Journal Entries, 2016
Listen to ‘Journal Entries, 2016’ here.
The sharp pencils of your gaze
trace new patterns on my destiny
and puncture the paper-thin mask
I wore
Your words brush over me
like the kind of breeze
That makes me aware
of the sharpness of my cheekbones
Cutting the air
Making it drift across my hair
In streamers of blood salted sea air
Your eyes,
Your eyes, your eyes, they demolish me
They melt the things I thought were me
They hold me in a vice so tender
It feels like a skewering of love
I’m melting tears,
Raindrops
Secrets
Words
Salt
Paint
Water
Smoke
Blink. Why don’t you?
But you are still gasping
So I remind you to breathe
And catch a sucker punch headed your way
How shall I write yesterday?
Weave plot points into daily decision
Assign backstories to your indecision
Toss in a line or two
Kill those darlings, for just one taste of you
But lo, today’s here already
Right now is poetry
I can rhyme, keep time
Life, just a story I tell myself
You hold me up as I cough
Well, this is awkward
And you say, so let’s be awkward together
Let’s place our barriers close to home
This playground is still open sand
where monsters, mice and trolls come to play
Let them dance and befoul
Let them prance and play
And fall foul
Of smiles and threads and word-stones
Love, we’ll feast on their carcasses another day
Just hold me in conversation and never let us go
Yours is the voice of a stranger
Pouring familiarities all over me
Like warm water and honey
And my quiet place is a quiet blush
And silent thanks for skin so brown it doesn’t show
And heartbeats getting louder but no one can hear
It’s quiet, so quiet it’s delicious
and warm the way gratitude feels
Thank you for existing
I told you I thought
Sex was an experience, not an identity
But you and I, when we became you and I
My quiet place became a liquid place
You and I there
Mixing, merging, fusing, flowing, ebbing, drying
We’re sticky, we’re peeling
And now here again, we’re flowing
Remember love, this is what it is to create
When you love a poet, this is your fate
Shall we start?
I’ll be ready whenever you are,
because we’re liquid together
And then it’s love among the bookshelves
Dirty talk in literary verse
Turn the fans off so the pages don’t fly
Never let the ink run dry
And when it catches and smudges, don’t stop
Because a love bite is also a bruise
Forgive yourself for needing some more
We forget you can be passionate
without being aggressive
And that ink is flammable
And love incendiary
So stop stop, just stop
glorifying my breaking heart
Or your own
It’s never going to heal that way
But if we stop, just stop
Maybe we won’t be stuck selling tickets
to the Tragedy Show
But we don’t, we can’t
We only thought about
how to start the story
Never caring how it ends
And we aren’t a we any more
I’m barely even more than a broken I
But there are harder things than this,
I tell myself since you won’t listen
There are harder things, I say
As I pick out shrapnel from my veins
And listen to the world call me hate
In your voice
There are harder things than this
And I am one of those things
At the end of the month,
Christmas arrives guilt-free
Equal parts indulgence and grace
An old story with pieces of comfort
Will make way for something new
Gifts of smiles and hope
Growing up you learn to be your own Santa Claus
This time the gift will be goodbye
~O~O~O~O~O~O~
This poem is the result of many pieces of late night poetry in tweets. They were not all about the same people and sometimes they were results of my mood on those days. But they spread out over the course of a year so I decided to call them Journal entries.