Saturday, May 1, 2010

and freckles

hunched at the
sticky kitchen table
my back hurts.
i'm hunching and
scratching lines,
separating my hair
at inopportune places
twisting the back of
my scalp and feeling
my mouth, hard and dry.
my back is hurting
a long work day,
loud voices, louder
thrusting music
in beats with human
hearts, apparently.
old lady lace curtains
and neon paintings
with heidi as signed
my friends are somewhere
amidst the mist of
hollow smoke and
stumbly drunk wet
feelings, peelings
and cursed eyelashes
spending their
intelligence on an
unimportant conversation.
elation and inflation,
inflate your mind,
half drunken cheap
bottles and the people
outside puffing something
important, talk of time
and god and someone near
me wants doritos.
still fiddling in my
dirty hair i'm the girl at
the party writing a poem
at a table; everyone wants
to know what i'll say.
no one wants to talk to me.
feeling strange and vain
and plagued, comparison
killing, never shedding,
always exposing, always
vulnerable, always hiding
this body, this face
and filtering ideas and
rhymes and glittering
chimes in the doorway
doors opening and drafting
and being out of place,
insecure and prettily
putting the hair
behind my ear its
my charmful thing
being known
to flee thinking
about him and me
thinking about people
i don't know and the
boy with the blue lights
coming from his
fingertips and
the girl with bright hair
and fair skin and
freckles little kisses and
his kisses, my pencil
getting flatter and
duller the dancing
getting bigger and
stronger. little girl faces
entranced at the
movement, their stillness.
all this motion and i don't
really fit in here.
i move fast, my hand,
writing because if i don't,
it will all get lost and all these
moments never happened
except in a faded
drunken nostalgia
of someone's spoken
memory on a porch
over an afternoon
cigarette, always coming,
always going.
and with these moments,
my scribbles, her memories,
so much happily lost
among the world
that lives in the night, that
we barely remember, that
holds the strangest sweet
spot in our hearts we will
sadly and fondly look
back on vaguely tasting
of a thing you tell your
children
not beautiful;
but there.

4 comments:

britt said...

this is amazing.

taylor mckay said...

yes. i am so glad you write poetry.

Carrie said...

Great, as usual. Gosh I love your writing and honest and the way you phrase beauty. Favorite lines of this one: "that
holds the strangest sweet
spot in our hearts we will
sadly and fondly look
back on vaguely tasting
of a thing you tell your
children
not beautiful;
but there."

Anonymous said...

love.