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 Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 4:30 pm
So, I have a lot of backlogged poems that I'd really like your feedback on. They're posted in chronological order, and the title is in bold and any notes I have are in italics. I will be adding to this as I make more, so use the table of contents if you're looking for something. 3nodding
Table of Contents
Everything – post 17
Glass – post 2
In List – post 3
Jeff – post 4
Lamb – post 5
Mental Exorcises – post 6
Monday – post 15
October – post 14
One Hundred – post 12
Pale February – post 7
PDA – post 13
Proof – post 16
Silence is a Golden Burden – post 8
Simple – post 10
Sleepwalker – post 9
Rainbow – post 11
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:43 pm
Glass
I wrote this poem about my first boyfriend, when I was still in high school (read: probably four years ago or so). A little outdated, but I still like it.
I thought I smelled you last night when I went to bed.
My stomach made a funny little flip;
but it was only my mind playing tricks on me again,
an odd combination of
fabric softener, shampoo,
and the taste of the air at 2:38 on a Tuesday morning.
Needless to say, I miss you.
When I inhale sometimes, I have to
catch my breath again,
because I
think I’ve caught your scent,
I can taste it, taste you..
But I haven’t.
When I’m talking sometimes, I have to
pause and recollect my thoughts,
because I
think you’ve interrupted me,
I’ve heard you, your laugh..
But I haven’t.
Everywhere I go sometimes, I see
a shock of auburn curls,
hazel orbs,
or that odd day-glo
orange t-shirt assaulting
my eyes, that you
always wear
and think,
“My God, I’ve found him again”..
But I haven’t.
I feel your breath in my ear,
your fingers in my hair,
your arm around my shoulders,
your eyelashes on my cheek;
and I cry, I cry, I cry,
because I understand what loneliness is now.
It’s making excuses
to yourself, occupying
yourself, like second grade dittos,
busy work to postpone the
pain of an empty reality.
It’s that gaping chasm left
when your sternum is ripped
out, jabbed between your lower
left ribs, and twisted viciously
and relentlessly until you feel
you just
can’t
take it anymore..
Then you do.
It’s the blood you feel
should be left in footprints,
in fingerprints,
every time
you touch
or speak
or look
at something,
a secretion like a snail’s except
the blood is harder to wash off.
A constant reminder
like the tears that just won’t stop,
won’t just stop.. They
stain worse than lipstick,
stain worse than the blood,
worse than the scars of the
mental suicide that we dub “love”.
I’m not sure
if it’s better or worse when I sleep;
meeting you in my dreams,
but translucent like cheap glass,
bubbles and lumps running through
your colorwashed semblance.
For a little, I can pretend it’s real, but
even my subconscious seems
to recognize it’s not right,
it’s not real,
and you diminish
and dim
until you’re as present there as here..
Which you aren’t.
I love and miss you both more
than words can say, but
I’ve vainly attempted many
many times to express both.
I have a feeling I won’t learn
from those failures, striving
hopelessly like a Sisyphus,
my rock of verbal inadequacy.
I’ll always keep trying though,
I’ll always keep trying, and I’ll always
try to see you where you aren’t,
and hear you where you’re silent,
and I’ll dream you in bubbles
and streaks through my heart…
never give up on you.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:44 pm
In List
I wrote this when I heard a friend had enlisted. War bothered me, then, and it still bothers me now.
I had been told
that we had several classes together,
but on the first day your name
was unanswered at attendance.
I never understood
the point of taking attendance
anyway in such a small school.
I sincerely doubt we would
have not gotten along without
a constant stream of mispronunciations,
clarifications, and corrections.
I heard your name called,
but no one was there
to correct its mispronunciation.
Then in the midst of a lecture
about the Balkans you enter
the open door, backpack
carelessly slung over one shoulder,
giving the teacher a pass and a grin,
“Sorry, I just enlisted”.
The black box with gold
“welcome aboard” splayed
across the side tucked under your arm,
the black t-shirt emblazoned with
“be all that you can be” draped casually
over the uniform regulation polo shirt,
they both suddenly make sense now,
though I wish they didn’t.
Questions mentally array themselves
like those kitschy black and white P.I.s
soliloquizing over a similarly disturbing
entrance into their office, though usually
that is made by a distraught blonde in a tight dress.
Oddly enough and surprisingly I see you like that,
and let me just say that pearls
do not go with those stilettos,
especially with your fair complexion.
It was even more surprising
how many of the questions
were simply the word “why”.
Why would you want to do this,
why now, you’re not even a high school graduate!
Seventeen and enlisted;
God damnit, something is wrong
when you can not drink or vote,
but you can sure as hell die for your country!
You can not have a say in the country’s future
yet yours is that country’s possession
like some yard-sale two-dollar trinket
that can and will be thrown away,
its family sent an encased flag,
and forgotten when its usefulness is outlived.
And you will be outlived,
by your friends,
your parents,
if you’re assigned to a “situation”.
Even if you do live
you’ll wish you hadn’t,
because when you sleep
the death whines of
men and women haunt you,
their eyes glazing over accusingly
because of you and your
“patriotism”.
You will see mountains,
a coniferous forest,
a suburban garden blooming
crocuses and begonias and only
see them ravaged by blood
and death, war-torn and littered
with cartridges, and you think
but can’t be sure those pieces
used to be that guy you ate
breakfast with a week ago.
You will see children,
cheeks flushed and eyes
glimmering with the joy of living,
and only think that it’s only
a matter of time before they die,
murdered by nature or human nature,
maybe not living long enough
to really grow up, or growing up
before they should have to,
seeing things that no human being
should ever ever see, like you.
You will look at life and see death…
As I do, looking at you.
And I hear your name called
with the millions of men and women,
an endless somber list of those
who shouldn’t, shouldn’t have died.
I hear your name called,
but no one is there
to correct its mispronunciation.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:45 pm
Jeff
A poem that I never actually shared with the person for whom I wrote it, while he was going through some tough times. I don't even think he knew how much I cared about him, as a friend.
There’s always been a certain quality of otherworldliness about you
a certain something intangible and indescribable
in fact, no words remind me more of you than “celestial” and “serene”,
though I didn’t say that when I tried to explain yourself to you,
an attempt you greeted with a laugh and
probably a combination of confusion and uncertainty.
But there’s something about you,
unwittingly touching the lives of those around you with your presence,
changing their lives with a brush from your elegant fingers…
your aura extends for miles around you,
enveloping all and tuning them to your mood.
It’s why this sudden sadness touched me so poignantly,
struck a resounding chord somewhere within,
why I unconsciously felt a need to do something to help you,
though I knew I couldn’t bridge your Styx if I had all of Pluto’s sway.
I’d say I understand but I know I don’t.
I’d say I’m sorry but I’m not sure what I did that I’m apologizing for.
I’d say I know how you feel,
but I know there is no way to know how you feel,
engulfed in aural tides or no,
and to imply that I do would be an affront to your deepest soul.
I wanted to do something meaningful,
something that could express and possibly pay back
an infitismally minute portion of the debt I owe to you,
tabbed simply from being in your presence.
And I flatter myself by having the audacity to claim
any influence in what I say,
but I’ve never been one to listen to the seemingly safe
sense that my inner voice spouts from the dry and
unkempt corner of my mind.
The inner voice was sufficiently told to sit down and shut up
by the necessity to somehow reach out to all you know,
perhaps brushing fingertips in an exchange
without words or true thoughts involved,
beyond their control,
as the guardian sphinx radiate all the questions of the world
and the only one that can stand the gaze is
another sphinx…
Our own souls searched each other out,
sensing reverberation of an echo that resonated with something deep inside,
a nonconscious alliance of spirit,
a kindred enigma that could withstand the
unseeing watch of interrogation for the reasons
of how and why, and especially why..
Why now,
why this,
why me,
why God,
why me? –
the keenings of fractured spirits
that will heal in time, in great time,
but now it seems rather relevant
and particularly frustrating that
these questions will remain unanswered,
your eyes mirroring doubt,
and asking my own questions of me that I am powerless to answer.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:47 pm
Lamb
Creepy stalker guys who mess with your mind aren't fun at all.
Oh, the wool was over my eyes this time,
the scratchy yet comfortably warm mask of emotion
that obstructed my vision, my blind woman’s bluff,
yet you were the one bluffing, unspoken yet by no means uncertain,
leading me to pastures no longer verdant, perhaps never so,
especially in comparison to the field I momentarily left.
But the grass not greener was never so more seemingly green,
and I had been so out of touch with humanity, so
long without others’ compassion, that I mistook
your kind smiles, your sensitivity for wiles,
perhaps purposely unaware of the miles
that truly lay between us, your sheep’s clothing
a handy bridge for the snake beneath
to creep into my heart, its death squeeze erstwhile unnoticed.
But you, so seemingly sensitive to my needs,
you, so seemingly harmless in deed,
in reality purposely misleading me
off the beaten path of truth to the tangled web of lies I lived,
thankfully for not long but too long still, too long.
How could you not have noticed? Lie no more to me,
claiming innocence, claiming ignorance, claiming
it was for my own good.
Now the wool is gone, ripped by one who truly loved me,
truly cared, not this false quote-unquote relationship
where the only one who cared
was me.
And it would have been understandable, painful in its own way,
if I was laid and lain there to shrivel in my stupidity,
at least then it would have been more obvious how you
have taken advantage of me, I mean, those things happen
when one is vulnerable and broken, with no fault of their own
save their lack of knowledge and lack of cynicism, truly the faithful flock,
but now the shepherd is the butcher, not of my body
but now of my heart, not truly given
but falsely taken and stolen and murdered as I
trustingly followed the crook of your finger,
never once having the least suspicion that your
forbidden fruit was simply wax, never truly there
but present the same, weighing in my heart, my mind,
my conscience of how could I be so stupid once again,
had I not learned that precious few could be trusted?
But I had, and counted you among my handful of a hundred,
unaware you had wandered to a ditch, laying a trap of smiles and light,
or had you ever been of the number at all? An imaginary number now,
the square root of negative one’s heart being broken,
twice the fool for believing that you ever were
what you truly seemed
to be-- a wolf in friend’s guise, a tempter
in the costume of a counselor, an executioner
in the mask of love, but the mask was on me.
On me, and yeah I’ll pick up the tab, as always,
but never forgetting, never forgiving
paying for my mistakes with my time and effort,
almost cashing in on my one true always,
my only faithful flock and shepherd.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:48 pm
Mental Exorcises
When you start writing poems like this about your boyfriend, it's probably time to move in...
It was one of those issues
that hangs about like a specter,
running his chill breath down
the nape of your neck
when you least want him around.
We never exorcised him,
never used the bell, book, and candle
of reason and conversation
to excommunicate him from our relationship.
You, however, chose to ignore him,
in reality only feeding him
with your psychic mental energies
that you seemed to believe
were devoted to the well-being
of both yourself and me.
But now he rises above both of us,
above what we are and
what there is between us and
forcing himself between us,
and it seems that although spirits
may pass through walls
nothing can pass through them.
And now I’ve brought your attention
to him these past days, you suddenly
are aware of him, and it has hit you like
the cliché ton of bricks, bricks of lies and
depression settling over your essence.
And my god, this hurts me the most of all,
seeing you bowed and broken under this
weight of circumstance and consequence,
humbled and wounded by your own doing.
I would cry, but my tears have long since
been depleted for you. And the ghoul seizes
my throat, stoking my anger with the guilt
of something I had nothing to do with,
strengthening my resolve that this weight
was forged by you lying to yourself, tested
in the fiery firmness of your resolve for pretending
there was nothing wrong, nothing, nothing,
like the nothing that has implanted its hollow
self inside my ribs, and it’s quite amazing
how much substance that nothing has,
choking the words of apology and amends
that I would make, my Germany to your Britain,
except I would mean all the concessions I swear
just to actually end this once and for all.
But I can’t.
I can’t apologize, no, not after this,
we have to face down our demon
and rip his smirking smarmy head off
because otherwise he will keep returning,
I will be bowed and broken, humbled and wounded,
and nothing will have changed.
He will be there, biding his time and
binding our hearts, squeezed to oblivion.
And I’d cry, but my tears have long since
been depleted for you. The only reason I
know of emotion is the hollow emptiness
in my chest, where my heart should be,
and I know there should be something there
but it has long since been sacrificed
to you..
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:49 pm
Pale February
This is what I used as a sample of my work to apply for here. It's one of my favourites, though I'm still in doubt about the repetition.
it tastes like spring:
like mud on shoes,
like the warm wind,
inviting bare arms and loose hair to play with.
it tastes like spring,
although ice in clumps still
stifles the ground
and imprisons the grass.
it tastes like spring,
like a 6:49 vernal equinox,
a balance in shades of green
and pale, pale pink.
it tastes like spring,
like tight buds testing the air
in pastel array,
hints of promises of longer days.
it tastes like spring,
like light fleece,
like early beach visits with
steaming sand and frigid water.
it tastes like spring,
like a sky that is blue
and righteous and dotted
with eager ivory clouds.
it tastes like spring,
like fledgling flowers straining
for their first breath of sun in too, too long,
like air heavy with birdsong.
it tastes like spring,
like love poems, and music, and smiles, and dancing, and a promise--
oh, a promise, a promise--
a promise that things will actually turn out okay for once and...
it tastes like spring.
it tastes like past sorrows.
it tastes like hope.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:51 pm
Silence is a Golden Burden
This is one of my favourites. And it actually rhymes! It was weird-- I remember when writing it, it almost wrote itself. I live for moments like that.
I also just realized that I wrote it for the guy who is now my boyfriend. Funny old thing, life.
Silence is a golden burden.
Cross my heart and lock it tight;
Always hoping for the moment,
Always fearing that I might
Chance upon a meeting with you,
Fall immediat'ly at your feet..
Silence is a golden burden,
But a burden, oh, so sweet.
What would happen if I told you?
(Although I think that you know
Already what I'd say to you;
My poor heart is so aglow
Whenever I behold you that
It spills out into my eyes,
Choking my throat, tying my tongue,
Turning all my breath to sighs.)
Would you look at me and simply
Laugh at me and pat my head,
Patronizing girlish fancy?
Or, while wishing I were dead,
You'd turn away from me, sneering,
Disgusted with me. Although,
Maybe what I'm really fearing
Is completely opposite:
You would tell me "yes", and hold me,
And we'd never be apart.
Every little thing you told me
I'd keep close next to my heart.
I would tell you all my secrets;
From you, nothing would I hide.
My soul would be laid bare to you
Despite all I'd erstwhile tried.
But I know that our love so true
Would soon start to wane and fade;
And in silence once again, my
Broken heart would be remade.
If I wrote you a love letter,
Dearest mine, would you reply?
Ever wishing, ever hoping,
Hoping for an alibi.
I'll claim I'll be rejected now,
Or, if not, rejected then.
Truly better to love than lose,
I'll keep silent once again.
And I'll keep my golden burden,
Ever fearing for "what if?"
With my heart forever burning,
With my mask forever stiff.
And I sit and write love letters
Never meant for your sweet eyes,
Tie them tight with my broken heart
And set them safely aside
In some forgotten dresser drawer
Where they'll never see the light.
Silence is a golden burden;
Cross my heart and lock it tight.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:52 pm
Sleepwalker
Oh, I love it when words mean two things. Blank verse, I believe.. er, the one with rhythm and no rhyme. Written as an experiment in grieving.
I could never picture a present
without your presence;
I could never picture a future
without you by my side.
Yet that's exactly how i now stand;
alone, without you.
but my heart, my being refuses
to accept this as right.
Still, the truth is not always what's right,
what should rightly be;
beauty's rarely true, and even less
is truth beautiful.
You were beautiful; your heart, your touch
all seemed so right.
But true? I suppose that's the question;
and still, I don't care.
I don't care if I had lived a lie;
I was with you.
Your beautiful lie was worth it, worth
more than life to me.
And still the fact remains, but you don't;
I am alone,
left with the remnants of a lie that
I still hold tightly.
And from now on, you only exist
in memory;
your touch in my thoughts, heart in my dreams.
Gladly, then, I'll sleep.
I'll sleepwalk through life, living in dreams,
in memories;
and for now, for ever, and always,
I will lie with you.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:53 pm
SimpleWarning: strong profanity (repetition of the f-word). Can be found here.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:54 pm
Rainbow
Saying goodbye is harder than you think, sometimes.
They always use the term
"sudden summer showers"
on the local weather forecasts.
It's always one thing to hear those three
alliterative words and
quite another to actually
experience them.
I open my window on a whim
and, suddenly,
the rain is
everywhere at once,
from nowhere..
Just like before.
I can remember it so,
so clearly now.
Scattered clouds adorned
the sky;
an unexpected warm breeze
tangled its fingers
next to yours in my hair.
And the rain.
It came with no warning save
a drop, a touch of liquid
glass on my hand,
a moment of slight surprise.
But that moment was washed
away by the torrent that
came from erstwhile clear skies,
shocking us to our feet
with shouts and laughter.
We stood,
never minding that
we were getting soaked,
and we reveled in it, this
gentle, penetrating rain
that stuck
to your hair
and your eyelashes
and my soul.
And you smiled at me
as you laughed at the rain;
I didn't look for a rainbow,
because I didn't need a promise,
not like that.
You were there,
right there with me,
and you held my hand and I
was happy..
So I pause for a moment,
my eyes on the thick
crystallic beads of rain,
my heart on the breeze
that suspends them in the air,
my mind on the something
almost there again.
I pause for a moment,
my hand on the last pile
of neatly-folded clothing ready
to be equally neatly packed
away.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:56 pm
One Hundred
It's hard when you love someone, and see them going through a period of self-doubt. And it's even harder when they love someone else.
I tried so hard, so often
to write a poem about you,
for you, but I couldn't.
I started one hundred times,
wrote one hundred lines,
discarded one hundred more.
I'm not even sure why I'm trying,
or even keeping with this pathetic attempt,
but something about just
being with you
makes me feel restless, like
I need to do something with this
extra energy and inspiration
that you impart,
if I could only find the words.
But I'm used to that feeling around you:
not knowing what to say
in the face of such a brilliant soul..
Sometimes you let me see a glimpse of it,
and even that glimpse is something
so humbling; it gives me a sense of perspective,
like standing at the ocean's fringe,
flawless blue glass that fades
into the smoke of the sky,
like staring up and into the night
and seeing the light of stars-- of other suns
of so many other worlds.
A star, one hundred stars condensed
into the shape of a human heart
and locked away.
But occasionally I see a shimmer,
a glow from a crack in the façade,
and I'm again reminded of how small I am.
And sometimes, when you let me,
when you open yourself to me,
so slowly, so slightly,
I know why I was drawn to you.
I know why I hated you at first,
even; repelled by the same
current that drove my heart,
that rooted my bones,
that composed my soul.
I feel a kindred spirit,
wounded, hurting;
perhaps you'll heal in time,
but I can't repay you with comfort,
although I'd trade anything
to help you in one small way.
I don't know how to ameliorate
your wounds, so like my own.
But just by being, you
have changed my life.
It sounds so trite, so overused
when I say it, when I think about it,
but it's true.
It seems almost you can read my mind;
you know precisely what to say,
exactly what to do
to make me feel a little less worthless,
a little more like I matter.
And I know I'm not the only one;
you're a flame that catches
on whatever's near.
In your wake you leave currents—
tiny ripples composed of one hundred
tiny smiles or kind murmurs—
that sweep up anyone and everyone
near to you in an ever-widening arc
just because you're
you.
You don't even realize it,
claiming that you do just the opposite;
and then I hear that echo of myself in you.
You just can't believe that to someone,
to one hundred someones,
you're more than just someone.
And one day,
you'll be the one
that sets someone's heart aglow
with the light of one hundred stars.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:57 pm
PDA
For Public Declaration of Affection. This one is actually out of order, but it's when I first shared it, so.. here it stays.
I had once said that
I love you more than
I could ever find a way to say to you.
And for some reason,
right now,
the urge grabbed me by the throat
to produce another futile effort,
words that sound as emotionless and hollow
as their black type on white paper,
to fail horribly at something
I knew I could never do.
I’m on the verge of throwing it all out,
just giving up on attempting.
But, somehow, I think,
if I try, I can do it.
So I’ll try, for you.
When we first met,
I knew you’d say no
when I asked.
But for reasons I still can’t know,
you didn’t.
You said yes.
And it still floors me,
drives me near-speechless,
that you actually felt and feel like . . .
We talked, three-hour phone conversations,
irc until two in the morning,
whenever we were together;
and no one could understand
what the hell we were going on about,
but we did.
We could without saying.
And when things went bad,
when I left you, but you followed me.
And you were there when not a night
went by that I didn’t cry myself to sleep,
when not a day went by that
I couldn’t wake up in the morning.
But I tried, for you.
And you’re here, now;
with so many things in my path,
it’s hard sometimes
to actually see where my path lies,
with the underbrush
overgrown and tangled and twisted,
where the road before me isn’t
much better than the one behind me
(by my own devices).
When I don’t think I can do it,
when I’m frustrated and
overwhelmed and
oppressed by my own shortcomings;
then you appear,
coaxing, cajoling, encouraging
and gently prodding,
putting yourself down to tease me
into a semblance of self-confidence.
And I try, for you.
And there are the days when I’m acutely
aware that you’re not here,
an absence I feel so strongly
it wounds me, cuts me to the quick.
Because you’re not in arm’s reach,
I can’t reach out and touch your face,
I can’t hold you close to me,
feel your heart beating beneath my hand,
your breath warm against my cheek.
Because you’re everything that’s worth anything,
you’re music and sight and laughter,
you’re colour and sound and light.
Without you, nothing is worth it anymore,
life is suddenly lackluster.
And these are the days when
nothing seems to go right;
I’m caught and lost in the
swirls and eddies of the everyday.
These days, these days,
I feel like everything I touch
turns and sours and disintegrates;
and I’ve lost all point to trying,
lost all point to crying anymore,
all point to continuing on now,
because, oh God, it would be so much easier,
so much easier to just end it.
I just can’t take it a second longer--
and I see your face.
And I hear your voice.
And, for a second,
I see myself through your eyes.
So I try, for you.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:58 pm
October
Angst. Woo.
It was unseasonably warm,
those days in October when
I laid in your arms and
each of us pretended so hard
that we never lived before eachother,
that the world's
sole existence was in our eyes.
It was crazy, I thought, that
you and I could ever be
"you and me".
And I felt crazy, gripped
by some gentle madness that
didn't matter really,
because, after all,
you were mine; for a while,
so you claimed to be.
And I was quite happy
to believe you.
When you said I was the one,
I believed you.
When you said you cared for me
to such a depth,
I believed you.
When you said I was so unlike
any other, and you
considered yourself lucky,
that you were crazy,
too, and couldn't believe..
I believed you.
But when the first hints of frost
lit upon the air and showed themselves as rain,
when you said you didn't deserve
a second chance..
I didn't believe you.
And so, my fingers entwined in yours,
I desperately tried
to prolong the stolen summerdays,
blissful in my studious ignorance
of all else in the world save
the break with reality at
every brush of your lips,
the insanity brought by
the touch of your hand..
Not believing you the one time,
the only time
that I really should have,
the only time
that actually mattered.
The shiver struck my spine of
the sudden departure of lazy warmth
and our hazy subreality all too soon.
When you again said you were sorry,
that you wished things weren't like this,
that you didn't have to hurt me,
that you never meant to break my heart..
I believed you.
I believed you all too late.
But I wonder, now, that the snow has
blanketed everything and the wind's
all-too-real icy fingers
clutch some point beneath my chest;
when you glance at me,
then look away, each of us pretending so hard
that we never noticed eachother,
can you see the pain in my eyes?
I know I'm not as good an actress as I play at,
though I was good enough to fool myself.
Though you would, of course, deny it,
you're uncertain how to act around me now..
So it's back to how it was before,
completely the same as how it was before..
Except for the small fact that everything
is completely
and totally
different.
I never really liked October,
anyway.
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Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2007 6:59 pm
Monday
This one is very recent. Again, feeling for others, and telling them that you do, can be difficult.
sometimes your whole life feels
like a monday.
you hate admitting that you're
living for friday afternoons
and the borrowed time
in your car, spent driving,
not knowing a destination
other than anywhere else
but here and now.
it hurts on the sunday
summer nights with a
rain so cold it
fogs your glasses:
the glow half-glimpsed
through the mist you wipe away
is more real
than anything else
in your eyes.
you never really
fit, square peg, into
the social sphere--
pretend all you want
that you've sanded
away your difference,
you can always tell that
under the caffeine and
coronas that you won't
ever match their
expectations.
you can't understand why
they want you recast
in their grave images.
but your dark hope in rain
is far, far more potent
and real than their
condemnation by sunlight.
their indifference reduces
them to peeling triptychs,
and they see this slowly,
deeply misted in their minds.
and your sudden flashes
of what they deem irrationality
are the truth,
but they deny you
because you make them much
too uncomfortable
just by existing.
so you will never fit.
you will never play the
part that they want you to,
despite your desperate
imitation of their
artifice of life.
though you will play by
their rules, you will
never lose their game;
but you cannot ever
win it, either.
and it's so very, very
hard to say that it doesn't matter
when it cuts you to the quick.
but i want you to know
that you're not alone.
i want you to know
that on rainy monday mornings,
when you wake up and feel
misplaced,
that someone is thinking of you;
know that you are more real
than anything else
in my eyes.
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