Nothing

This is something that isn't anything.

This is where I ask a boy why he would let me think we could love each other.

This is where I wonder what reality is, because someone has deconstructed it. And everything. With single words, with "I can't talk about this now."

This is the moment when I wonder why any of us are where we are, because why are we why, because when are we when, because what are we?

What!?

This is nothing.

This is where I stop letting myself love.

This is where you break my heart...

where my heart breaks all which loves it.

This is something and nothing and everyone who knows what I have not yet been allowed to understand.

This is conspiracy.

This is dogma.

This is life.

This is.

I don't know what is tonight. The things I believed are no longer believable.

This is a man sleeping on a mattress. This is a girl waking in the night.

This is a boy not knowing what love is.

This is a girl who is not the boy's own to love.

This is how a girl hates him for no promise he made.

This is nothing.

This is everything.

Relationship. Words exchange.

This is no poem; this is no cry.

This is what falls out of my mouth as I think about carelessness and novels and song lyrics, the mix CDs made for me, and the city streets I cannot face, for love has paved them, and I do not seal its tar.

I am forbidden from the paths the men have laid. I am restricted from the asphalt under my feet.

This is nothing.

So on I'll drift to nothing else.

Had You Followed Me Home

An old poem: for October and November, for quirks, for happy times and timely goodbyes.

Had You Followed Me Home
For all the things that never happened with you,
and all the things that shouldn't have happened to anyone else.

If you had followed me here, we’d be in the breaking leaves
behind my parents’ house—the dying earrings of the cottonwood
litter the grass, the chopped onions from a mower blade in a lawn salad.
Your warm Pacific blood would move slowly and
you’d beg my worn Midwestern hands to assure you—
You’d stand, swirled by yard dusts and flakes,
and I’d touch your knee and smile with my father’s laughter
when we’d meet him for pizza on an October Thursday in Chicago.
We’d see my high school friends and sing our way to the all-night diner
that’s been made-over (purple ceilings and yellow walls) by the
Greeks who’ve owned it for the last five-hundred years or so.
Holding the menu half open, you’d order—no, ask for—chocolate cake and
my friends would taunt and tease you, actions typically reserved for me.
I’d swipe a taste of the frosting and bury myself in the corner of the booth,
green glows for irises at the impossibility of you on the vinyl with me.
Had you followed me home, you’d have seen Chicago play a symphony of who I am:
the Metra hum beats percussion with State Street brass and theater light strings
and my hometown, my mother’s house—its mellow reeds play woodwind tones.
In grass under cotton shade, we—with closed eyes—would float on
the rising of the suburban orchestra and then, with the birth of these thoughts,
you’d tune the masterpiece and call it love.

Anklet

If I were to make a road map,
I’d begin with where I am
which would span into the metro
and plains mountains deserts
oceans continents that haven’t
had the please of my bare
feet digging through their
soil grain dirt dust sand—
our toes sliding over white
porous stone on glowing
cerulean greenblue seas—

The map veins would circle
in the net of longitude-latitude
yarn choking the hemispheres
in place—a fat ham in my
mother’s Chicago Easter Morning
Kitchen, the lines holding meat,
threading spools of fishing line,
wrapping packages.

I’d sketch the map of every thing
that ever passed between us—
word and wave stitched together
with the string around your ankle.

The Weight

I keep wanting to start things, but I'm afraid of finishing.
When you finish something, you want it to be good, to be right, to know perfection.

But that's too much Weight.

The Weight

For Thomas Walter, Stephen Thomas, and Thomas Stephen.

I laid down in my home town, feeling the weight of the dead,

fresh off the flying machine with altitude dropping in my head.

Here, brother, I made it, where’s Grandfather in his eternal bed?

He looked down, and shook his head, and Here was all he said.

Let your cross fall, Grandmother.

Let your burden fall free.

Let your cross fall, Grandmother, and

pass your lover’s timber box on to me.

I picked out dark sister, and I took her to the alley to hide,

then I saw how same and different we are, standing at her side.

I said Hey Sister, where’s your life going, there downtown?

She said, It’s something else—this town ain’t a place to stay around.

Lay your load down, Father.

Let your weight fall free.

Lay your load down, Father, and

pass your handle on to me.

Go hush great-grandchild, there’s nothing you’ll ever say;

It’s us asleep and waiting—to see the man on Judgment Day.

Well Thomas, my brother, our children, he’ll never see,

But I say, Burn our worries, brother, our stories will keep us company.

Let your pain fade, Thomas.

Let your name be free.

Let your pain fade, Thomas, and

pass your name right on to me.

Mister Grief came in shadow stalking, and settled on me, a fog.

He said, I will take your heart, blanket and warm you in my smog.

I told him, I’ll stay awhile, Darling, but I’ll leave you alone, man.

He said, You think you’ll leave, girl, but you’ll come back when can.

Take a load off, child.

Leave it there buried.

Take a load off, child, and

put it in the ground for me.

We held our unthorned roses, and all stood there in line.

Our ungloved hands, were shaking then, knowing it was time

To drop the petals and the bones, with the casket all as one.

We said goodnight, grand man, rest well from everyone.

Take a load off, Grandfather.

Let your spirit fly free.

Take a load off, Grandfather, and

You stay in heaven and keep a watch on me.

Mountain Breath

Miles out from the foothills at the end of a July light:

look up and west.

Peer beyond those ridges, to the verdant valleys

nestled between weighty hills.

Then, when the sun hangs low,

and the clouds grow heavy, spilling with wet pearls

You will see the earth reborn.

Breath goes climbing and life comes falling, in drops, sheets.

Watch it come graceful and smooth over all,

heaven and creation.

I stood east of the range, and

saw the great land go up,

crawling through golden, misted flame,

reaching into the lungs of God.

He spat life down on the hills.

I watched with the eye He gave me,

and I will tell you—with the rhythm of

the rain in my chest—this:

This is the way of the rain,

the Creator falling with the air.

Notes.

Hi all,

Glad you're stopping by again. I don't have much to say tonight, but I wanted to check in since it's been over a week since my last post. I spent a few days out of town and have had a bit of a whirlwind life this month so I've gotten a bit behind from where I want to be.

One thing I've been meaning to do though, is to write this quick message. Over the course of the next couple weeks, I'm going to be pulling already-posted poems off the blog. At this point, I'm not overly concerned about material being plagiarized/stolen, but it may be an issue in the future, and further, I'm getting ready to send material out over the summer in hopes of getting published.

So, I'll be starting with the oldest poems and taking down poems from each month at the end of the week... meaning I'll take the January poems off on Saturday, and the February ones off the week after that.

I wanted to let you know so you'd all have a chance to look through them if you had any desire to do so. I'll make poems available to individuals by email after they've been removed if you request them.

Now, that business is all out of the way. I've been writing some pieces about perception and childhood and my grandfather, so you can expect to see some selections from those in the coming weeks. And I had a zombie dream last night that I want to write about here, so we'll see how that goes.

We're in our last two days of classes, and have finals next week, so it might be another week before I get to posting, but you'll hear about it when I do. Thanks for checking in, everybody. Have a good week! And as always, thanks for reading.

-E

I Was Climbing In The Rain (Brand New Poem!)

When the kettle came off the stove
with a whistle and the smell of forgotten toast
I cursed the coils for trapping food beneath themselves.
Such greed displayed in the morsel hoarded there.
I thought it selfish.
And the steam
when I emptied the steel out into my glass mug
crawled up the air and I felt it on my cheek
because it was a quiet love letter
from some man some place.
I closed my eyes and felt its warmth to my shoulders and down
so I breathed and grabbed my keys.

It was raining and I thought it ought to be snow—
quiet and cold—just the same with the
sliding of tires on the hill and the way my eyes felt.
But my cheeks were still warm from the steam and
the color stayed until I opened my empty mailbox
and remembered my eye-open dreams
where letters are for novels and
tea waited, steeping for me.

I smiled at the sadness of reality
that I, with words like these, might
not know an address for their envelope.
So in the buzzing yellow and the icy drops
I laughed like tobacco at the thought of you,
and how you had let me become a drug
that you could swirl in your fingers and exhale
in any weather.
Smoke to climb the same air, to break under falling love.

Cub

November 2010

If the cub can’t trust the lion, how could she trust a man?
If the one can’t trust the others, how could she trust the land?

She hunts with the lioness
and wrestles with playmates—
not yet lifemates in her early days.
With her own kind,
their paws and manes,
she learns to fight, and yes,
she preys.
Until preyed upon.
The lion throws his weight on her back,
resilient spine, until it breaks.
The lion comes over her
stifles with knotted mane,
greater mass, mass of disgust.
He overtakes the cub of the pride,
her pride.

If the cub can’t trust the lion, how could she trust a man?

I Was The Author + Doctor Friend

First, thank you, all of you, so very much for reading this page.

Whether this is your first visit to my blog, or if you've read every post, or if you fit somewhere in between, your simply opening these posts and giving my words your time is amazing.

I'm overwhelmed every time.

And secondly, a special thank you to the dozen or so of you who have commented, Facebooked, texted, and even called in response to my last post, She Said I Lived.

If you haven't looked at it, I request that you do before you read the poem below; you'll understand the context and see how the two relate.

Several of you shared with me that you've faced depression and the darker side of your selves. Knowing that I am not and was not alone in feeling that sadness has been encouraging, and beautiful.

I'm humbled to see others speak to my heart after hearing that I've spoken to theirs.

Thank you each, deeply.

The following poem is about the secondary unsung hero of my high school depression. She was my psychologist starting the week I started as a freshman, fourteen and falling in every direction.

I haven't seen her in over three years, but she's still as much here for me just by existing and living as she was when I sat in her office during my teen years. She was beautiful and kind, and she too, loved me.

My friend's sister saw her first, and then my mother, and then me. But she treated me like my story was the most important in the world--like I was the only narrator--even though the characters had already been written by other authors.
Now I see how selfish I was and how I rambled about my high school indulgences, but her investment in the narrative that came from my heart and my head and my fears--that was all I needed.

My time with her taught me that listening and meaning it is love, and means as much.

This is for her.

Fall 2009

Doctor Friend

It was one hour every-other Thursday at seven
through high school but that had almost
nothing to do with it
It started with my father saying bitch and
didn’t have a definitive end because there
was a job so I stopped
She saw me every time

I sat on a white couch with obnoxious red flowers
and more throw pillows than I could squeeze
between to sit comfortably
I stared at the short legs of the brown leather arm chair
and memorized the simple pattern of the olive green
carpet worn thin by drumming feet
There was always a Diet Coke—with a bent straw
stained by dark pink lipstick—that sat on the glass
side table amid messy stacks of notes
The walls were lined with shelves which were loaded
with volumes on abuse and eating disorders and anxiety
and they all had wordy titles
She watched me every time

She wore nice outfits because she made nice money
but there never was enough color in her attire
to match how pretty she was
She did her makeup in a way that made her blue eyes
look less anatomical and more like jewelry that matched
her diamond ring and silver cross
Her nails were always painted and cheeks were always blushed
whether she was smiling in her joy for me or grimacing with
empathy or something like it as I spoke
She sat with her legs crossed and hands folded mostly looking
quite composed and comfortable but her bouncing
foot said otherwise
She heard me every time

I shared stories of my world and received advice as it was her job
to dissect my issues and hear my joys as our lives were lived
and hour by hour, years passed
She changed me every time

For Stephanie

A Breathy Defense of My Reckless Disclosures

December 2009

It’s ever so peculiar—

how we tend to find something new
to say about the same things
whether they are old or unimpressive
or unamusing

that we assume words addressed to
anonymous audiences are really
calling our names or looking at us
sideways

And it’s not quite right

that I told a man it’s a lot easier to tell my
secrets to a holiday card with a calligraphy
pen than to actually vocalize them
out loud

that we keep living our lives after
parts of them end—not stages like
adolescence or relationships—but
separate worlds

It’s appalling—

the way I forgot about the boy I
abandoned when we were children
and that I didn’t realize it for
five years

that I am so thoughtful of these things
in coffee shop moments
but that they escape me in exhales
and regularly forgotten motions

Yet I—we—forget

We do

We Knew Time (and a note)

Inspired by a summer's sleep with Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac

I had hummingbirds and refracted light for birthdays.
Life was miracles and moments that floated on whirs of backward wings.
At their beats, your beauty swept in me, and pulled webs from atrial corners
with straw bristles that pricked up through my chest to you.

I desired the endless; you asked who could say anything of us.
The stars! I cried: The stars who fall and our wishes
answer pleas for tomorrow, for more days, time.
To the stars, the birds, the colors! Magic and wonder—
Love, I was a child again on logs over streams
in mosquitoless, thin air beside you.

Those June hours ambled along like we knew time, though
it laughed us off—whimsies on the road with some dead language.
I told stories of beauty without pain, of flesh off bone,
and lost my own speech to questions novels asked: If this isn’t nice, what is?

There was Independence pumpkin pie on the bridge, on a night without pops in the sky
because the rain soaked the fuses of all the men in our towns.
We had Broadway bookstores, their paperbacks for our change and
I gorged myself on the scribble of a dream—a world where the rain kept coming.
But it slowed. And the days shortened so the cinematic light
ushered us to darkness on plazas and porches.

Without cover, we watched shooting stars in backseats and coffee shops
with fewer words between us, yet ever more beneath us.
On broken color and falling light, I wished for more time—which you spent with
ignorance of the short season we pretended to enjoy, or did—maybe.

There had been days rich with rain and walks in soggy denim
on Friday nights when I—with dripping hair—would ask you why.
Then there was Tuesday outside the speckled library windows
when the books stayed shelved: out of our hands, dry from the air.

But under hot blues, words of the published men in our eyes went out my mouth
and in your ears as July cried in the dry heat, while we sat poolside and silent.
The heat came on with hurricane breath and desert air,
then we shriveled as sprinklers spat and the backwards birds kissed us goodbye.

The summer drought sucked the color and give of our skin, which
left us to watch as it flaked and burned.
We knew time like the touch of arid rainbows,
ruby-throated, and almost alive.

Hey all, this piece was going to wait to see the blog until summertime, but today felt like an appropriate day to post it. I just hit 1,400 views, and I'm pretty excited about it. Thanks for reading and supporting me. And now I have a favor to ask: share me with someone you know. There are about 50 of you who consistently read when I post, and if each of you share this poem with a friend who you think might enjoy my type of writing, it'll make a huge difference for me. If you didn't know, I started this blog in hopes of establishing a readership to help me get published in the next year or two, and now it's time to move past having only people who know me as followers. Again, I'm so grateful that you have all been reading, and I'm humbled by the numbers.
Easy option to be a huge help: share the link on Facebook. I can't even tell you all how big it would be for me if you each got one more person to start checking back here consistently. SO big!

Let's make it happen. Have a great day everybody. Let's get to 1,500 by tomorrow!

The Van

October 2010

For my siblings

We cleaned the old family van today:
the carpets are now more brown—less gray—
and wrappers of twelve different gum brands
were stuffed in the backseat cupholders.

The waxy printed paper tells of
rides home on Sundays after church breakfasts
when each belt was stretched over the hipbones
of a child—one in each of the benches and buckets.
We went altogether and with filled seats:
in one place, at one time.

We sucked dirt from a dozen states or more—
and as many years—from when we gobbled
the Midwest and jumped to coasts in summers
when we children drove alone, all learning, all leaving.
The sand of seven beaches came up and out
with football pads and baseball bags,
record players and poems scribbled on those wrappers
and napkins that wiped all of our faces
of foreign filth and the sin of thoughtless travesties.

We had left our childhood skins in the upholstery
with engagement rings, teenage things
who we were, and how our family exhaled.

Name

An old poem from Fall 2009 in Poetry Sem. Published in Paragon, 2009-2010.

I said
I wrote a poem today.
I used your name, but
I promise, it’s not about you.

You said
I should write about that, and

I asked
what.

My name, you said.

While we talked,
I heard a song about words the world
uses to call these this, and those that.
It had a good build up, and
the lines came with the music:
I wrote about you, not your name.

We wondered
what any of it meant or if
it would be different if your name
was Jack or Tim, Ben or James.
And despite my inherent honesty,
I didn’t say it, but I thought,
your name doesn’t matter,
because I was won before I knew it.

So, instead of asking questions, or admitting
answers, there are other things
we say.

I say
I hate some rules of writing, and wish
I could change them, and
I over-use the words, great and perfect,
I and and—and
I
say
too
much.

You smile, knowing silence elicits
more noise from my ever-moving lips.
We go on, with the talk about me and things
I want to say, that you don’t need to hear.

Then, you start to know more than
you thought you would, when
I was just a name.

Rage, Rage

Note: To enhance your experience in reading this poem, first read "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," by Dylan Thomas. Full text can be found at the link here. This poem was written as a response to a piece of artwork created by an old ghost, and in tribute to Thomas's poem. A certain paradox is intended.

Autumn is on fire.
It is burning toward oblivion:
a summer camplight,
a winter hearth.
The trees are shooting flames
through crimson and pumpkin leaves.
The branches reach out
like external synapses from
a man’s brain, into the atmosphere.
And they are burning.
The light pops and pulses:
boiling blood in his veins
at the thought of a last kiss with this, his distanced lover.
The uproot-sounds of trees in the falling season
call to the edge of the universe where
the lover is alone in a winter of another world.
There she tiptoes in snow, on the spots of faraway stars,
her cogs in the sky: pegs to hold her in a gravity
that does not exist in her steps:
all the pieces of her life float in a child’s bubbles,
rising, spinning, bursting without warning.
There is darkness and air, cold and thin.
She returns from the past, from other spheres,
for the great fire of their autumnal histories.
Yes, autumn is on fire.
The season roars with his passion
for the lover who will not have him,
the girl who watches with open, dry eyes
as he moves toward the flame, knowing—
crisped and spent—they are altogether finished.
The love that calls to the borders of existence
is not sufficient to stop the heat and thickness.
The grass greens while the world burns;
the lovers smile as they join the dying of the light.

Note (Part II): If requested, I'll write follow-up posts to help extrapolate meaning from more difficult poems. Readers, let me know if you're at all interested. I understand that sometimes the mystery is more intriguing, though. Cheers, and thanks for reading.

I Wore an Emerald Gown

When I grew up, I tried to use my words,
spewed them from spoken to heard.
But they fell out like ugly music and flat champagne.
So with that we toasted abilities of the insane
and loyalties of the dead at the filthy brink
of the secrets we eat and the messes we drink.

Gowns and tuxedos floated charmingly by
but pearls and diamonds had no draw for mine eye.
Then with golden ales and foaming brews,
I let my lips fly with things about truths—
those were ugly green stories in oak tree waves
so after midnight toasts, I was branch-bound for days.

In the new year I remembered my words—
I fought to prove them truths to be heard.

This Town

This town is built of poetry

with secrets drawn out in sidewalk chalk,

colors, concrete, cut limbs,

diced innocence.

The house beams are cedar conspiracies

and bricks are only metaphors

For the ties that hold houses together.

Stores stand only to hold all the words--

written, thought or told--

Piled in news columns and built in block quotes

for paper cities

and scissor-made men.

Cowboys

I sat in a ghost town saloon

with squealing doors and

cracks caked with dust on windows and mirrors.

The clouded water brown matched the filthy air

that never left me in those old days.

Then the cowboys, wild, rugged, bearded—

they pushed those swinging doors—filled

the bar, plunked piano keys, left prints.

The men came in and brought the town to life.

But they dirtied my water,

and pulled the dust from my air, and

I forgot to remember what never left,

because I didn’t feel it stifle my skin.

We were all breathing in that place

until I realized: all I needed was the air.

I sent the cowboys to their saddles,

sat alone in the saloon

to breathe with the ghost of the town.