Tag: poem about poems

My Words

Do not ask me to spit 

up eloquent words in a 

fifteen minute box. 

This is not a contest. 

This is not about sounding pretty. 

This is about truth. 

When I am welling with

emotions that I

no longer understand or know how

to feel, when I am anxious

and gasping for

breath in wheezes,

it is how I breathe. 

It is nothing, it is

everything— it is happy ever

afters and a knife in the back. 

When You Ask What I’m Writing About

seeing the world in a
drop of rain. 

finding
meaning in the leaf that has just
fallen onto the pavement. 

discovering truth in the
cracks of the living room
couch. 

frantically catching thoughts–  
like flower petals in a 
whirlwind– 
in the palm of my hand
before they escape
back into the universe.

hearing stories in her
breath as she lies
next to me,

how much i want
to kiss her. 

seeing the universe through
a kaleidoscope,

smashing
it on the floor 
in hopes that the colors will 
repaint
the skies. 

how reading  
perfectly phrased metaphors just feels
whole, and like truth, and
like home. 

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We’re masked in clever conversation. 
Witty remarks. 
Perfect metaphors. 

But poetry is not always
the set of fine china your mother
keeps locked in the cupboard. 
It is picking through skin
and meat and getting to 
the bones– sucking out the marrow. 

And sometimes it is the stench
of decaying bodies. 
Sometimes it is the taste of
someone else’s blood. 
Sometimes it is supposed to 
break you. 

And we are not flowers– we 
do not give off warm perfumes. 
Sometimes we are fingernails tearing
through the yellow wallpaper. 
Sometimes we are covered in
scars (inside and out). 
Sometimes we are our own tormentors. 
Sometimes we are the pain 
we write about. 

Don’t you see? 
I live with my hands permanently 
dirty, covered in everyone and
everything I have ever
touched. 

How The Words Get On The Page

They are all the times
i’ve been put away on a back shelf 
and collected dust. 

All the times my heart has shattered
onto the pages of my notebook and
sullied my fingers black. 

They are the words
I carve onto the pages instead
of into my skin. 

All the times I have felt
my heart was burning in the night sky
instead of in my chest. 

The times I have stood still
among hives of buzzing, 
undulating people. 

When I have been sitting
on my own bed, 
and still felt I wasn’t home. 

When I feel so restless in
my own skin 
that I swallow rainbows so I may
dissolve into darkness and wake up
forgetting. 

It Makes Music

I write to      release
the emotions and feelings I’m
            too scared
to express.
To see my thoughts
                 on paper. Sometimes
I write to

            remember
and sometimes to

            forget.

I write because it’s the only way to make
my feelings concrete

                                                solid

                        cohesive, understandable.

            When I write, my
thoughts become art
                                   instead of a jumble in my head.