well. .

Even as a stick figure my family was never really as good as theirs. "Why is your mom taller than y our dad?" my teacher asked me. i wasn't aware that there was a stick figure format to abide by. i simply placed the slanted stream of 5 sticks from olderst to youngest, and my mom is older than my father.

Anyway it was a pre-requisite tot he next 5 years of so and how they would shape me today. I used to think we weren't as good as everyone else. I heard the whispers, saw the heads turn, witnessed the abrupt ending of a conversation as soon as i entered a room. Apparently a teacher even gave a lecture to my math class while I wasn't there to let them know what had happened and how they act towards me. i aboslutely hated that everyone in the town read the newspaper, saw the news, heard the radio and had already started the rumors and sympathetic treatment before i knew what they knew. They knew more than me, and it was my last name too and it wasn't fair. If they were going to judge and assume, at least let me know what they're basing it on. i snuck downstairs one night shortly after and njherald. com told me everythign i needed to find, but wished I had never seen. i read the graphic details and reactions of the public and to this day it makes me literally sick. all of the times I was told that it was okay to talk and people were there for me was never proven more untrue. in the past 5 years I have been disappointed and hurt by the people who held the deepest darkest and most sacred hands of my trust,a nd will be forever considered as such, no matter how I've tried to make that feeling go away. If something was, then it always will be. Time can only be a temporary blanket, but you can still see the shape fromunderneath pressing upwards.

I've lost a stick figure in my family. That was a long and terrible story. But wehre I am now, and the love I received back recently has proven to me that there are not enough blank papers in the world to hold the shapes of things i now hold dear...

but I'll save that story for another time.

mhmm

We spent months unaware of each other-
(it was easy to get lost
amongst the hundreds of uniformed white and red.)
The first time I heard you speak
you were giving me a delivery of flowers from someone else.
Who knew then. . .

I had freshly ended,
you had never begun
but watched-
a face in the crowd who disapproved of the public display
of disrespect.
All you needed was that night-
You saw me cry, and you would not have it.

We figured it out slow-
very slow.
VERY slowly
unraveling the layers of each other that
we both protected so much.
But because we knew
we gave way, and let them peel back
like rose petals in the presence of sunlight
anxious to let the beauty in
after so much rain.

It's strange,
alien even.
I never understood the symphony
in simplicity.
For years I had felt like a dog
for years
and scraped and tore
into myself
and into him.

In my case you have to
know
patience.

I know patience.
But now I also know respect
and truth
and someone
who was never taught
how to hurt.

rough draft

let me know your thoughts on this?
It's still a work in progress



13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT WALLS

It was said, when it began
"this is a wall to keep them out."
but it soon became 200 yards of mines,
dogs, and machines
to keep everyone in.

Walls have holes from tacks,
spots of paint missing from ripped tape.
Punctured and peeled-
but sealed.

Not even walls
can harbor
every color in the
spectrum.

I am often tired.
But then I feel guilty
because the walls of our atriums
consistently pulse-
pushing and stretching
to transfer the essentials
and turn the tired blue
into an oxygen-rich red.

Walls separate and categorize the necessary-
writing from WWII,
chemicals from calculators.
The mind
from learning new ways to speak.

Some called her an architect.
She created the most spectacular walls.
They kept the world at a safe distance
and they were very efficient.
She worked and designed for only herself.

Frames of words or moments at standstill
"Remember this?"
Walls are an icon of raw strength,
they carry the weight of the past
without resistance and without say.
They carry it all, and they still hold their ground
without wavering
or crumbling.

Walls will put up a fight-
you have to know how to tear them down.
Caution signs will warn you
to not cross the yellow tape
without excessive patience.

Some build walls to keep each and everything outside.
They usually don't block all sounds-
but they muffle
and do the best they can.

"I don't quite know what to do with this wall.
Maybe it's the color, it doesn't work.
It doesn't flow with the others,
it's always been the one that's given me a problem."

It braves cliffs
and the most uniquely impossibly peaks.
A sanctuary from evil-
Tell me of any other wall
that is visible from space.

I watched from the kitchen
while you banged your suitcases
against the walls of the hallway.

I felt like that wall-
beaten and scarred by
something that is never coming back.
You can't spackle hearts...
can you?

new

They say that when you put your pen to paper
you will eventually find
its reason for getting there
in the first place.
But this...
this is without structure.
Kind of like the last 5 months.
I can't figure it out but trying can't hurt.
And my hand keeps twisting swirling
making lines that make words
that make
fragments. So
something must be coming from this.

When you love you don't abuse weakness.
How did love even get involved?
Not mistake, but we are so small in
the grand scheme of things.
Especially me, in comparison to you.
Or at least that's what you taught me.

Taught.
But now I'm learning.
It's like this new euphoria-
and it never made sense
how much fun it is to read new expressions.
To feel the different shape
of new fingers
and their entagnlement with mine.
How much it makes me feel alive
in a way I never knew until now.
To think..everything I've missed.

But I'm here.
I've watched and felt enough crying.
Tears like debri-
descending human beings.
That would rather jump then stay where they were.
They would rather plummit then suffocate in eyes
that were, then, scarlett.

I don't look there anymore.
These eyes are new, amber.
New skin.
Not by any means a tower, but an oasis.
Admist the chaos
and that feeling-
that horrible feeling
that I was involved in a slow process of decay
and screaming through soundproof glass.
No, never again.

I have found a sanctuary.
In all of them, and finally in me (this is the newest feeling of them all.)
I've seen so little of the world, and I want them
to hear me,
but not be changed by me.
I want to scream so that China covers its ears-
and to laugh until my stomach collapses.
I want to spin with you, my new start
like the sky that circles and spun above us
while we kicked the water around in my pool-
spinning around us
or around them
or nothing at all.

disgust

Something happened to me today.
This isn't a poem, it's a stream of thought
of truth.
This was my Sunday November 11
at 6:50 PM.
Pulling into a gas station to get milk.
Coming face to face with a truck
with two men inside.
The details aren't important.
The words they said are not important.
I couldnt post them if I wanted.
The gestures they made are not important.
Once again, I would not post them.
Theymake me sick just thinking about them.
Being followed out.
Violation from far away.
I feel like I'm going to be sick.
I'm sorry,
I don't mean to just rant like this.

But it horrified me
and it chilled me.
I'm a 5'2" girl
they had size, and strength on their side.
Maybe they were just trying to be funny.
But it didn't feel funny
I felt terrified.

I hope none of you had a Sunday afternoon like I did.

hello blogspot

Why would you have to
let
yourself live?
Don't we just?
I've realized
that poetry
doesn't have to
be
poetic,
not anymore.

How dare philosophy -
Aristotle and Plato alike.
How dare they suggest that this
is not real.
What is a dream - do you have
to be dreaming to dream?
Are they flawed -
or does taste really
not exist?

And what of sight?
Am I not really tasting the scent of Autumn?
"Ignorance is bliss."
I don't call it ignoarnce.
You can have your criticisms of
acceptance.

"an empty shell"
"blinders on"-
I call it something different. . .
I see the fulfillment
in constantly searching for the wrongs
and the flaws
in the world.
Cliche as it is,
I'll savor the good.

Like or not, this is what I have.
I've dealt with enough real wrong
to pick and choose which good to discard
and which to dismiss as
not real.
It's all I have.
Take it from someone else.