sometimes ghosts plant daisies.

well. hi.

~

i.

i think that death is a curious thing
energy cannot be created or destroyed,
so where does your energy go after you die,
up in the sky,
where blue jays catch it in their beaks, spin twice in the air
and live forever.

or maybe into the ground,
deteriorating into the damp earthworm soil
and melding with an apple tree,
sprouting from the earth and
eventually dancing into the core of an apple,
the famer's son eating your very soul.

personally, i believe the dead become phantoms,
not invisible to those who want to see them,
i believe that the dead become ghosts
and i believe that sometimes ghosts plant daises.

-

be warned, i get kind of weird and i occasionally curse.

set to be published! :]

set to be published! :]

iv. i think i'm early

In my pockets, there is
2 dollars and fourty-seven cents,
mascara, an owl charm
and sunflower seed.

I am writing bad poetry and
sunlight is drawing shadows on the walls.
There is a generic pop song on the radio
and earlier,
I had plans to buy sushi with money that isn't mine.

My outfit was supposed to be pretty today,
slightly slutty,
but still pretty;
black lacy tights,
a sweater that I wore as a dress,
peacock earrings, Converse
and an owl neckalce.
I couldn't find the earrings, lost the chain
of the necklace and the sweater
was shorter than I expected.

The view from the window is something out
of a picture book.
Strokes of different blues and pinks and oranges
shade the air
and the leaves on the hanging tree
are so green I'm surprised
they don't bleed into the sky.

I suppose Spring really is here and
I've heard love is in the air,
so I'll hold my breath and
try to explain color to the blind.

--

this is what happens when I'm forced to write with a pen and paper.

The first one has such wonderful imagery, what with spring (birth) and death woven in to one. "where blue jays catch it in their beaks, spin twice in the air/and live forever." is just... so lovely!

The second two feel like two parts of the same poem to me. Or poems on a very similar theme, anyway. They both feel somewhere between diary entries and letters never sent. Really nice sentiment.

As for the last one, all I can say is... "I am writing bad poetry"? I don't think so. ;) I look forward to seeing more!

v. only the good die young

i went to my first funeral today.
it took us (me and my mother)
forever to find the church
and when we did,
parking was impossible and
the air smelled of christ.

the church itself was gorgeous,
sloped, high ceiling and chandeliers
and stained glass windows with a mosaic of
mary and jesus on each one.

it was packed, over 400 people showed
and people began to spill out of the church
like ants. everyone was in black
except for one curious old man,
who showed up in a bright yellow parka
and sea-green pants.

i didn't get a seat in the pews
and maybe it's sick but i spent a lot of time
thinking about how my legs hurt
and the cute boy standing three people away from me.

suddenly, my body started malfunctioning and
i began to cry but then the service was over
and we all migrated to the gym for turkey sandwiches
and lukewarm coffee.

later, i heard someone say that only the good die young,
so i think i'll be alive for centuries.

vi. ties that bind

i wish you lived down the street,
in the house with the apple tree out front
and the swing set in the backyard,
the one with the broken shutters and
grassless lawn.

no one lives there and i don't think anyone
ever will because i heard this story about
this family that lost their son and moved away
and still owns the house,
but doesn't live there.

i've heard that the boy haunts the place
and will spend eternity looking for his parents and
his best friend who lived down the street,
in the same house that i live in now.

i still wished you lived down the street though.
we'd pick apples and throw the rotten ones in the trash,
but i've heard that fruit doesn't fall far from the tree,
so maybe i don't want you to live there after all.


--

lol wtf was this.

vii. he smiled when he killed all the others, too.

-

grief spills out of her mouth
and he holds his hand over her lips,
trying to stop it,
but it slips out of the lines of his fingers
like sea water.

-

earlier, he had choked and coughed
and wheezed and dived over and over,
searching, trying to find those who were lost
but air becomes nothing
when the ocean wants you for itself.

-

she tattooed herself with words that
meant nothing to her but something to
him and who he used to be.
'you were my love story'

-

she woke up with bruised shins
and sore teeth. there is sand in her hair
and cuts that slash across her palms
from broken seashells. she smells like seaweed and
starfish and she has been been kissed by the sun.
her eyes are red and her throat burns
like she swallowed the ocean whole.

-

viii. a list of things to remember


- that one time, we were tipsy and you dared me to eat deodorant
- my metrocard is on top of the piano
- the color of your eyes in the sun, like dandelions or hawk eyes.
- my essay is under 'asddkeldsof'
- the tulips you bought me after my show at carnegie.
- to cash my check in the morning
- the road where we met in central park (i was jogging & you told me to tie my shoes)
- take the car out for an oil change
- the night where we played old board games for hours (we called it even after i beat you at scrabble 3 times and you beat me at chess 3 times)
- refill my prescription at the pharmacy
- our roadtrip to san fransisco and how at midnight in maryland, we went to a tiny bar and took shots until we couldn't speak anything more than 'love, love, love you'
- to buy a dress for maryanne's engagement party
- the day you left, with an old suitcase and half of my life.

-

merp i was prompted and couldn't resist.

xi. annie (humor me)

my sister annie dreams vividly
of my death.
i dream vividly
of lobsters having sex
and i suppose that must mean something
metaphorically
or ironically
or psychologically
but for now i think i'll worry about annie.

when we eat popcorn,
she swallows the kernels whole,
and when we dig holes
in our backyard
(i search for china
and she digs graves)
i crackchewspit sunflower shells
and she eats them whole
like they are roaches,
skittering across her tongue.

once she told me in the middle of the night
that before i reached china,
with dirty fingernails
and a white-hot shovel,
i'd meet the center of earth
and burn
whole.

x. confessions

i have three fathers,
except i have no fathers
and i have two mothers,
except i only have one mother.

i have ten fingers and ten toes
but one of them got blasted off
in a war i wasn't alive for.

i have three sisters and
a nephew with cancer,
only they don't exist in america.
so i only have one brother
and one mother
and no father
and no one in my family has cancer.

however, i do have a best friend
and a cousin
but they are the same person
and she's not really my cousin.
i can count on one hand the drops of blood
that i share with anyone:

1. my (not) cousin when we did a blood pact at age eleven and swore to be sisters but we can't be sisters because we are not cousins.

2. my nephew with cancer that doesn't exist, but his head is too large for his body and last i saw him, i drank orange soda in an apartment that smelled like morocco with too many sofas and not enough beds and roaches that flew across the linoleum kitchen floor when we weren't looking.

3. my mother who is not my mother but was my mother for 9 months but stopped being my mother when my real mother came into my realm of existence. of course, i did not know this. i was a baby.

4. my three sisters who do not exist or maybe they do exist and i saw them once or twice when i was four and again when i was twelve but i've forgotten their names. we all have the same noses and the same long inkblack arab eyelashes.

5. my father who has never existed and i think he was always just a figment of my imagination because how can he be real if my mother who is not my mother doesn't even know who he is?

overall, i do not have family. i have lines that are drawn by me on the palms of my hands with pens then scrubbed and scoured with steel wool and rubbing alcohol so you can see that the black ink is not black but actually purple.

xi. holidays in the dordogne

it was easter four hours and thirty-one minutes ago
and i have been reciting french numbers.

une is a number of silence.
une is the number of success and
une is the number of life and also,
the number of death.

deux is a cliche. deux pretends to be something
it is not and deux is the number of dandelions
left in my garden after i picked them
out of the garden this morning.
isn't that clever, how we put dying flowers in the living room?

trois is the number of mismatched love.
trois is a triangle that we all spin in
till someone falls off like a
five year old on a bike and then only deux is left.

quatre is a mean number.
quatre is when people split and
again make deux, quatre is double
double dog dare you like ten year old's
in their little recess playground cliques.

cinq is the number of suppressed luxury.
cinq has champagne tastes with beer bottle pockets
and cinq is a party but only when the paycheck comes in.

i think i have a problem where i focus too much on
numbers
and not enough on why my poetry sounds like
prose that has been thrown into a meat-shredder
or maybe like someone has swallowed a
dictionary
and is now vomiting up scraps
of papers,
scraps of words
that mean nothing alone (une)
but everything put together:
deuxtroisquatrecinq

i sound like a god damn first grader.

(but still yet we've forgotten zero with a little
dot-slash-line over the top
and i can promise you
zero is the most important number-slash-concept
yet)

-

Spoiler

please forgive me for the word-vomit poetry i've been produced over the past few hours. it's 4:45 and i've never been more tired or more inspired.

xii. she's a dreamer

there are dreams that i used to whisper to myself
every night before i slept. i told myself stories
of the far away kingdom in the far away land
that was everything i ever wanted.

i told myself that there was a prince there
who would rescue me from the monster in my closet
but as i got older, i realized
the closet was empty
and the monster was me.

xiii. nina grew up

there are sealed envelopes that dawdle in my kitchen cabinets,
under forks and spoons and sticks of incense ,
half burned, still lingering with the scent of prayer.

inside them are the love letters
i wrote you from rehab,
little pieces of angry poetry and purple prose,
scribbles and doodles drawn in the margin
of my notebook when i should have been focusing
on the 12 step system.
you were a figment of my imagination
and i was a drunk.

when i left, i folded up into myself
and shoved the letters where i knew
i'd never go, because when you're
dead inside, there's no need to eat.

even this, that i write,
squeezed tight in my father's wine cellar,
all the bottles empty or broken,
(i was barefoot when i came in and
there are shreds of glass that dig into my feet now)
is nothing, because you aren't anything to me anymore.

you left and now that i'm alone i realize that
everyone winds up kissing the wrong person goodnight.

i think i'll stay in this cramped little space forever.
there's a window and i can see spring blooming outside,
the birds and the bees flitting around in april air
but i'll sleep here and smoke cigarettes and
write letters to boys who don't remember who i am
because no one wants to fuck a corpse.

xiv. hotels in jesus

there are mismatched socks littering my floor
and my back is sore,
the spot right between my shoulder blades,
where i'd have wings if i were an angel.

my mother wants me to go to church tomorrow,
but she called me evil yesterday,
and i thought the devil couldn't step
on holy ground.

regardless, i find something beautiful
in the simplicity of a bible
and how with a pair of scissors
i can make childhood snowflakes
out of jesus's words.

the print is always slightly raised
and stroking the pages
always feels like touching the skin of the dead:
it is cold and papery and i always feel like i shouldn't.