Poems from My Day (10-12-16)

i make no apologies for being silly

1:
Maybe she’s not aware of how loud she walks.
Clomps.
Or that I think about recording her eating Hot Pockets,
Calliente pockets,
Because she chews like a cartoon eight-year-old bacon eating boy.
She wears mid-calf boots that muffin top.
She can’t handle my spicy food.
And she thinks she’s better than me,
Which, really, is the only thing that truly bothers me.

2:
I stood, well,
I was folded in half staring a my knee,
Thinking,
I am not a downward facing dog,
I am an angry person folded in half.
I don’t think my belly should be touching my thighs,
I think that’s because I’m fat.
Lady, my arms aren’t that long,
There’s no way people used to cook sitting in a squat like this,
No, my heels will never touch,
What the hell does the light in me respects the light in you mean?
Do I look like a lamp?
Actually, don’t answer that, I was in tree pose earlier.

3:
The pump that fills the tank in my toilet broke,
I don’t want to have to clean my room,
So I haven’t called the maintenance people.
4chan would call me beta.
I call myself a particularly beautiful kind of lazy.
I’m refilling it manually with an empty 3 lbs cashew jar.

4:
There’s going to be strippers in Craig.
They told me on the conference call.
Oh, hey, I saw that flier.
They’re from a traveling group, up from California,
I’m told.
Apparently, they only let gay men in the bar the night the guy strippers are there,
They’ve had problems with territorial Alaska men.
The story only gets better from there.

5:
I love having paint on my hands and having someone comment on it.
I got claustrophobic in the sauna two days ago.
I had to keep taking deep breaths, and the woman sitting next to me copied me,
Thinking that was the thing to do in saunas in the Alaskan wilderness at 9 p.m. on a Monday.
I take long drives on chug-hole filled white gravel roads so I can sing as loud as I want with my arms out the windows.
I drove a 1998 jeep with a coked-out 300 pound woman on the roof of my drunk roommate’s car, down a gravel road in the pitch black without a seat belt, blaring 2008 shorty rap. Two bottles in the cup holders. The other woman was hanging out the window. And the seats were damp from last night’s rain.

6:
I feel like a failure.
I can’t do enough. I can’t do it right.
I need someone else to tell me to get it done.
I can’t do it myself.
I’ll never escape this. I’ll be like this forever.
I’ll never be good at anything.
Then I laugh at myself,
And pretend to shake it off,
And putter around for a couple more hours before I can go home.

The Road We Drove to Get Here

those alders made music on the bottom of the jeep

Poems from My Day (1-26)

i’m moving across the country soon. did i mention?

1:
My father has never been happier.
His little girl, forsaking the world of marketing,
High-profile, clients, ARR,
To take a year of her life and work for the good of the country.
First time he’s ever seemed full of pride since I graduated.
He’ll be able to make so many sermons out of this.

2:
A pretty girl in middle school told me,
As she was trying to braid my hair,
That I had a sensitive head.
She didn’t think someone like me would be so soft.
To this day, I still have no idea what she meant.

3:
Everyday I drive on the highway,
I have a second, a feeling,
Like I was a hairsbreadth away from crashing.
Some days, I think, I’ve lived my whole life like that.
Just this far away,
From walking in front of that car.

4:
I’m sitting with my arms pinned in by people talking loudly on either side of me.
We’re in a basement of a crowded place, there’s alcohol, and the social necessity to talk.
Sitting on those kind of benches from 8th grade lunch.
It would take me a solid thirty seconds to get out.
And once I realize I’m starting to have a panic attack,
It makes it worse.
I got through it.
Then I sat in my car for twenty minutes in the parking garage with the lights off,
And cried.

5:
I don’t like when people know things about me.
It’s mine to share.
I don’t know what you’ll do with it.
Probably hurt me.

6:
Why am I so bad at the things I think I should be good at?
I want to be quick, nimble, and fast.
Smart and caustic.
But I feel slow all the time.
Behind, outdated, frumpy, and slow.

7:
I got sick Sunday.
And went to work Monday morning.
And I’m not sure why.
It wasn’t loyalty.
I had so much to do.
And my sense of right, won’t let me do a bad job, at my job.
Even if they deserve it.

8:
I told my sister once that she was selfish.
I think it was the only time I ever hurt her.
One count.
She brings it up every once in a while,
Expecting me to apologize, take it back.
But it’s the one hurt I’ve never been ashamed of,
It’s a pain I don’t mind causing.
Because it’s as true today as it was years ago.
She’s selfish.
And she’s hurt me so often, it seems like fair cosmic retribution
That I can have my pride on this one point.

Poems from My Day (5/19)

i wrote ten of them. you know why.

1:
My dog led me along a thin and narrow path.
I followed her into the deep woods, into rivers
Under trees, I followed her.
We walked up a hill steep and narrow.
She yanked my arm,
Shot into the brush,
And brought me out a little squeaking groundhog.
I followed her while she buried it,
Then we went back to the car.
We had such a lovely time.

2:
She told me I have too much personality. These, hand brush, are cookie-cutters,
Like those boxes that only change from beige to brown,
You, you have too much you in you.

3:
If I wanted to,
I can find all your secrets. Anything you’ve tacked up.
It’s all still there.

4:
Who’s gonna pay for this?
Look at all this damage.
You did this to me.

5:
Tried a new place where the old Thai place used to be, had good drunken, sloppy, noodles.
I wanted to like it, for the spirit of the thing.
They showed off the same dusty black candle boxes, the same Vishnu painting with a mint tint.
The noodles were gummy and the chicken chewy.
I started singing Joni’s “don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
And I didn’t laugh at someone else’s joke. I’m still going through my, I want to be stoic and not laugh all the time phase.
My cheeks hurt now when I smile.
Their sweetened condensed tea wasn’t bad. One day, I’ll be on time. I’ll find the place I love and it won’t close before I’ve had my fill.
Too fancy philosophical for closing Thai restaurants? Yeah, I thought so.

6:
I drive over the limit when I’m surrounded in traffic.
But when I drive at two, after a Saturday of whatever it was,
I go the 55 exactly. I’m accountable more to myself than to the waves, then, I suppose.
I hear as my car starts to struggle with the second switch, my second switch hasn’t worked since I have to be exhausted to sleep.

7:
One of these I wrote for you, you know.
I’ll give you a hint. It was a love poem. Not that I write a lot of love poetry, or good love poetry, or good poetry at all. (I’m not fishing, don’t send me things, you butts)
I just want to talk with you. But I don’t know how to get you to open your instructions.
And if you do start talking, I don’t know what to say. I’ll say something to make you go away again. I always do. Then I miss you.
You said that to me once. I missed you. It made my day, you know? No you don’t.
I’ll be flying with my fancies over this way. Belittling myself again.

8:
I had to tell a story about something fun I did with my best friend from childhood. I couldn’t think of one.
And I started telling it and got that feeling of being boring, and made it worse.
I trapped myself, then got mad at being trapped, then made myself stuck.
We must have done something that was nice, that I don’t associate with embarrassment, shame, penance and disgust. And now I can’t think of any gleeful memory.
They’re only happy when I’m in a certain mood.

9:
So, then, big power in my mind.
I just get the one, then?
She gets me. She’s smarter, and funny as hell, I want to write down everything she says,
Mystical magical.
Same soul.
I just get the one though? I need another, please. Where do I fill out my form?
I’ll get on stage and recite lines for you. I want someone to know me.
Someone I’m not scared to hide the sections of me I only tell the dogs and strangers.
I tried to give it to someone else, pushed it, dropped, stained my floor, still there now, part of the furniture.

10:
I’ll never be good enough. Enough for me.
The competitive me wants more.
The styrofoam container kid in church, says you work for goodness.
But I still take comfort, sometimes, in thinking that the meek have something.
We’re supposed to get the Earth. I think I have that on a magic card as manna.

The Poems I Wrote Today (November 27th)

I Wrote 10 Poems One After the Other
Day November 27th

Poem 1:
Home for Thanskgiving
But after I moved for school
Dad moved for work
And now I travel four hours to be
Home for Thanksgiving.
He said don’t feel obligated to come and see me
But I think I should, so I did.
And here I am
With all it’s quietness and hot food
In someone else’s house for Thanksgiving.

Poem 2:
He went through so much work for us
Made all these dishes on all these plates I never saw otherwise
This ceremony he takes up, otherwise shunned the pop of cultural
So we ate, but she usually had a cold
And would lean over to say
I can’t taste any of this,
Then tell him how great it all was.
He cooked because his mother cooked on the same day.

Poem 3:
I shouldn’t have been driving
I slept in my daydreams only
And I ran into the snow
Little flakes flew off at first
Then it stuck
I should have pulled over
Kept saying at this one the next exit
Behind blurring red dots of a FedEx guy.
If I’d ‘ve stopped I would have stayed stuck
Like after a while I couldn’t change lanes
Because of the ice in the middle,
Keep yourself there.

Poem 4:
I don’t mind you at all
I won’t have that all consuming passion
But I won’t mind
You’ll be there for a while
You can have me for a bit
Then give all my me back when I leave, please.
I’ll promise to give you back your change.
But I won’t mind, I don’t think.
I never expected to be attached,
Just scared to have no strings.

Poem 5:
And now, it’s been too long since I’ve seen people
I get all jittery
And giggly and I’ve lost all my charms
To be relearned to be with friends
If you’re around the vain who won’t let you talk.
I have to remember I’m worth a glance.
When I see a friend tomorrow.

Poem 6:
I love the space between Thanksgiving and Christmas
Not either of the holidays themselves
But just the stuff that goes around them.
Well I guess why
Is that we all seem to be thinking something like the same thing.
And I feel closer to the girl siting next to me.

Poem 7:
I’m so cold I can’t sleep
I wait for it to take me
So I’m less cold
Or forget I’m cold
Or something
Beyond
It’s cold.

Poem 8:
I flit across a memory
One I don’t want there
My hands freeze up
And I stare at what I was only looking.
I say, I’ll put this in a box
I have a case in my mind full of wands and witches and bits of rubber
They hold all my boxes
Some with extra tape
All the times I’ve fell.

Poem 9:
I need a buffer with me
For most people
Stand over,
Yes, right,
There.
In their way, in front of me.

Poem 10:
The first time I disagreed with my father
I learned I was wrong.
And just how wrong I was
With citations and page references
Footnotes and verse
There was no other option.

Blue Car Driving

he got in my picture, so i made him a gif, i’m assuming a guy was driving, of course, it could have been a panda bear, or a kiwi fruit