Posts tagged writing

in Poems

What a Life

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It’s been twenty-five years since you’ve stood with your friends singing Hallelujah on a stage, feeling the vibration of a hundred voices lifting from the platform to the sky. It’s been twenty years since you listened to that same song on the way to your friend’s funeral. He’d shot himself to death at work. What a life. Now you can’t listen to that song without crying and you will always wonder how you couldn’t have seen it coming, and why no one ever usually sees it coming. There should be a prescription everyone gets at birth, an RX for love … Read the rest

in Poems Written Promptly

don’t test me

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it wasn’t the argument that ended things for you,
the one you held on to and wrote about, the one
you felt was so demeaning and mean — 
it was a simple question — and you wanted to give a 
simple, honest answer

that’s it
that’s all

you didn’t know what would happen
you didn’t even know what you wanted
to happen, but you lit the fuse that 
would eventually blast you
to smithereens

boom
poof

and all these years later we are both
asking what the hell were you thinking
to do things like that, to do everything
the … Read the rest

in Quotes

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It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.
– C. S. Lewis

in Poems Written Promptly

the only thing I want

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In this relationship I have to be flexible,
I need to always be ready to bend if necessary,
and to make myself small and quiet 
whenever I am asked. 

One of the prices I pay for this relationship 
is silence, my silence, my starvation for
affection and validation, and any 
conceivable hope for the future. 

Those I must pay for
one way or another. 
One day, or not.

In this relationship I have to be ready for 
cliff diving, train jumping, backflips, I
need to be prepared for the quick exits,
I always need to be ready to run. 

I … Read the rest

in Blog

I’m not a good poet

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In approximately eight and a half months I am going to be going on a six day, five night writing “retreat” all alone, and this will be the first time in my life I’ve had the opportunity to do anything like this. 

My favorite living writer has a tiny house / AirB&B on per property that she is offering to writers and artists as a place to visit, relax, and I suppose most importantly of all, to create, and to create in solitude. 

I love being alone. 

I love being with friends and family, too, but I am definitely … Read the rest

in Poems Written Promptly

no one’s second best

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I thought we were okay.

I was running on autopilot,
that I can admit,
but I know I was here,
present, conscious, 
I know I felt loved even if
I felt it a little bit less. 

I told myself “Sometimes,
it can’t always be 50/50,
sometimes one person needs
to offer the other more when 
their well is running dry.”

So I offered you more. 
I offered to give up my peace 
so that you could have yours
for a while, and apparently,
that wasn’t enough. 

You caught me last night,
deer-in-headlights I sat and
listened to all the things… Read the rest

in Poems Written Promptly

patience for the pilgrimage

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there are so many months between me and here and there
but I can’t wait to prepare. I can’t wait to go from wistful dreaming
to actual planning, to opening a duffle bag and beginning to pack.
Clothes and deodorant and soap, various and sundry things to fill 
the space in me (the bag) just like where I’m going will fill the space in me.

a whole entire winter and spring need to pass before this chance comes
and I have to remind myself it’s still a chance, anything can happen
in that amount of time. illness, death, job loss, … Read the rest

in Poems Written Promptly

skin twin

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there are so many things about us that one could make 
one say we mesh. we call each other our skin twins, 
the same light shade but sprinkled with freckles. if we put our
arms against each other, i can’t tell where he ends and i begin.

there’s a comfort here i’ve never had before, the feeling that
i can let go a little bit, not be so close, not be so clingy, not
be so afraid all the time that he will leave me.

(and trust me, i have an excuse for the fear i can’t release)

but for … Read the rest

in Blog On Writing Writing is Hard

down the road a piece

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Two years ago, right around now, I was supposed to be going to Maine for a writer’s retreat led by my favorite living poet.

That didn’t end up happening because I didn’t find a job by then and I was rapidly running out of money. I had to take the refund when I had the chance and save all the money I would have spent on hotels and gas and food for the few days I would be there.

To say I was devastated would be putting it lightly, because this is also just after I would have been seeing … Read the rest