers you choose to decorate it with, on the nights you choose to decorate. It’s stale like a hospital; dry like death. Your bed is always made perfectly. The seams are always so flawlessly creased. Your bathroom hasn’t a spot; not even a misplaced hair. When you tuck yourself in at night, which kinds of sheep do you count? Do your muscles relax in your successes? Does your heart ache with the scents of lovers past? Are you lonely? I will be lonely. Of course, you would argue that I am already lonely. And I agree with you. But I will be even more lonely when you’re gone and I’m left to twiddle my thumbs in my bed at night, counting my own sheep. My bedroom will not be empty. I’ll collect my evidences of life like a rat, hoping that when I pass, people can see, feel, and know that I was here. Because I won’t have someone like you do, there to sponge up my legacy.
Did you know that your skin melts onto mine
when our thighs touch?
It’s just my silly heart racing, trying to catch up
And when our angles aren’t facing
I back myself into your walls
I smile and pretend indifferent
But I miss you so much.
I always want to explain myself to you
I’ve always got ten thousand things to prove
I’ve got important questions to ask
While I’m staring at your back
And when you turn
Our eyes meet
And I suddenly feel bad for you
Here I am, gnawing at your feet
With all these obstacles before you
How do I say what I mean
Without sounding pathetic
I twitch and start to speak
And I already know I’ll regret it
But it’s too late
here I go
There are some things
You should know
I try really hard to be good
I try to do what I’d hope anyone would
I try to be funny
I try to be brave
But I’ve got a heart that needs loving
And a soul to save
I wonder if you know how much pride I swallowed
Just to live through yesterday
Do you spot it in my eyes
Are you so deliberately blind
And even if you are
Am I so hard to find
I’m awkward and spill out everywhere
Spit at the dark and you’ll see me there
Curled up against the props
A deer in headlights til the curtain drops
So am I more guilty than I feel
Or do I feel more guilty than I am
I haven’t got perspective
Or a back up plan
I’m so easily excited
I think I love love that’s not requited.
