I Would Be Prettier If I Looked Like Her - 03-03-11

99 cent dreams
99 cent dreams
Come my children
Find the perfect fitting scheme
To wrap your life around
Until it all comes crashing down,
Find something to make your heart pound
Until the failure
Is unbearable
And you find yourself starting to drown
In your 99 cent dreams
All cast on the ground
Like wedding scene
From someone else’s hometown
With some other girl
In your wedding gown
With hundred dollar dreams
And your frown upside down
On the arm of a picture
You’ve tried hard to see
In your own blurry
99 cent dreams
She walks down the aisle
In hundred dollar dream heels
Looking at you
Like your supposed to smile
With your 99 cent squeals
Making her day
Like any other deals
Think about how her hundred dollar
Dreams will break
Once it’s too late
For her to fix even one mistake
But you’ve got practice
On taking stakes
With your 99 cent dreams
Turning peaceful nights
Into restless screams
Struggling to understand
Your fright
Or his flight
Or the famine of love
Or the absence of light
So with your shoes on too tight
You hold your head high
Don’t care who sees you cry
And run off to buy
More 99 cent dreams
More 99 cent dreams

Let Me Take a Note from Tunisia - 03-01-11

Ladies and Gentlemen,
adults with baby brains,
kickin’ back to the glare
and the snare
of FOX News,
listening to whatever
and whoever
is on the radio,
turning the dial low,
making your brain slow

Let me remind you Americans
what the people of Tunisia
recently discovered,
let me inform you
what the people of Egypt
have uncovered.
Come and hear the wisdom
of Yemen, Bahrain, and Jordan.
Listen to the secrets
of Greece, Algeria and Sudan.

We are oppresses
by the clothes in which we’ve dressed,
by the revolutions we’ve missed,
by the chemical lips we’ve kissed,
by the star lit crack addicts we’re caresses,
by the companies we’ve supported,
their causes we’ve donated to,
by the way we’ve paraded to
their mass sales,
throwing workers wages back at you.
The consumed consumer.
The used user.
The obsolete treat
to freedom’s enemy,
the television.
By everything you see,
all the Barbie dolls you try to be,
every advertisement you believe.

That moment when you stop perceiving
and start following.
The moment when you stop following
and sit down.
When we sign our votes to companies,
and disregard epiphanies,
and throw poets away
to the modern day Gulags
of writing crap pop songs
that someone else will sing.
When what Lady Gaga
wore to the Grammy’s
is more important than the riots in the streets.

And here’s the ultimate plot twist,
the deadly kiss,
the last lisped words
of hope:
they look to us.
People in other nations,
praying for freedom,
marching for liberty,
bleeding for basic, human, rights
look to us.
We symbolize freedom,
we symbolize progress,
we symbolize equality.
We have women senators,
but I still wouldn’t earn as much as a man
for the same job.
We have a melting pot of culture,
but Portland only has nine Synagogues
among endless churches.
We have the first black president,
and we beat gay men to death.

You know,
I won’t debate over the second amendment,
because we were given it
for a reason:
so that when the government
- our government -
commits treason
we can correct them
and protect
what we are currently
neglecting to respect.

Freedom.
It’s more than a constitution,
it’s a state of mind.
and the reason not every dictatorship is revolting
is because some have bigger things on their minds,
like their next meal
and clean water
and their children’s lives.

And we?
We have the Oscar’s.

Roaring 20s - 03-01-11

Should’ve been born in the 1920s.
Shouldn’t been a rebel girl
with my rain boots unlaced,
flapping around like jazz notes
blowing away all the German spiders
and sticking to billboards like price tags.
Should’ve bobbed my hair short as my skirt.
Should’ve given Queen Victoria the finger
and caresses Langston’s black neck
the way his words wooed my soul.
Should’ve sang with Margret Sanger
about ending the pain in my ovaries
and spreading my legs without worry.
Should’ve run around with DuBois
and lynched the freaks in the sheets,
not the knights in Harlem.
Should’ve run to the lights,
to the glamour and clamor,
to the growing cities like healthy children,
rocketing to the sky with hopes.
Should’ve laughed in the flowers
and gazed at the clouds with Georgia O’Keefe.
Should’ve head butted the traditionalist for firing Scopes.
Should’ve stayed out late with the Jewish.
Should’ve danced with the Polish.
Should’ve drank bootlegged beers with an Irish fellow,
out in the woods with painted lips
that sneered at mothers and puckered at men.
Should’ve seen the world for the first time
in a black and white news reel
with maritime music.
Should’ve cheered for Babe and laughed at Chaplin.
Should’ve lived and loved.
Should’ve drowned in culture and possibilities.



Historical context:
In my history class, we are currently learning about the Roaring Twenties.  This was a time of cultural revolution.  The traditional Protestant ways of the United States were being challenged by Pluralism - being of more than one belief.  This was the time of Woman’s Suffrage and the sexual revolution, where flappers wore short skirts, drank beer, and defied their mothers.  The flapper was named after the fashion of wearing rain boots without lacing them up so they made a flapping sound.  This was also the first instance of birth control, promoted by Margret Sanger.
This was the time of the Harlem Renaissance, an explosion of African American culture in New York, of jazz, poetry, and art.  Langston Hughes was one of the foremost poets of that time, and if you’ve never heard of him, please look up “Mother to Son” because it is amazing.  African America rights movement took off, With W.E.D. DuBois advocating for blacks to not just accept what they could from white, oppressive government, but to fight for their rights.
This was the time of mass immigration and the true beginnings of America’s “melting pot” idea, that, until then, had honestly not been followed.  People of all races moved into cities and learned about each other.  Old ideas were replaced with a conglomerate of the new.  Catholics in the USA formed a tradition of football watching.  A person could be of two worlds, that of their decent, be it Polish, Jewish, or Irish, and also be an American.
This was the time of learning about the world.  Mass use of radio and the first movies with sound brought news from all over the world to American citizens, letting them expand their view.  It was the time of the skyscraper, of the big city, of innovation.
I have been greatly inspired by this era.  Yes, I know it wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty freaking awesome, you have to admit.

It Takes a Certain Kind of Person to Ruin Snow - 02/24/11

It's snowing,
snowing in February,
angels of ice glittering from the sky
with the grace of stars,
in flurries
in gallops
in dance steps
1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3
I throw my head back
and let their cold kisses hit my tongue
before the bickering
and the fighting
overwhelms my senses,
cuts off the feel of the cold
and smell of the water
and the taste of the flakes
and the sight of stars falling to the earth
with a dance.

So, broken and breaking even more,
we walk home
past the pretty, purple strip club.
Woman on their break,
their cigarette smoke meeting the snowflakes,
dashing together like star-crossed lovers,
but eventually both dying;
past light posts that illuminate the snow drift,
showing each dancer in her own spotlight,
then each flickering off stage;
past spouses holding hands
with their children laughing.

Snowflakes hit the ground and melt
but the atmosphere my family creates
makes it feel like they turn to water
before they can even hit my face.

I Wish I Was a Whore - 02/23/11

Some skinny little skank,
leaning callously against a blue bus stop sign,
her fake red hair contrasting,
taking a long, brutal drag
off a bummed cigarette;
looked at me as I passed and said,
"You're wrong, girl."

I stopped, in my orange tennis shoes,
my fading jeans,
my tangled hair lazily assembled because what matter was
what was underneath it.
I stopped because she said I was wrong
and I was going to be a physics major,
and I was in the
amazing, stupendous, rigorous, monumental,
over-hyped IB,
and I was good at tests.

I stared at her seductive clothes,
clinging perfectly to her curved body,
like she was a store mannequin come to life,
like she was made to look good.
She used two painted nails
to throw the cigarette to the curb
and black, shiny heals
to stomp out the flame.
She exhaled smoke and perfume and said,
as she breathed,
"You're wrong, girl."

Buses come to that stop
with a irregularity
that makes my mechanical heart twitch
like it's organic.
But she stood there,
leaning,
breathing,
inky eyes cast down the street
with a carelessness
that must be what makes sex sound so good.

"You're wrong, girl,
because you know, but you don't understand.
You don't wait:
you jump in on the lab before you know how to do it.
You don't stop:
if it's written, it's written, and you're turning it in.
But you're wrong,
because you are good at taking tests,
but you've never been tested.
Because you're smart,
but you've never smarted.
Because you actually have,
and you won't admit it,
Because you're not a physics major,
you're a poet in denial."

If I Was a Poet - 02/20/11

If I was a poet the likes of
Pablo Neruda
who fills my teammates' memories,
quoting him like a deity
like Buddha
like all the words of all the languages,
were his
to mold and cradle with the tender kiss
of a mother,
then maybe I could find a way
to explain
the stars’ attraction,
pain’s satisfaction,
and why I feel the need to be needed,
want to be wanted,
and love being loved.

If I was a poet the likes of
Charles Bukowski
with his sarcasm,
his energy,
his honesty and lack of apology,
maybe I could then just tell you all
that it sucks
everything does
but you do it anyways.
just do it.
That you live and you live and then you die
and that is okay,
as long as you lived.

And if I was a poet the likes of
Mikel Jollett
then maybe I could serenade
the broken hearts with music
with rhythm
with chilling images
with pure emotion
with love and hate
mixed and mingled and torn
torn right down the middle and taped together

If I was a poet the likes of
Tori Amos
if I had a voice to yell my words
my words and my soul
to tell the world my soul
then maybe I could be free of paper and pencils
and trying to convey inflection
though line breaks.
Maybe I could make life make sense.

So We Both Love Rivers - 02/19/11

Here,
in the dying light of a year long Saturday,
the sky already so dark that I,
a writer so practiced,
can barely make out my pencil’s tip,
do write on the back of a map that was supposed
to lead me to victory so sweet,
how I ended up by the river,
a year passed and no change:
it flows.
The river gathers and flows.
So everly it flows even as darkness
of sky and soul
cloud my vision.
It flows.

The trees arch over it
as they did last year,
as the will next year,
one dead and I remember.

Remember the way back
perfectly, not one wrong turn,
even though I doubted,
but here I am,
flowing.

The river does not whisper to me
the way it did the Brahmin prince,
does not tell me its secrets.
Have I not lost enough?
Have I not completed an experience ascetic enough
to beg pity from this river,
flowing?
So, alone, I sit,
where I once stood,
holding a love,
touching lips for the first time,
learning, passing on.

Back to the setting sun,
I sit.
The river flows.

And I love so I will
flow back
to where I came from
but wander slowly shall my feet
with my heart’s slow beat
of mourn.
And as I wander, I do wonder
what has happened by the river?
I fell beside it,
empty and heavy,
dreading to move,
feeling so little,
but as I wandered back and wondered,
there was the river,
filling my heart,
filling it, but making it light.

So full and so light.

Summed Up in a Held Breath - 02/06/11

Do you know what “everything” means?
Do you understand “love”?
Do you know what “my whole world”
Is comprised of?

Little flashes of your smile,
Between sarcastic remarks
On my personal habits,
My sleep schedule,
My on and off anorexia,
My insanity.
That little eye roll.
Circular hand motions.
“Breathe” as a command,
Not a verb,
Not a word,
But my whole world
Summed up in a held breath
A skipped heart beat.
A gentle hug.
A quiet kiss.
Refusing to let me out of your arms.
Refusing to let my lips leave yours.
Jaws firm against each other.
Magnificence
In a scent
Captivating
Intoxicating
Stimulating.
Rocked in a sound wave
A perfect crest and trough
To sooth my pulsating mind.
Confidence flooding from it,
Intelligence raining from it.

Love,
To sum it up in a single breath,
Love and love and life and love and you.

And what more is there?
What more is there but sleeplessness?
What more is there but tears?
What more is there but holding
Clinging
Clawing into any sign of love there is
And hoping it doesn’t shake you free.
What more is there but wrapping
Coiling into life
Winding around it,
Devouring it,
And yourself
And the sun
And the moon
And the stars?
What more is there but hoping?
Hoping for love?
Hoping for life?
Hoping for understanding?
Hoping that today will not be the day you die?
Or that someone you know does?
Hoping that “sorry” will stop coming up
Because there is already so much
To be sorry for
And so much of it is worse
Than what you’re apologizing for?

Hoping for more hope.


A slight breath.
A sigh.
Silence.
Walking next to you,
Trying to match your pace,
Your strong legs.
Hoping the stars will fall and we will see beauty.

The Best - 02/06/11

Starlight.
Brilliant bands of hope
Radiating from what might be already dead stars
And yet still shining
Glowing
Illuminating the nights
On which we throw tear ridden eyes to the heavens
For a sign

“Do I continue?”
“Am I good enough?”
“What’s the point?”



I want to be the best.
The very best.
I don’t care what at.

School is out of the question.
Years of striving for a
4.0
Brought down
Like a house of cards.

I’m not the best friend.
I’m a liar.
Sorry to disappoint,
But I’m not actually
“fine.”

I thought I could be the best
Girlfriend.
Loving, tender, helpful, horny.
What more could a guy want?
But I’m needy.
And clingy.
And not the best.

And then
One tournament
I got a first place.
True, it was in a room of novices.
True, I couldn’t beat anyone with experience.
True, I wasn’t the best of the best.

But I was the best.

That thought flooded my mind
And the tears stopped,
Mid-roll.

But I was the best.

The starlight lit up on the cloudy night
Curled up next to me
Whispered with the delicacy of a lover

But I was the best.

The starlight held me there with it,
One of its own,
Its kin,
Alike to it,
Part of it,
Accepted,
Welcomed,
Loved.

 But starlight disappears behind the clouds,
Behind eyelids,
Behind quick words.

Starlight fades to hurt,
To pain,
To sadness,
To emptiness with her neck craned to the sky,
Waiting for the stars to return

Blue Sea, Red Blood, Purple Water - 01/27/11

Let me teach you to drown
It’s as simple as screaming aloud
Hold your head where the sun deflects
In the grave of the defects
The water welcomes your kisses
The cold turns you to Mrs. from Misses
The bubbles of sadness escape
As you give your life to the lake

The liquids in your brain
They’re just things to shake
It’s as easy as thinking
That luscious sinking
Torture compared to what’s next
Close your eyes, relax you neck
Quell your reflexes
They think they know what’s best
But they power is in you
So hold your breath
Until your pretty death

A Cat and a Vile of Poison - 01/12/11

The snow drifts
And settles
And melts.

All that wishing
And thinking
And hoping
And praying
And crossing my fingers
In more ways that I thought possible
Pulling
Ripping
Slipping
And then gripping the edge

That was it
That night
Months ago now
Long gone
A moth in a flame
Dead
But it still sticks
With me
Like the dead roses pinned to my wall
From my heart-shaped box
Pluck a spike from my heart.

It used to be filled
With memories,
Hopes, fears, dreams
Lies, pride, schemes
It used to be open
You used to know
But Schrödinger will show
Now that it’s closed
You can’t know

A tiny, tiny gesture
And the emotions,
The openness,
The sharing,
The magic of us,
Of the intimacy,
Of being close mentally,
Emotionally,
Every way,
Was lost to a tiny gesture
Surly not even meant
But preformed
And the box was closed

Dead and alive

Is This All I Have? - 01/12/11

Aching
Paining
Complaining
To the wrong person
Best friend
Explosions
Confessions
Better left
Unmentioned
Detained
By a brain
Deprived
Of what I need
To survive
Suicidal not eating
Or sleeping
Repeating
Same pattern
Of disaster
In every chapter
I’m sorry
Don’t worry
It’ll all be
Over soon
So rest easy
My darling
It’ll all be
Over soon

Back Down Again - 01/12/11

The memories
Of blood and sadness
Potent like beer-stained breath
Come back
Crawling with malice
A false hint of love in their black eyes
Hoping - knowing - they will win me back

Hence I do fall
From sunlight to shadow
With a simple push
A little doubt
A dash of misery
Bake at 1500 degrees
For perfect desfunctionality

Hopes that were built up with each day
The ones that passed merrily
Were then dashed so much lower
Stabbing shards in my chest
Boil blood in my veins
Teeth sinking into something
Anything
Ripping
Slashing
Violent and vindictive
Not thinking
Not noticing

Falling

The only thing I can’t do
Is stop breathing
Though not for lack of trying
I just fail at dying
Slow on expiring
Low on self admiration
Contaminated by annihilation
Far below expectation

So the current consensus
Is that I’m insane
Not that they know the half
Of my brain
Of the motors oiled with blood
Of nightmares laced with lust
Of hopes stroked like flames
Of beauty as painful as shame

Your Voice - 01/12/11

They say
“Girl, open your mouth
Open your world
Open your words
Don’t shut it out”

Skills and stills
Pictures in my mind
Times New Roman
Running behind my eyes
Pulling and flowing
Stopping and going
Speeding and slowing
Letting go like glue
Flying like fantasies
Escaping reality
Seeing what I want to see
In the neon blue
Of perpetual insanity
It all blends
Quite neatly
Completely
Showing and going
With the flow
Until you know
Then break it
No more need to fake it
You’ve got it
The power
This hour
Rise up
Your greatest weapon
No question
Your attention
To word choice
It’s your voice
Now use it
Before you lose it

Honey, So Sweet - 01/09/11

They voted and they said
that I was the
sweetest
person on our team.
They said that I was the
most reliable,
so kind,
so friendly,
just a perfect
angel.
When I rejected their claim,
I became
humble,
sincere,
adorable,
sweet
sweet
sweet!

But the thing about sweets
is that if you eat
and eat
and eat them
you get sick.

And you die.

Because underneath the sweetness
is poison.  And it isn’t even hidden
very well,
look at the label
and you can tell
how much it really only wants
to sink pink nails
into your skin
for misjudging it,
pressuring it
to live up to your expectation.
Every time you say
“So sweet”
it’s an annihilation
of any true sweetness
that may have survived
and now it’s buried alive
because death is too good for it,
the failure,
and its dark thoughts
of pushing people who text and walk
down stairs,
of punching people whose voices annoy me
in the face;
of riding through a tunnel
with my friends,
my beloved,
and the most encouraging teacher
I’ve ever had

of riding through that tunnel,
holding my breath,
and wishing
for death.

And two hours later,
curled under soft layers of caramel bedding,
eyes bleeding salt,
body sweating shivers,
thoughts SCREAMING at me:

“Sweet?  No!
Kind?  No!
Adorable?  No!”

Those who ignore the morals of fables
and the kicks under tables
could see the dark thoughts
I’m capable of thinking
and think often
always
so much
too much
You hit me I will knock you to the ground.
Such is my
anger
that my teeth sink
into my skin
so that I don’t snap and hurt something
beautiful,
like the soft face of the TV screen
or the cups hanging form the ceiling
or my kin
or my friends
or anything that matters to me.

And, yes, I see what that means:
that I don’t matter to me,
that I don’t care,
that I don’t give a damn,
that I can hold my breath
and wish for my death,
that I can see a car crash
and understand that pain,
want it,
because I deserve it.

They say I’m sweet.
And I try to be:
I hold my tongue,
I bite my skin,
I listen and listen,
and don’t understand a thing.
But I smile.
I smile through pain,
through fear,
through anger enough to want to hurt another.
I smile.

They say I’m sweet
and I try to be
but I can’t
I can’t
I can’t be.
I don’t know if I even should be,
if I want to be.

All I know is they tell me I’m sweet.
And that makes me feel
like I have to be.

And that is killing me.