Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, accidents, electricity, Esme Writes, fingers, lakes, Love, Sunday, toasters
We would reach the point of no return quickly
and swimming in the back
depths of my mind
were all these little flashes
all these little things
I struggle against
the relinquish of control
all too easily
left to the currents
and into the hands of someone
else as our fingers linked.
These gentle water depths
that churned with fingers
and eyes and lips charged
with an electricity not felt in..
the darkness makes it hard to
distinguish the details
or maybe I just spent too
long convincing myself that
all these momentary lapses of
judgement were just growing pains.
Like accidental electrocution.
Fishing in toasters with forks
sunday mornings and
the difference is mostly in
walking around the lake alone
and walking around the lake
fingers linked with someone else.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, delete, digital, Esme Writes, forgetfulness, photographs
We took photos because we wanted to remember
because being there
was just a little too real
a little too frightening
a lot too much
to process
all we needed was
a little pixelated glass screen
we weren’t sure what to do with each other
without that lapse of
time and the moments
where we made fun of the shapes of
our eyes and the turn of our mouths
before we pressed the delete button
a re-take
for posterity
all glistening teeth and smiles
like we loved being there
we could look back and talk about
all the perfect little moments
and ignore the awkward pauses
years from now we would forget about
the button
and just look back so gently and
fondly on the best years of our lives.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Echo Park, Esme Writes, Sweet Little Something | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, balloons, crushes, easter, Esme Writes, feathers, reincarnation, trees
8 April 2010
I’d like to come back
as the type of tree
that people
carve
their names on.
9 April 2010
rising balloons on currents
become the clouds overhead
at sunset
all the colors at once
all the pretty feathers
in hats on Easter. One
year I remember an Easter hat
with a thin white elastic band
to keep it on my head.
The thin mark it left on each
cheek as I wore the hat until I
fell asleep.
All white straw and blue bows with
fake daisies and leaves. All what
I dreamed of for my pretty Easter
day.
A dress that twirled and hands
that let balloons fly into
the sunset to
become clouds.
10 April 2010
I don’t know what to say about
it all except it
reminds me why I got permanent ink
on my right forearm
O hopeful dreamers, we…
yes, yes.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Dudes, Love, Poetry, sex, traffic
So things began and then
they ended just as suddenly
it’s not the turn of seasons
but more like the swap of color
on those damn traffic lights
that seem to make my drive
home an hour longer than need be.
Things ended and then they began
and I couldn’t help but to talk about
who and what with whomever
it’s just the nature of the situation,
you know?
It’s just how these things are,
I guess.
So I’ll sit and radiate all these feelings,
that could be like seasons or traffic lights,
out into the universe
simply because
one day I want to wake up and not
be worried by it,
anymore.
Just be.
With someone.
Someday.
Soon,
I guess.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Jets, Love, past, Poetry, Questions, Spring, summer, wistful
The jet airliner strode across the
sky all silently thunderous and
not nearly as quickly as all
the fast buzzing things all around
my head.
It moved, they moved.
I lay on a bench staring at the space he
had occupied years before when
we were both too young to understand the
consequences of the question
“Do you believe in love?”
Before we knew the immensity of the world.
Before it wasn’t enough.
Before it wasn’t enough, though,
it was enough.
It was enough for us to be in those sun
drenched afternoons while it all buzzed
around us.
The heart lurching moments spun
from a wheel moved
by a hand too big for us to comprehend.
He would have been there
on that bench, maybe,
but there were all the times I wanted him
to be there
and he wasn’t.
The times that tore my heart into
such cavernous ruin.
Wounds too big for his gentle hands, too
tender for his needle and his
bedside manner all
grave and forgiving.
He sailed away and I plodded
on land bitten by Michigan frost
and thawed again by a sun that we
all forgot could be so stunning.
She poured out for us
and I lapped at it.
I drained it dry.
I attempted to burn it all away,
seal gaping holes with
thick crusts of cauterized scabs
and singed streaks where
he used to be.
All those places we used to be.
Like those jet airliner afternoons.
He sailed away one day and
I floated until I landed on the
West’s golden coast.
The buzzing of all these things
all faster than the silent crawl of the
jet airliner above
draws such a pretty picture for my eyes,
the consequences of the question
“Do you believe in love?”
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Cars, Love, Michigan, Photograph, Poetry, Spring
It was spring in Michigan
we were alright then.
We were still young enough to feel invincible
and had no clue it would be like it is now,
wishing it away like
winestains on bedsheets
and nightmares that reoccur
for weeks on end.
It was spring in Michigan
and no other spring would be like that one
and no other spring will be like the one right now
in California
where days
fade like photographs
left on the dashboard
of a car
in the spring,
in Michigan.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry, sex, writing
I really miss it
when it gets to the point
where there are no awkward pauses or fumbling
with wrappers or digging frantically
through bottom drawers
when it gets to the point
where it just turns into the slow shift
high tide rolling in from the depths
a slow soft quiet murmur that
explodes like those fireworks we never
got close enough to
to get burned
just got a little warm
the afternoons on painkillers
outside in the open
wide open
lots of words that burst in the back of throats
that sound like growls
buttons tearing from shirts and hems fraying
the sounds vaguely rising from back
behind the thickness of it all
the widening of eyes pupils
shivers and goosebumps in all the right places
it all happening in all the right places
hands and fingers and lips and teeth and tongues
all the right places
all over
I really miss it
…
this one is unfinished.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry | Tags: 2, 30 Poems in 30 Days, April, bullets, dream, Esme Writes, healing, Poetry, shot, weird, writing
I just remembered
last night
that I was dying
I was shot
but my blood didn’t pour out
as quickly as it should have
I willed it to slow
and I edged away from the ice-grip around my heart
I willed it into resolve
or into healing
or whatever the fuck my body
did
the wound sealed shut
a perfect little pink circle
bullseye
the bullet still lodged
delicately
prodding at my heart
with the coldness of steel or iron
or whatever they make bullets of
next to sweet blood filled
tenderness
I didn’t die
I willed myself
on
that’s how it goes
I guess.
Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry
the rooftops of LA ain’t so high.
they ain’t as high as we, up here
this afternoon
we’re so high the sun’s got problems with us
but he’ll sink down low, sort-of growling
under the wind’s shoulders
we don’t care as long as we’ve got our backs
pressed together
and our palms
pressed to glasses
and that sound when we reach out
with hands
to celebrate feeling
so damn high
higher than this city with its
mountainous embrace and the
highway that sounds like the
Pacific we know is
hunkered not too far off Westward,
with the sun, still slinking and
growling at our star-spun
reeling laughter and voices
that call out
loud enough to drag
a neighbor up to us
she’s pissed but kind-of enchanted
cause she thought our singing was a radio
in someone’s window
And we creep into the shade on the other side
of this roof
empty wine bottles in tow
guitar still going
to say good riddance to the sun
and hello to the past we never shared
together
we don’t care though,
not because we didn’t know each other
then, but because
we’re high,
higher than this whole goddamn city
and we’ve got each other
to press into
Esme Writes. 