Soul
What can I say?
My heart is prone to stupid heroics.
With a brush full of emotional bullshit,
I try to paint over the morose with beautiful words.
I have made an art form out of overestimating my significance in others’ lives.
I make time for the people that matter to me
and get so damn hurt when they don’t reciprocate.
Every single time.
And I never learn.
I “paint” words with my pain.
I hope no one sees through it.
Stubborn. Oversensitive. Unrealistic. Loser.
What can I say?
This is me.
The Real Mee
Alone
In the world
I cried
To no one
Who cared
So I learned
My voice
Doesn't matter
I grew up
Quiet
And afraid
If I were disagreeable
I would be shipped off
To another family
In another country
Fear
As my breakfast
Lunch
And dinner
Made me vulnerable
To predators
At first
It was junior predators
And then
Full blown
I
Never
Said
A
Word
Until the rage built
And the cage broke
And I replaced it
With a wall
Insurmountable
By nearly all
But the pen
Being mightier
Than the sword
Penetrated
My defenses
And I was
Shattered
In a way
As a kintsugi
I would shine brighter
Than any other
But I survived
And I
By some standards
Thrived
By others
I may be
Deprived
Possibly
Even
Deranged
Definitely
Estranged
From the truth
Of who I am
Because mirrors
Cause me pain
And my favorite season
Is rain
(Yeah I know that's not a real season
and no it wasn't just a stretch for a rhyme)
I am Mee
And if you get me
I'm sorry
For the hardship
That has been
Your life
But I appreciate
Not being alone
In my strife
And I believe
In the power
Of connection
As completely
As I can be seen
Burning bridges
I guess life
Has not yet worn down
All the ridges
Maybe
Next year
Things will be smooth
Sad Hill
I erupted from the womb
as hot lava,
but after meeting the world
I hardened
into stone.
I am the hill
who became a mountain,
formed by the convergence of
of misery
and neglect
colliding—
a tectonic shift
of a child’s happiness
turned to sorrow
because
daily letdowns
and growing up too fast
were the only scraps
collecting mold
in the back of the fridge
while hope
was found three-packages-in
to a box of Swiss Rolls
bought with newspaper money.
I am the hill
who became a mountain,
uplifted
by my mother's madness
reigning over
a fatherless
household,
and the liquid fire
of Southern Comfort
bubbling like magma
from the mouth
of that seismic slut,
of late nights
holding her head
over a toilet,
in hopes
to prevent her sulfuric geysers
from burning holes in the carpet,
and a revolving door
shaped like her worn-out cunt
making it tough to fall asleep
on school nights.
I am the hill
who became a mountain,
whose line in the sand
is a six-thousand-mile
fracture
throughout my existence
of scar tissue
crusted over scar tissue
that never healed,
and of the aftershocks
palpitating
from my heart
newly discovered
as symptomatic tremors
of self-diagnosed
anxiety and depression
proving
the probability
I'm a Hypochondriac,
and certifying
that I'm too cheap
to pay for therapy
because living poor
is the state of mind
I carried with me
and downing pills
the size of cake slices
is how I medicate.
I am a hill
who became a mountain
who emerged a Volcano
after hibernating for years.
The world made me unstable.
My vents
have split into fissures
after having
nowhere to blow off steam.
My body bulges at the center
and the ground trembles
from beneath.
Some call me a sleeping giant,
others,
a sad hill,
but Vesuvius was once a hill too
and unlike him,
I’m no city killer,
I’m a world destroyer,
and I’m now awake!
When I blow
it’ll be further reaching than Krakatau,
deadlier than Tambora,
and more devastating
than the prediction of Yellowstone.
The seas will rise
at my bidding
into an impenetrable mile-high wall
where no ark,
nor any god
will ever save you.
The ground will collapse
into the netherworld
and I will scorch the skies with hellfire
burning every naysayer
and nonbeliever remaining
under my infernal blanket.
I’ll heave pyroclasts
in every direction,
covering mankind
in fifty feet of Ash,
and watch them drown
in my disgust
for humanity
under an ocean of grey
as their fate is cemented
in an eternal suffering.
When I blow,
It'll be the new
Big Bang
and it’ll be the start of everything
while being the end of it all.
And to think
I was created,
and there’s another version
of me that could've been
a happier hill,
or a loving hill,
rarely a sad hill—
the one who lived peacefully in a world
where everybody
including himself...
...survived.
Misplaced
I feel misplaced,
Detached,
An evolving conundrum
Of a disjointed life.
My body is here
Whilst my soul lingers
In another place
In a time foretold
Within books of old.
I spin and gravitate,
Perpetually,
To English Moors & Castles,
Michelangelo,
Elizabethan works,
Ancient, glorious art,
And emblazoned,
Lyrical compositions
Of maestros like
Puccini, Liszt, or Chopin.
Sitting alone,
Writing prose
In the dimness
Of the night,
I long for many:
Jane Austen,
The Bard,
Emily Brontë,
Oscar Wilde,
F Scott Fitzgerald,
Or Virginia Woolf
To inhabit my soul,
Conduct my pen,
And perpetuate
Their illustrious tales.
Still, I’ll muddle
As best I can
Through the task,
Strive with every breath
To create my own
Piece of prose,
Whilst praying
My endeavors
Will echo the
Slightest remnant
Of long gone
Literary geniuses
Whom I so love.
Snowglobes
Once upon a time someone told me I was broken.
I took that moment and encased it in a snowglobe,
a glass dome on a pedestal, figurines frozen in time.
I grew up, but the world inside the snowglobe stayed the same.
It sat on a shelf gathering dust, until one day
I dared to take it off its dusty shelf, wipe away the dust,
and shake it, until the words leapt off the ground and swirled
like asbestos snowflakes, poison. I translated them
into ink, turned their venom into tattoos
that I imprinted on notebooks instead of skin.
I outgrew the body, outgrew the snowglobe.
The notebooks were filled.
The shelves expanded to make room for new memories, new globes,
some words less poisonous than others.
But the original globe still remains,
on the highest shelf where I almost can't reach it.
It is the snowglobe from which all others are born.
My poems are innovations, and the memory
is necessity, the mother.
Some days it makes me angry, other days it makes me sad.
Sometimes I revel in it, the knowledge
that I am shattered beyond repair,
and might as well live with the pieces.
Once upon someone told me I was broken,
but I could not let it go.
So I ensnared it in glass and injected it with meaning,
shook it until I could make it make sense.
Now I am frozen inside it, watching the world move on without me,
while I remain stationary,
shaking the walls until a new word
falls into my lap
waiting to be woven
into the narrative of my pain,
and I wait alongside the words
for my chance to be released,
expressed, created, made real. I dream of taking myself off this shelf
and setting my childhood free
to find the snowglobes
I never got to see.
My name is Broken,
and I live in a snowglobe,
catching fake snowflakes on my tongue
and swallowing the stale words
until I spit out new ones.
Everypoet
We are all artists, the only question is, "What is your medium?"
I dance through life, juggling responsibilities and joys,
cooking dinner with grace and creativity.
I play with my son, summoning all the improvisation of an actor.
I teach kids to build with their hands and build structured minds within themselves.
A true potter shows the clay how to mold itself.
I musically click click click on my keyboard, compose symphonies of emails,
or scritch scritch in my journal, or tap on my phone, resonating with my self and others.
With thoughts and feelings, I paint my worldview in infinite color.
I weave love into my relationships, each thread a connection.
Every movement, every decision, is art, is life. "Isn't it the same for you?"
Emotion in Poetry? Poetry in Motion. Life is Art. Art is Life.
Paint it Black (Raven)
I see myself in shades of monochrome,
skin dusted ash and hair singed.
I burn with every lick of heat I have endured and in turn, bottled,
stored in the husk of artistry no one is allowed to take from me.
Every word I speak is poison,
thick with vitriol on my forked tongue that forms stories,
heretics behind an enamel cage.
My song is an epic, deep and dark.
Taunting. Haunting.
They know the person with pale skin, and kind eyes.
They do not get to know the entity that bleeds dark,
and stains eternal.
They can take my body, and they can mar my heart, but I will always avenge it.
I will ruin them, syllable by bloodied syllable.
I am the soul, after all. You cannot kill that.
The Uncertain Certain Woman
Sometimes I think the bottom of me has fallen out.
I mean, I think I am never satisfied.
I have gotten to a point where I think I can love someone but then I choose to look at desserts on other plates that are pretty but will never, not really, satisfy the yearning within me.
What does it mean to be perpetually unsatisfied?
I never thought I would be this way.
I did not think that I would let my heart/mind be put into something far less safe and sound, something that could sink me.
I still do not know if I am steering my ship in the right direction. I can tell you most certainly that the clouds look like they will bring rain and thunder but when they arrive… well that’s when the sun breaks through and shows me all the ways in which I don’t know a goddamn thing,
not one thing.
And in this… I am certain.
The Mirror
I avoid the mirror
I need to.
It's the only way to hide.
I can see her. Every time I look in the mirror, she's standing there beside me.
"What have you done to me?" Her eyes bore in the me, gnawing into my soul as we reflect in the glass.
I can not respond. There is nothing that could explain this.
She is me, but I am not her.
Years went by, and we seemed to be split.
One innocent and wide eye. The other bitter, panicked, and clinging onto a thread of hope.
I have become a Benedict Arnold to myself.
Ideas, words, and thoughts lost to time all for my own gain, which I never managed to earn.
Running to glory but falling to a void where I lost myself along the way.
The glass kept it all. It shows it all back to me.
It will never let me free.
I avoid the mirror
And the thoughts that scream at me when I look at it, looking for release.