I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry(8)
I’m quiet in a car ’cause I was on another planet.
Felt like he didn’t listen and I couldn’t understand it.
It was more than different languages.
I took it all for granted.
The summer killed me, skin was crawling, couldn’t stay still.
A suicide
inside my body
(went onstage still).
I hear it echo
through the arena, “Du er
et minne.”
AMERICAN WOMAN
My insecurity
hurting me
all these boys gonna flirt with me But my head down
on a mattress
famous actress
and she skrrrt’n me.
There’s too much space between her skirt and
me.
“Let’s take some tabs of acid at Lake Placid,”
I say certainly.
Still too afraid to touch her but it’s
urgin’ me.
She says, “You’re staring and quite frankly shit is irking me.”
I’m feeling hatred from the waitress as she’s serving me She thinks I’m spoiled probably thinks I’m some suburban me.
Thinks I’m a child of a Money-hungry
Prideful country
Grass is green
And is always sunny Hands all bloody
Tastes like honey But we’re finding it hard to leave.
I got no space in my memory Just some pics
of a friend and me I got a mailbox
and a mansion
But no letters that you send to me That house has haunted me for centuries Should take a rock and throw it at the windows but they bend for me I want to break some.
Ache some.
Feel like I’m awake some.
Meet with all my issues And then
finally
handshake ’em.
And eventually when you tell me all the reasons that you’re leaving me I have to hide them so the people still believe in me.
THE FUNERAL
I finally killed my pride.
I saw you yesterday
and felt a funeral inside.
Like someone I love died, and they asked if I wanted to see the body.
I know it won’t be the same.
It will hurt me so badly I’ll choke on your name.
But how could I let this go?
I love you more than I love anybody.
This must be a nightmare it couldn’t be a dream.
I’ll watch you in the shower I’ll rub all your limbs clean.
I’ll rinse off all the wounds we caused when we were being mean.
I’ll dry you off and hold you and kiss you in between.
Your friends will all be happy and mine will wonder why.
Your mother will start to worry why you made your lover cry.
My father will be angry and you’ll be left
alone.
HEREDITARY
I don’t look much like my mother But I know my kid will look just like me.
With eyes that gleam and razor teeth, And Jordan 1s on two little feet.
I’m impatient and passive-aggressive compulsive
obsessive
But mostly poetic I’m whatever I’ve seen on a movie screen I grew up banging on a pinball machine I spent a lifetime trying to wake up and be mean.
But I will
never
believe
That I belong to the side with the guillotine.
(You should eat the rich Even if that includes me) I still run
on gasoline
But my insides are gooey
Like gelatine I’ve got:
Cellophane in the place of a windowpane
A mixtape where I used to keep my brain
Daydreams running like an Amtrak train
I’m sunbathing in the door of an aeroplane.
Imagine if I weren’t always busy all the time.
I would love to get a tan line and call you from a landline and maybe
hold
your
hand,
crash-land
In a land mine.
DRAMA QUEEN
Can you hear the silence of being alone?
The deafening stillness of everything you’ve ever known?
Put on pause like a VHS tape A full-on heartbreak
And you whine
and cry
and it echoes through the static of a television set.
Can you see the darkness of this void?
Bewildering emptiness of knowing that he had a choice?
Pause
like a checked cassette tape An empty slate
And you scream and cry and it shakes through the static of the radio waves.
Can you feel the fabric of being alone?
The rush against your skin that vibrates all along your bones?
Pause like a broken zipper A sterling silver whisper And you shake and shiver from a velvet shimmer (will you pull it down just a sliver?) Loneliness never made for a good song You’ve been singing on your own all along
Writing records in your bedroom since 15
Drama queen
Well you’re older now it seems Loneliness never made for a movie No blockbuster Oscar, no silver screen beauty Behind a Technicolor lens since 19
Drama queen
Well you’re older now it seems Why is everyone so mean?
TERTIARY