The Poetry Marathon

If I was a better story teller,
would my teeth still be shoved in the spine of this book?
Gumming through the pages of our torrid love affair,
swallowing the chapters I didn’t like.
None of this added up,
an entire encyclopedia but not an ounce of truth.
I saw you taping over the facts and scribbling with stolen paint markers about what had and hadn’t happened.
I felt my hands turn red and my face even redder,
my neck bending from the pressure of the burden you put on my back.
You left me with all these books and nothing to write about.
Every time you opened your mouth,
I lost another muse.
Please stop saying my name in your sleep,
you’re not the only one being haunted,
and my ghosts don’t live on a shelf, like yours.

I showed you holy,
you showed me purity’s price
then you showed me holes

Your fist is the same size as my mouth

But that doesn’t mean you needed to introduce them

Ten thousand dollars for one smile and you broke it

without your hands,  with your mouth

every angry word

There is something ugly

spawned a life in the corner

Eight legged memories

Each one with a bite

Since the beginning of time,
I held your hand at night
And watched the shadow of my shape against the wall.
I would kiss myself good night, wrapped tightly in my loneliness,
begging for a sign of change.

I never played, so I was dull,
The writing child is never full,
but also never empty.
I was too far from bland to be mundane enough.
I was never an adequate companion because my name is so ugly with an ampersand.  13/24 9pm

I bought a dollar store match box, half price because
the box had a tear in the side
it had lost a few matches and I did
about anything to save a dollar.
I knew the first time I pulled a match out of Creased cardboard that
I had bought an extra burn.

The first stick, she was humble
the Red of her face tickled against the grain of
such a flimsy box.
I used her to light a candle,
but I know if I let the flame burn,
she will burn down my house.

That’s what happens when you
get what you prayed for at night
when you are on your knees praying for a little excitement and
just a spark enough to engulf you
and she comes to you
blending, in and bent
but better at burning
than any of the lovers
In your bed

I remember the first time I was in a hallway with shrunken hips.
I remember the summer that I half disappeared, holding tight to my bones so they wouldn’t press out of my aching edges.
My peers would report a rattle, but I knew it was me. I wasn’t excellent against the wind and water, I just was.
Not a shrunken head, no voodoo doll,
Just a skinny girl with a too-big soul.

There’s a shiver in my spine that mimics the wind of the day you first left me.
I can hear a curve in my voice against the walls and I know it only hits them because you’re not standing in the way.

I ran out of ideas I count on my fingers,
I crossed the ocean without knowing a swimmer.
I can’t eat you, while I’m still getting thinner.
I hate the summer but I don’t love the winter,
She took me to church and she prayed me a sinner.

I couldn’t swallow you whole,
despite my mighty incisors.
You are such a fiery thing of music…
Hand a poet a box of happiness and they’ll write in crackers
Shove them a pin head of heartbreak…
And the libraries are on fire,
but that’s okay,
They can rewrite every word.