Poems from My Day (6-29)

when everything’s in order, it’s for sure i’m a mess

1:
Wow. His wife looks at lot like his mom.
Just younger, and a bit prettier.
I should stop noticing things like this.
On a list of things you can’t un-learn
The oedipal complex is has to be near the top.

2:
When I still believed in heaven,
I worried I would become bored after a while.
A physics teacher at my school gave a morning assembly about how if God could create things you can’t imagine, you’d never tire of thoughts.
That was nice, calming, wholesome.
It made me think of what God would have up there that would be interesting.
I always hoped it was a big list of statistics about you.
This is how many total hours you spent brushing your teeth,
Or
This is how many total lemons you’ve seen in your lifetime.
Or
This is how many close scrapes to death you had but didn’t realize.
I’d enjoy reading that.

3:
She would bake scones if she had the time.
I guess I do have a lot of time,
But I think, it’s one of those things, that if you’re busy, you get more done.
I sit and stew,
Sitting next to carrots doesn’t help me avoid my doubts.
I wish I was worse at baking so I wasn’t so fat.

4:
God everywhere here is pretty.
The town dump is pretty.
Even in the cloud overhangs in dull, steel gray.
I feel exotic.
But I have to be careful to remember that is this normal for a lot of people. I’m outside.

5:
Okay doctor. I know I’ve gained the weight back that you asked me to lose.
Three pounds a month. To be healthy, needed to go.
I know it. I’m sorry.
But I got my fifteen minutes in today, and I’m hoping to go bike riding on a regular basis once I get a helmet and a hex wrench.
I’ll get it together.
I’m tired of my roommate using me as a comparison to make herself feel better.

6:
I’m screwing everything up, and
I don’t have the emotional energy to talk myself out of it right now.

7:
What am I going to do after this nice, by-pass year is over?
I’ll go back where I know the roads and bird calls.
No, I’ll go live with the best carpenter in the United States and learn how to use my hands.
Maybe I’ll take another marketing job and sell some more soul. Five cents a memory.
All over again, it’s my worst fear. Directionless and skill-less and dream-less.

8:
You’re a bully to push this on me, this summer brew in an orange label.
It hurts that I have to explain, that you can’t understand. Even if that’s not fair to you.
Let me drink half of my beer, so I don’t have to start going to AA, let me
Let myself leave half on the table. To prove to this body I don’t have a problem.

Poems from My Day (6-28)

what’s my sin? i try so hard.

1:
My brain woke up today.
There are so many things to keep in mind when I’m having a conversation.
Or telling people what to do.
I can’t keep it straight.
Then I over eat to compensate.
It’s a protective shield.
If I don’t take care of myself,
No one has to talk to me.

2:
Trying to be interesting, and well read,
I’m up to number seven of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
So far,
I’ve gathered,
I’m supposed to have a child to pass on my beauty.
I must be missing something.

3:
In one of my potential conversations in my mind,
I have to explain my relationship to him.
We’re messed up in similar ways,
So we’re mutually supportive of our destructiveness. Together,
If you can get him on the line,
He’s a good source of predictability,
But he’s also one of the main reasons I won’t drink too much. He’s so close to what I am, it’s a reminder to do better. What a way to use him.

4:
Quit telling me how to feel or what to do
Just tell me what you want to tell me and get on with it.

5:
I can have a family? I can pick them out? I can choose?
I could have kids and a husband if I wanted and smoosh together in photos?
I could have that?
It makes me want to cry.
It seems so far away from the life I’ve known.

6:
A friend here on the island has a baby.
I’m becoming familiar to the intricacies of wails.
Someone else has a two-year-old and a five-year-old.
They’re around all day.
It’s,
Almost too much.
I don’t think I can deal with that,
Can I make that proclamation, or am I too young? No kids on my own.

7:
There was a woman, drunk
Outside the blue house across the way,
And her man, a man, I guess, was forcing her into the truck.
There were little kids.
Screaming, and she was beating the kid with her bag.
And yelling.
I felt so naïve.
What to do, what’s right? Why am I so upset? Why aren’t I more upset?
Why are they so casual about domestic violence here?

On the One Sunny Day This Week

the water is the color of dr.pepper

the waterfall is in the shadows. also this water is cold.

this is what it looks like facing the other direction

Poems from My Day (6-26)

my god have i been writing poetry for two years now?

1:
My house in Alaska has run out of gas.
No hot showers.
Cold water to clean with.
And the day in late June, when the temperature drops below 45,
I have no heat.
To get gas, I have to call a guy to come pick it up from the fuel station and bring it to my house, and pay him $20 and find the lock on the tank.
I can’t bring myself to do it just yet.

2:
How do I tell my sister what I want for my birthday,
How do I say, spend this on me,
When she’s as poor as I am.
Do I give her options, but then I sound greedy.
This is something that needs to be done over the phone.
But then I’d have to call her.
I’d just rather not bother with.
Maybe she’ll forget.

3:
I can write like “Frog & Toad Together.”
Short sentences are easy to read.
They make writing difficult.
A lot of emotion fits in simple ideas.
Many feelings squeeze into short stories.
Mr. Lobel tells powerful, human stories.
I would like to do that too.

4:
He says I could fix me if I wanted,
I’m not trying hard enough.
He says I don’t want to have more confidence,
Get better.
But he also says he loves me,
So his word isn’t much to go on.

5:
I confided in my mother,
So I felt supported and connected to humanity for a minute.
But everything I tell her will come back to bite me,
Take a big chunk out of my heart later,
“Well don’t you remember two weeks ago when you said …”
I knew that going into the call.
The need to talk to someone
Outweighed the need to feel lonely.

6:
I want to be lost in the world of a crappy romance novel.
So I don’t pay attention to food,
Or weather,
And the problems of my day to day life.
I just can’t start reading.

7:
It hurts so much, having no one to talk to.
Who I can open up to completely,
Without fear of repercussion.
Someone who’s here with me,
Who already knows my story.
It’s so damn hard,
And I’ve been under the impression that friendship isn’t something you force,
So I’m sitting here waiting for it to happen, naturally.

8:
I’ll go to a new small town, village, thing,
Where I’ll be self-supportive, and not need anything from anyone,
That’ll be better.
I’ll be able to be myself,
And I won’t have to answer to anyone,
I can be rude, and snotty, like I am in my heart,
And I won’t care if people dislike me,
And any friends I get will be real friends, because I’ll be being myself.

9:
My roommate took a bunch of kids to Costa Rice for a senior trip.
She wanted them out of this village, to see the world,
And also to have a passport, a passport that’s good for ten years.
This reminded me I have a passport. I can go wherever I want.
If I can afford the plane ticket.
I moved to Alaska by myself,
I can do anything.

10:
Start peddling.
That’s what he told me on the phone.
I liked that.
Maybe that’s what I’ll start doing, once my bike works and stuff.
I’ll get a helmet and fit in that way.
Up and down the hills.
I’ll bring a camera, my camera, and I’ll travel all around.
With a cell phone of course.
People will recognize me then.

Paddleboarding Today

i tried this for the first time ever, and i couldn’t stand up. yay for failures.

Poems from My Day (6-22)

no one makes me feel like a natural woman

1:
Kelly stood up at the little girl’s birthday party,
Inside the bunk house where the service group is staying for a month this summer.
He grabbed baby Helena from her Momma.
But effectively cut me off from my exits.
I had to mentally calm myself down, like I have to do on a plane.
He wasn’t trapping me. I could get out.
I wasn’t stuck.
I have to tell myself the same thing in my physical space as well as my headspace.

2:
Sometimes I like being around people I can’t read.
Get a read on a mean, like understand.
We’re on the same level.
But, when my brain is tired, it’s less work to be around less smart people.

3:
I don’t do well on my own.
I mean living alone.
Because I am now.
My roommate has fled for her summer teaching holiday back to her home.
I’m having to have a new experience each day.
I’m planning them.
So I don’t fall into the bad kind of depression.
The kind where I can’t leave my bed.
And no one will be there to judge me for it.

4:
There’s a woman here in town,
She’s a lot like me.
I dislike her.
But, because of the similarities between us, between who we are,
I feel like I’m disliking myself, by disliking her.
It makes me want to change.
Be less of a know-it-all,
She’s the sort of girl I avoided in college.
But, here, because everything’s so small, I can’t tell her how I really feel.

5:
It comes back when I’m uncomfortable.
I can’t stop smiling. There’s nothing to be smiley about.
It’s a default.
I want it to go away.
This person who smiles.

6:
I spent an hour of my lunch seated in the beige chair
Reading a book I’d read before,
Hunched over my small phone screen
While eating my lunch of dried apricots and peanuts.
But from that spot in the library,
No one can see me, I’m not watched.
So I can sit like a man.

7:
I warned her before I was going to do it.
Throw my phone across the room.
I had talked to my father.
It was one of the times he wasn’t listening, but hum-hawing along.

That same day, he drunkenly told me he loved me.
And I was upset that I wasn’t worth it sober.
I went into shut-down mode.
She asked what was wrong.
I smiled and made small-talk.
I think she finally realized just how much, exactly, I hide.

8:
So, part of growing up,
I’m told,
Is learning more about yourself, and growing habits.
I used to think I had no habits, I was the best in the world to live with.
But that’s not true anymore.
I’ve learned more about myself, and how I work.
So now, I take all that with me to each new person I share a sink next to.

9:
I’m mad at myself I couldn’t see it as a good thing that we both like to draw, and paint, and speak bad Spanish.
I didn’t see it as a bonding thing, but competition.
Because we’re similar, I had to be better.

10:
I held her baby.
I wanted a baby.
I didn’t understand this.
So I called my mom, hoping to have her tell me it was okay not to want kids, but crave something of my own.
Instead she told me all about how my stepbrother has decided everyone is dead to him, and how her conference went well.

Afternoon at the Point

nice wake

salmon berries also come in gold, i’m told

i have no idea why i decide to include this, but, there’s something about it.

Poems from My Day 6-14-16

all i can say is sorry today.

1:
I have to create the space for it to go wrong before I can do anything at all.
Which means I often turn my muddy wheels in a ball of shame and stress,
Before I decide I can’t do it.

2:
It still hurts.
He looked at me right in the eyes, and
He’s the only one my age from the group,
He seemed to be listening.
But, today,
They must have spent the morning together,
And he passed me over with his time.
The most outgoing boys always get the prettiest girls,
Who know how to tie a shirt around their chests.
But it still hurts.
It’s a wound I’d forgotten I had, that never healed from middle-school me.

3:
Dear Lord, was I like that?
I remember thinking that about the freshman in high school when I was a senior,
And again as a sophomore in college looking at the first years,
And again as the boss of the interns dictating to the group of newbies.
I met college students today, they came to help me out.
I wasn’t a part; I was other.

4:
I want to get mad at him.
Tell him, our friend is a better man than you.
I want to tell him how badly he hurt me,
But I don’t want to have to say any of it out loud.

5:
She told me I’d lived many lives for my years.
I said I’ve done a lot of things, but nothing for long.
Which is true.
But they’ve none of them been me.

6:
Two days ago I stood at the point in my depression cycle where all I could do was read romance novels.
I don’t even like romance novels.
But it’s all I could do.
So it’s all I did.
I got by minute by moment, instead of hour by day.
And made it by.

7:
She wasn’t with mom in that bathroom at the funeral parlor.
Our mother, practicing over and over.
Apologizing over again.
Pacing,
With a handwritten note,
And I couldn’t make any improvements.
I thought, then, I wouldn’t leave this place for anything, I need to be this support, I feel good about being there for my mom, but I’m still bored.
It was me there.
She can never take that away from me, as much as she tries so hard to be included and the center of it all.

8:
I want somebody to tell me I’m perfect,
And I do it the best in the world,
So I get interviewed and matter according to mass public opinion.
Sometimes, my own blocks and lincoln logs aren’t enough to hold me up.

9:
There’s only one way you can listen to this song.
Wallowing in a heap on the floor, no lights.
So I got out of bed, lay on the floor with my knees bent up, an elbow over my eyes.
And heard him cry about “Lua.”

10:
I can’t imitate your work without adding me to it.
I don’t even have to try and change it,
My copying will make it me-like.

11:
And just because somebody cries loudly doesn’t mean they’re feeling the most.
God what a presumptuous thing to say,
And so like her too.
To think the loudest must be right.

Poems from My Day 6-12-16

i’m backdating these because the day i wrote them i couldn’t pull my courage together to publish

1:
I just want someone to love me.
Easy.

2:
You offer me a cigarette,
Like you haven’t been around addictive personalities before,
Who say they don’t smoke anymore.
You offer me beer,
Tell me to drink more,
Like you’ve never seen it turn bad.
I’m not sure how you made it out unscathed,
From your childhood,
From our childhood.
But I’m so damn jealous.
I’d love to be that stupid again.

3:
Dear Sally,
When I saw your hands,
I didn’t think,
Wow what a weird finger,
Her hands look really messed up,
First I thought,
It looks like she hit her fingernail with a hammer, I wonder why she would be doing manual labor,
Then I thought, if she can be successful with hands that look like that,
Then I can too,
With my stubby, slightly twisted fingers and overly flat palms.

4:
I can’t tell if I’m feeling better
Or if it’s just another day,
Or if it wasn’t that bad in the first place.
Sometimes I get mad at myself for still being myself.

5:
Hide me, give me a place to rest, where I don’t have to worry or explain.
These are things you don’t realize you need until you leave them behind.
I just want a place to sit. And be okay. Please.
If that’s a person or a feeling. Please.

6:
My mother told me she (who doesn’t drink) brought a bottle of fireball, a tupperware of strawberries (two packages for five dollars) and a gift card to a cook out.
No one else brought anything.
They had never had fireball.
She said, “it’s what white people bring to parties.”
Black cookout, did I mention there were two other white people there?
Oh god I love my mother.

7:
We got a dryer.
My clothes smell like laundromat instead of mildew and cedar.
Another day.
I still feel useless.

Older New Mexico

smell that vintage flavor

i took these with my mom’s old 35mm while i was still in grade school