Poetry & Short Prose

Crow poem.

It’s hard to write the crow poem

When you build up the crow poem in your head

And then you gotta put pen to paper,

Write the damn crow poem.

I’m supposed to explain how I am the crow

Maybe I am intelligent and underestimated

Maybe I am dark and misunderstood

Maybe I have a disproportionate need to collect shiny things

Maybe being the crow is about nothing more than being the crow.

It’s dangerous to be the crow when you can’t say why you’re the crow and you don’t know who else is a crow and the crows that fly by your window at night aren’t crows like you.

What makes you a crow instead of a raven?

Maybe you’re less elegant.

Maybe you’re not as smart.

Maybe you’re not fucking cool enough to be loved by Edgar Allen Poe.

It could just be that you are not quite big enough,

A voice too high,

A bit croak-shy

Maybe you aren’t even the crow.

Maybe it’s the idea of being the crow that makes being the crow so dangerous.

Maybe it’s the idea of being the crow being dangerous

that makes it impossible to write the crow poem.

Maybe one day you’ll write the crow poem

And look at where you’ve come from.

Because then

You will have two crow poems

and maybe you only ever needed one.

I have to be in love with myself,

I have to love me enough for the both of us.

I learn to bear his weight,

drag the corpse of promises I thought he made,

maybe I was mistaken.

I feel it, how he doesn’t care about me as if the sun shines from my veins. But I had that once.

I wake every morning to stare into his eyes,

someone's sun, no sunglass needed,

So I hide away my brown tinted lenses,

deep in a drawer, next to the feelings I have not the strength to address with him by my side.

They are not needed.

Every time I feel my breath leave my chest

I curse it for leaving to seek him.

I am the dust collecting on the entryway console

can’t even be bothered to swipe it away.

I pump my heart on manual

so he won’t have to.

I sip at his feet

gasping for the few drops of potable care,

potable affection,

potable amusement.

I dig the claws of my dignity into the ground

not willing to make the sacrifice

the earth grapples with what I have given it

wondering if it's to take.

He hasn’t moved

and he probably won’t.

The winds of change can blow the dust away for him

no need to lift a finger.

It will settle on the ground,

gently,

where I remain

in the trap I made, and also fell into.

Time ticks on,

taunting the fibers of my being with hallowed words

the wind blew past on a quiet night.

Inbetween the hum of the nighttime sky,

I can hear fate whisper in my ear about the time she’d been to the moon.

I inhaled the clouds like smoke from a cigarette

and breathed them out as a midnight pool

in a starry lake

with boats and things floating idle by in the harbor.

The jeers of clockwork pass

as I am building a new town

out of the whispers blown past my ears.

Love and hatred exist so closely to one another,

they are within striking distance.

When I listen closely

I hear your voice saying my name instead of my mother.

It makes my blood boil

How have you come to overwrite my memory

when I never existed in yours?

You caused pain in places I didn’t know were capable of feeling.

I look up and I see the same sky that you’re under.

I wish for another earth

another sun

another moon

one that you aren’t seeing too.

Nothing has been mine since I became yours.

Stick my neck out for you

and you go out of your way to cut off the head

like you’re slaying something great,

something worthy of terror, violence.

You’ll find every reason to hurt me

and then swear to God that you aren’t trying to

and I will believe you.

But it won’t hurt any less.

It was bright.

She shields her eyes from the oncoming infliction of touch.

The press of skin against her skin.

Palm against arm was the fire's ignition.

The flame burning in her body swallowing her whole,

melding mind and bone until one entity of girl is consumed by heat.

One palm.

The inferno engulfed her in one touch.

The conflagration of her heart ensured and decided for itself it would not let her be whole again.

All of her feelings were there all at once,

lighting her up like a firework,

until it was gone just like that in an instant.

One palm set her on fire.

One more touch put her flame out.

Her breath still hot, reminiscing of the blaze that once was, now gone.

Eyes of amber extinguished by the burning blue she stared up at.

Two palms, and she's effete.

I really don’t love you anymore

I don't know why I still have you on social media.

I still have your t shirt

I use it to dry my hair after a shower.

Sometimes I see certain cars and it makes me think of you

What kind of a loser loved his cars more than me?

You still text me now and again

Sometimes I answer just to be polite.

I know that you still think of me fondly

I fondly remember how badly you hurt me.

I keep that memory tight and close,

so close

so that no one else

can hurt me in that way

ever again.

so I guess in a way, a part of me is still yours.

forever and always.

you can keep the part of me that let people hurt her.

she’s no use to me now anyways

you made sure of that.

or you can give her away

just like you gave me your spare t shirt

only because you had another

of the exact same one.

The sunset shot through the broken glass of her heart lighting it up briefly,

the moment was beautiful,

until she realized the sunlight she had let in broke her heart even more when she thought it was making it better.

Defeated and darkened

she retreated to spending her days with a broom and a dustpan

and stood anxiously

waiting for the next sunset to arrive.

When I was eleven,

I was bitten by a praying mantis.

It leapt from the top of a gaudy colored trash can (who knew they made trash cans shaped like fat little clowns?)

onto my hand

my little hand

I admired it

how could something feel so small yet so grand at the same time?

in an instant everything changed

it bit my hand

as i flung it back to where it had come from,

I asked myself what I had done wrong

I couldn’t find an answer

I couldn’t forgive it

every time i tell someone new how I was once bitten by a praying mantis, they tell me they don’t bite

“I don’t know. but this one did.”

they never believe me.

i really never have met another praying mantis

but all i can think about

is the sting left behind by the one i once knew

The last time I saw her she pranced in my gaze. Her eyes spoke a thousand untold words. Why must she go? The angels must grow. And flee they must from their past.

The last time I saw him, with one grave expression, I knew he was leaving so soon. He took me by the hand, and smiled soft, but grand because the angels must grow. And flee they must of their past.

The last time I saw, I blinked one sad tear. Said mama the angels must grow. My legs, too tired to run. My arms, too weak to put up a fight. My lips, too weary to plea for help. My eyes, too distraught for sight. I closed my eyes, breathed the scents of flowers as I thought, for the angels must grow, and flee I must from my unforgettable past.

If my bones were made of plastic

maybe you would take me home, too

but the problem is

you can’t put me in the back of your closet

I won’t sit there quietly waiting

for the day you decide I am once again worth your attention

if my bones were plastic,

maybe you would put me on display

tell the world this is your joy

you’re participating

in the ritual

in the rat-race

in the careless social practice

of feelings made of plastic

my voice box is programmed

to scare you

to say the things that you don’t want to hear

you listen to me

you speak over me

you never speak to me

I’ll hang lifelessly

I’ll listen to you

I’ll wait for you to put me in my place

my place is where you say it is

because my bones are made of plastic

you bought me cheap

you got the good deal

no one else will ever want

these plastic limbs

and plastic skull

when you are done with me

I’ll go back in that place in your dusty attic

or even worse

I am banished

to spend eternity

in the plastic graveyard

the landfill of lost love

A story became of the ink flowing from that chewed up pen she had to dig for in the bottom of her bag.

With her level of focus she could spot a canary in a fucking ocean.

Not to say that you'd be able to find a canary in the ocean,

considering it's not, in fact, an aquatic animal,

but just that the level of concentration etched across her furrowed brows decided that in this universe we were in,

there's a single canary in the entire goddamn ocean

and she could see it because she paid attention.

She was so undeniably cool and awesome, and I wanted her to know that,

but I, along with everyone else in this god forsaken school, lacked the confidence—

no, the intelligence—

to open my mouth and tell her to her face.

So we sit and watch as she sits, creates, and leaves.

Quietly elegant, lonely, but never sad.

I wished nothing more except for this girl to find herself in that ink from her pen.

sometimes

you meet a boy

and he’s the elephant afraid of a mouse

the elephant has good intentions

it would never step on the mouse

but it lives in fear

until it realizes the mouse was never scared

you come to learn

the boy isn’t an elephant

though wise and stoic

though strong and smart

the boy is a boy

not everything that seems, is.

the boy has good intentions

he would never hurt the mouse

but now he knows

even the mouse isn’t a mouse

she’s a girl

the girl sees the things that seem

and takes them for what they are

until they aren’t

until they become something

something different

and so there was a girl and a boy

and an elephant and a mouse

and they lived their lives. unafraid, and sometimes, together.

Inbetween fateful breaths of filling her lungs with clouds she hummed softly, but chillingly.

This wasn’t the kind of humming of a lullaby or even that of a song that was stuck in your head.

This was the hum of a broken person.

I suppose somewhere along the way her brain cracked

and now she just creates eerie ambivalence with her lips and her teeth and her tongue.

When you reach out to hold her she recoils as if you had hurt her and when she smiles at you it doesn’t reach her eyes.

A sorry existence

Perhaps, but I don’t even know this girl one bit.

She doesn’t seem to know herself either, by the quizzical way she stares at her reflection in ponds, and store windows like she’s questioning whether she’s real or not.

I can’t get her to tell me what’s on her mind but I can tell you, it’s a mouthful.

Sitting.

Drip drip drip.

Dip beneath the surface of the water.

Close my eyes.

Water wells in my ears.

Drip drip drip becomes boom boom boom

as my hearing clouds,

and the sounds in the water

amplify until I can hear my own thoughts

bouncing around like frogs on lily pads.

Serenity.

I am calm.

This is a new feeling.

Warmth wrapping itself around my limbs

like a blanket.

Water is ever moving,

but I am still.

Breathe.

Breathe again.

Breathe air not water.

BANG.

I jump up startled.

Nothing has moved.

The water has moved.

Water moves.

Drops of water cascade off my hand,

softly delicately flowing down my wrist,

or popping off my fingertips.

Drip drip drip.

I make a fist.

Tighter.

Tighter.

I break skin with my nails.

Tighter.

Drip, drip, drip.