Blade

Over Memorial Day weekend, there was....an incident. I was hanging out with her and her boyfriend when his parents unexpectedly dropped by. His parents were lovely people, I think I got along better with them than she did, but the whole experience was my breaking point. I was done being silent and just watching her be his. It was killing me slowly on the inside, and I found myself drinking too much, a problem I've already overcome once. So I opened my mouth. Some might call what I did courageous, I call it stupid. It was like I finally said all the things neither one of us could say, and forcing the issue just ended up hurting us both. She has what I want from her with him, I have what she wants from me with other friends. I don't know what I expected, probably a Hollywood ending. Maybe not all of my idealism is gone. But it just didn't go like I planned. I guess while I spent the last years believing that we were always destined to be together, she spent them getting over what might have happened and made herself believe that we'd never work out. The one time I need her to believe and she tells me she can't. I was angry. At her. At myself. And so this poem.


BLADE

You are my sister goddess Erato
giving me the ability to write.
And I know you love it, all that control.
But I love you more and
I’m willing to sacrifice my writing
for it if I have to.
You’d rather sacrifice my happiness
for what you view as talent
because it glorifies you.
Is that why?
I don’t think it’s worth it.
When will you give me the answers
to all my questions?
When will you tell me what it is
you can’t say?

You talk of my negative space
but never address it and always leave it
unanswered.
Should I not have exposed the rough edges
before I smoothed them out?
I get a response that separates you
from the page and
you become a reader and critic
rather than the subject.
And then I wonder what it’s all for,
if there is an equal and opposite reaction
to my initial action.
I can’t be this wrong.
Your intoxication tells me
the very things you are trying to deny.

You are the who, why, what, where
of everything I put down.
Are you really telling me
you didn’t see the boiling volcano
rising from the deafening static?
I think you’d rather just read my tragic words
than see my pathetic tears.
I start on the offensive
and end up the apologetic aggressor,
always.
I have no more to defend.
I’ve done my time,
spent it evolving from my fear.
I’d rather gamble on the surprise,
go all in for the risk.
There’s no living in safety,
no excitement in comfort zones.
I want to walk the line
between what I can’t do
and what scares me the most.

My poems are
my private letters to your eyes
because you won’t let me
talk to your soul.
I never really look at you,
at least not the way I want.
I write what you won’t let me say
because you say
we don’t work like that.
How can you say
what I do when you have no idea?
There’s an excuse for everything.
Did you ever once think that maybe
I’ve forgotten the old past
because I want to make a new one?
What’s wrong with starting a new adventure
or getting on a different ride?
What more could I want?
I want to spend every night
feeling the warmth of your body
in my heart.
I want to hold you in
the bitter silence of my arms
and make you feel at home.
I’m done fooling around
now that I know what I want.
I’d rather lose it all,
what little it is compared to what I see,
than never show you
the best I could be
and all I’m capable of.

I’ve made some bold choices.
My conservative struggle is no secret.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if
today my existence was denied
even though I know
deep in her soul
I showed her
what she truly deserves.
It changed her, I know it did,
because it changed me.
I don’t want to just be a story.
I want to be your story.

My writing isn’t what’s keeping you
from me, is it?
You don’t think you’d have to give up
one beauty for another, do you?
Are the words what you would want
if you did?
You don’t even know how many times
I tried to start writing to you and couldn’t
because I forgot what this feels like.
I feel ridiculous for being so romantic,
silly for being so sloppy.
If I could steal one from God,
why can’t my desire steal another?
This selfish ego makes me vulnerable
and this writing becomes my prayer.
When you smile at me
I see an angel
and I look at the stone-faced
metal surrounding me
as I fall asleep
forever into this daydream.

Undecided

This is another older poem that I reworked. Just today, actually, and rather quickly. The new version is much improved.


UNDECIDED

Lately I’ve been feeling sick.
I don’t get hungry.
In fact, I think I’m going to puke.
Something has filled me to excess.
Two extremes and I can’t decide.
Attainable happiness or unreachable dream…
…the choice should be easy.
So why don’t I have the nerve to decide?
Because I don’t want my life to be full of
lies and deceit and regret.

To know you’re there is enough.
To know you’re thinking of me constantly is enough.
Or it should be.
But when you’re here it hurts.
It hurts because I don’t want you to be just “here.”
I want you here beside me, so close I can feel it.
I want you to shelter me from anything that can harm me.
I want you to be sitting or standing or lying beside me.
I want you to be able to comfort me constantly.
I want you to caress me if anything goes wrong.
I want you to care for me more than anything else.
I want you to make me feel guilty when you get so jealous.
And you do.
I want you.
I want you to love me.
And you do.
But I still can’t decide.

I can’t decide what to say or what little to say
before it’s too much.
I want signs.
I need them to help me navigate this terrain.
Or do I just trust my own sense of direction?
I ponder whether it’s worth forever to veer off the path I see before me.
I ponder whether I’ll ever make it back to where I started,
where I stand now,
if that’s where I’d rather be.
I’m standing here trying to decide
thinking it’s your turn to decide.

If I Knew Then

After our reunion in April, it took maybe two weeks for me to put something on paper that I liked. This was my first new poem in nearly a decade.

IF I KNEW THEN

What’s my starting line?
I have so many to choose from. I might as well just dive right in.
My memory ain’t what it used to be
so if I repeat a phrase or forget
it’s because there’s just too much to remember
and then sometimes I forget everything.
Who was that?
Who am I?
I don’t remember anything.
I went from everything being important
to nothing having any importance. Or is it the other way around?
My life was easier these last years without you.
But it was also boring and meaningless,
mindless and mediocre.
I was living simply but now
I simply choke on the word.
I don’t have enough time to deal with
all the life you’ve awakened in me by reappearing.
I wait and I wait and everyday
I wait is another day without you.

I pontificate on the past for the first time
in a long time.
Those timeless poems track my mistakes,
how I distanced myself from my feelings
by writing them down instead of actually
speaking my Shakespearean fantasies.
I wonder who is this child who knew so much
and when will I ever learn?
I later tried to write like that for her and I couldn’t.
Maybe because that time I acted on my feelings.
I never tried to write like that for him.
Maybe because that time I had nothing to act on.
If I write this will it bring you back?
There’s no way you can be over me.
“When were you under me?”

“The world is too much with us.”
That’s all I ever believed in,
love, our most powerful weapon.
Could we really bring the world to an end?
Or would we just redefine everything
the world has already defined?
Does what we have go beyond the mortal definitions
of loyalty and devotion and dedicate
a whole new existence to what we are?
What we could become?
I think I can be the person I want to be
with you.
I think you can be the person to
fix me.
But you just let me go
without a fight,
without a word,
without telling me
how you felt,
how you knew I felt.
Now I’m left to do the finding on my own
to find you,
to find what I know is here
hidden and waiting.

I need a good night’s sleep.
But something keeps me awake.
A hunger.
I never wanted to resurrect these feelings.
Or maybe I did,
just not on these terms.
But that’s my own fault
for letting go before,
for saying no before,
or at least not saying yes.
I stopped believing, somewhere stopped knowing
and started doubting everything I was so sure of.
When you’re not with me I worry.
I worry that I’m going to lose you.
I wonder what I’ve done this time.
And each time
it could be anything I do.
For being romantic.
For being impatient.
For knowing what I want.
For being a mystery.
For looking for something that’s wrong.
For wanting to taste the way you smell.
For wanting everything.
For wanting.
For raising the level of my thoughts to a screeching siren.

I ask too many questions
and continue to answer with more questions
until I forget what I’m even in search of.
I thought you knew.
I thought you believed.
That’s what I thought it took me so long to discover.
And now I don’t know what to believe
as I find myself
editing myself until even I don’t recognize
my own words.

Fortitude

This is another one of my older poems. I pulled it out today and revised it ever so slightly.


FORTITUDE

I used to think you were my Muse.
Once I was so sure it was you. Almost.
I was wrong.
Now I know that my muse is much closer
and lives inside my dreams, living my life the way it ought to be lived
or at least the way I thought it ought to be lived.

I had an epiphany,
a gleaming moment of self-discovery that made you
amusing in some sick way.
I wanted to ask you if you were happy now
because now you have what you always wanted,
but I’m not sure you realize.
Let the dead bury their dead.
I am drowning in religion and swimming in spirituality,
placing my priorities.
I can’t sign away my life. I’m asked to do the impossible.
I’m on my knees.
You are my Jesus.
You are my first priority.
But you’ve got to understand that my spirituality is
deeper than four days in the sea of humanity.
Though what they say is right,
that everything in this material world requires that we give something in return,
I don’t mind making that sacrifice for you.
But you’ve got to understand that this is it.
There’s no higher level.
Believe me, there’s not much more and you’re digging
for something that perhaps was never there.
Maybe that’s the mystery of me.

I think about the irony of how we’re all somehow destined
to become what others think we are.
I think about the disappointment when I realize I’m not
what people think I am.
My sandpaper hands don’t always live up to these mistaken expectations.

I lie awake one more night.
I think about school and work and my past and my future
and my present and my end and mostly you.
I hear an echo,
the sound of a capless pen clicking in an empty room
and I go through all the red lights.

The Wait

This is another poem written ten years ago that I could have written today. She went away to college and became a smoker. It was just one of the many things I became jealous of.
Sometimes I'm haunted by the accuracy of these words after all this time.


THE WAIT

Sometimes I think you love that smoke more than you love me.
I get very envious of everything.
But you like to light up and puff away and suck down the country flavor
and blow smoke in my face to make me cough.
And you weigh my soul.
And you burn my hand.
What charm. What enchantment.
What character you possess with that burning stick in your hand.
I wish I had character.
You're killing me with it, you know.
I want you to love me like you love that smoke.
Or else I want to love that smoke as well.
I want to understand your love for that smoke.

I used to believe in a thousand different childhood dreams.
You killed a few. Growing up did the rest.
But I grew up for you. Do you think I like this?
This thoughtless, selfish, lifeless creature that I've somehow become?
You come expecting me to turn you inside out with laughter and loathing.
The pressure tugs me away and pushes me into a journey where I search
for other things,
for other people,
for myself.
I've been told I can learn more from myself than I can from the rest of the world.
I won't let them teach me.
And yet they've somehow influenced everything I've done.
I may leave. But I will come back.
And when I do come back,
I might not feel the same as I did when I walked out.
I don't have any golden guarantees or lifetime warranties to offer.

You can't feel this. It's like someone's tickling me on the inside.
And it hurts.

Barbara Blue

Back in high school, she and I would go see a local blues singer perform. The singer's name, obviously, was Barbara Blue. No one else ever went with us, and why we even started going to see here I don't quite remember. I wrote this after one of Barbara's shows. Reading it today I feel as though I could have just written it yesterday. I'm not sure if that means I've grown or not, but at least one thing has remained constant.

BARBARA BLUE

I’m so confused. I know,
and you’re so annoyed.
I don’t know.
It’s just that I don’t see the importance of everything that happens.
I want you all to myself.
I am selfish and jealous
and I don’t want the world to find out how wonderful you are and take you from me.
And I didn’t see the use in telling you.
I mean, would you rather be in my head or in my heart?
Now I want to tell you everything.
But I feel like I could talk forever and still not tell you everything I want to tell you,
so I figure, why bother telling you anything in the first place?
But I want you to know.
But I don’t want it to seem forced like it always has before.
I’m not before now.
I don’t know what I am.
It’s like those things we keep inside high black walls,
those things, secrets and facts and dreams and feelings that no one will ever know.
I’m terrified of saying something that could bring down one of those walls and let in the light.
Then I’d be vulnerable. I hate that feeling.

When I’m out with you, I wonder if people see it, the love in my eyes.
I sometimes feel naked or transparent, as if they can see right through me,
as if they know what I feel.
I’m not sure if you see it.
I think you’re too blinded by your own love to see the truth,
that truth which you want to know but cannot ask.
We had so much fun that Wednesday that I should have never left you.
I know it was late
and you had to get up early
and I had to get up early to call you to get up early
and you were tired
and I was tired
but the sky was full of stars.
I got out of my car in my driveway
and finally saw it.
I was sorry then that I didn’t spend the rest of that night with you.
After all that coffee, I know we were both up forever anyway.
It just makes me mad that we could have spent that wonderfully lonely evening together.
Then it began to rain.
But this rain can’t wash away everything.

This life is not just some random occurrence.
I refuse to believe that it is.
I have witnessed too many strange coincidences to find faith in accidents.
And then, just as the band starts to play and I think I hold all the cards,
a rock from a balcony strikes my head as I sip my Shirley Temple
and I cannot scream (or I am not heard),
and then they are upon me.

Gold Leaves Shiver

I was raised Catholic. And for the longest time that was all I knew. I thought everyone in the world was Catholic until I went to public high school and met a Mormon. But from then on, I began to question things. I always devoted myself to church activities and such, but with my friendship with her I started to doubt what I believed in. Partly because I was feeling things for her but also because I had never even thought of the possibility that what I was taught to believe might be wrong. This ongoing debate over religion and spirituality played out in several of my poems. This is just one of them.
I remember talking to her about when the public grade school kids would see us, the Catholic grade school kids and what we thought of each other. This poem came after that conversation.


GOLD LEAVES SHIVER

When we were ten you felt sorry for us.
Why? Because we had to wear skirts and ties and go to church in a line.
But we were the ones who felt sorry for you
because our God loved us and didn’t like you.
You were different and we sang “T-H-A-N-K-S.”
Our books were borders with all the knowledge we’d ever need to know.
And they were out of your reach.
We had all we’d ever need – we had God and Jesus and the dove and heaven and His love.
We were destined to always be better than you.

Now nearly twice that age, I am reminded how foolish we were, and
how foolish I was for listening and believing.
I never knew you but now you are the most omnipotent thing I know.
Another day goes by and
I wake up and I’m lonely and I miss you.
I’d be damned if they knew.

A Remembering

So I wanted to share some of my older writing first and then move into the present. It's remarkable how I'm still saying pretty much the same things after all this time. I guess that just goes to show love never dies.
This particular piece however was basically a writing exercise that I did in one of my poetry apprenticeships in high school. We had to choose or ask someone for a number, a color, a date and an animal or something like that and then fit all those items into a poem. I don't know why, but I've always been quite fond of this piece. I've tried this exercise many times since, but this first attempt has always been my favorite.


A REMEMBERING

My mind is a computer terminal
salivating information
from a central location
where experiments are done
using elements and chemicals
with Avogadro’s number
and baby squirrels as bait.
So what’s the use of waiting
on the corner at the bust stop
in your new knickers
if there is no green?
It’s like Novemnber 24,
surrounded buy naked trees
watching vehicles go by
on the busy street
and leaves falling
like baby squirrels.

"If it wasn't for the music I don't know what we'd do"

Music has always been a part of my life. At a young age I would play my Dad's old 45s. Later when I began to write and started to feel the passion of words, I was able to gain a stronger connection to the music I heard. I'm always amazed and gratified when I hear a song in someone else's words that so perfectly expresses my own feelings. There's a song by Cevin Fisher called "Music Saved My Life." I feel like that sometimes, like when I'm feeling totally hopeless. I'll put on one of my favorite albums and find comfort in the words, even if they too are hopeless. So from time to time when I start to hear enough songs that strike the right chord at the right time, I'll make myself a mix. Some people understand the art behind it, some people don't. I just like to put songs together that make me feel a certain way at a certain time or capture a specific moment or feeling. I was inspired to do this with the recent reintroduction of lost love into my life. I created a mix I call "High Fidelity." It includes the following songs:

1. The One That Got Away (remix) - Natasha Bedingfield
"I need a hook so you won't be the one that got away/I need a look that stuns you makes you want to stay/Don't want to speak in case it comes out wrong/Don't want to blink cause in that second you could be gone/I need a twist to help me turn, turn this story around/I need a bridge to cross this dangerous ground/Meet me in the middle like I want you to/I gotta find your heart to shoot my arrow through"

2. What Are You Afraid Of? - West Indian Girl
"There's no chance of losing/When there's no chance at all/As time goes by, I forget why/From a distant view it might still be true/There's a part of me that lives for you"

3. Maybe Tomorrow - Stereophonics
"Been the upper side of down/Been the inside of out"

4. Son's Gonna Rise - Citizen Cope
"Man she saves me/To this day I don't know why/She picked me up/When i was down on the road/With the wind when it blowed"

5. Aftertaste - Ben Lee
"And I really didn’t need this/Don’t wanna be this/Don’t wanna see this/I’m fallin’ in,/I’m going there again/And it’s not my fault/Are you sick of pretending?/That all this trouble is really ending/The way things break/Every step you take/Is not my fault/Your love’s like salt/The aftertaste is gonna break my heart/Feels like it's over before it starts"

6. Come Around - Rhett Miller
"No one else can fix me/Although sometimes my heart tricks me/Into thinkin someone else will do/You are the only one, you are the only one//Am I gonna be lonely for the rest of my life/Am I gonna be lonely for the rest of my life/I'm gonna be lonely for the rest of my life/Unless you come around, So come around/So come around"

7. You're Beautiful - James Blunt
"You're beautiful, you're beautiful/You're beautiful, it's true/I saw your face in a crowded place,/And I don't know what to do,/'Cause I'll never be with you"

8. When You Love Somebody - Fruit Bats
"When U love somebody it's hard to think about anything but to breathe"

9. Gone For Good - The Shins
"You want to fight for this love/But honey you cannot wrestle a dove/So baby it's clear//You want to jump and dance/But you sat on your hands/And lost your only chance//Go back to your hometown/Get your feet on the ground/And stop floating around//I find a fatal flaw/In the logic of love/And go out of my head"

10. Strength To Say Goodbye - The Mavericks
"No matter how many years I've cried/No matter how many tears I cried/Who's to say who was wrong or to say who was right/But we'll never find the strength to say goodbye"

11. Hung Up On You - Fountains Of Wayne
"And now and then I wonder/Why this painful memory/Can never find its way to you from me//And I can't dial the phone just now/Even though I know your number/Can't bring my broken heart to be untrue/Like you did today/You'll say goodbye the same old way/Ever since you hung up on me/I'm hung up on you"

12. Clap! Shake! Jump! - Behavior with Andrea Revel
"The sky is blue/The grass is green/And your heart is true"

13. Someday - Shivaree
"Someday/You want me like I want you/But I'd be gone/With somebody new"

14. Hope For Me Yet - Marc Broussard
"I could write a million verses/Every word you've heard before/Steal some of Dylan's best/But it'd leave me wanting to say more/Cause there's so much more//Baby if you could love somone like me/There's no end to the possibility/Hopes and dreams push away the pain and regret/But loving you just lets me know/There might be hope for me yet"

15. Home - Michael Buble
"And I feel just like I’m living someone else’s life/It’s like I just stepped outside/When everything was going right/And I know just why you could not/Come along with me/That this is not your dream/But you always believed in me"

16. Talk To Me - Ringside
"I've got a feeling/You've been so confused/There's something that you've been fighting/Deep inside you/I know you got some damage/I know what you've been through/But there's nothing I can't manage/I'm gonna take care of you"

17. Live With Me - Massive Attack
"See it almost makes me crazy child/Nothing's right if you ain't here/I'd give all that I have just to, keep you near/I wrote you a letter and tried to make it clear/That you just don't believe that, I'm sincere//I've been thinking about you baby//Plans and schemes, hopes and fears/Dreams i've denied for all these years"

18. One Thing - Finger Eleven
"If I traded it all/If I gave it all away for one thing/Just for one thing/If I sorted it out/If I knew all about this one thing/Wouldn’t that be something//I promise I might/Not walk on by/Maybe next time/But not this time//Even though I know/I don’t want to know/Yeah I guess I know/I just hate how it sounds"

19. Mushaboom (Postal Service Remix) - Feist
"It may be years until the day/My dreams will match up with my pay"

Self

I rarely remember writing any of my poems. This one, however, I remember vividly. I must have been 16, or almost 16. I was in drivers' education class daydreaming as usual. I envisioned myself going through a tunnel, kind of blacked out for a minute, and the next thing I knew this poem was written on an envelope I had on my desk. It stayed there for the longest time because I wasn't sure what it was or what it meant. It's been the one poem everyone seems to like.

Self
going further in
i could see
why the others let their fear
force them to leave
and i, too, was tempted

So the story goes like this....

I met her in high school. I came from a Catholic childhood into a world I hadn't even imagined. I lived a very sheltered life, I must admit. And yet it seemed as though we immediately became best friends. But our connection was something beyond that, something that our young idealistic minds thought was deeper than any other relationship on earth. And maybe it is. I believed it more then. There was always so much unsaid between us, what she called "negative space." There was always more than just our friendship, some cosmic understanding between us. And yet I don't think we ever quite trusted how the other felt. We started to argue for no reason as we were about to graduate, I think partly because we didn't want to have to say good-bye. She went off to college 500 miles away. I stayed where I was. We had some rocky roads to navigate, but we somehow got back on track. Sort of. And then I went away to college, actually 10 miles from where she was. But we never saw each other. I walked away from her. I had to. There was too much to happen between us and neither of us knowing how to act on it. I couldn't stand the confusion, never knowing where I ranked. It was about this time I fell in love with someone else, someone back home while I was away at college. The love that blossomed was amazing, and as first loves go I have to say even now when I'm more of a realist that it was completely original and totally pure. But there were obstacles. It lasted a good two years, two of the happiest years of my life. And also, at times, the most painful. That first love broke me. I had all these hopes and dreams of what love was or could be and I thought I had it. And then it all fell apart. And when it did, I realized that I was with the wrong person the whole time. It took me a long time to get over that. Except I never really did. Because about two months ago and ten years later, she found me. On myspace. And it was like I was born all over again. My life suddenly had meaning, there was a point to everything I had gone through. All this before we even saw each other. Just the e-mail exchanges awakened something inside me that had been quiet and dead for a long time. And while we both recognize that something was meant to be, it seems I've lost my only chance as she is now with someone she not only loves but someone who can finally bring her the happiness that I wasn't ready to back when we were kids. I'm happy for her after all she's been through. But it still breaks me all over again. I lost something I never knew I had.

So why the blog? Well back in high school I wrote poetry. Constantly. I was quite possibly the definition of a romantic idealist. I never liked my writing, even though people (not just my friends) would tell me it was good. Sure I attended poetry workshops and got little criticism, but for some reason I never believed it was that good. Writing seems so egotistical to me sometimes, like who am I to think what I have to say is any more important than what anyone else has to say? Back then it was my way of communicating to her. I conveyed all my greatest hopes and fears. Some concerned life, but most were of love. A love I dreamed of that was more powerful than anything this world had seen. I felt that love inside me, but I was too young and inexperienced to know how to share it or who to share it with. But everything I wrote was for her and to her. She was my inspiration and most prized reader. I always felt as if only she truly understood what I was trying to say, even more than I understood it. And she enjoyed it, for many reasons. I'm not sure what all they were because we never really talked about it. After we lost touch in college and I became romantically involved with someone else, I lost the desire. What I felt for her was what fueled my passion, what put words on the page. Without her, I didn't have that and I couldn't even pick up a pen. I didn't know where to start. And now that she's back in my life my spirit is renewed. I went back and read things I wrote in high school for the first time in a good eight years. Being that far removed from what I wrote is hard to explain. But in reading the words again I remembered how she made me feel and I realized that now, ten years later, she still makes me feel the same way. So my writing has started again.

Talent or no, I know she always wanted me to share my writing with people. There are very few people in my life who have actually read anything I've written. I'm protective of it, mostly because it reveals things about me that I'm not sure I want people to know. But here, anonymously, I will share these new poems (and perhaps some old) as a way of overcoming one of my biggest fears. And hopefully it will be a way for me to get over what never really was.