Adventure!

I want to write my soul down
Feel the words of it pound out
In pictures and letters
Bound it up in poems and lectures
creative adventures that let you
See and understand my heart

From the start I want you to know exactly where I stand
Because someday the mystery of my life will unravel
In front of God and I want to make sure
he knows the journey I've traveled

So when I fight Him about having stolen
I can say "look I took it on accident" or
"That time I yelled at my mother
Another part of me was mourning inside
Wondering why the love inside me had died
And yes, I am reticent so here read this,"
Shoving the papers on His desk
"Now you'll know what I really meant."

But mostly I want to show myself I'm trying
Because I'd be lying if I said I had an excuse for every sin
I need to know what to fix and why
So when I say goodbye to this world
The story I've told will be one that says
I'm trying

I want to spill myself open
Return my soul to the ocean by revealing my guilt
Because there are days I know I've built up my perfection
But really, it's just because I fear rejection.

I need you to know I'm not an angel.
I don't wear a halo.
And if you want me to say why,
I'll say so.

I have stolen.
I have cheated.
I've denied and wrongly pleaded.
I have bribed and been the briber.
I have lied and been the liar.
I've been the bully and false-crier.

I do these things and do them still
And everytime I think I've conquered I lose my will
There are days when I wear eight million facades
And I look in the mirror and ask
"Girl do you know who you really are?"

I want to confide myself in thousands of pages
So I can rip off my masks and put one less on back later
So that one day, all that's left is the raw uncut unfinished me.

I'm not perfect, I know, but I'm trying
Because its the little battles in our heart
That let us know whether we are living or dying.

That night, when I pretended

To be a asleep, I knew it meant

The end of us.

I meant for it to be cute

But it was a nightmare.

I talked to you,

Told you I loved you

And you told me to drown myself,

Fuck off and die.

You were supposed to love me.

You were supposed to protect me.

Strange but you were always the one

I needed the protection from.

You were always the one trying to hurt me.

I don’t know if I miss you.

You tried to kill me, twice.

You knew school shooting statistics

The way I knew Shakespeare.

After Virginia Tech you

Declared I was your

Number one victim,

Your dream kill.

An entire year and

I wonder why I couldn’t leave

Or worse why you stopped loving me

And not the other way around.

You simply stopped calling

Didn’t give me a reason

For the harsh goodbye

And told me to fuck off.

You tried to kill me.

I tried to save you.

And the worst part,

I still don’t know who succeeded.

Sometimes you have to loop around a time or two before you know where it is you are or where you're going. I'm on sleepy head thoughts. Haven't been awake all day, metaphorically speaking. Here's a rewrite. I'm revolving around something. Haven't nailed down my center yet.

Inside the Fish

People, places, and moments
Come and go from me.
One after another, after another,
Until the next comes then goes.

The smell of rosemary and ginger
(Always in the kitchen, always during winter),
The faces of strangers I remember from my youth,
The voice of the peddler out on Boylston Street,
The way I sign my name -- just
Like my sister.

Not knowing who I am or
Where to go. Whether or not
I should say hello
Or goodbye or
Nothing
At all.

My hair in my face,
The look my mother gave my father,
The way our dog barked and
The thumping of her tail on the cabinets.

My aunts and uncles and grandparents
And all those that came before and with and after.
And all those that you wanted to stay, but didn't.

The taste of fall in the morning.
The taste of toothpaste in the evening.
The taste of regret still staving off the snow.

The note he gave me, buried in my wallet.
The apology he skipped, still haunting onward.

The hardest part about writing is that you actually have to write. Contact is everything. The way your fingers hit the keyboard, the way the muse hits your heart. I'm just not feeling much of anything story-wise these days and I fear that that's only because I've strayed so far from character names and actually trying to write something other than my own story.

If all I write are journal entries, does that make me egotistical and self-absorbed?

Finally got to a writing workshop and the writing prompt was "sex."


I'm way too tired to think anymore.
Sign out.

"You Are Still A Ghost To Me"
You used to grin like dolphins do
Call out to me with a playful flick of your arm
So we twirled about your kitchen
Lost in the sound waves

Hands and hipbones hugging
The bass lines of our hearts
Almost kissing in synchrony.

Later we played that song
You on your guitar and me, softly singing:
It was your hello that kept me hanging on every word
And your goodbye that keeps me listening for your voice around each corner. . . .
The notes skating out on into forever
Until your D string broke.

We restrung your guitar
But the harmony was forever
a little more discordant.

Sometimes you sit in class and talk about something but instead of saying anything you just write down your response. This is sort of what happened. In my poetry workshop rather than telling people what I didn't like or what I thought was running through their head I just sort of doodled my own responses. The rest follows.



Then also because I don't know where to put it more slam scraps:

I should be in bed. The stars are tap tap tapping their shoes above my head. Night is a glorious time. They're dancing me a lullaby that's too beautiful to fall asleep listening to. Have you ever listened to a song so completely that you've wanted to break down into tears. Not because you are sad and not because you are happy either, but because it is just so incredibly beautiful.

Threw on an old record and got so ecstatic; bliss. The way a song slips into your ear and reminds you of someone, something. You can't help but love the fluid of the movement. Air twisting and turning. Smiles bloom like flowers in the springtime. You can't stop the circle of life. The question is, how long can you stay on a high? The question is, does gravity apply to emotions? I'm starting to think I'm on a rocket ship to the moon.



I don't know where that came from.
I feel awesome
XO

Our greatest tragedies are our biggest medals. We like to wear them as scars and souvenirs, showing them off to everyone we meet. See, what happened to me? See? And look, I'm still ok. Don't you get it. I'm fine. Have faith in me!

We're so fast to show our scars.
So quick to show the bruise.
Slower to show the blood
Slowest to show the wound.

Everyone loves a tragedy. We're all Shakespearean actors: To be or not to be?

Or worse. Our friends. The ones we lose or who get lost. Our bragging rights. Their pain, our momentary glory.

My friend had cancer.
My friend shot up with dirty needles.
My friend's mom died.

Conversation starters and stoppers. Do we ever stop to think what it is we're saying. The lives we trivialize for the moment's passion, that tiny spotlight on us.

If the game of life is a card game, don't deal me in. I don't want to win.
I'm tired of trumping around tragedies, masquerading them as achievements.

I'm tired of people harping on sadness.
That long wailing note.
The bell toll.
That empty chime.
Finished.
Done.
Dead.

In the silence, people think they know what you are thinking. I get annoyed whenever anyone thinks they have my riddled solved because hell, even I haven't gotten that far.

I get so frustrated some times.

People not understanding compassion, or just lacking it.
People not getting my goodwill or hijacking it.

And all that time people saying, here's my tragedy, look at it. Here's a microscope dissolve it under your lens.
I am tired of being the fucking hero. I am tired of untangling the strings in other people's lives then being left with nothing in my hands except the callouses I gained from working out the knots.

Do you know how it feels to be the one they forgot?

The thing is this. I'm not saying "dissect this." I'm just saying listen. "I'm here." Sometimes I put my thumbs on the keyboard and hit go on my brain. Sometimes I just start writing so you'd know I wasn't going insane. Letters are the blood cells of my brain. All they do is nourish me and reproduce.

What's this creature I'm creating?

I am not sure why I do what I do. Really, I just want to love God, but I don't even know how to. At night I don't sleep thinking I've missed the message or am failing to live it out - when I talk about the people I knew and loved and lost. Or the things I did or worse, the ones I failed to. When my life becomes more about me than everyone else.

I don't want to live with the spotlight on me. I want to live in the shadows. The man behind the curtain hoisting up others to fly. My biggest blasphemy, sometimes I think I could do what Jesus did. If I really tried hard. Sometimes I wonder if that's what we're supposed to. Just try really hard and fail by a lot.

I want to hold faith in the palms of my hands and say here, friends, examine.

I'm tired of highlighting tragedy.
Our lives are more than a list of failures.
Our songs more than low notes and minor keys.
I want to write symphonies that say "you are ok" and "you are loved."

I want to give hugs when I speak.
Wrap my words around souls so hard they can feel
The life seeping back into their bones.

I want to walk with a rhythm that says listen
You are a star that can glisten

Someday I hum hallelujahs and love poems
That flow out so far they hit the ocean
Evaporate by the sun then
Dissipate on everyone
A thousand I love you's a minute.

It's pretty beautiful you know
Love that melts the moon.

I want to stop lying. I want to stop saying I know so-and-so or this-and-such happened to me. If I could, I'd speak only of others. I want to mother the world. Say Baby girl, keep walking. Or better yet, keep talking. You're almost there.

You're almost there
You're almost there
You're almost there

But really,
Where is it that we're going.

And why are we in such a rush?

I wrote the poem above in response to a poem someone wrote me.


Then I wrote the above in response to a memory.

Inside the Fish

My hair in my face,

The look my mother gave my father,

The way our dog barked and

The thumping of her tail.

People and places and moments

Come and go from me.

One after another, after another,

Until the next comes then goes.

The reflection behind the reflection.

Standing, staring, waiting.

The smell of rosemary and ginger

(Always in the kitchen, always during winter),

The faces of strangers I remember from my youth,

The voice of the peddler out on Boylston Street,

The way I sign my name -- just

Like my sister.

Not knowing who I am or

Where to go. Whether or not

I should say hello
Or goodbye or

Nothing

At all.

The stagnant silences,

The road I took to get here,

Wondering how many times I've

Slid my feet across these stones,

How everything builds

One on top of another

Slow and Steady.

The dirt at the bottom of a mountain.

The dirt at the top.

Wondering, if there is any difference.

Not knowing who I am

Or if it matters.

The note he gave me, still in my wallet.

The apology he skipped, still lingering on.

The taste of fall in the morning

The taste of toothpaste in the evening

My aunts and uncles and grandparents

And all those that came before and with and after.

The prayer you pray alone.

The prayer you pray at church.

The prayer you pray for your family.

The prayer you pray for your friends.

How really, they're not that different.

How really, no one wants to be alone.

How really, no one is.

My mind is running on anything but empty, but every time i try and pour myself on paper the ink runs dry. I can't seem to find what it is that's haunting my mind. Everything is running in circles and I'm getting lost in the loop.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Everything seems to be breaking itself down into its simplest form but I'm resisiting change.

"Your tongue is a rudder that steers the whole ship" but my mouth has been closed for days. I'm drifting in between thought and dream. Sometimes life gets going so fast that you get lost in the inertia. You'd think living on a boat would slow things down, but it doesn't at all.

I'm moving faster than ever but all I want to do is stop. Rewind. Backtrack. Your heart is a record stuck going in circles singing out the sweetest of melodies, the saddest of songs.

I'm tired of people being mean. I just don't understand the concept. I'm tired of being on the receiving end of every bad intention gone horribly right. I'm tired of being a punching bag just because I'm strong enough to stand the bruises. I'm tired of taking other peoples losses on my shoulders when no one will take mine.

Sometimes my optimism is a curse. Instead of disliking others I just end up mad at myself wishing I could be angry, wishing I could stoop down to that level and just tell everyone to go away. But I'm incapable of disliking a person. I'm incapable of not-forgiving. Maybe that's a good thing.

Except it seems to run against everything everyone else believes in.

Still there are days where I walk

With my ear to the ground so I can hear the earth pound

Out her faint pulse that's echoed in six billion heartbeats

But I am still confounded by the fact

That I'm surrounded by a sea of faces
Crowned in scorn

I want to tell them

Love is never the color of blood.

It's blue like the life pumping inside you,

like the sky echoing above you.

Love is not red because red is the color of stop

and love is always on GO.

There's no slowing down no cautionary thoughts.

I've never heard of a love where you only give a part of your heart.

You give it all.

And sometimes it gets broken.

Sometimes you get so hurt and torn open

that your soul can seep out of the cracks.

You just have to remember that it may be December

but it's summer on the other side of the world.

So plow yourself open and move yourself to grow

lnto the brightest star you've ever seen

Into the vision that makes up the best dream you've ever had

And then, keep dreaming it.

And if you fall, fall knowing

That someone is making a wish on you

Fall knowing that a million faces are watching

and waiting and praying on you

Fall knowing your going to climb up again

Fall knowing that sometimes you fall at the start but you keep running

Sometimes you fall off the swing but you get back on and keep jumping

Sometimes you fall flat on your face in a front of a crowd

But your heart will keep thumping

So start conducting the beat of your life

Because life is a symphony where the high notes

Are laughter and the low notes

The beginnings to happily ever afters

So stop waiting and start playing

Because even in autumn beauty occurs

You drive to New England and see the trees unfurl

The pearls of their soul in red, orange, and yellow

So don't stop now, keep going

If your stuck in a storm, keep rowing

If the walls starting growing around you, start mowing the down

Because life is too short to let someone else box you in

So glue your eyes to the sky and listen

Sometimes cruelty is the giver of what you need most
Sometimes love is a parasite and your body’s the host
Sometime your world has to flood, you save what you need
Get on the boat till the waters recede

Leaving the ground ten-thousand times more fertile

Than it ever was before.

Tonight, I'm a wildflower growing on the side of a mountain

Naked and lonely with my heart exposed to the sun

Waiting for the rain to come find me

So I can grow and become the beauty

That a hiker finds and will treasure

So much he'll want to pick me

But he knows I need me roots in the soil

So I can keep blooming

I want to be loved like that

Loved so much you can't measure.

Tomorrow I'm the penny thrown into a fountain

That you made your wish on.

But don't go home and wait for me to come true

Come and find me, I've already started looking for you.

Pretty good for a half hour...
Work Time

All of those faces
And you are one of them
(And still you are them all)

Times come and past
These too are you

So many pairs of eyes

Looking and seeing and being seen

And you are those too

(One pair and in one all)

Sounds and places

The blue hue of the sky
The way night sets on fast,
The brief glow of a firefly
The violence of a hurricane
And the alarming quickness of fire
These too are you.

The view from a mountaintop,
The course a stream takes,
The yellowing of leaves in fall,

All of this is you
And is in you.

The breath in your lungs
The dirt under your fingernails

This is you;
you are the world.

New age prophets gone extinct
This is an age of endless humming
The sun’s been blown to smithereens
No remnants to bury

We roam and struggle in
Our artificial darkness
Searching for that Great Electronic Switch
And boom, there’s clarity.

Oh, but it’s not so easy
Darkness knows no end
And that Great Electric Switc
hThat sudden light bulb syndrom
Doesn’t work on a macro scale

The very thing you Worship
Brings your slow destruction.W
here are those great cedars of Lebanon now?
Those impossible chemists of Brazil?
Don’t you feel that slow chemical burn
Crackling through your lungs?

But machine gears clink onward
You’re axe readies another swing
Plant your poisons into
The lives you grow to eat.

Well, the circle swings in full.