doyourealize's blog

i.

Nobody walks their dog at midnight.
So quit bullshitting me with fake reasons for waking me up.

ii.

here's what makes you who you are:
dark green silk with a lightning scar,
princess shaped shadows on a rainforest cascade,
gerber daisy chain surf, juicebox lemonade,
minty musk
driving at dusk.

you'll shiver
at every touch.

a topaz ring around your shoes,
a tassle full of painting you,
thin black lace
to encase
the asphalt tete a tete.

you
can't
forget

the blink of empty correspondence,
the predetermined automobile dents,
the prying, crying months
of tugging fish hooks.
but take a look.
your bait was sand,

the deck is empty, check your hand.

He has no front teeth. A nineteen year old boy with no front teeth.

There's a pipe in the Chemistry room, drooping down from some chemistry related contraption above my head. It is as thick as my thumb, and drips down, around and back up in a loop. It's tear drop shaped. I never took chemistry so I don't know what the pipe is for, but I'm sitting here taking my standardized test and I can't make myself focus on electrons or particles or experiments on a salmon population. I'm just staring at that pipe. And in my head, it's not a pipe.

i.
I'm drawing on my hands again.

Mary Poppins always said she would stay until the winds changed and when I was young, wide-eyed and clutching my patchwork lamb I always wondered how she knew when that was. It simply didn't make sense, because the winds changed all the time. Sometimes the trees outside my imaginary window seat bent to sweep the moss with their creaking knuckles and sometimes they stood stagnant and ominous, no wind to coax attack.

spin, pierce, flow.
gray heart and black love
burn together in a picture explosion.
exhaust me, gracious melody;
your amber tangerine tea has whittled me down into
a million little sharp rain smiles.
hear them.
curl and crumble around their chambered clay
for immunity's sake.
the sun's smoking petals will
spin, pierce, flow,
and burn together a picture explosion of
gray heart and black love.

"Do you have any dark secrets?
"I don't know. What do you consider to be a dark secret?"
"Do you have any secrets you wouldn't tell me in the day time?"

i.
and how do you think it feels to know
that I learned more about our family from your ATM pin number
than any conversation we've had all year?

filling my tank in the shivering
dark
I finally connected the dots between nonexistence
and relief.

"Do you have any dark secrets?"

ii.
and you with all the answers,
you filling that imaginary hole in your life

i.
You paint.
This is something I didn't know.

In eighth grade you sold a painting
for a hundred dollars.
You were fourteen.

You paint,
and this is something I didn't need to know
to be drawn to you,

but if I had known
it would have helped.

ii.
I paint
but not well.

I have a burlap sack full of big rubber tubes
and brushes that are stained and hardened with use.
I use an old cutting board as a palette
and have several pads of canvas paper
for the days when I feel I deserve better than just
paper.

I paint during the months when words don't serve me right;

This is something I wrote months and months ago and never got around to podcasting. But it's a podcasting kind of day. Sorry if it's really quiet, like it is on my computer. And sorry about my cold.

Brother
you used to play me songs
as rich and sweet and strong as golden honey
on sunny, whirling autumn days
and in my childish haze I saw
a world of patterns, moments paused,
reflecting as your fingers bent
and sent
premonitory glass repents.
The air was thick with your sickness,
thick with moths and quicksand rhymes
in double time,
your strings emitting sound ignition

I see it all through a periscope:
cold concrete and a warm Coke,
and the possibility ushered in by 13 dollars on a Friday night.
I might
have learned
to drive myself by riding alongside,
which in hindsight turned the tides,
because I don't mean this in a literal
text book
tackle-and-hook sense of watching wide eyed,
but rather,
I learned to love them seperately, each in their own flawless imperfections
by noting the connections of their freckled
knuckles on the wheel,
skin like ivory steel,
and I learned how not to love them from their right blind spot,

Long story short, I got bored, and decided to see if I could write poetry in French. If anyone out there speaks French, it would be lovely if you could tell me if my grammar is anywhere near accurate, as I didn't use a translator and there's bound to be millions of errors. Merci!

Ma chanson est un des ruisseaux d'or,
j'ai formé des mots dans mes mains
que l'amour a traversé, comme le sable vain.
Je l'ai senti dans rêves d'essor
mais ce n'était pas un tel trésor
et il fondait le lendemain.

Je chante maintenant pas de lueurs, decors
ou l'amour de poutres fracassant

An Unsendable Letter to a Sister Never Born.

Dear Margaret Claire,

You're eleven years old, and that idea makes me cringe. I remember being eleven: being in-between and soft skinned and new. In a way, I'd rather be where I am now, in that terrible time when you're on the brink of everything and the pressure reduces you to dust. With all my worries, at least I'm past the years of sneaky three way phone calls, padded training bras and shaking off the patronizing adult laughs at every word out of my mouth. Even when an eleven year old says something of substance, they're eleven, so the world keeps turning and stops listening.

We never gave up on the royalty
of genuine dandelion crowns
and the yellow streaks in our hair
-dark on light; soft serve twist-
in our thunderstorms would drown.

We knew to hide from angry stings
and empty, open siren songs.
We knew when to chase horizons
-exagerate the bruises; match the scars-
and when to let them lead us along.

But we never gave up on wonder and words
and together we two
of Romanov glitz and Powhatan drums
-of emeralds and rubies-
regressed as we grew.

((Zipadee doo da, Zipadee ay. My-oh-my what a wonderful day.))

i.
My memory is selective.

--forgive me for this, and no worries, i'm fine. i'm just not good with holidays.--

"I'm thankful for my lovely, beautiful wife and our wonderful home.
I'm thankful for my eldest son. I'm so proud of everything you've accomplished this year and how you've turned out.
I'm thankful for my youngest son, and how music means so much to you, and how much you've grown.

I've known pregnant pauses before. But this one has no lovely parental glow.

And I'm thankful for my daughter...I'm thankful she's here with us."

Just as I expected. Dead. Gray. What a waste.

I don't resent her. I don't resent her. I don't resent her.

Kneeling on the tiles, I become aware of how my toes have fallen asleep. She's sitting in a heap before me, her sobs causing her entire form to quake, and as usual, she's holding my hand as tightly as she can. I become aware of the lack of blood in my rubbery white fingertips.

I don't resent her. I don't resent her. I don't resent her.

She's crying. Focus on that.

Inspired by the wonderful Nonnie+Locke :)

There's a trail of bright red gummy fish tails scattered across the cemetary ground.

You bought the bag of candy fish.
I ate them.
I always eat the heads first
-you know, put them out of their misery-
but for some reason this time,
I couldn't bring myself to eat the tails.
They were your tails afterall; your fish.
For each head I chewed, a tail was dropped
like a sugary flower petal
onto the spongey earth between the headstones.
They marked our trail of footprints
-soft and shallow-
and we followed this same path again

Today the wonderful Shadowtailed and I sat down and fired words off each other for a good twenty minutes or so, in hopes that something half decent would be produced. What follows are my results...The internet at her house is a fail, but hopefully she'll post hers at some point.

Pretty pink ribbons 'round blank-faced waves,
a slave to the wondrous abyss,
the sun's goodnight kiss,
the world that's trapped inside its own fragile ribs,
the pearls you knotted 'round your childhood fibs,
as the girl whose black eyes wandered from her crib.
We always knew we'd end up

And don't you know you walk like water,
your movement smooth,
unyielding,
sweeping air through leafy veins.

And your words are pears that taste like apples,
your teeth in their flesh
indenting instincts as scavenger:
gathering broken string.

And don't you know you're built of splinters,
your stained glass steeples hover
over empty silken night.

And your calluses are faded gold,
your voice is organ echoing,
sounding over clearings
of your last velvet days.

And don't you know you walk like weather,
placid yet unforgiving
with rainy rhythm on your sleeve,

A friend recently told me I should post something. So here's something. More like one of my ranting, journal type posts of yesteryear than actual writing. But ah well...I'll get something real out there in time.

i.
I drive too fast.
It's not really something I strive to do or not do, it just happens that way. I know this because people tell me, and as much as I argue, my lovely collection of tickets and that hunk of metal formerly known as my car would beg to differ.
So, I drive too fast. I drive too fast and I don't drive very well. These are facts.

Before I get any sympathy or worry, let me say this is not me pondering my own death. I wrote this about mid-August, back when I was working on a production of six short plays, one of them being Picnic on the Battlefield by Arabel. It's an amazing little piece, and sort of inspired this poem, which I just found in my piles of random papers.

There's a moment in the linoleum storm
when phone cords
tie knots around
my silent, breathless form
and it's warm

and there's a moment overwraught
with empty film,
when my words are caught
in your ruffled feathers,
in my beehive tethers,
in a dangling orb of wild summer weather

and there's a moment when I'm better
than they let me be,
losing my mind with my keys,
tapping my stick to a tree
as if it'll let me in

and there's a moment burning my skin
when I could paint you,
if only to contain you,
in pulsing strokes of green on white on black

please, no more questions
with cellophane answers
and silly putty smiles.

play an old jazz standard,
unclench your granite eyelids
and let's talk a while.

burgundy fur sweet on my cheek,
inspired rippling laughter
imploding porcelain tea.

toes invading 83rd street,
willow branches circling.
childhood isn't free.

(Forgive me, this is me writing so I can get some sleep. It would probably be cooler if you could hear it the way I do.)

I was underwater, weighed down by frustration,
dislocation,
finally getting the basis
of the phrase "a heavy heart"
surrounded by the noise, ripped apart
by the thud of another arrest, the siren of another letdown, the

gunshot

of one more plastic artery stripped of it's dependability.

I let my head sink under the suds
--muffle the thuds--
and I could hear my own heartbeat.
--rubber on concrete--
It was
pulsing

This is just to say
I have edited him out of my videos,
hence erasing him entirely from existence.
It works like that, right?

This is just to say
I wish that the male population
was a little more creative
in their choices of rebound relationships.

This is just to say
I didn't cry during My Sister's Keeper
and spent most of the movie
peeling the iron-on off my shirt.

This is just to say
we did not hook up that day.
Believe it or not,
we were fishing.

This is just to say
I hope they serve terrible food

Not to copy William Carlos Williams of course. Or Usagi. Or Lemon. But these are too much fun. I dare you to try it. Not exactly beautiful poetry but...so much fun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This Is Just To Say

i.
I still have
your password
and sometimes
when I'm bored

I'll spy
on you through
cyber space
for the hell of it

Forgive me
it was so memorable
so easy
so rewarding.

This Is Just To Say
ii.
I stole
a necklace
worth $7.50
plus tax

It was silver
with a perfect
oval Ganesha
dangling off

Forgive me
I wanted it, but also
wanted to feel a hole
burn through my pocket.

This Is Just To Say
iii.
I have watched
the 6th
Harry Potter
without you

not once
not twice
but three
beautiful times

Forgive me
I doubt you
even remembered
we had plans

This Is Just To Say
iv.
I stopped listening
to a song
I'd loved
all my life

because I didn't
want to feel

i.
We write our poetry
on love and suicide
because both scare us.

Both disrupt our comfort in static life.
Both mean change.

ii.
Some things can't be bottled.

Poetry.
Love.
Suicide.

-alcohol stained tears soaking into my jeans,
a hard earned body pressed into mine-

Some things can't be bottled and that's why
I don't bother remembering every detail.

Your eventual drunken hiccupped giggles on my lap
were all it took
for me to shake the reptilian scales of childhood.

I emerged from the ashes,
cocked my head at the mirror
and saw no difference.

Something else I wrote for a slam at GIA. Not a big fan of this one so any feedback is appreciated as always.

Brother
you use to play me songs
as rich and strong and sweet as golden honey
on sunny, whirling autumn days
and in my childish haze I saw
a world of patterns, moments paused,
reflecting as your fingers bent
and sent
premonitory glass repents.
The air was thick with your sickness,
thick with moths and quicksand rhymes
in double time,
your strings emitting sound ignition
--adolescent metacognition--
in Lego fortresses
and dandelion doll dresses
and time capsuled petty stresses
and you immune as your delicate tune
floated into dust between my rusted eyelashes,
your intuitive crashes
--so inevitable--
yet in my time wasting, cloud chasing, reality facing view,

you

were my barefoot, thistle-scratched, pomegranate stained reaction,
weaving twigs in my hair, 'cause there
you weren't yet a broken Polaroid
of plastic toys and genuine grins

This is something I posted a while ago but recently edited for a slam at Governor's Institute on the Arts.

You make me shiver with those silly words,
those incandescent,
stark florescent,
reluctantly familiar

s i l v e r

words that I somehow still believe though
my.teeth.grind
and I glance behind
in hestitation

desperation

when I recall the magnified
contours of your face,
sil-hou-ett-ed embrace
against a backdrop of snowy candles that March morning
when you woke me up at dawn

I stand with my bare and grimy toes dangling off
the burnt stone precipice
as the flames singe the hem of my jeans
and melt my jacket into my skin
and sting my watering eyes
and illuminate
one honest sillhouette.

Eyes glow golden amidst the flames.

Rain over me, shower of ash.
Bury me true.
Be my Vesuvius and preserve me forever;
let future generations
study my bones
in awe.

Firefly stars of sparks swim freely,
sewing together the treeline and the deep velvet sky.
Sewing the thread between truth and my
alternate reality.

Alternate past.
Alternate self.

How faithful, how true a shadow one can cast.
How it aches inside me that I stand weakly
in my flourescent yellow raincoat
and let my wet hair weigh me down
into nothing.

I will seep into the cracks between the stone,
and at last be a fly on the wall of all that is:

at last I will be one with the earth.

Don't stare.
Don't be that person.

My fingers,