Writing

How to Stop Sleeping

daylight:

smash the face of each person who gives you advice
on getting out of bed.
sneak in the side door at work.
eat the young of those foolish enough to speak to you
before 10:30 AM.
godforbid without coffee.
hate them for trying to shake you out of this.

perch your anger and remorse like weighty buzzards in a willow,
let guilt tunnel out the place your creativity once lived.
replace with resentment,
fast to harden like quick-set concrete.
siphon hysteria from the chaos you absorb from your manic boss.
stop eating.
replace food with the insides of cheeks, your molars, cuticles,
a random lover’s shoulder,
your co-worker’s bone marrow.
anything.
make your stomach an empty cave.
paint the walls with anxiety attacks.
brandish a pointed finger,
and never be a slow-draw to the showdown.

nightfall:
leave the office at bedtime.
make empty promises to the litter boxes,
to your sheets, your toothbrush.
gargle the hours of solitary confinement in cubicle walls.
let its sting burn the holes in your chewed mouth.
debate cleaning windows for 15 minutes.
detail the toilet.
scrub and re-scrub the shower.
if your skin isn’t white and peeling, continue until it is.
pace.

let your eardrums ring with the thud of your father’s hand on his lap,
as he asked you to help him brush his teeth.
rewind, hit play, rewind, hit play, rewind, hit play.
start smoking again.
tell yourself he’d understand.

carry unpaid bills like a new baby to a room of women.
when the stacks topple from the ledges into a paper snake on the hardwood,
leave them there.
tell bill collectors they have wrong number
when they call during business hours.
tighten the golden handcuffs.

watch hours of porn with disinterest.
chase your anger’s tail.
clip the cycle and force your entrance.
when this doesn’t work,
fuck men you admire and men you abhor.
discover that the imprints in the beds of those with missing last names
are more familiar than your own fingerprints.
than your mother’s laugh.
than your father’s silence.
become a soap carving of your wanted image,
wearing away with each shower.

the nights you don’t pass out in someone’s bed,
let a dying man’s curse fill the tinnitus in your ears.
when the static of Chicago’s streets quiet,
you can only hear
the din of your own thoughts,
the way they ricochet off each other,
then–
belly your burden until it blisters.
shape your spine and shoulders into the S of should.
bend broken without breaking,
until the extremities of you are all that is left swaying.

when the distractions are too much,
when the distractions become the distracting,
rely on chemistry to give you 4 hours of relief.
as you fall asleep,
chant your mantra:
you are not the sum of your failures.
you are not the sum of the universe.
you are not a failed universe.

 

No Comments Posted in General, Poetry, Writing on 06.06.11.


the first time

no, the first kiss didn’t matter.
hardly remembered, really.
some boy in kindergarten or first grade,
lip-smackers and vaseline,
maybe a playground, under the risers at lunch.
but i remember the first time my second nature,
my sloppy flirtations,
threaded a boy’s oblivion.
side-swiped a consciousness.
the orange lamplight on washington street during kick the can.
my dad’s best friend’s son.
shaggy hair, glasses too big for his face,
and what my memory only hopes could be a navy member’s only jacket.
follow an inched finger behind an oak tree.
the first rattling behind my knees.
the solid tangibility of friction and awkwardness
of meaning and futures exchanged like a snap.
and later, when i was caught with horrible high school boys,
i would hold out for the one with streetside kisses.
there would be no background music, no island or beach, no starry skies.
but there was an awful teen sitcom, a basement clammy and mildewy,
a scratchy plaid couch, and the cool slip of a polyester sleeping bag.
i mouthed questions to the ceiling panels
about the inexplicable way the fibers didn’t melt on his skin
when his shoulder was on my neck–
my skin warmed at that return of the rattling in my knees.
this first, i will remember.

hold his picture in the light and tell him he has the same beard as Jesus.
will replace praying hands on a wall with fingerprints and palm sweat.
try to forget the ankle bracelet. or maybe even his extra long pinky nail.
will roll the bolder over the mouth of the cave.
i ache for grey and red striped sweaters, and i get sunken sockets instead.
someday i’ll pour intention into actions and gifts,
maybe even pills and poppers and plastic solo cups.
but right then, i didn’t know this.
and the rattling behind my kneecaps is stinging.
no astringent is strong enough to erase the last night.
the secret night walk to the house with the closed bedroom door
in the back….
where the steel and spoons
spoke more truths than my thighs.

here, the cancer begins.
someplace between liver and spleen and spine, coffee and cigarettes,
playlists and poems, and numbness and scorn….
the roots are secured in blood and bone,
filter through what should have been and what was.
the graduation and the reunion.
the recovery and sobriety.
california and dark-haired babies.
but right now, i feed the tumor with photos and ink,
at night, drive the praying hands to the church drop box.
when it chimes off-key harmonies, ask forgiveness from a god i turned away from years before.
swallow martyrdom with a nervous chuckle.

each turned back feeds the metastasis.
there are pictures, sulfur clinging longer than the smiles,
love notes and drawings on denny’s napkins,
and textbooks marbled with cursive incantations of possible names of unborn babies.
i learn bottled cologne on sticky skin never
scents skin like the earthiness of when our two collarbones collided.
the jersey sheets documented when my tongue was sweet and metallic,
but this cancer is feeding on my breath,
consuming all oxygen in sucked-in sighs.

when i saw him on holiday break,
we were cordial.
nerves washed like a tsunami, he is brother,
he is friend.
he was lover.
share a smoke and a smile.
maybe even coffee, but he’s got curfew.
and sobriety.
and i am 18, stringy spaghetti limbs, sunken eyes,
the buzzing filament of a nearly-burned light bulb,
an ache that hurts to stand near.
i tell stories, trying to tempt the boulder from inside the cave.
i am thirsty for his musk, and forgiveness, camaraderie,
and washington street, and poems, and agreements,
and allowances. and washington street, and oversized glasses,
and sleeping bags.
i am a used notebook, spiral unbinding, coffee-stained,
a hornet’s nest in the attic, a 6th-floor screen imprint on fingertips,
sprawled and praying,
one fabulous mesmerizing clusterfuck.

but my skin is pocked, and weathered.
he saves my life in a sentence.
“stick to your club drugs–don’t mess with the hard stuff.”
a hug and goodbye,
his pea coat is scratchy like the plaid couch,
and i smirk to myself.
hug this to the hollow cancer growing behind my breastplate,
feed this moment to the roots.
my buick rolls off the gravel parking lot,
and i’ll sample this night with a few others,
replay it like a broken record,
want to shape the shine to quaint perfection.
but it is shredded wheat stabbed into mushy pulp.
and the rattling behind my knees is now a dull thud.
solid and silent.

the time was irrelevant, but i remember it was morning and probably a sunday.
i should have been sleeping or heading to church,
but i never was That Girl.
gray snow melting outside, overcast, and just the way
you’d want it when you get that call.
i’ve heard the pattern too many times.
the first w’s sucked-in shrill and squat demand,
the “how” already sorted before the lungs exhale.
the matter as irrelevant in the moment the sound turned off,
the talking muted, and the ringing, the fucking ringing
like the low bellow of a metal cross on donation bin,
and the lightness of a body.
the lightness of a body.
the lightness of a body.
the lightness of my body.
the awkward threading of a girl’s sideswiped oblivion by
a boy’s sloppy flirtation with a spoon.

i don’t remember going outside to smoke,
but i remember the calm and emptiness of the campus.
i wanted people to gather in a group.
to listen to me testify the sharp corners of his lessons,
to shake my fist and ask for sunlight or thunderstorms,
to slap god for irony–
he was addict. i was addict.
he was sober, i was still a junkie,
instead, i stood atop the forced-round corners of college benches,
dipped my toe with each step,
and felt the rattling of my knee caps,
the weight lifted from my legs,
and settled into the growing cancer in my belly.

 

No Comments Posted in General, Poetry, Writing on 06.06.11.


That’s not life, that’s just existing.

We exist not only in the realm of our capabilities but in the realm of our unknown. Remember that you are greater than the sum of your parts, which are more than you give yourself credit for. The beauty of life is taking the risks to discover not only who we are now, but uncovering the aspects of the selves we WILL be. Embrace the opportunity to shift your perspective of the world around you & of the way you look upon it. The only way we grow as a person, as a people, as a society, is to TRY. The object of our missions rarely equate to the sum of the lessons we learn along the way. Lessons > goals. Figure it out as you go. Just don’t stifle yourself so much that you’re afraid to dream.

 

No Comments Posted in Prose, Ramblings, Writing on 06.06.11.