The Poetry Marathon

I have two daughters
but one child
she has no siblings
but there are two of her
the one that held my hand
and laughed at my smile
and asked me questions,
sitting on the kitchen floor
viewing me as a skyscraper
and the one who
thinks blood shot eyes are the new black
and that lying is
a solution
she collects bottles of alcohol
and lost count of her
one night stands
every new one
is a reason to stop
for twenty three hours
and then the reason
binge
so close to death that
the graves become pillows
a mother would rather be blind
than watch a butterfly
lose its wings,
when it can’t be called a caterpillar

__ar.

(Addictions poem from the perspective of the mother)

(s)he wants a lover
he wants a friend
but h(er) parents do
not know
what to call h(im)
at family dinners
at Sunday brunches
or on field trip attendance forms
all of h(is) friends think that
(s)he was so pretty and that
(s)he could have any boy
that he wanted
if (s)he wanted him
but he just wanted
a friend
to hold
h(is)
hand

__ar.

(poem on transgenderism. needs much revision. was just a concept, i didn’t fully draw it out)

I do not know her anymore

I once played cymbals in her honor

I learned percussion to
compensate
for the beats she made me skip

after eight months
I loved her body
although she was
deficient in attendance
I thought if I held it
like I did in my memory
her reality would grow
out from my palms
that my palms were seeds
and her hair would
be branches
but I am not strong enough
to father roots
or nuture a love
that was between me and
a person who
grew into a habit

__ar.

(Addictions poem from the perspective of the lover of the addict)

the day after
high school graduation
is supposed to feel like
a new beginning
it felt like a detour
i wanted to make a u-turn
but i can’t even drive
i guess the first
sixteen years of life
are building
the next two are
trial
and one day you walk out of a place
that holds all your memories
for the last time
and nobody is holding your hands
or laughing as you slam a locker
they tell you it gets better
parents are practiced liars:
1) it does not
get better
2) we do not find out who are real friends are
we make worse ones
3) we do not pick up where we left off
with every old friend,
4) we do not
find ourselves
in college
we get lost
in the streets
in the sheets,
we get lost
because we are lead are whole lives
without asking.
our majors
are pieces of paper
we are taught
they define us
we lose our names to occupations and salaries
we never lose
weight or debt

growing up
just means adding
and you don’t
get any stronger
to carry it

__ar.

Home is no longer a feeling
it is my bed
and people who tell me they love me
without me forming a sentence that
bears to question them for it
my name isn’t whispered
it’s the theme of parties
who knew that their hugs
would be homecoming

I am less excited for praise
than I am for the rest that comes
thereafter
sleeping with an empty conscience
makes for less headaches

__ar.

(Addictions poem. from the perspective of the recovered addict)

i would eat you off of a spoon
i would take you to the moon
i would take your hand in marriage,
and you’d have it annulled soon

i would take your weight in Advil
i would hold your hand to travel,
i would kiss your best friend twice,
and you’d become entirely unraveled

__ar.

(a lame rhyme-y one)

children taste the sweetest
the way I lure them in
with just the very idea of appeal
they prefer their own ideas
swimming in pink imaginations
I do not ask them questions
I give them answers
and they learn how to ask
midnights are double jeopardy
hanging shoes off of telephone wires
last week I became life without a curfew
I am shaped like tally marks
and stain like wine in infomercials

i go beneath the clothes
and carpet
i am worn,
and walked on
despite the alternating surfaces
i sizzle
and ask the fire alarms
if they are happy
to see me
again

__ar.

(This is also part of the Addictions series. this one is from the perception of the addiction – the drug/food/alcohol whatever it may be)

to eat

bullets

pills

or nothing at all

to end

something that was

“just a

phase.”

__ar.

(short one. I don’t have power)

can’t help
but to admit that
i smirked
at the idea of
writing death,
i can’t help
but to think
i have never
written
about
anything
else
death cheated with me
and had the
audacity to call me
dishonest
but i always
kiss him, good night
he’ll still love me
if i don’t

i was eight when
i met death for the first time
he would have apologized
if the words were in his vocabulary
instead,
he asked to bargain with me
i asked him for art
he gave me poetry
and he kisses it
out of
my mouth
every night

__ar.

(prompt about death)

I was set on fire once and I
never
stopped
burning

there is nothing that I
fear and crave with
quite the same brutality
than the days in between
my highs
unable to call them lows
they’re emulating car crashes
I’m eating survivor’s guilt
and whip lash
it’s nights that follow days
without the sun
sweating somehow against nothing,
maybe high beams
I grew irrelevent to celestial objects
I disowned astrology

in my highness I ask for water
and sympathy
I did not ask for this to be beautiful
they hear me cough
and give me oxygen donations
the flame grows
and fits me like a hand-me-down
so if anyone asks
it’s not mine
I just live in the corner
of the body that grew it
waiting for the rest of me
to find a reason to visit.

__ar.

(this is part of a series I am going to do on Addiction. this one is from the perception of the Addict. also, my recitation of it)