This is my 54th Love Poem of the Second.

Today I am going through my things, attempting to organize my life into sidewalk "Free" piles and boxes for storage in preparation for my journey eastward. This process takes forever because every unlabeled box or expanding file turns into an exhumation of former friends, feelings, and, most recently, high school English homework. It takes a keen eye to separate the Crap from the Stuff Worth Saving. I don't write poetry anymore, probably because the years of antidepressants have effectively dissolved my Overly Angsty Bone. But I do enjoy finding and reading my old poems, which were the essence of survival in the hell of high school and teenagerdom. Sometimes they are good for a laugh and a self-shaming, and sometimes I kind of surprise myself with how awesome I once was and how true some of it still rings. Of course, it is not all 100% awesome, nor do I harbor any illusions of literary grandeur. I am attempting to use this blog as a testament to my creative endeavors, so why not invite the past to do some mingling with the present? I consider this a tiny reminiscence, a glimpselet, if you will, into the annals of my formerly creative mind.

I give to you, oh mysterious Narcissus lake that is the Internet, the first in what I think I shall make a regular installment. Behold, below, three specimens of poetic genius (!) representing the personal, the political, and the, well, personal again. (Tip: I think the last one is genuinely the best. I remember the feelings that inspired it so well! [See, this is what happens when I smoke a J in the middle of the day and start feeling sentimental.])

"My 54th Love Poem of the Second."

I am the girl whose spine is made of blue lines
who has red margin eyes and
compares things to spines and eyes most of the time.
I am prone to redundancies and I am not unique
like I thought I was when I was naive.
I am still naive and I cannot be
the bigger person.

I let piles heap up around my feet;
sleep in filth and then complain
that I feel dirty.

My boyfriend is a virgin.
I am not--
and he reminds me of that every time
we speak.

I am the girl who knows that secrets are
small black cavities
that we should always keep in teeth.
I cannot decide if solitude
means the same thing as being lonely.

I used to think I had wings hiding beneath
the bones of my back but now I know
I am nothing that can fly.

Sometimes I think:
"I am nothing."
I am seventeen.
I was born in 1985 and
this is my 54th love poem of the second.

II.

I've got salt crusted onto these white cheeks;
My face, like an illuminated moon,
has been the subject of biology:
I am a melanin study.

They used to ask me,
"Girl, what you mixed with?"
Thick blood and anxiety.
They didn't know my ancestors were evil white men
of the sea,
bearing silver swords
beating hearts
and injustice for centuries.
I am a walking peace treaty.
Just look at me.

I am the seed and the greed of every
European country.
I hear engines racing down California pavement.
On long rides home I wonder
how soon I'd die if I
just sat in the street
and waited.

I've got too many emotions, too many words
but everyone
can say it better.
I stutter. My tongue slips and I remember
third-grade fights with my sister when she
made fun of my lisp.

She was fat then but now I am too.
My thighs are blue
Instead of pink
Stretch marks have torn the flesh and exposed
veins where my slow blood is flowing.

III.

I am the girl who sits in the steam
of the bathtub three times a day.
Something is right for me
Privacy.
It is like an ocean,
but not cold or salty.
I feel my paint chipping.
I can't get up early enough in the morning.

I grew up under the firm lock of
daddy's ideology but now every time I hear
the President talk of God I think
it's bullshit. But I am too afraid to say so
Respect has been branded
in some invisible place, but I can't respect
my nation.

My nation has taught me about abortion
molestation
pornography
and murder.

But that's all okay
I've got skin like lead
I am the girl who waits for a phone call
and ends up dialing instead.

Waiting is endless and I
am a restless girl.
I want pearl earrings and I want to feel pretty;
I am obsessed with vanity.
But I have not discovered her mystery.

I do not understand beauty. It evades me.
I am sick of apathy and of empathy.
I cough deep from lungs under the shower every morning
and something always comes
up.

I wonder what happens when I'm sleeping.
I have dreams where I'm doing drugs and
dying.
I have dreams I can't remember even while
I'm having them.

Jesus is trying to tell me something and I don't even believe in him.


----------
I find this poem equal parts incredible and hilarious. Firstly, I clearly recall writing this during my completely lame, bullshit senior economics class taught by my completely lame, bullshit economics teacher. I think it's funny not only because it's so righteous and so glaringly wanting to be a bad-ass slam poem, but because it totally disproves my family's theory that Berkeley turned me into a liberal. I clearly had some political issues on my pre-college brain, and I don't think they were even vaguely republican. Oh, well.


Where would I be without these
big tall trees conveniently repackaged
and refined into fast food bags soaked with grease,
sick and see-through?

They remind me of my skin with paper veins just below
all that blood surging
so quick
and my economics teacher said once
to a sea of dead eyes, "kids, it should be no surprise,
we live in a fat, fast food society."

A society of subways, instant gratification
cigarettes smoked through the perfect V of gray fingers
painted neat and high heels
1950s Barbie doll physiques,
and street sweepers
homelessness and
homosexuality
anti-depressants and anxious red tongues
gun metal, free speech, blow jobs
white teeth, STDs and
amphetamines
hate crimes, barred windows, fossil fuels
television screens
and sodomy
landfills
and prostitution.
"There is pollution, too,"
she said,
"The sky is sagging and soon, it will
touch the ground,
as fat and heavy as stomachs bearing the weight of
all that fast food."

But where would I be without
the glow of the TV, blue
against the white chipping walls
of my bedroom?

Where would I be without a solution
where can we go with these
potholes in roads and the false notion that
everything is status quo?

It's time to gather up our silicone
our razor wire
our marijuana
our midriffs
our landfills and lipstick
our synthetics
our free speech hiding in sugar rotting cavities
our piercings
our acne
our industry and obesity
in plastic bags and let the ocean swallow the blemish
whole.
so the glow of our society's cleanliness with show
from the great canopy of the big gray sky as it
again begins
to rise.
And we'll be in a society of
alive
and
righteous
instead of a society of drive-thrus
and quick pay, no pain.

But I said, from that
shimmering sea of expressionless stares,
"Your society is more blinding an obstruction than the golden arches,
Your society is a lie,
and I won't
buy it."

And since I'm fond of metaphors, I let her continue.
She said,
"You live in the society of filthy green and
white bread and don't say you've never shed a dollar
into the economy which is raping you silently
and secretly
right beneath your suburban streets."

I don't understand the
economy.
But she told me, "You live in a society where
governmental trust is vague
because the President's face is masked behind the waste of
the cement space every fast food restaurant takes
and this red-and-yellow place is what constitutes
our race.

So when you have
that greasy fast-food bag in between your
white, see-through hands
think about the fact that
it is America in your arteries sending you to
an early death.
All those purple mountains majesty and
amber waves of grain causing
cardiac arrest.
But I just shifted uncomfortably in my plastic desk
and said,
"Where would I be without these biased,
masked, and metaphorical economics lessons?"

--------

Break-up poetry.
At all those poetry readings when we were seventeen,
We composed a secret language to
speak in silence whenever the room was filled with
scars on wrists and souls
"Pain in the rain" and all the rest
of the rhyming redundancies that kept our
eyes rolling.

I would think of speeding down the freeway,
eyes pressed
to the roof of your car, with retinas dilating tiny
stars would begin to spin
in sight and as those broken yellow lines became
one blurred stripe
I'd say,
baby, we are so inspired.

And all this freeway time I've spent
from your house to mine
has given me a million beautiful words
just waiting to slip into verse
and your poetry makes me feel like I'm
spinning out of control
Makes me feel like I'm losing my skin

Then we'd make love with our perfect red lips,
and turn that break-up poetry into comedy
On nights like those, every failed attempt at suicide
became a punch line.

Those were the nights
you'd get up on stage
the object of waiting faces and you'd put that
break-up poetry to shame
because you took each letter of my name and made
it synonymous with
red hearts
rainbows and
bee wings
and you put it so goddamned uniquely that everyone
would turn around just to look at me
gauging my beauty
seeing if I was worthy of words
that didn't quite belong between land and sky
words that split the universe open wide
when you opened your mouth
and my face was inside.
And you recounted every time how
complete I made your life and how
good I made your bed feel when it was quiet,
and there were no lights.
Jaws would drop everywhere,
no eyes rolled
and there were no secret languages of boredom and
annoyance to decode.
Every girl sat on her palms
and let her binder of break-up poetry fall
against her ankles
and from every angle I'd hear
the release of sighs at my perfect boy
pronouncing his syllables of
infatuated joy
with perfect clarity

I'd think,
that's right, bitches,
he's in love with me
and tonight, when the stage shifts to abstract memory
we are going to speed down
dark streets,
evading police, listening to loud pop music
with all the windows rolled down.

He shares that fresh night air with these
hands and eyes and feet
these two eyes and heart that on those nights would beat
so hard I thought it would it explode
right there in my chest,
and cliches were okay back then
because we were poets.

Those nights continued when we'd exchange glances
as teary eyed strangers
confessed the deeply personal emotions
we'd heard quiet throats regurgitate
a million times before.
This break-up poetry
always spilling, slippery, white sheets
spotted with ink.

The unrequited loneliness,
the emptiness just wasn't good enough for you and me,
and when we'd leave we'd
walk holding hands and go to examine
the shadows of the trees and each others' faces
and I remember one time
when you said
"These poetry readings are killing me,"
And then I think you wrote that
in a poem
So now my poetry is quoting your poetry
which seems somehow fitting.

I found that after the majority of those
poetry readings
I was speeding alone down freeways
as black as the sky, the stars were blinding
when tears blurred the dividing lines and tires
swerved to both sides
the miles accumulated over
months of holding hands, sideways glances and
pushing the spedometer to feel romantic.

So now, break-up poetry equals
Saturday mornings when voices
pour through telephones to say
"This just isn't working,"
"This just isn't working for me."
"Your knees under blankets,
those eyes in close proximity,
they have stopped inspiring me."
"There will be no more odes to your
breathtaking beauty."
"40 minutes of gasoline is just too much
for me."

And when heavy tears stained my bedsheets
I thought how
trite break-up poetry might start
inspiring sympathy in me
because all those "honey"s and "baby"s and "lovely"s
have toned my ears to sounds so sweet
and your tongue on
your teeth have made me sting
daily in that place between my ribs
I just got so used to it.

So now, break-up poetry is blooming
up from my gut
so at the next poetry reading
I'll get up on my feet and spew about wrist bleeding
and the expanding void inside of me
the worthlessness of a girl so un-pretty;
how you were the only boy who could ever love me
And how love meant sharing things like
summer sunlight and
new CDs and cones of ice cream and
reality TV and rented movies--
nights after poetry readings that were so freezing
we'd share our skin while we
slid our lids over tired irises and joked about the
pseudo-talented poets,
their sad tales of masochism.
Our laughter would ring up loudly from our stomachs.