Poetry

I eat words and spit them back out. 

I have always been told I was a good writer. I used to keep journals in elementary school and crankiing out those three-point essays in high school was no big deal to me. But I joined a creative writing class in 11th grade as a blow-off class. and quickly learned that I loved to write poetry. 

I was not good. I was not experienced. I am still not. I simply tell my stories. I continue to do that to this day. Here are a few of my poems-some are edited and published, while others are completely unedited, raw and need real work. But I write. I write for me. I write for others, in the hopes that they can understand what I feel like. I write because I have something to say. I write because I love to write, even though it is one of the hardest things I ever do.  It is a craft that I continually work on. I have to write-it is something in my blood, something deep down in the marrow of my bones.

Ernest Hemingway once said all he wanted was to write one true sentence. That sounds very simple, but when you think about it as a writer yourself, it is incredibly difficult. Because while I might interpret a situation in one way, another may interpret it another way. I also do not even know what is completely true to me. Who can? But I write from the guise of my own experience. It's all I can do.

The following are poems that are actually published and ones that are not yet-that are still unedited, rough and extremely raw. Please be patient with me.

I wrote this in about five minutes after it had happened to me, which I describe in the poem. It is very stream of consciousness. I did not edit it at all before it got published.

She does not know what it's like

to smell the animals dying. 

My mother knows only calendars,

clocks,  

kitchen timers, 

common

sense. 

hating my sullen stillness 

the silence of my hands,  

she forces me out of bed again today

ripping off covers

tearing open blinds

with clenched-dishwasher fists

letting in the lethargic light

ruining all hopes of swimming 

in the dark waters of dreaming 

I do not blame her,

though. 

She has never seen the tired Sun pack up at eight in the morning,

with a gaunt shuffle, saying

So long, let's try again tomorrow,

tipping his hat

when everything is so slow

sluggish, thick

that breathing is tiresome 

inhaling humid Arkansas summersodden air 

through a wet blindfold. 

my cicada sins are 

crawling up my legs 

and all over my arms

gnawing at the skin in-between my fingers

nipping at my heels

shadows that follow even when there is no sun. 

Now there's my sister

with her Pinterest perfect house,

law degree, 

sensible shoes

home cooked supper

beer, pretties they bought from the antique store,

the television blaring,

uproarious laughter,

"who are these people,"

I ask. 

All I want to do is be alone 

in my room

in my head

to try to make some sense out of myself. 

I wanted to try to write a positive poem, as it is so much easier to write about painful experiences. This poem is about the first ride I took with my ex-boyfriend. It came out in literally three minutes and has no edits. It is one of my favorites. I also wanted it to be a short and succinct as possible (thus the references to Pound & Hemingway-both known for their brief sparse style), because brevity is not my strong suit.

If I Were Hemingway

Or maybepound 

I would tell you how

The suncircles on the 

afternoon trees that smiled

Unfurled the poisonedpetals 

of my foreignforged fingertips. 

Twitching to the rhythm 

of a thousand dead men

dancing in the street. 

When you held my hand. 

Another published work about my sister:

For my sister: Sarah

My sister cried in the hallway

while a kind black lady with soft skin

and a gentle voice prayed with her

holding her shoulders-slight

as the nurse bathed me

teeth clenching on pink sponges

my cracked lips begging for water,

for mercy. 

Limplagous legs

spread open like

the Japanese fans

we played with as children 

my heart beating to the rhythm of the vent

in and out, in and out

let's play the dying game

I'll take the lead.

Later, when I was in a space

somewhere between the end

of the beginning 

I asked her, "Does my hair look like Natalie Portman's?"

You know, like in V for Vendetta 

she knew I was still there

spread out stiff, 

swaddled in hospital gowns

my father's prayers

She came to me every day

bringing me pretties

little lotions,

bright tank tops

everything so colorful, garish

against the prison grey light. 

painting the space

in-between my body

and my head

with its right ear

dangling down

I hadn't yet seen myself 

faces warned me

it was better

not to ask. 

When we got home,

we went shopping for wigs

my old hair in a plastic bag

somewhere in the closet

she covered the scars of my crucifixion  

so Michael wouldn't notice

the first time he saw me

after the carnage

a Hungarian wasteland 

dead birds on the windowsill 

"I think he should see them so he'll know how bad it was."

"Was?" 

I wanted to ask. 

Twice in the night,

she would come to turn

my frailbonesbitter

turning on music

to drown out the sound

of my nighttime nightingale tears

The prayers to a god I hated 

stroking softly,

with lily-petaled fingertips

my face

my neck

 

I never saw her cry 

it was just the story I heard

as hard to believe 

as a rhinestone-dragon tale 

I was told nobody, 

not even the rain

has such small hands. 

But e.e. never met my sister. 

That last line was based on the first poem I ever loved, by my favorite poet, e.e cummings. 

Here it is:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me,i and my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands. 
Beautiful, write? Catch my clever pun? :)
And here is an example of how messy poems are-at least mine are-before I work on them:
You plead not guilty to all charges against you. You forget that four months can seem like a lifetime to me.  You forget that I can still taste your kiss in the mornings when I wake up alone again. 

You forget the words you fed me.
 
Kiss me. Beautiful. Again. Now. Please. Stay. 

Lips pomegranates, fingers peeling petal by petal the magnolias of our mouths. The way my name was soft inside your throat. The sky a carousel of buttercream and azaleas pouring down our cheeks, covering the red veins down your back, my broken teeth. You forget the tangerine rinds of my thighs and what it is over parted flesh becoming. Belly kisses, your bare hands calloused, tracing the tears down my cheek.

I fuck for the speechless. You fuck for the screams. 

You forget that hospitals and home smell the same to me now. Like blood. Like metal. Like alone. You forget that the do not resuscitate sign still hangs above my bed--a warning for anyone trying to save me. 

Your mouth is the burial ground and the battle field.
 Most war zones avoid being loved 
but these lips remember your bloody kind of sacred. I love you for the home you made of freckled shoulders, open mouths, piano fingers, safety. And I hate you for the way you tore it down, pieces of our ghosts still there in the spaces between us. You didn't even have the decency to let it burn. 

You forget when I scan my body, I still see yours. You forget to stay out of my poems, out of my head. You forget that everything isn't about you. 

You forget that I can't. 

I hate writing. And I love it. It is so difficult to explain the dichotomy. But for now, I rest. I realize that I will never be the best and I will never be the worst. I can only tell my story and that is good enough for me.

Love,

MourningGlory

PS. Ernest Heminway also said, "the first draft of anything is shit," which gives me great comfort. 

What is your favorite poem of mine out of these?

Once again thank you so much for reading!