Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, bottles, CAPS LOCK, Esme Writes, stuff, you know
IT was never intentional
WE spoke these words so graciously
AND carefully
BEFORE, weaving our way so adeptly
THROUGH mazes OR tightrope
spiderwebs OR the sidewalks
WHERE we threatened the livelyhood
OF our mothers,
THAT it bottled up.
IT bred inside, somewhere behind closed doors.
AND THEN……
WELL, you know.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, fire, ghosts, hot air balloons, lanterns, Poetry, smoke, summer, wine
Lanterns
We all broke into pieces that
once collected by the coarse scrape of a
push broom would never again as a sum
equal the initial whole
These were the things that
went wandering once the seams split
These were the ghosts that once
no longer trapped in our index fingers or ear lobes
roamed the earth, their weightiness
transferred to more or less
hot air balloons.
Or lanterns propelled by tea light candles.
Those lanterns we folded of tissue paper
and so gently lit.
The one false move and the whole thing ignites
lanterns
The breath held on a back country road in the
middle of nowhere in the dead of night with maybe a
few too many cigarettes and few bottles of wine deep
lanterns
We would set things on fire with matches
and our fingers
the nights where it was all it could be
the days where something delicate and dangerous
ripped
and all the seams unraveled
when our ghosts went wandering
like lanterns
or hot air balloons
our breath exhaling all too quickly
as flames and
clouds of smoke.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, blood, Esme Writes, fighting, ice, Poetry, tubs, writing
He spoke his last ten years as a death sentence.
It would all be over before he knew it.
Before we blinked our eyes against the harsh
broken glass slivers the sun had become.
It would make both of us rub our bloodshot
sockets deeply in the mornings and ignore
the black holes we had become.
We were each others tangled bedsheets
in the middle of the night so oppressively hot.
Steam rooms of emotion, suffocating.
We gasped each others skin.
We smothered our mouths in salt’s scent.
We let too much blood into bathtubs filled with ice.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Echo Park, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, chinatown, dreams, fireworks, maps, small towns, stoops
Small Town Dreams
Sullenly staring from stoops
so spaced to indicate the passing of
time
markers in history all architectural and
significant
like growing up in a museum
all beauty without interaction
as some marker
at some point in time
all unequevocal but repeating
nonetheless
there were map pins and
circles drawn
around the cities we dreamed of
cities with more stoops
spread on streets like
the staccato of a snare
or the tap whir of a one two one and two and
played on the high hat held open on the and
the sounds of firecrackers that errupt from
chinatown
bounce off sheer wall cliffs
and buildings who have no business except enormity
sized for a global economy
not felt in these stoops
with chalk remnants of hop scotch and
little magnifying glass burns and
soap water bubble circles
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry | Tags: 2010, 30 Poems in 30 Days, Bonnie and Clyde, Echo Park, Esme Writes, Friends, Fuck, Hope, Kamikaze, paper, sharp objects
21
Mostly I’ve learned all these years
is that it’s all a joke
and not one that’s hilarious
filled with belly laughs and sparkling
hot tears
and that post-orgasmic languor
but it’s just
kinda odd-funny
like those something is out of
place search for it puzzles
I used to do in Highlights Magazine
as a kid in the dentist office
My table legs are umbrellas
and there are daisies sprouting from my phone
and outside it’s raining
literal cats and dogs and
a few other of god’s creatures
and it kinda just makes me shrug and say
that’s funny.
20
Bonnie : Clyde :: Esme : ??
how far would you go with me?
would you rob a bank, with me, Clyde?
It’s Clyde I want,
a partner in crime,
a tear-it-the-fuck-up-just-because-we-can
and fuck-it-all-cause-I’ve-got-you-babe
with devil-may-care in his step and
just the right touch when I need it
and mostly
we’d be like kittens.
it wouldn’t be that dangerous
man it would be
the Clyde who
reins in my wolf-ways
makes me want to stand in
our kitchen barefoot
draw baths
paint boats on canvas
plan trips to Europe
hold hands
be sweet
stop my earth-shaking ways
I want
learn to love someone with hands bigger than mine
and who doesn’t take my shit
hey Clyde, how far would you go?
you’d do that for me,
wouldn’t ya?
19
I want to make sudden quick moves
like darting out into traffic while wearing all black on
a moonless night from a dark alleyway
not like asking for death kamikaze
but more like let’s see how far we
can run before our lungs bust into
those big red forth of july fireworks
I remember from Kensington Lake when
I was 7.
18
I am awful at finishing anything.
Why do I fucking start things I can’t finish.
Fucking hell.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Echo Park | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, hidden, Poetry, triplet
Caught up in fingers and toes and
eyes and lips and unable to speak
or say anything.
At all.
Just bite my lip and play dumb. Not Play.
Be.
An actor in the role of her lifetime.
Become The girl-in-love lead who just is.
Stop stopping. Stops the stuttering doubt
Plain Jane.
Be.
The dream girl who has-it-all who speaks so easily.
Loses the loss. Keeps her head cool-as-ice.
The girl-next-door come into-her-own.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Echo Park, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, cats, Esme Writes, Poetry, widows
I can see where you
used to wave to me
like your fucking ghost is still walking
the eves of that house like a cat
or a fucking banshee.
These days are about as long
as they were a year ago
it’s strange thing, friend, to
think how far we’ve come.
This walk that once took you too
a roof now takes you to silent caves.
And me?
Well, I drive by your house almost twice daily
and only once in awhile wistfully look
to my phone and debate calling you.
You see, we met and you were that cat,
on the roof, all wild and pouncing.
You were free and you prowled and
we prowled and screamed all those
untruths into the valley between us.
And, it’s been a goddamn year between
us now and every once in awhile, I’ll
look to that roof for a shadow
or a cat or the ghost of the past.
Then I’ll feel like a fucking widow
mourning the loss….of….something.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, sharp objects, words
I am praying for some random
grace of God to interrupt the
monotony
something to strike me deep in
the chest like
a knife or a spear or
a trident or something
swift and resonant
to push me a few feet back and
then jolt into life
or death
or something different
than this fucking complacency…
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 2010, 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Los Angeles, Poetry
It’s the start of something I can never take back
it’s undo-able
it’s the thing that happens in dark corners
it’s this, thing
these days that bleed into nights that bleed into days
into the next and the next and the next
the exhaustion of days all repetitive and urgently empty
and all these wants
characterized by demands
without compromise.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, constellation, Esme Writes, megrez, Stars, ursa major
He was on Alkaid and
I was on Megrez
and every summer I can’t
escape the glaring eyes of
that damn bear head and
body that tore it all apart
I forgot for awhile the name of
His sun that he was the center of
some universe
untouchable by my poor
fading light
years away
and so much less
time than we needed
bears have teeth that
tear and throats that growl
and I still have Megrez
all these years later
Megrez
Dubhe
Merak
Phecda
Alioth
Mizar
Alkaid
Esme Writes. 