Crying Loops

Sometimes, hormones mess with my brain. There’s no other way to put it. I can qualify it if you want. I can say: it’s not my fault, it only happens to some women, it shouldn’t impede my cognitive capabilities, you shouldn’t judge me on this one thing, it’s not just me. But. It. Happens.
So I’m listening to the radio, and the woman gives a heads up message that the next song, “Creep” by Radiohead, was banned by the BBC for being too depressing. I, of course, relate to the song. I’m already a bit teary, not, oh look a baby sniffling, but sniffly. I start singing along, “I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here.”
The words hit. Boom. Then I’m thinking about the last time I heard the song. I remember I was sitting by myself in my dorm room back at school listening to Radiohead for the first time, looking for something that would mean something to me, feeling all alone, unheard, and understood by no one. So I’m thinking of that, driving down a pretty busy street in rush hour. And I start crying and singing. I’m wiping my eyes, singing along with wobbly gasps, and navigating traffic. We stop at a light and I look to my right. Oh look, it’s a police officer. I’m worrying he’s going to pull me over, and I’ll hit a car while I’m trying to pull over, then I’ll have to get another job to pay for my broken car, and I’ll still be crying. So I’m frantically trying to wipe my eyes and at the same time roll up the windows so he can’t hear my shrieking. But, I went right on past. No problems.
And that made me cry, because I thought maybe he needed to fill his policeman quota, but he didn’t want to pull over a crying girl after a day’s worth of work, so now he’s having a bad day because I’m having a sad day. Then Thom finished his sadness hole, and I drove back home, flicking radio stations every minute so that I didn’t get too attached to a song with too much memory.

For the Mother Who Holds

I’m silent. I let you make me silent. I don’t have money. I depend. And I don’t have the strength to be on my own. And you took my words. How I say what it is I feel. I’m not a quiet person. I laughed years ago. I let you do all this. It was me. I’ll hate you for this far longer than I’ll hate you for forgetting I’d grown. You took this. You made me think I gave it. That it shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I shouldn’t ever go against you. I left myself in a box. I thanked you for letting me stay. I can’t ever be here again.

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Forty-Six)

Why hello there. I wrote some poems for you. I did. I even wrote more than one of them.

I Wrote 10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 46

Poem 1:
I woke up today
From a good dream,
I thought. I felt happy.
But my jaw aches,
I’ve clenched it for hours,
All through my good dreams.

Poem 2:
I can paint on clay before
Designs show through after
I can paint you now
Before you’re made
And leave you branded
For later
For after you go past fire

Poem 3:
My friend, this friend
A big hulking black cape friend
Settles right here, there
Right next to me
No greetings or hellos
Just presence
Substance with no light coming through
Hello again depression man
It’s so nice to see a friend

Poem 4:
Give me a thousand lifetimes
I can make you perfect

Poem 5:
We sat in a deli behind
In front of, to our perspective
A man, wild Einstein hair
With architecture building drawings
Next to his empty chip basket
In a corner with tucked away maroon short curtains
He listened to us chat
Overheard our lives
Knew all about me by the time the tea was gone
He heard strangers and lives
Next to his paper plans of restaurants

Poem 6:
She sent me a text
Months went by without contact
To say meet us here, at this place
I became the 6th
Even number, booth filler, spare driver
But they didn’t text again
Tell me what I did wrong
Or how I pissed you off
I want friends
Who like me

Poem 7:
Turned twenty-one
On a Saturday
I’d said it was no big deal
No fuss over me please
But she’d flown herself down
To fluff all over
And stayed in my, oh is this it, apartment
She said, hey, some friends of mine are in town
Mind if they come to your party
I was always nice to her people
So they came to my little bit
And they were loud
I collect introverts around me
She collects good hearted oddballs
So we were silenced by these table banging
Older friends of hers
She didn’t try and meet my people
These great people
Who looked just as stricken as I
That she became center on my birthday

Poem 8:
The heat hasn’t popped back up to the eighties
Stayed pretty much in a strange early fall place
But it’s always cold by Halloween
Every year it’s the same
And every time I think how novel
To watch it all change again

Poem 9:
Stop being nice to me
Kindness temporary
I can flip you one way or the other
Raging fury
And a smile
I don’t want emotions I can manufacture

Poem 10:
I’m a failure
Cycles in my head
The same insults seem to always be spinning
Sound so harsh on paper
What do they mean
To anyone outside my head
Who doesn’t see/feel
All that ties them to me

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Forty)

I’ve been doing this for forty days in a row. The flood waters have stopped raining. Four hundred poems in forty days. Goodness me.

I Wrote 10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 40

Poem 1:
Kim, they adored
Manicured makeup and bouncing
Steered without morals
Told us
She drove on the highway
Straight as far as she could
Eyes closed
See how long she lasted
Forty seconds
Smiling, they thought, cool

Poem 2:
You think you’re alone?
No
Any feeling you’ve felt
Someone has held before
I worry it’s too easy to manipulate
Especially the uneducated unlearned
Who can’t tell the difference
Between opinion and thought
There we are same.

Poem 3:
Walked while they ran
On this trail between houses
Paved with gravel and ducks and geese
A homeowner left out a bench
Weary resters welcome
A place to sit for the moving
Right alongside the cars
Even the muddy water
Right along

Poem 4:
Girls in yoga pants, tie up boots and long tees
Took me aback and back
Your shoes are scuffed
No one notices a shabby girl
We who don’t buy on sale

Poem 5:
Early memories trace to
Why I think I do this’s
I popped a grand biscuit in half
Buttered it with the right knife
Stabbed it back in the pot
They laughed at me
Drugged out one sitting cattycorner
Called out butternose
I ran upstairs crying in the bathroom
Only unshared room
They all had to apologize
I said little so they couldn’t laugh again
For something I didn’t know yet
I should

Poem 6:
He told us
I bet you all think you’re morbid
Yeah
All thought about your own deaths
Who’d be at your funeral if you died like
Right now
He had us then
Because he spoke truth
To those who’d never heard it
Applied to them

Poem 7:
No teacher singled me out
To say
Look how great you are
Not a one
I under-radared
Not the smartest, nor the f
Spoke when asked
Quiet when should
The celebrated

Poem 8:
I thought when I got to school
Oh all these smart people
Who wouldn’t laugh at reading
Would have backed up opinions
Suave smart
But instead
They were louder
I just accidentally agreed with them more often
Louder now there were more of them
Who had something to say

Poem 9:
Don’t tell me to calm down
You won’t excuse my anger
On a phrase
For what you did to cause it

Poem 10:
If they could take my shoes
To say
Where she’s been
Walked one thousand four hundred seventy one steps
On her way from home to the car
She moved three miles on swing set
She chased after you in yards
And years
Hoping for the next corner
To stop
Then I could measure how long I’ve wasted
And finally have a good reason to cry

10 Poems in 20 Minutes (Day Thirty-Two)

I wrote lots a poems, poemy, poem, poems.

I Wrote 10 Poems in 20 Minutes
Day 32

Poem 1:
They sent me this piece of paper in the mail
I can add to the rest
Now I go live my life
Go back to what was four years before
There’s just not much here

Poem 2:
I want to blame everyone else
Why didn’t they tell me what to do?
Why didn’t someone give me a profession?
Why won’t someone take me under a wing?
Why can’t I do anything?
Jobless with a brain
Don’t tell anyone

Poem 3:
There’s a job I should get
Out there
To make money
But I haven’t done anything
So I’m scared to fill out
So I don’t
Then I don’t do anything
So I have nothing to put down
Then I feel guilty for having nothing
Makes me think not good enough
So I don’t have it
To apply to start

Poem 4:
Do I have to work
No one seems happy
But, then again, no one’s happy anywhere
I want to move to Montana and sit on a porch

Poem 5:
And I’m all spoiled
From all my pamper
I can just sit here
And I am just sitting
So useless
But useless anyway

Poem 6:
Maybe by not doing anything I’m equaling it all out
I’m not out and about wrecking and havoc
So I don’t contribute, but I don’t take away

Poem 7:
He seems so happy to tell me
How I respond and back away
I can’t remember anymore why I hate him
Just that he’s there
And it’s been there a while
Then he yells at my brother
It all comes back

Poem 8:
I heard that hymnal song
From some band they played in the basement
Memory vodka hazy from the party with free pizza cups
Music brought it back
How the drink sweated against me
Make the music take it again

Poem 9:
I just eat and cry now
And make fun of myself in my head

Poem 10:
I scrape the finger pads down my thigh
In the beige shorts with blue paint stains
Watch how my skin depresses around
What could I do to make it all go away