The Poetry Marathon

Not in sand hills or winding mountains
Sharp turns like a voice that’s more like a knife
Winding I lose traction on the ice and I fear
Damage

Tried to grow a new version of you
Forgot where I planted – forgot to water
Maybe that’s why they show up
Lacking

Always brunette it’s noticeable
Aversion to reflections
Find them less magnetic if they look
Like me

Half-loved and quarter-trusted
Please don’t blossom without me
Don’t wither – I wonder if Freud
Had a garden

My fair skinned flowers how they wrap
Entangle without strangling
She teaches me to breathe
I should love her more

Still searching but this drive makes me sick
Always kneeled behind a tree
Weakness showing empty stomach
You’re not there

My nostalgia tastes like vanilla coke
Straight to voicemail inbox full
I want to be full like that
Bloated narcissism

Set up to fail these frail nymphs
Test them and reject them
The story needs to keep
Repeating

I want to be proven wrong
Cycle repeating like the CD stuck
Roads still icy and you
Still damaged

Quiet yourself and grow smaller
One pill makes you larger
The pill you tell men that you cannot take
Protection comes in so many forms
Like a wallflower trying not to be seen
To be plucked pulled cut at the root

I don’t dye my hair blue anymore because people will stare
I want to be seen in a bedroom
I want to be seen in a home
Doors shut tightly locked double locked
Check the locks again to be sure 

Being cut off – I hate it
Let me finish let me complete a
Nevermind I didn’t have anything to say
Anyway
I am decoration I am a brass hanging lamp unlit
You talk too much fill your mouth with something
Harder
Wetter
Sweeter
Alcoholic
I drink too much please don’t notice
Point out jutting clavicles and silence

I wanted to be an angel; a muse
Don’t you see they took the shiny parts
Took the lightning and thunder
Like a sorry excuse for LA rainstorms
I used to make windows rattle but at least
Now I’m a safer drive 

I belong in a gutter, no that’s my mother talking
Listen to Radiohead and leave this body
This cage this trap this neon sign
If there was a green pill I’d name it control
Make it mine
Take it every day like Paxil
Will this make it easier
Will this make me ok

I can’t shake the sore throat the fever dreams
Wake up silent scream drenched in sweat
4 missed calls from heaven but hell is in my bed
Throat chakra
Thyroid test
Get some rest
Like I could ever stop moving
Stillness is an enemy
Silence is a ghost

I grow big and small
My namesake accurate when clouds are thick
Keep getting sick
People worry
Guilt hangs heavy I still fight to stand
Can’t demand change with a
Missing voice box
If you find it can you wind it up
Went from center stage
To choir mouse need to blend
Can’t defend my absence
When they come they turn the tv off
It’s too bright a 27 year old shouldn’t sleep with the lights on
But it’s not my place, is it
The space you visit
Mausoleum of baggy clothes

I chose this but I’m scared of what
People think
Family thinks
Two more drinks and maybe your friends will like me
Too young to wear leather
Overnight became too old
Days of bold displays
Left right when hope did
Shame leaves me painted into the decor
Pining first nothing more
Than to go to IKEA
Embrace the idea that I’m worth more
Than furniture 

One day I’ll feel at home
One day chocolate sunflowers will bloom me in their center
I will surrender behind this steel wall
Stay here where it feels automatic
The traumatic thoughts aren’t real
Another projection
Broken kill switch
And I know she took it with her
Don’t bother
It’s a fight you cannot win
Bleeding knuckles
I wish I was less Fight Club
More Dirty Dancing
They like me best in a corner

Wallflower, growing up home
that didn’t feel mine
Time costs more than moods swing
Pendulum girl koi fish
Swimming circles in Perrier and Cabernet
Top down top off
Drop a house on me
Tell me I’m not bad 

8/6/17 5:06am
Millie

The flowers in the courtyard
Half withered, half new.
Handfuls of them I want to grip
their stems and take the prettiest ones
home to you.

My aunt knows the names of every flower.
She can tell you of Magnolias,
Jacaranda,
Amaryllis,
and Creosote.
She paints them onto dishes,
stuffed into baskets on the front of bicycles.
The wheels always a bit uneven
But they’re perfect to me.

8/6/17 4:31am
Don’t Cry

Do you remember the way things were when we first met?
Roller-coasters beneath fireworks and every day was a celebration.
Every day was an anniversary, an outpouring display,
Of all of our shiniest bits. The ones that I like to nibble on.
Making love inside tents while rain dripped down through the trees,
All my memories of you are reels on repeat of giggling and holding each other close.
Walking across hot coals in your dad’s back yard. Climbing through the woods.
You and I were always climbing, but then there came a shift; I didn’t feel the hand reach back for me.
I don’t know when it was that I grasped forward and felt my palms fly through the air,
But suddenly you weren’t there and I turned into a gnashing and resentful whirl wind,
Of drinking myself stupid and watching the clock expectantly.
I miss the way we used to be. I miss the empty apartment with one couch,
Our room just a few boxes on the floor in the corner. I miss the way things were,
Before this became our present. I miss the calmness of your presence like a
San Diego ocean lulling me to sleep.

8/6/17 3:17
Sister

She looks like you.
Pale and eyes full of longing.
Sand shifting through the hourglass
of her body.
Calculated.
Were you always this hard?
I could sharpen my intentions
on the
slab of roman concrete
your nose.
I always envied you,
your curves.
Your pooling bust and
rumbling hips.
But it’s your wrists that I miss
most of all
Small wrists keeping the sky
from crashing down.

8/6/17 2:10am
Temple Vein

It has always been your fault
From the first breath
to today’s silence.
You were born evil,
pathologically manipulative
A vile spitting and kicking thing.
A screaming thing.

It has always been your fault
for being too quiet or
walking too far behind or
not responding when I fucking said your name the first time.
I know you heard me.
Walk faster, speak up, they’re looking at us again.
This happens every time I take you anywhere.

It has always been your fault
you’re so annoying
can you please stop singing
sometimes I want to smother you
do you have any idea the day I’ve had?
The phone is always ringing
why is the phone always fucking ringing

It has always been your fault
It has always been your fault

Always

8/6/17 1:05am
Give It Up

Electric bubble gum popping
The wires all open ended
Gasoline and sparks
The trains don’t run here
It’s too flammable
Uninhabitable
A Chernobyl wasteland of what used to be “pride.”

Sludgy and thick
Battery acid crackling of ulcers
What you could’ve said
should’ve said
Spilling over
Melting through your plastic suit
The radioactive quarantine of what’s been kept inside.

Clear out the rot to make space
Cut away the decay
And ease the toxicity.

8/6/17 12:36am
Spatial

You’re a tiny thing
twinkling in the spaces
gooey and dripping between the stars.
You’re nimble fingers plucking at constellations.
You are.
You are.
You’re the pressure of planets
spiraling out of control
colliding into glittering gold.
You place the specks between your teeth.

Those are for you sweetheart.

You’re a tiny thing
Cosmic and glowing.
They called you indigo child and kissed your head.
I hold your head.
Small and heavy head,
lulling with it’s many moons.
You can name them and yes,
keep them
That means
we can keep them.

You’re a tiny thing
pointing at them as they’re falling.
You hope to catch them like fireflies
the itsy bitsy bits of you
Pin pricks of dust
Galactic debris collecting on your lashes
my little nebulae.
You are.
You are.

8/5/17 11:10pm
At the Circus

Lick the whip that
sits coiled on her chest
resting above the Lion’s beat.
Her poor heart,
It rustles like an animal
Stretching giant lips over
canines.

Wincing beneath the leather
It’s flecks of saliva
The cut-off roar.
At the circus,
She asks herself if she’s the tamer
or the tamed.