A Quarter of a Poem

Sometimes I think of all the poems that have been birthed, and killed, in my mind.

I’ll be brushing my teeth and looking at myself in the mirror, my grey hairs sparkling beneath the chestnut brown, peeking like a reminder. I’ll come up with a phrase, a thought, a word, that feels perfect for a poem. Sometimes I’ll write the entire poem. Other times, it’ll just be half a poem, a quarter of a poem, a title. I get a rush, my skin starts to warm, my eyes start to dart to my surroundings, looking for topics, metaphors, suspicions. I think, yes, I have to write that down.

Then, I spit out the toothpaste. I wash my mouth with water and wipe my mouth. And the poem will be gone. Just like that.

I think of all the poems that have been birthed, and killed, in my mind.

I think of what they could have become. Could they have been my best poem yet? Let’s be honest, most might not have amounted to anything, yet I feel guilt for not giving them a chance.

What is Poetry?

What is poetry?

The dictionary says they are expressions
most commonly of feelings, ideas, beauty.
Is poetry an idea swaddled in a metaphor
so grand that it becomes indecipherable
and that’s what makes it so exciting? Is it
something personal? Like the personal
growth I’ve found myself in recently? An
epiphany that only matters to me, or a
story that is so general it connects with
any human being who comes into contact
with it? Is it a lie tied with dying flowers
and kisses and loneliness to make it seem
tragically beautiful?

I’ve recently found myself in a good state
of mind. I haven’t been journaling or
writing poetry or even thinking about my life.
Almost like riding on autopilot except I’m
sitting in First Class with a glass of cheap
champagne and my heart is as bubbly as my
tongue. It’s like I’m aware of my life, my thoughts,
my anxieties, and desires, but my mind has
found a way to compartmentalize it all. For
once, my past is not haunting me, but welcoming
and I greet it with a smile, open arms, and a glass
of champagne. Please take a seat. We’ve got much to
catch up on.

Is that poetry? Is the way the sun shines into
my room poetry? Is it the first taste of a fresh
cup of tea?

I don’t know. And I’m tired of trying to define
everything. I’ve spent 19 years trying to put a label
on everything; trying to fit everything into a neat
little box on a well-dusted shelf; trying to make sense
of everything. But maybe nothing makes sense. Maybe
that’s poetry: the search for meaning in things that are
coincidental. This is it, there’s no strings attached and
no one making sure everything happens for a reason.

Things happen. And for once, I’m allowing them to happen.
While I sit on the sidelines, flying at 38,000 feet. And let
me tell you, the view is beautiful.

 

Cheater

We are not longer together,
we are no longer us and I no longer wish for
the gratification of your hands. My skin does
not itch for you at night, and I can sleep without
worrying if you will still be there when I wake.
My lungs are full of air and I am no longer
breathing in the toxic taste of your tongue. I am
so goddamn proud of myself. You are no longer
imprinted onto my back like a birthmark.

But what doesn’t make sense,
is how much she still haunts me. I can’t stand
seeing her come across my newsfeed with those
chocolate brown eyes and her hair that seems to
flow perfectly over her shoulders like the calmest
waves. I can’t sit in the same chair she occupied
without my stomach clenching. I can’t stand still
knowing I’m in a place she used to be. Why is
it that I am happily over you, you are no longer a
concern in my life, but she,
she still haunts me.
She is proof of the broken promises you whispered
to me, she is the one with your hands around her neck,
on a night when she was all you could think about,
and you still had the courage to come back home to me.

Scab

Writing – 
can be like picking at a scab,
your consistent thoughts and fingernails
that dig back into the wound to pull out 
more phrases to make your heart swoon
and ache. The scab lasts longer and you
end with a scar to remind you of your 
journeys and the countless nights you 
spent picking at it until the last drop of 
blood leaked through, your quill dry. 
Or, writing can be the phoenix that 
rises from the ashes, the wound now 
completely healed and clothed with 
new skin. 

You – 
are the scab I cannot stop picking.

The Meaning of Life

Stop asking for the meaning of life –
all you will be is disappointed.
The world’s dirty secret is that there is
no point,
no purpose,
no hidden meaning,
no reason for existence,
no sacred rite of passage.
You are not alive to make the gods happy,
and your heart does not beat 80 times per minute
to make you happy. If you must know, life is
growing up and realising what your parents meant
when they regretted not spending time with their
families. It is the journey of a hormonal teenager, and
understanding that the feeling when we hold our
first born has been felt by our parents and
grandparents. It is the circular motion of a ripple,
for our house is no longer home until we
have kids of our own. The reason to your life –
is to experience, because what is a more beautiful
way to live than to experience the pits of depression
and the mountains of love, the weeks of adventures
and the years in school, the weekends of regrets and
laughter with one too many memories. The experiences
will not matter when you die. You will go into the
earth with your restless nights and coffee strung mornings,
your one night stands and the way you felt during your
first heartbreak. Your experiences matter now, in this instance
and this moment. This is all you have.

CD-ROM

My memories are placed on a CD-ROM;

and they are slowly getting more out of date
and scratched up on the reflected emotions, 
and I’m mad because all the ones of you are 
beginning to skip, because of the one day I 
decided to listen to scissors instead of you. 

Park Benches

Sometimes I am overwhelmed simply by sitting on a park bench. There are too many lives I wish to be a part of, but I am stuck watching as they all pass by.

Tongue of Earth

Here is a secret; I have talked to the world.
I’ve spoken to the clouds who drifted like the hitchhikers
you meet in dark, musty bars and they’ve told me the tales
of the mountaintops and the way they shifted, mimicking what
they observed below. They transformed from whales to see-saws
and when they formed into an old oak tree, I saw my life: stemming
and growing, blooming and learning, even during the winters when
my body is cold and my arms are empty.

I’ve whispered secrets to the oceans, and they swallowed them up
into their stomachs to ensure they were safe. The salt stung my
wounds, but I welcomed the pain with a sign of healing. I tried
to drown myself in that ocean, but it spit me up and
whispered back: “You need sadness for happiness to exist.
Coexistence is the only existence.”

I’ve exchanged memories with fireworks, and when I
was afraid of the gun shots in the sky, the colors cradled my
eyes and I felt the warmth under my skin. It took the
nights I spent crying and rocketed them in the air, exploding
into pinks and blues that I would later dream of, and my
happiness ricocheted off the sparks.

Everything in this world can speak, only if you are willing
to listen.

Human

Falling in love is a wonderful thing,
but there is nothing more satisfying than falling in love
with a human being. I have fallen for the cities with lights
that tell me even the dark can be beautiful, and I have
fallen in love with rainy days and sweet summer sunsets.
I’ve fallen for the way hands hold teacups delicately, and
I’ve dreamt about soft bedsheets whispering against my legs.
Fireworks that show the sparks in the air and the way the
sun dances along the roads and mountaintops. The first
snowfall and the hot chocolate that awaits when you drift
back inside. 

But falling in love with another person,
is something that will never be compared to,
because out of the billions of chances on this planet, you
are given the chance to fall in love with mistakes. A
person who’s breath smells in the mornings and has a
messy room. You get to fall in love with their fault lines
created from earthquakes of their past. You fall in love with
their scabbed knees, and sometimes you collect a few of your
own on the way. You learn that there would be nothing to cherish
if there were no flaws. Falling in love with another human is a
poem before it has been edited – raw and true. 

When You Asked Me Where I Wanted to Travel

I have met enough people on this planet,
to know that each person is their own world, but you
are a universe. I’ve found a way to put the
ocean in a bottle and that is your eyes, blues and
greens that swirl together and create waves
on days when the weather’s a bit stormy. I know
I can look into the oceans and I will find
you, and when I stare into your eyes I have found
home. I’ve discovered an echoing cave
with walls that breathe and ache, and when I press
my ear against it I’m amazed that I can
hear and feel the very thing that keeps you alive.
I’ve talked to the solar systems that
expand in your mind, and I’m slowly learning
all the supernovas and black holes
that make you who you are. My fingertips have traced
over the road lines and rivers of the veins
on your palms because I wanted to learn of your origins
as they learned the landscape of my own body.
I have kissed the constellations that are burned onto
your skin, and I will kiss every one of
those stars like they are push pins on a atlas map until
our entire bodies are covered, because
I have finally learned that I can travel the universe
just by staying in bed with you.