one of my favorites.

i'd fall in love with you,

if you would beat these people out of me.

-buddy wakefield.

pearl (final copy)

Written as a part of the IGNITE! Spoken Word Mentorship.  Performed with Jasmine Harvey.  Green: Jasmine.  Blue: Me.  Red: Both.

What do I do?

In your family, the definition of a tragedy is when bone crushing is involved.  Something like a drunk driver and a little old lady.  Something like a car jacker and a family minivan.  Something, something like a newly licensed driver, losing control and spinning into a tree.  The compressing of a body- like an unwanted vehicle, crushed as easy as hearts. The sudden melting of marrow, spreading of soul onto bark like butter and toast.  Glass attacking the canvas of their face like an angry artist good. 

When you tell me your secrets, this is what your voice sounds like.

Did you see it coming?

Your older sister thought that when romance was finally brought up, boys would be involved.  I picture you in the car with her.  Asking her to please not/don’t tell your/our mom and dad as if this was the moment when you threw all your eggshell bones into one basket of a closet as if there is no turning back now, and you wonder-

Growing up in a home with a bible of morals, how could i end up as broken as a rib cage after a crucifixion, when I was raised to be as sturdy as a cross. 

Was there a point when you noticed your joints were bending too far?  A morning when you woke up a little more crooked than usual? A morning when you woke up, covered in the aftermath of your carcrash of a sexuality. 

Surely, we are both searching verses for the perfect answer.  Psalm 139:13 says that he/ you created every part of you/me; he/you put you/me together in you/my mother's womb.  Did he plan on the shin splints that would show up in seventh grade, the ones that would turn into broken legs?  Did he plan on me pulling at skin, until I found answers?  An orientation so crooked, surely not even a mother could love it.  

Maybe it’s just a phase?

How long does a phase last?

After you tell me about coming out to your sister, I face the reality that there is nothing I/you can say.  You tell me that this is your/my life.  You/I don't expect anyone to help you/me with it. 

I thought I could never be more caught by surprise than then.

I never thought I could be as feline in the fast track of your vehivle death trap as when I didn’t know what to say.  Caught between religious and reassuring.   Never thought it could get worse than not having the right answers when your car crash tragedy of a life comes to me and asks what do I do? 

I know this will send me to hell, but I swear to God it’s worth a few fourth-degree burns.  So put down your bible, and listen to your skeleton, it is closer to your heart than anyone can claim to be.  I will never know how to answer your body of questions, but I hear that the closets in this city, they’re big enough for two good.  One skeleton, and one friend to make it a little more comfortable in there.

By listening, and staying.

anthony

thought it would be interesting to post one of my first slam pieces.  i wrote this almost exactly two years ago- it's crazy, the difference I can see.  holy moly.  

Your mangled limbs

Like misplaced puzzle pieces

Awkwardly strung together

Makes it difficult for us to believe

You're just sleeping.

Could it be that we're just dreaming?

Because if that's so,

We'd like to wake up now.

The wrinkles on your green polo shirt

Tells the story of inebriated bar fights

Before you passed out

and the purple liquor and fist induced

Bags beneath both your eyelids

Suggest that when you wake up

You wont remember much more

Than the taste of ice cold vodka shots

As they cascaded down your throat.

I wish I could hug you and I wish I could hold you

And I wish I could tell you I understand

That to you, this addiction is a sick love affair

And you've always seen yourself to be

A hopeless romantic.

I wish I couldSmooth down your hair

From flying in seven different directions

And brush the dust and the lint

From your faded, over worn, two sizes too large sweater

And tell you it's alright

Because someone out there still loves you.

If I was the daughter

Of that seemingly strikingly beautiful young woman you met in college

Before you dropped out

While you were asleep on the couch

I wish I could play connect the dots with the freckles

Scattered across your nose and cheeks

Making lasso shapes

So for mere moments

We could tie down this innocence. 

initial writing assessment (eleventh grade)

I took this really cool course in 11th grade called "Contemporary English".  You basically learn all the thing you have to in English, but through Hip Hop and urban culture.  Coolest ever.  This was the first assignment I completed.  The italics are supposed to be the mirror speaking.  (:

Today is Tuesday. I think.

It doesn’t matter what Tuesday it is, exactly; in what month it is, in what year it is, comfortably and normally, nestled (however, I will tell you that my sixteenth birthday is supposed to be somewhere in the near future). And you know, the fact that it was Tuesday, doesn’t even really matter. Nothing matters. None of these words are important, so I would much rather you just put this pile of wasted trees down, instead of wasting your time labeling me with “Teenage Angst”. All this is is black on white, a filler of blank space. Lord knows, these days, all my life has been is blank space; everything melds together, repetitive and in routine, with little-to-no surprises. All this is, is self-medicating. I once heard that trees have ears, but I’ve never once heard of a Spruce with a mouth, so I figure that this is the only safe way. The only secure way. The only way.

I will always remember the first day that I met her. Her family had just moved here, and I was the first thing she saw.
Who would have though a relationship could take such a turn? There were no signs; I never could have guessed where this was going. It wasn’t something that was immediate, like a flick of the light switch, turning our room from night to day. It was gradual, like our light bulb, dying, from the second she twist it into its home. I guess it’s kind of that way with everything, don’t you think..? We’re all dying, from the second we’re twisted into our homes. From our first breaths. From the first seconds our eyelids open, to expose our minds to color, to expose our minds to truth.
Every obstacle I’ve come to approach in the last 6 months has been my enemy. Anything in the last 6 months that has approached me has been like an enemy. I’ve somehow managed to find the negativity in everything, as if there is no positivity in existence.

It only took glances to trigger my change. It started with flicks of the eyes surrounding me, and turned into all of the whispers, giggles, et cetera, making home in my brain the idea of it all being aimed towards me.

After that, everything’s a blur, like I was knocked to the ground. I don’t remember anything in between. But I seldom leave my room now, and the only thing I ever really look at is my ceiling; my ceiling can’t talk, can’t look back. My ceiling can’t hurt me.

Now, she seldom leaves her bed. She’s the only thing that I ever see, and while her state saddens me to incredible heights, I can’t look away. I’m locked in, unable to turn in another direction, stiff as a mirror And she’s rubbing off on me; every time she stands before me, I am her reflection, only displaying to her what she’s shown me. Melancholic, and silent. Regretful, as I always tried to show the truth of what she truly was, but I could never find the means to personify myself so I could express it to her in words. Her view of the truth was always different from mine. It used to be buried, deep beneath the thick wall that was her skin. But she’s now dug so far beneath, that anyone who catches a single glimpse of her will understand what her perception of the truth is. No double-takes needed.

I have decided that today is the day. To others, it’s like I’ve been in vacation for the past few days. No one sees me, my parents don’t even come to check on me, knowing they’ll receive no response. I’m the only one who sees myself, through the surface of my mirror, as smooth as still water. But I want to make it disperse, the water, the mirror, the image, all of it.

I can see something in the way that she looks at me. It’s different. Almost filled with relief, it seems. I take in as much as I can, committing it to memory. Maybe this is happiness. Neither of us has seen that on her face in so long, it would be hard to tell.
So, dear friends, dear family, please know this is not your fault. Some could say it was all me, including myself. I’d hate to place the burden of blame upon someone.

I think that if I hold it in my eyes, tightly enough, I’ll be able to present it to her again, someday, when she really needs it.
Everything reaches a point where it is deemed unsalvageable by the universe. The light bulb in my bedroom burnt out a week ago. I haven’t found the means to replace it, or the odd hope people had in me, to try and will it back to life, knowing it would be an impossible feat. I barely even noticed, to be quite honest. Night and day will fade in and out as they do, and I shouldn’t try to control it. This is why I was always a fan of natural light. It’s gradual, not immediate. Slow, and as it should be. People are always trying to control the time of day, turning day to night, or night to day, with just the flip of a switch. There are some things that just can’t be controlled. And then there are some that can be controlled, but shouldn’t be.

Suddenly, the light overtakes her face, like a tsunami. She is overjoyed, and I have not seen her look at me with such happiness since six months and a day ago. I savor it, like rations on a slave’s taste buds. Try to cradle it, as to not let it get damaged.
I would like you to know, friends, that in my last moments, I did not feel pain.

Even more suddenly, the sheet that once coated her mattress is covering the glass of my face.
I was overcome with relief.

It does not matter what the last sight to my eyes was, so much as what it wasn’t.

And just like that, the last thing I ever saw was night.
Do not worry, for it was quick, and painless.

Like the flick of a switch.
Like the flick of a switch.

bus ride I

they sound so uncomfortable leaving your mouth, those words.
they sound so uncomfortable.
a little naked, perhaps.  a little empty.
like maybe that wasn't all of what you wanted to say.
maybe your single statements were parts of the biggest families of abusive parents.
maybe they were the oldest, the first one born into your body of thought.
maybe they ran away, too distracted by the optimism of free limbs-
                       maybe your dream children keep on getting pushed into dream jails or something.
they must be mourning their younger siblings. 
what dark corners are they hiding in?
how small have they shrunk themselves?
will freedom ever tempt their feet in the same way?
will they experience the ehiliration of letting your stiff spine unravel, like a scroll, for the first time,
before like animals, the next catch, they are netted?
have they heard about their older, braver brothers?
of the fate that is surely growling right outside of your lips, their window?
was freedom too tempting?
did they think they could escape the beast if only they made themselves as frail
as a whisper?
they sound so uncomfortable leaving your mouth, those words. 
young children, tricking themselves into thinking monsters don't exist,
when you can hear them right outside your window.

a little blurb written after reading jodi picoult's handle with care: http://www.jodipicoult.com/handle-with-care.html

more information on osteogenesis imperfecta here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteogenesis_imperfecta

You are half the skeleton, and twice the heart.
And your family is breaking so often that your breaks seem only like bends.
Like when they sign your casts, they're really wanting to put themselves inside of the plaster.
Your bowing bones are all like branches.
We are all birds, flocking to you with a wingspan of pity.
All cooing over your clipped wings.
Over everytime you lost a little too much feather.

Gravity is always getting you down,
but you swear you never forget what flight feels like.
Even on the days when your chicken legs are weighed down with iron.
Even on the days when everything is coated in clay.
You always have the most beautiful song.

Turn Off The Lights

January-

As I write this, it is raining.  It must be cold.  I can't tell.  I blame it on the weather.  A snow storm of shivers frosting their way up my spine.  Sometimes- I think there is a winter evening resting against the naked inside of my body.

February-

No body will blink an eye if you say that you hate Valentine's Day.  Make something up about how you think it's silly that the world has to assign a day to value loved ones when it should be always.
No one will guess it's the loneliness you aren't fond of.

March-

You are only a teenager.  You are only a silly woman's youth.
Think nothing of the way you pull at your skin like a reflex.  Think nothing of the way your mind clucks at the mirror.  Think nothing of the way you only ever want to sleep for weeks on end.  Think nothing of yourself.  Think nothing.  This is normal.

April-

If anyone was to ask what hating yourself is like,
Tell them it is being able to appreciate beauty because you always have the ugliest thing to compare it to.  The taste of copper pennies hiding in your cheeks, tin foil resting on all your fillings.  Tell them, that hating yourself is a finger jammed so far down your throat that you can't remember if you were aiming for an eating disorder or suicide.
Bulimia, or suffocation.

May-

I often wish for comas.
Sometimes I bump my head on purpose, just to see how closely God has been listening to my prayers lately.

June-

I am in the back seat of the car.  My older brother is driving, telling his friend about the biggest cliff in Haida Gwaii.  About the sharp rocks underneath.  He's using big hand motions, when they should be on the wheel. He's laughing- I do so occasionally, so he doesn't look into the rear-view mirror and see me curls into the corner of the leather, as if bracing my body for the blow.  My mind is a police scene- blood, sharp rocks, uncontrollable.  My mind is uncontrollable, and I am throwing myself.  Over, and over, I am throwing myself.  I can feel the rocks plunge through the surface of my skin like a diver.  I can't breathe.  I am throwing myself and I can't stop.
I hope we crash.

July-

Smile as pretty as you are capable.  Wipe that suicide off your face.  Everyone can see what you are thinking.  You are as easy to read as an open diary.  They will turn your pages, crack your spine, read you for all that you are.  Hide you between the mattresses.  Throw you into the fire when no body is home

August-

Do not think of all the reasons you could possibly be unwanted.
How your hair doesn't curl quite right.  How you are always filling the silence that everyone is savoring.  How there is constantly too much of you in all the wrong places.
Instead, turn off the lights, when you shower, and forget why you do it.  Instead, turn off the lights and try, to let someone, somehow, love you.  Feel the hopefulness of being wanted, even if only ever in the dark.  When someone tries to touch you, do not flinch away.  Welcome it as if they just might hold the savior in their fingers.  Instead, turn of the lights, and remember who you were.

September-

I tell all the internet forums, that the only reason I haven't killed myself yet, is a fear of the pain.
No one says anything.
They have seen this all before.

October-

On the day you realize your mind has left you, take it like a car you saw coming.  Like you are the only one who survived the wreck.  Do not sob for your lost ones; be grateful for this sudden silence.  Lie on the side of the road- half of your face still on the windshield of your realization and wait.
In this world, you are so small, and helpless.
Someone will put you out of your misery.
You broken legged-horse.  You brain-dead deer.

November-

The only reason I haven't killed myself yet is a fear of the pain.
Like an answer to prayer,
I remember the sleeping pills in the medicine cupboard, and suddenly, I am so tired.
I want so badly just to sleep.

December-

closet.

when you step out of your suicidal closet.
fold the doors back like last seasons laundry,
everyone will already be wearing you funeral on their shoulders,
look at you like you are already a ghost,
like all the thin parts of you are taking over-
you'll be about as thick skinned as your last attempt at a poem.
everyone will take you as a chance to be a messiah.
everyone will try to save you
to feel the christ in themselves,
feel the cross in their back bones.
their empty prayers will cover you like a wool blanket.
their preaching will gently press your eyes closed.
when you make the mistake of letting your diary entries spill from your mouth like a mudslide,
when home is the last place that feels like one,
when you have to use your depression to convince everyone of the savior inside of themselves,
remember your hiding place.
there will always be a darkness waiting to fold you back into itself,
cradle you like a mother,
wrap around you like an oversized-sweater,
the edges creased,
so they're tidy for when you finally decided to come back.

in memoriam (final copy)

lyrics (in italics) curtesy of Mike Johnston.

My mind's a graveyard, 
I will bury you.
Burn you from my memory,
Ash like your last cigarette.

You are the only person, that does not feel your death date hanging heavy on your shoulders.
A heart as hard as tombstones, you do not realize you are digging your own grave.
Your chest cavity is as empty as your casket, waiting to be filled.
Daddy,
your eyes are a cemetery.
I get frightened like ghosts when I see myself in them,
a mirror image- we have the same irises.  They are brown like dirt.

When I see you now, you are slouching.
Your skin is hanging from your skull like bodies from their nooses.
You are hardly thirty six, and your face, it looks like compost.
You wear this addiction like a winding sheet,
rest so easy in it- like it's your coffin.

Not a corpse quite yet, I see a cadaver in you.
I see a carcass in the back of your throat, in your rare, haunting moments of laughter.
We all wonder-
Just how bad a sickness has become,
When a father is everything he tells his daughter to stay away from.
When he laughs at the accusation like it's some kind of joke.
Well, I think it's funny
that any chance of my childhood is buried 72 inches beneath your feet.
I wonder-
does it feel the vibrations when you slap your knees?
You are not a comedian.
You are a human scarecrow-
and your smile is decomposing.

This is the reality:
you will lay in a shallow grave.
You will rot at an average rate.
Maggots devouring your eyes, earthworms building a home out of your insides.
And when the last person who knows your name, exhumes your skeleton,
The bones will be empty, like that of a birds.
They will fill them with the memory of you.
And this- this will be the emptiest fullness anyone has ever felt:
Being haunted by your own self.

Everytime you look in the mirror
you wonder, for a brief moment, how you will die.
Old age.  Cancer.  Natural disaster.
We all know the answer, but we're too afraid of the truth.
You are killing yourself.
A suicide of magic, disappearing in a cloud of smoke.
You leave no nicotene scented legacy.
As a daughter, I am the only thing you have to leave behind,
and you did that a long time back.
You aren't even dead yet, and you are already haunting me with your absence.

My mind's a graveyard,
I will bury you.
Burn you from my memory,
Ash like your last cigarette.

So when you finally stop breathing,
and the smog that covers your entire city lightens a lot more than one would think.
When the autopsy comes back,
when it says there were holes in your lungs, brain, and beneath your ribs.
When you are cremated,
remains of a body that was one part animal, one part ashtray.

I will be the one, Daddy,
who packs all of your belongings,
as if to make you leave,
a second time.

final copy of kindling.

the burning is still here
the burning is still here.
still stings like sparks.
still makes itself known when ever my heart beats.
pulse
in my wrists.
the burning is still here.


and i caught them once.
my hands
cupped like a fireplace.
shaking like fear, but not moving like they need this.
like this position is still routine.
like they need to find familiarity to cover them like a shock blanket
before they go to sleep.
and that will only come from flames.
that will only come from remembering.


back when momma's boyfriend
would take our hands, tender, in his,
and curl our bones like burning paper.
set his anger aflame beneath us,
like all the rage that man had was crammed into his zippo.
he was all fire.
his mouth was a chimney.
his knuckles made of flints.
stinging like sparks striking logs


i remember him like a house fire,
hitting each family member like we were curtains.
like we're shot glasses of vodka, flammable at best,
like we're all trees to him.
my momma was only kindling to him.
my little brother was only kindling to him.
i was something so much bigger.


he was so much bigger than me.
he was firewood to last a whole winter, and i was only a sapling then.
now, I’m left as barren, as scorched as the aftermath of arson.
left a pyrophobic.
left with hands like a prayer.
praying to the sun god,
begging, please Ra, make this inferno stop.
i am too young for cremation.


i caught myself once.
remembering his face.
red as fire.
make my heart beat faster.
feel my pulse in my wrists.
hands like bricks.
cupped like a fireplace.


they used to be as black as coal, as cracked as the sound of matches.
still as delicate as ash.
my flesh doesn’t scream anymore.
but the burning is still here.
the burning is still here.
he will always be here.

Note to self-

remember that you are a poem waiting to happen.
but don't settle for any old author,
            don't lay yourself down like paper to the first person
            that goes as far as picking up a pen.

"listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door. let's go." e.e. cummings

At the beginning of May I tried really hard to write atleast 6 times a week.  5 out of 6 times, I didn't get anything good out of it, but this was half-decent.  It has an unfinished feel to it, but I don't know if I'll pursue it.  I kind of like it right where it is.  (:  

listen;
there's a hell of a good universe next door. 
let's go.
are you not tired?
are you not weary of the bed you have built for your bones?
are you not aching to stretch your fingers farther than the fence of your skin gloves?
listen;
there's a hell of a good universe next door.
let's go. 
there are no stars in this cosmos that are good enough for you.
your shoulders deserve every grain of a galaxy that cannot be contained here.

you look like a black hole in that universe of a bedsheet, sometimes.
your eyes look a lot like saturn's rings this past week.
there are 10 asteroids between your breast and your hip.
there are 10 comet tails,
ten shooting stars, fading celestial fires,
painting their tragedies on your sides.
your constellations are fading.
orion is becoming looser around your waist.

Sonata

I wrote this piece as I neared the end of my time with in the IGNITE! Spoken Word Mentorships, where I worked with a bunch of amazing poets, including my mentor, Brendan McLeod for four months.  This piece is actually written and performed to a piece of music by an amazing pianist (Irene Chou).  She played it backwards.  I can't even play it front... wards.  Impressive.

Enjoy! 

All of the best musicians have it inside of them.


Beethoven was deaf.
It’s documented that at the age of twenty the man sawed the legs off of his own piano,
So he could feel the vibrations through the floor.
He wrote
His entire ninth symphony this way.


I have found nothing more sorrowful
Than the world ripping music from a man
Who has sewn it into himself so tightly?
A man who believes that if he can just keep his fingers moving
He can hold onto himself
A little longer.


Children,
You are pianos.
There are chipped keys in all our toes,
If you ever wonder why we sound so off-key, every time we speak.
In all of us,
Our footsteps started out as pristine ivory.
Our legs were made of steel strings.
Some of us-
Let our hammerhead experiences hit ‘em too hard.
If you ever wonder why we go shakey in the knees so quick-
We’re still trying to be arrangements-
Letting everyone else conduct us.
Some of us-
Went about being instruments all wrong.
We’ve been letting people play us.
We only ever wanted to be masterpieces.
Got too caught up in the melody of things to realize we already were.
Sometimes
An organ is most beautiful in its silence.


Children,
Don’t ever lose your music.
There are so many hymns we could have carved into our bones.
There are so many anthems we could have created.
We have grown so tone-deaf.
We’re always sounding like the tune-up
Before the treasure.
We’re always stumbling with our sustaining pedals
When we really wanted to dance with the ones that soften everything around us.


Children,
Don’t ever lose your music.
You are all composers.
You are all writing a sonata of a generation.
These days,
Everything is far too silent.
Pianos,
Staccato the shit out of your entrance.
Make it clear,
You are a messiah of an orchestra,
You are the savior of our songs.


Children,
Just keep your fingers moving.
Maybe you can hold onto yourselves a little while longer than we did.
Fingers raw, ears popped.
Tried to out-fiddle the devil,
But we only ever out-played ourselves.

a video of Kindling (formerly titled "Gloves In The Summertime") from Van Slam last month!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EmlOp8us84&list=UUuzKs6-vrtnTPHacAP5ywZQ&index=3&feature=plcp