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Freewrite 3.15.13

He came back home
without the arms he
took with him

without the grasp that made
his classmates mock
elect him the “go getter”
of 2008

when his promises
when his love you’s
when his insults
lost their follow-through
lost their embrace
lost their bite

he barked himself raw
threw fear and anger and desperation
at everything he had ever covered in smiles
until he was hoarse
until he was little more than
sapwood wrapped
around and
around an
empty chest cavity

he didn’t notice himself
becoming a tree,
hollow, with no roots
just cell walls and shaky
foundations

he would blame the war for taking
his hands, every time he shook
yours

alive is a noun
living is a verb

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Haiku +Freewrite 3.9.13

She left me sleeping
in thoughts she feared would never
survive her ride home.

(I still wake up and recognize them sometimes)
(lying on the pillows I don’t use)
(glistening, laying deadstill)
(in the same spot where they fell or jumped or were pushed)
(I can’t help but wonder if they could leave)
(but stay here to show me something)

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Freewrite (2.5.13)

Sometimes I play word games
while I wait for sleep to open it’s door.
I’ll take each letter of the alphabet,
stand behind it, make it megaphone and
fling names out at my ceiling
listen to it echo back
some mixture of surprise and rejection,
like it’s new here
like we haven’t played this game
every night since la la’s stopped coming easy;
like it’s never heard me lonely before.
names of objects or people that I could put
on the other side of this bed
in hopes of helping it with it’s empty…

Alicia, Brittani, Che Guevara Biographies, a Double-Barrell Shot Gun, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” x Jonathan Safran Foer, French Press Coffee Maker, Golf Clubs (Never Used), Hookah and/or Hennessy, Insomnia (I’m not sure why her parents named her that), Jennifer Lopez in 1998, Kelli, Laundry — All of it, Macallan:18, Single-Malt, New Socks (which are one of the best things on earth), an Oversized Teddy Bear (you can only have this until the next time someone walks in your room, at which point you have to act like this was a surprise gift for them), Personal journals dating back to 2002, Questionable (okay, creepy) Lianne La Havas Stitch-work mural, Rihanna, Selected writings of Warsan Shire, Technics SL-1200 Turntables, U-Boat Replica (not to scale), Venus Williams’ Sister, Where’s Waldo Book Collection and Where the Wild Things Are and “What is the What” by Dave Eggers and most things Walt Whitman ever wrote, Xylophones because nothing starts with X…

It’s actually a pretty fun game…
until I get to Y.

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Haiku+ 2.4.13

her fingerprints loose
my grip on throttles; fast things
become less needed

(when her hands are on mine)
(she throws her voice)
(torque and twist and turnt down off full tilt.)
(full gas tanks, suggestive winks, and blown)
(kisses to highway lane dividers)
(turn to bedtime stories and)
(a chance to share)
(all the books my father read to me)

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Bypass (fragment)

Ears turnt; stethoscope

Presst against hardwood waiting

For your hind leg to drop

along with that other shoe

and a sans-stiletto,

broke-heel,

broke-dream,

broke-beat,

kind of silent

that will drag in behind it

like big game carcasses after a hunt

like a building in a war zone

post-evacuation; pre-bombing

walls still warm from all of the

things that hearts can do

when nurtured and motivated

and the sounds, like

what’s heard in seashells

circulation turning to echoes

of doors closing on their way out

spent so much time waiting for you

to leave,

that I never noticed

you staying.

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