So I write. I still do not know if I write well. I want to set this page up as a writing challenge: every week I want to post at least one poem/piece of prose and see what kind of feedback I receive. I have posted one as a test and until I can figure out how to make these separate blog posts based on the date, you can enjoy whatever is here. Good comments, bad comments, constructive and even destructive criticisms are welcome.
Cheers!
Shani
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Somehow reading about hair follicles
isn’t as interesting as thinking about you;
the words are black on this white page
and the inverse of you and me blocks the progression
of paper to eye to brain,
and all I see is what you would feel like against me
curled up in a bed that belongs to neither of us.
It makes sense I suppose,
I’m reading about terminal differentiation,
isn’t that what you and I had?
An influx of hormones that led to some permanent changes
in the texture of my soul,
so that no matter how many times I uprooted you,
plucked you, waxed you,
burned you, electrocuted you,
you grew back,
sometimes fast, sometimes a bit delayed,
sometimes thicker, sometimes soft and unnoticeable,
still always there, always present.
They say you’re born with all the hair follicles you could possibly have,
does this mean I was born for you?
I was born to complete the cycle of birth and reincarnation,
breaking through skin only to be cut down again,
while you nourished my roots with your sweet sweet words,
making sure that I remained healthy and alive,
rooted in you, but not so much intact.
I wonder how I would score your growth on women;
hirsute, her suit, your suit on her floor.
Somehow reading about hair follicles
isn’t as interesting as thinking about you,
but it doesn’t make my heart hurt nearly as much
as thoughts of you are wont to do.
Friday, November, 18, 2011
I always insisted on clothes
and you never knew why.
How could I let you understand what was hidden beneath?
Clothed, I was me, fully completely utterly me, safe.
A complete person with a brain, a personality, a desire to live and
a life to desire.
I always insisted on clothes
and you never knew why.
One day I told you, whispered the secret through my fingers:
clothed, I held the whole universe in my hand,
but naked, I was just a mismatched collection of skin, scars, and
body parts.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
3:30 am.
I’m just another whore,
Not for money but for attention,
I really need your affection.
I listen to your words
and they don’t make me wet anymore,
I feign interest, look at your fat pink cock
and whisper about how I would love that in my mouth,
and I so badly want to believe it, so badly I do.
I think I’m done, from lovers to fuck buddies,
you masturbate but can’t cum,
I show you my breasts and they’re just pieces of meat;
we’re like butchers in a lion’s den,
chopping and cleaving actions that weren’t meant to be,
driving home stakes and steaks of lust and love,
to what end, to what god shall we make this sacrifice to?
It’s 3:30 am and I’m just another whore,
you’ll never love me the way you will love her.
Wednesday, September 21st, 2011
There is nothing more to say,
you've won
and it's for the best, I suppose,
as I sit here on my bed,
laptop warming up my lap until the heater kicks in.
3 am and I can't fall asleep anymore,
I'm scared of the dreams and the nightmare,
they're too vivid and I'm woken up
with a potent thirst
and a feeling of being watched in the dark,
and I'm alone.
There is nothing more to to say,
you've won
and I'm now an insomniac,
drinking cold water at 3 am
to keep the dream and the nightmares away.
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
It isn’t fair that I’m wrapped in this blanket
watching the sky fade from gray to gray
And as the clouds of time finish their daily pass over,
which is supposed to mimic my life,
I think about the colour of brown eyes and how it
faded on the screen,
and I can remember the way your hands moved the grain of sand
that you tried to take from my eyelash,
the one that broke the camel’s back,
although I would say that we were higher up
on an elephant of sorts.
And of course it all seems imaginary
when there is not a single trace of you in my life anymore
and I find myself creeping your shadows,
your internet footprint to find out whether I still impact you,
a fool’s hope is still hope nonetheless
and I cannot believe I am here again,
wrapped in my pink blanket as fog continues to curtain the trees,
and waking up at 2 pm seems to be the norm.Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
I stand here, cooking for the family I'll never have,
cooking for one is like cooking for none and like
cooking for a thousand in the same breath.
I stand here, cooking for the family I'll never have,
and I pretend that there are children listening to sounds of my singing
that make the time go faster as the watched pot never boils,
and I imagine his arms around me, kissing my neck,
exposed so very briefly as my hair finds its way up up up
to the base of my head.
But alas, if cooking for one is like cooking for none,
please tell me why sweat runs down my back
and my eyes play hide and seek with the rain?
Monday, August 15th, 2011
She sat by her computer,
sleep heavy on her eyes
as she tried to draw pictures with words,
typing the way artists used to paint,
using black and white to recreate Venus,
the Mona Lisa of syntax overcoming the Dalis of diction,
all while she sat by her computer,
with sleep heavy on her eyes.
Abstract pieces of postmodern angst
littered the page as verses upon verses
flowed freely,
sliding down the curve of her arm
metamorphosing
as she sat by her computer,
sleep heavy on her eyesThursday, August 11, 2011
I kissed you under the waxing moon in Wicker Park,
and no recollection I have of the way your mouth tasted,
granted, I had a few beers,
but your taste escapes me, evades my memories,
your scent drifts in and out of some wishful fantasy,
some parallel universe that belongs to neither of us,
but one I cannot escape from, cannot forget.
Please tell me why the way you felt against me is but a butterfly kiss
against my mind,
when the memory of you getting on the train away from me remains
so strong and pure
and unforgettable.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Walking to Wendy’s on a Sunday afternoon,
let the sun beat down on my warm face,
tan my lips as they curl around the grease filled
potatoes,
filling this insatiable need within me.
Walking to Wendy’s alone, on a Sunday afternoon,
as families traverse around the roads,
cars filled with children and dogs, and the smell of
Communion wine and baby powder ruffles my nose
as I step step step,
gravel and glass
crunching underneath my ten dollar shoes
worn down from months of taking Sunday afternoon walks,
when the walls of my room started to close down upon my throat
and squeeze raindrops from the ceiling.
So I walk, because choking hazards aren’t very friendly
and the rumbling in my tummy can only be satisfied
by the crunch crunch crunch of gravel and glass,
and the moans of the guitar through my headphones
which both makes me heartsick yet calms me down.
Walking to Wendy’s on a Sunday afternoon,
I am trying to walk away from the image of your face,
trying to step on it each step I take,
trying to quiet it down each bite I eat,
but it’s burned into my brain,
and empty calories on a Sunday afternoon only seems to make it worse.
Monday, April 18th, 2011
So the lions lived alone...
Fierce, with manes untamed,
and eyes so proud and so sad,
because they were good, and beautiful,
but alone.
So alone.
And as the accordion struck the chords,
the lions started dancing on their hind legs,
to imitate the hyenas that nipped at their feet,
striving to feel something,
be something
anything apart from what they were,
because they were art;
a painting, a mirror, an image
to be admired from afar during hours.
And then at night when the families went home,
and the boy sneaked a kiss from her behind the tree,
they ate the pre-processed meat fed to them,
stars twinkling above giving them hope,
that maybe there might be more.
Nothing was more,
only disappointment,
rage,
and a tranquilizer in their side.
And upstairs your older sister
sat playing melodies on her six string guitar,
her voice husky and all wrong.
The melodies finding ways to bend out
of her hair into this dishevelled song.
The strums were like heartbeats against
an open grate and the emotion in her voice wasn’t
able to break your dam, though hers was
wide open and spent,
for her eyes and her smile caused her to lie
through her teeth at you (and she thought you couldn’t tell).
But when she sang, her mouth moved only in the
ways of truth, and what a truth it was
that spoke of a deep emotional vein
that ran from her thighs to her brain, and
she spoke in tongues at that moment as
soft pink flesh curled out “Hallelujahs!” and “Amens!”,
but the air wasn’t receptive and spat it back in her face.
And now all you remember was how she had
held that piece of wood against her chest,
as broken melodies taunted her from within a metal box
with buttons.
Tuesday, March 29st, 2011
Sitting down against the wall,
the floor is cool against the back of your jeans,
and as you press your palms downward,
trying to absorb the calm that only
linoleum in all its wisdom can bring,
the memory of her seeps away from your forehead.
I haven’t written in ages
And it’s because I miss you,
and because I think I’m getting over you.
When my heart was broken
and lying crushed open for the world to infect
the words poured out of my soul,
out of my skin,
and entwined so carefully with the leaves of the willow
that rested by the river that they called
“the one that always was”.
I’m tired and the work that I’ve undertaken
takes me further from the memory of you each day,
and it’s healthy but it’s not interesting,
and it’s good for my soul yet I am crying
because I yearn to feel the touch of your thoughts
against mine again,
and listen to your breath quicken as the music
you brought to show me created a whirlwind of
passion and lust between us.
I haven’t written in ages,
and maybe it’s not because I miss you,
maybe it’s because you gave me life,
as fragile and cruel as that life was
and now it’s gone
and I don’t know what to do with myself.
I dream of something to come.
I saw your thumbprint on the screen this morning.
I never saw it until now,
I think it was when you laughed and covered your face
in the photo where I had caught you mid-sentence.
You had hated it,
and I loved it because
it reminded me of how a simple snapshot
could never capture the magic that you held in your fingers,
in your smile,
in the curl of your hair or that one dimple.
I can’t believe that thumbprint survived,
and that it was so clearly yours,
the mark that the gods had bestowed upon you
when all was darkness
and shadows didn’t exist because there was nothing to contrast them with.
Unlike now, at this moment,
when I forget the way you smell.
Monday, February 28th, 2011
Lovers in an Ultrasound Room
Hands clenched in the dark,
They look at the screen
Where the little alien floats,
Bright white and black,
And shades of gray that compose
The love of the idea between them.
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Little old man
bends over the coffee machine,
and under it,
picking up white tissues
and coffee stained styrofoam,
walking about,
his pants held together by his belt,
his waist the span of my hand
and I have small hands.
He doesn’t need gloves
as he turns the garbage can over his trolley,
thin brown fluid seeping out,
his eyes faded and lost in thought
remembering the muddy waters he jumped in
with his younger brother,
when his knees never ached.
Monday, February 14th, 2011
Dream in Snow Here
I dare you to
dream in snow here
once again,
the fields as white and
wistful as the day we first met.
The clouds were hanging onto the trees
and the fog made the hair on your temples curl.
Do you remember the noise our boots made
as we walked alongside the paved road,
cars driving by us at breakneck speeds
and how the resulting air whipped broken pebbles at our calves?
I remember the snow that fell from the rooftops
and landed in puddles beside us,
the chill making our noses red.
Yours was cold as it touched mine,
your lips melted my heart.
I held your face in my hands
and sang all the songs to you,
told you I wanted everything with you
all the love song clichés,
and you laughed at me and smacked my arm.
You smelled like shampoo.
It was a December afternoon,
and they said the snow was supposed to wash away
in the rain,
and we talked about the nothing and everything of time
the now of forever and the never of yesterday,
and the need for the moment,
this moment, to stay.
And you dared me to dream in snow that day,
so I carved your name and mine
on the tree beside the hill,
to remind me forever that
you dared me to dream in snow here.
Try writing spoken word, and make it not a cliché.
You need this internal sense of beat, of measure,
and to do it without a care,
oh such pleasure it would be,
to wrap that lock of hair around my finger
and see a method to the madness, it almost isn't fair
all this time I spend on you, and all it is,
is a dream, a thought, a confused state
of agitation and I try to cut through the
hesitation that your eyes cause me to feel,
unloosen this emotional constipation
that arises from fear and vulnerability,
like when the the old man by the window called me
a crazy baby
but I swear I hadn’t done anything wrong,
talked a little, laughed a little.
Can I help my bodily functionality
in the midst of this alcoholic irrationality?
You judge me for being a tragedy,
And all I want in this life is to say
“Yes, that happened to me.”
A story is all we are and all I want to be.
Can I be your story? Your symphony?
The entirety of being is that being all I can be
is not just a reflection of me but an
apparition of the true condition of humanity,
one of hope and desperation,
one of loss and inspiration,
we cry "Abba Father, to thee do we sacrifice,
our miserable flea-begotten eternal lives!"
In hope of some salvation
in the midst of this god forsaken notion
that we humans deem a soul.
one of hope and desperation,
one of loss and inspiration,
we cry "Abba Father, to thee do we sacrifice,
our miserable flea-begotten eternal lives!"
In hope of some salvation
in the midst of this god forsaken notion
that we humans deem a soul.
Trees watching the progression of time,
growing deep, growing tall
only to be uprooted to make room for
your car, for your house,
for your family.
And now the majestic oak
is a voyeur into your marriage bed,
Where with your perfect wife you lie
And smile,
and forget me.
Monday, January 24th, 2011
You is More than Me
Isn’t it funny that you
have been my pillow
for the last few nights,
because I had vowed I would never
be with someone the way I
would be with you.
I have learned my lesson
in never saying never,
because little enigmas like you
come around and topsy turvy
my entire being until right side up
is down side west and little heart
beats fill the entire void
that has made my life a black hole.
But no more I say as I lick your cheek
and the dimples in your smile
pull on my heart until it
trembles in anticipation
of the whisper of your name
in the air that rushes through my hair
and down my chest until the goosebumps
you have created by your smell cannot
be shaken by any voice in the sea.
I am yours
and you are mine.
You do not see it
but forever
you is, and will be, mine,
but ever more than me.
