First Boyfriend

September 5, 2000 11:53am

"If you’re going to cheat on your boyfriend make sure you break up with him first, you ugly bitch!"

As I turned to see my friends walk back to class without a care — I came to realize, as I rubbed the streaks of mascara off my face, that my life would never be the same.

I remember lying under the covers when
our premature, first autumn began to fall; an October
night, pale as my lips were cold — abandoned by

blood's refusal to play warmth into November. This
hand evicted out from your glove; my father’s panic
found reprieve. Those childhood dreams of falling
down had come back; hitting the ground - safety
net occupied.

*
November 11, 2000 9:14pm

“I never meant to hurt you. Kissing him meant nothing. You’re the one I want.”

Your flesh at Seventeen— I wanted to relish every inch.
I remember rainy days where we’d seek refuge under your
umbrella, standing on the senior quad in all its emptiness, our
tongues submissive to lunch hour’s destiny. My skin pervasive
in resting eau de cologne, your neck stained in the hue of
habitual love letters — prime accessories in marking
clothed, sexual territory.

*

November 11, 2001 5:13pm

“This isn’t going anywhere. All we do is fight and plus, you’ve yet to let me fuck you.”

I remember your house. Careful in her home, I gained back
your mother’s trust after breaking your virginal heart. I remember
the night I slept over: running away with lies left on my home’s
answering machine, twirling spaghetti, sipping raspberry wine,
listening to wind chimes in blind rapture with the dry Santa Anas.

You undressed my inexperienced teenage frame.
Fearful as your finger let itself slide, I remembered the stained-glass butterfly missing its wing.

*
July 20, 2003 4:37pm

“I’ll call you back.”
“No you won’t.”
“I can’t take your shit anymore. I can’t talk right now with you harping at me. I’ll call you back.”

I was tested on young love. The welcome to cheat—wrapped in those
muscular arms, long through frayed edges of his cotton t-shirt— consented.
I can say I suffered along with you though you’d swiftly overturn my parole,
calling it a bluff, sentencing my capacity to assault fledgling emotions to further
rehabilitation.

*
October 11, 2011 6:37pm

I have always been worth waiting for.


I’ve been waiting 8 years, 3 months and 21 days as if old
photos and once pleasant Valentine grams are so inclined to ask.
Those childhood dreams of falling down have come back; hitting
forgiving ground – safety net easy, vacant only to be occupied by
last boyfriend’s love.

The phone number you never dialed is no longer in amenable service
to the moments we spent — they were nothing more than fairytales you
told to keep me captive.

Trading Secrets

My secrets hang splintered by wooden
clothespins on a line to dry—the cold shade
of nightfall coalesces with the degree of their sorrows.

My secrets scream for a change, each metaphor
exhausted—lying under its own linen waiting for
first light’s epiphany.

My secrets struggle to keep quiet—as the unchanged muse
fills pages in pensive cursive destroyed in a battle against
my hand’s weight—slash marks violate emotional
stains hours after manipulating their own silence.
Pull out these leather-bound sheets; no grief for this spineless
journal is in order.

My secrets wish they were worth keeping—arms down, this pen
resigns; unemployed by vices of real storytelling. Under rug swept,
a poet’s hands washed—the desire to repeat lathered with lye,
celibate in mingling with timid prose.

My secrets want to trade themselves in with yours—
walking out clothed in a free, written exposé, versed
in words past language, intimate in imagery’s arms
never felt before and lying as the dotted “I” in lines of
thought bent on one knee proclaiming this woman’s love
to her art—

Erase my manifesto and donate its nostalgia to the
shelters of prior, plaintive want.
An open Poet can only be read one way—
There’s no use crying over spilled secrets; tie the leather
strings tight, the skeleton within me is all that’s left.

James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream

When things get a little out of control, I look to the words and rhythm of songs that kept memories of my past afloat. With this, something fresh, all the confusion innundated in the muted tributary of my body releases itself a little more each time I listen.

For Anne

Most days I cannot remember the portion of happiness
exhaled by these lungs. The life in which you had nothing
against, where laying on its grass cut worse than razor
blades, suicide ’s restive aid.

You wrote in madness, a language as mercurial as that spoken by
an artist dictating pain to canvas, elucidating which red hue to fill
in hearts with, never questioning why a heart’s temper swings.

Infinite times, I have placed my contrived crux into a shoebox filled
with the same toxin that caused its abstraction; photographs shoot
stories as they are told, whose deaths will find comfortable deferment
time after time.

You possessed passing in the legacy you left bound. Two
days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital is
all it took you. All prayers fall short in revitalizing Poet from
your remains, as I step over the edge into the same darkly afflicted
end point.

Suicides deceive the human form; birth betrays the trust of those who
commit the crime concluding the lives they have lived, survived
as long as possible. Still-born births are presented privilege, immunized
against the fight for normalcy in a world where depression is inherent and
gangrene develops in the mind, invulnerable to antiseptic cleansing.

Death’s a sad bone, yes, but living pauses in the pale undoing of any
sores: new, old, or resting somewhere in between. Voluntary erasure
offers balance to cold; the creation of words stamp out numb from
tender living, offering balance to the beautifully frightened ones—
dying to take the next steps towards the perfect suicide: independence
from the echoes of anxiety printed in the obituary of a Poet’s
leftover metaphors.

Inside Out

I am a line from loud to soft. –John Frusciante

Early mornings before I wake, my head spins
wondering who I’ve been feigning it for.
These effortless strides have turned
tedious and still—
I pace down a lineage of pain
where all hesitation of spreading remains refused.

I am a fool—honest in a daze, waiting
to meet my match.
I am loud; mindful burning down the highway of
fragmented memoirs. Loud like my father, sitting
static—prospect prone to accident.

I wonder who creates these nightmares I’ve been
starring in—a heightened sense of being, still
a poet with nothing tangible against the backdrop
of every image clear enough to show for it.

I am a fool—angry in a daze
annulled by personal neglect. As frightened as
they are brave, I tread behind peers.
Damaged glass beneath me laughs—I walk
slow with attachments; overanalyzed creativity
hidden in shards pricks my bare feet. I am
anemic, not only in blood but in words that lack
confidence.

I am soft; saltwater taffy pales in comparison. Soft like
my mother resting spellbound by her own myth; denial
kept secret by strength.

I am a miniature needlepoint suffocated,
stimulated, pulled and spooled by former
mourning. Let me be a softer line divorced from
brash living; a grand tapestry silenced, an exhalation
blue in waiting.

INADEQUACY

Mother’s stretched out on her divorce settlement win, the seashell fashioned couch
father had carried across the threshold of their new home, crying over Susan Lucci’s
forthcoming severance. Carpel tunnel has confined mother to living vicariously through televised dramatizations of reality, twice removed.

What if she was Erica Kane and I, her lesbian daughter?
Would she approve of secondhand inhalations through us?

She watches in awe as the cast-iron certainty in television’s
representation pales in comparison to her truth, her lies, her
qualms. Reality’s starring lady, distant by no state of removal as it
poisons television’s conjured ideals, agonized a C- section
dependent on the path I was to embark upon.
My delivery summoned her reliance
in tranquility not in humanity and its sequence of making
mistakes and confronting self-doubt.

She harps, “How about beauty school? It’s easier than mastering Poetry.”
She harps, “I am not saying you can’t. I am just saying it’s easier.”
I bawl, “Reason always has its reason. I know exactly what you are saying.”

Identifying yourself in the world separate from the womb comes with liabilities.
The best ones are those found in the process; her projected inadequacy confused for
your disbelief in self.

Inherited Stubbornness

THE MAN IMPORTED FROM ISRAEL:
One thing my daughter is going to have to learn—
Apologies must be lent on her tongue’s behalf. I
do not want to be loved nor slighted by her. I threatened
to kill her and have no misgivings nor regretful expressions
to grant.

THE CHILD CONCEIVED THROUGH HIS WAYWARD GLANCES AT ONE OF IRAN’S MYSTERIOUS BEAUTIES:
I am determined that you shall not entrance the potency of rhyme, the fragile birth of my skill. I am armed with lyrical fury and unwavering in decree of the right
granted to my twenty-seventh year as a woman let alone your daughter. Standing hovered over your open casket, I have unapologetically doused your feared flame through chronicles of what you ineffectively forgot with wrought iron hands aiding retaliation by means of a double homicide on one; unnecessary suffocation ending the solicitation of my days spent in search.
Images of you held up at face value have bailed out every illicit irritant held
captive by the calm of this woman.
I have killed you in my fears.
I have killed supplementary labor of you in my verses.
I have washed the residue of love
lacking from my skin.
My hands are reborn, short
in the genetic rule of your fists.