Poems

These are some poems I wrote this past semester.
I hope you like them.
They're not really finished.
But I'm working on them.

Self-Portrait as Cavern

I am a tangible void.

I am your footsteps,

the echoes following your every move,

the splish-squelch of wet-muddy.

I am the increasingly cold

dampness and the unfamiliar texture

of the moss and fungi which intermingle

and reach out with their wispy antennae to

brush the back of your neck and cause

you to turn around and look

for my invisible hand.

I am the fading light behind you,

gradually becoming less and less

pervasive as you come into my domain.

I am the triple-forked intersection that gives you pause.

I am the increasing risk of not-finding-a-way-out.

I am the steady drip of stalactite to stalagmite that becomes a flick in the back

of the inside of your head, becoming more and more forceful regardless

of your distance from the source because I will remain for the ages

while you will either leave

or die here.

Not My Monkeys –  a ghazal-ish

He is a terror at six and a quarter, but for me, it’s perfectly good.

She whines a lot and doesn’t quite do what she should – not my monkeys.

The polish proverb does quote fair, “Not my circus, not my monkeys”

It’s a comfort when troubled with stuff, to rebut: not my monkeys.

You speak of infighting, gossip, and full-fledged pettiness.

Conversations and sentiments misunderstood? Not my monkeys.

The child at work who is not wearing pants, or the one with the runny-snot nose?

Should my patience wear thin and my kindness turn rude – not my monkeys.

If confronted with difficulties quite simply not your own,

some annoyance who refuses to get out of their mud – not my monkeys.

When I find you refuse to acknowledge the obvious, I’ll go.

For I may be Anne, but I’m not in the Sainthood – not my monkeys.

6 foot and a mile high

I dreamt my little brother was in a tank unit

in World War Two.

It terrified me.

Sometimes he spoke about going off

and joining the Marines, which scared me,

too. But not as much as the thought of him

somewhere in the 1940’s, so young, in a world

that seems much harsher and bloodier

than ours

his lanky teenaged self, a face that will be young

even when his unstable spine is curled with age

amidst harsh jawlines and harsher realities.

I have an irrational fear of cotton-balls.

Well, more of their texture than anything.

The thought of touching them or pulling them

apart makes me nauseous.

My little brother knows about the cotton-balls,

but not about how much the thought

of losing him, or seeing him in intense

misery makes me want to cry for what has not

even occurred.

He takes art classes now,

drawing the instruments of war

he will never actually use,

still obsessed with a world

he will never truly enter outside

of simulations in video games.

He’s not even that little anymore,

6 foot and a mile high, I swear,

sprawling yeti toes.

I know he misses me.

We have 3 years between us

but at times we’re more like

delayed twins

with all our inside jokes

and conversations in facial expressions.

My marriage, his insistence on growing up.

Fibers tearing with the ghost of their texture left on my fingertips.

I miss him too.

well folks this one can definitely be filed in the randomness section.

dear ones sometimes I make ramen noodle stir fry at 10:30 even though I'm exhausted because gosh dang it I am hungry.
 sometimes I get really melodramatic and everything makes me want to cry especially when I'm talking on the phone with the people I miss.
sometimes I get really excited about tiny things like snails or ice cream or foreign languages.
sometimes I see the sky and I just don't even know what to do it's just way too much it's just too beautiful and there are people that I want to just show it to right then but I'm driving home from something and it's just me and my truck and 9.09 fm krcl and I certainly can't cry out to the apathetic-sounding dj that no way those clouds are just too beautiful I'm overcome aren't you.
sometimes I feel that conventional english grammar and punctuation just get in the way of me and my attempts to convey my thoughts because I swear I really do think in mostly lowercase run-on sentences.

I don't know.

but here I sit, typing and loving the way the words can just spew out of my fingers to the keys to the screen.

It's cathartic.

the pickpocket.

I am not a wordsmith, someone who carefully crafts their own terms and ideas under the pressure of heat with the anvil and hammer. Rather, I am a pickpocket.

I see words and fascinating thoughts everywhere: In the thick yet crisp morning air as people mutter and begin the arduous process of waking up. In the static and white noise of phone conversation. In the cracked cement and aspens of my neighborhood.

In more conventional and obvious places, on transformed trees sandwiched in a binding, or the ones brought to life by the clickity-clack of hands doomed to arthritic tendency as a result of hours spent.

I see the words and defty pluck them out. Carefully pinching through the dense chill, pulling away from the sandpaper friction of interaction without a face, and simply pilfering in broad daylight whatever catches my fancy.

You see, I am the raven, the crow, the magpie.

My eyes, ears, heart, and mind come together to form an organ intangible and inexplicable that lends itself a driving desire and attention to words that is rivaled only by the greedy birds’ impulse towards all that glitters. I differ from the fowls in that I do not limit myself to the shiny alone, but also the heartbreaking, the exhilarating, the terrifying, the abnormal, the miniscule, and the downright oceanic in proportion.

I weave my way through, carefully maneuvering undetected (or so I hope), collecting them.

I take my choices home, and with a rough needle and thread I sew a pseudo-patchwork quilt.

My coverings are not the most beautiful or finely crafted, but they’re eclectic, warm, and true.

I am the pickpocket.

I am the magpie.

I am the maker of patchwork quilts.