Tag: original poems

Winter’s Kiss

wingedpiglets:

There are strawberry fields between your knuckles
that crack and bleed when you close your fist.
But you won’t wear gloves, you won’t wear mittens;
you say you love the winter’s kiss.

Even when the rest of the world has hidden
underneath the frosty snow and ice,
you stand outside with your arms wide open
and tilt your head up towards the sky.

Though your hands and legs are red and numb
and the snow and sleet begin to fall
you won’t come in until you’re frozen
because then you cannot feel at all.

i was myself, once.
like i’ve been before;
a phoenix, fire of 
autumn leaves regurgitates
me. 
i find my voice in the songs
the river sings, 
memory like the currents. 
constantly moulting, but
keeping them in a scrapbook– 
moments with blank spaces 
in between 
stitched together to make
a quilt.
i decompose. 
sometimes i bloom with the azaleas
in the spring.

anatman: “I hardly know who i am. I think I must have been changed several times… I’m not myself, you see.” // a.s.m

where have i slipped
between these cracks
that god intended for us
to sink into?
where have i gone to?
a place between my body and the sky. 
safe. 
soft. 

i can still hear
them, though.
laughing right
outside my window.
and my stomach against
this mattress is pulling me back
before i am ready to go.

i am never ready to go from here; 
where poetry flows in the streams,
where a mind is at ease,
where raw hands find peace.
you won’t cry in the night anymore here,
i promise.

there is a place of stillness within // a.s.m

write it all down.
pour your mind on the paper–
all of it:
every passing
thought
every hiccup
every mistake
every “i can’t believe…”
every disaster
every painful memory.
put it all on the lines.
and when you’ve squeezed your sponge dry,
take a wet brush and paint
the words into colors
shapes
noises
textures.

How to Write A Poem // a.s.m

i am i am i am
nothing
yet absolutely everything.
i am my decomposing
grandmother, six feet under Michigan soil.
i am being rejected from thirteen jobs before
falling in love with the one i have.
i am the insecurity and self-hatred
i have shed like a snakeskin,
insatiable wanderlust, and
falling asleep early on a Friday night– 
trying to write poetry with invisible ink
on the apartment walls in hopes that the next person
who runs their  fingers on them will carry
a small piece of me with them.
i am both my aunts and my mother,
so much history for a soul
that feels much too small for its body.
i am struggling with existence these days
unsure if it’s a game or
a dream, or something in between.

mosaics are made from broken pieces but they’re still works of art, and so are you. // a.s.m. 

i’m in some sort
of fucked up purgatory.
dancing between
reaching for the phone and
reaching for my throat
because
it’s my fault you’re gone
it’s my fault i’m gone
but at least i’m not
on fire anymore.

and i want to call you.
sometimes i go so far as to
hear the dial tone before i remember
i deleted your number
and never bothered to memorize it.
i never thought i’d need to.

and sometimes i go so far as to
imagine what it would be like to have you
in my life again until
i remember how much it hurt
the first time around;
how heaven and hell were never meant to be
together because
that’s what being with you was and
it was a cycle so vicious
i couldn’t for the life of me tear myself away.

but i did.

and in the process i lost
my skin from where
we were attached
at the hips.
the scar reminds me why i cannot go back.
because my hands might as well be ghosts,
the way they touch you.
because my lips are useless
if they never meet your skin.
because i will always love you,
and you
will always love someone else.

and even on my best days, my soul wasn’t enough // a.s.m

My Least Favorite Word

Probably:
the guarantee
of a lukewarm promise that
may or may not be
broken.

Probably: like babbling
brooks and babies. Like
babbling on and on and on;
empty words
just to fill the space
you were so afraid
of.

Probably:
a thumbs up for empty air and
words that pop like bubbles.
A contract signed with
probably in the
fine print scares me.

As I curl into your back I whisper:
will you still love me in the morning?
Only the sticky air replies:
hopefully,
maybe,
probably.

hybrid heart

thank god for hybrids, you’d said as you looked at me
and grinned the day
the gas prices climbed.
i can get 40 miles per gallon on this baby. 
you could spend less money and
go further, and
you loved that. 

you always were thrifty.

and now
i can’t help wishing that maybe
my heart was
a hybrid, too because
the more time that
goes by,
the less you hold
my hand;
the less you tell me you
love me
and i’m trying to
make us run with
less and less gas, but
i’m not sure how much
further we can
go.