rightintoday

[rightintoday]

It rushes around me, bubbling, swiftly, as I take the plunge. Water does not fill my lungs, but I imagine in at least three other universes,

I am drowning of my own volition.

It’s said you can die in less than a foot of water, so him saying he no longer loves me must be

A miles deep ocean with anchors chained to both my ankles.

If water is purifying I do not understand how after

Hours and hours of scraping my skin dry it still no longer feels as though I was ever right for you. I am red, scratched, parts of me falling off,

Raw to the touch, I cannot imagine a time where your hands did not envelop mine and I cannot think of a time where they shouldn’t again, but to you

I am just an experience on a never-ending bucket list, a round trip, a simple yield. For me, you are, he is, was the end.

Scrub and scrub I cannot take the thought of you in the bed of two others out of my mind, but of my skin - they say a snake sheds it’s skin every seven years, I have grown seven years today alone and I am determined enough to break free from my enslavement.

I am chained to my bed, to my thoughts, I am a product of my own mental illness, I am living breathing proof that mania is running rampant in our society, a monster - chained up in the jail cell, four iron bars welded together, a mattress, I am tethered to my own bed.

It is now 10:35PM, at 3:45 I asked what you wanted, how could I be more to you, how I could help, how we could be - still, but all I got was a series of … and bubbles that were never sent.

I’ve had a hard time remembering how to breathe since you left me.  With every step my lungs contort and twist, I feel every gust of wind

whisk across my exposed bones, and every thought of you stops every muscle.

If you were an ocean and I was a visitor across your aching sands, you swallowed me whole and left me sinking and gasping for air.

Redness lines every part of exposed skin, I feel your body along the curvature of my spine, your hands in my hair, your mouth against mine, how quickly you’ve become a ghost of my past, present, and future. You cannot erase what you felt was permanent, your touch is locked into my skin, carved and etched into my being.

I am weak; I told you the day you left me with conviction and love how strong you’ve made me feel, I am a power, I am a force

I have become what every day I told myself I would never feel again - unstoppable. But now, I am weak.

With conviction comes fallacy, you were the sand beneath my feet before the tide wrecked the shore.

It’s said you can drown in less than a foot of water, so tell me how it’s easier to breathe when you’re around.

[rightintoday]

He’s never afraid to say what’s on his mind.

It teeters over his lips, an ocean washing me away in it’s depths and I, a lowly passenger, am nothing in the wake of its storms.

I can not and will not tell you when I fell in love, I think - I know.

I know that I do not know.

Somewhere between loud and announced kisses in the day light and interlaced fingers bracing my thighs. I knew, I knew for once, this is different.

He does not carry himself in the night time.

Never will he be found binging on his own daily fowls, hungering over missed opportunities, destroying his own reputation with flimsy dollar bills, there is nothing waiting under a dimly lit street lamp to take him away.

There is no trauma that seeps into his forged shoulders. It does not grip, twist, impale his spine; his mind is not clouded or crowded with ash, pepper, and coffee grinds. He is not afraid to say he loves me.

This -

I hinge on his joviality. Never wavering in my own fears and doubts and despair, I have loved so sparingly and have forgotten so frequently what this might look like.

He does not make me feel like I am standing on mountain tops, nor shouting in empty caves, I do not want to kiss under fireworks, nor fly to the moon, but I do know that this,

This -

This, is what the beginning stages of normalcy must feel like.

I dig my heels into the sand, I, a lowly passenger, he, an ocean, and we - hold on for as long as we can before coming up for air.

[rightintoday]

Snippets of poems I never finished

Gone. Gone. Gone.

He pushes through spring like the desperate buds of winter, fighting with every inch to bloom. There was a time where this was a much easier feat: the clinging ice fell with the eleven o’clock sun, his soft petals ready and willing to reach to the sky. But now? He wilts at the thought of progress and weeps at his own prospects. He is, and always will be,

--

There is a danger in forbidden sadness;

I’m covered in polka dots, painted in lilacs, my hands tremble

with treble clefs and major chords. Propped up, protesting anguish -

there’s no secret to our facility, we are built on ideals and philosophies that may or may not

be contesting with our own.

I met a boy with bright and tender eyes, I broke him.

--

My emotions swing higher and higher, reaching endlessly, touching toes with

a fabricated heaven of my own invention. There are days where I wonder what

sipping wine, gossiping on leather couches while singing country tunes might be like,

there are days where the simple buzz of a harmony makes breathing shallow and unharnessed.

I’m very tired.

[rightintoday]

I am on trial by fire.

He mocks the way I carry myself, hysteric and brazen, lips chapped, eyes clouded - I am addicted to feeling nothing like myself.

I know, they know, that it is just a matter of time until I go running, screaming down the streets, catching the notes in the air as they

entrap me in my own mania, I am possessed not by a fever to combat, but a rotted stomach aching to heal.

I am the author of my own ineptitude and depression.

There are ten fingers typing a script to a poem that will never by read. Feet crossed, caressed, carefully groomed - there is a sense of vanity in undressing now.

Careful. I whisper to myself. Careful, I whisper again, as if walking across burning coals, crossing a canyon ten thousand feet above the air.

I am not in danger, not in reality. I am in a ten by ten room of my own, shared, by two others, never alone, always with - someone.

I am not in danger, I am simply - not myself. I am defeated by my own convictions.

But I know, this will not last - I am, we are simply running out of time.

[rightintoday]

It rushes around me, bubbling, swiftly, as I take the plunge. Water does not fill my lungs, but I imagine in at least three other universes,

I am drowning of my own volition.

It’s said you can die in less than a foot of water, so him saying he no longer loves me must be

A miles deep ocean with anchors chained to both my ankles.

If water is purifying I do not understand how after

Hours and hours of scraping my skin dry it still no longer feels as though I was ever right for you. I am red, scratched, parts of me falling off,

Raw to the touch, I cannot imagine a time where your hands did not envelop mine and I cannot think of a time where they shouldn’t again, but to you

I am just an experience on a never-ending bucket list, a round trip, a simple yield. For me, you are, he is, was the end.

Scrub and scrub I cannot take the thought of you in the bed of two others out of my mind, but of my skin - they say a snake sheds it’s skin every seven years, I have grown seven years today alone and I am determined enough to break free from my enslavement.

I am chained to my bed, to my thoughts, I am a product of my own mental illness, I am living breathing proof that mania is running rampant in our society, a monster - chained up in the jail cell, four iron bars welded together, a mattress, I am tethered to my own bed.

It is now 10:35PM, at 3:45 I asked what you wanted, how could I be more to you, how I could help, how we could be - still, but all I got was a series of … and bubbles that were never sent.

I’ve had a hard time remembering how to breathe since you left me.  With every step my lungs contort and twist, I feel every gust of wind

whisk across my exposed bones, and every thought of you stops every muscle.

If you were an ocean and I was a visitor across your aching sands, you swallowed me whole and left me sinking and gasping for air.

Redness lines every part of exposed skin, I feel your body along the curvature of my spine, your hands in my hair, your mouth against mine, how quickly you’ve become a ghost of my past, present, and future. You cannot erase what you felt was permanent, your touch is locked into my skin, carved and etched into my being.

I am weak; I told you the day you left me with conviction and love how strong you’ve made me feel, I am a power, I am a force

I have become what every day I told myself I would never feel again - unstoppable. But now, I am weak.

With conviction comes fallacy, you were the sand beneath my feet before the tide wrecked the shore.

It’s said you can drown in less than a foot of water, so tell me how it’s easier to breathe when you’re around.

[rightintoday]

vanity

There’s a dim porch light glittered in silver weaving, hazing through dirt-thick glass plating,

twelve wooden planks of varying length stretch outwards: torched, dishevelled, laid out with garbage.

I am told that it’s amongst the gravel trodden sidewalk that I will find my first home, but digging my hands find only

shredded beer bottles, flicked down filters and a convenience store receipt for one Coca-Cola.

Last night, I heard a man take a piss right outside my window, with heavy sighs I thought - this, is home.

There are twelve wooden cupboards laced with designer floral patterns along the bottoms, lost in a new generation, they are topped with glasses of varying sizes, forty-seven dishes, and an electric griddle. When my parents graciously helped me move in, they dumped hundreds of things I’d never seen, I looked in their eyes and asked, “Are you guys disowning me?”

There are too many things I ought not need - I find, perhaps, this is my home.

I find my brother with every smoke I take, he’s the inhalation of tobacco and the act of lighting a flame; I wonder often, which river I might find him in if I looked just hard enough, through condensed eyes it’s easier to find him with a simple light. There are many people I have wronged, and many times I have kissed failure on her jagged lips; finding him in my dreams only anchors away my soul. I am reckless, heartless, vain, and shallow. I find him in tar and feathers, I blame him for a house that is not mine, I find home in simple pleasures.

#writing #prose #poetry

[rightintoday]

imprint

Two weeks ago I tried to write a poem about how I’d fallen in love, it wrote:

“Somewhere along the way I got lost in roadways, stuffed mushrooms, and ashen park benches. Tracing figure eights along stiff arm hairs wondering just how close to infinite we were getting. Between sips of wine, we find patterns in popcorn riddled ceilings - this, he says, is what college entertainment can be best described as, and I, in turn, laugh.”

I flip two cigarettes from a carton holder, painted in pre-cursors, warnings that I hold in contempt - two decades ago, maybe, I would not know what I was pounding against my teeth, but I twist metal circuits like broken petals between my forefinger and thumb and sit pretty in the knowledge that I am, indeed, dying and he, now two weeks later, in turn, laughs.

There isn’t a speck of dust on my bedroom mirror, my mother finds this funny, she says - “Your mirror is the only thing in this damned room that’s clean,” and I smile, toothy grins with crackled lines of peach red lips - peach fuzz trickled like small pubescent pubes along a young boy's face, there are small grains of graham crackers, beer bottle caps, and a two litre bottle of Evian water leached across the floor. Who even drinks Evian water, who needs that much?

His reflection is imprinted along the side of a pillow, I see his sharpened jaw, twig-like nose, what was once shapeless now harbours a fugitive to a sudden and unrealistic love affair. There are many things I wish I would have said to you: one, if this were right, if you were right, I believe just now would have been the time. Two, I’ve only smoked once since the day you left - I’m afraid that once the pack runs dry so will whatever, this, was. Three, I know you weren’t ready, but I was.

#prose #writing

[rightintoday]

30/09/14

There’s desperation in my walk - a homeless man claps outside the  neighbourhood convenience store, the red neon highlights his dramatic persona, unshaven, unkept, tarnished, there is no music. Every inch of his body tells a broken story, but so does mine. His palms strike along to my hustling feet; silently, I thank him for the music.

Luke once told me that it was time to settle down. Long overdue. My fingertips conform to too many body types, there are countless bed frames etched within the sectors of my mind - but luckily, he told me, “you don’t have a bed post, I can’t imagine how many notches there’d be.”

The last time I fell in love was appalling, head first, uncontrollable - he said good morning twice a day, once when he woke up, and once when he knew I did. There were always two sunrises, and never a sunset. Love was never goodbye, simply hello. It was never goodnight but see you again real soon.

I never understood the desperation of a true love story until I heard it clapped out for me in solemn beats, it’s echoes lining down Nelson (the street I wandered), my boots clap out the same rhythm, broken.

-

Button toes, silicone nose, shirt slathered needlessly in palm trees,

Allison told me he’d never like me. “Especially with that - thing of yours.”

That thing, was my penis, I reminded her. Playful like children,

ignorant like a third grade sex education class, I swear if I wanted to hear

more people laugh at the word ‘vagina’ I would have never left public school.

He’s boisterous, but alone. The halls reek of wet dog, wondering if I’d

pulled up at some sort of residence for old folks, his walls are lined with

tie dye t-shirts, and post cards from Argentina. “This is the song,” he tells me,

“This is the song I listen to when I make out with girls - “ I know, thank you.

I’m used to disappointment. Somewhere along the line, the thin bridge snapped. 

A long time ago I learned to never sink your heels to deep in the ground,

it’s easy to find footing in someones heart, but it may -

it’s probably not your right to stay. There were five filters left in my pack, 

I told you before I came over that tonight, this night, I planned on smoking until I couldn’t breathe. You never said no. I’ve been told that certain boys are bad for me, but tonight

with wind dripping down your frozen face, pale, unmoving, I told you that

you were the kind of guy that would end me up in jail, and he didn’t say no.

He didn’t say no to loving vigorously, to finding a place in my eyes,

I let him in, not literally - and this is one notch, a single shard of self-destruction 

that my bed post can’t handle, regardless of that thing of mine.

My weird condition. 

#prose

[rightintoday]

old musings

Start with the thing you know to be true - they say,

writing is as simple as that - start with what you -

all I know is last night you brushed your hand along my face and it felt

like one million midnights, constant endings, swirling through our very

own infinities, looping every second letting me know this is the END.

it was hard to breathe in your 1998 sedan, i didn’t know what

the label even meant but you seemed obsessed with

it’s title, manufacturing date, make, brand - our relationship was boiled down to

an overrun conveyor belt, strapped in, forklifted to new heights, sprawled against grey slate,

cranked up hills. Congratulations! It’s a, 2013 “We’re just friends.”

Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear,

Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear I start a letter addressed to

you as many times as I need to work up the courage to write 

it’s contents. Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear,

Dear, Dear, Dear, it doesn’t go as well as planned

Please make sure you’re buckled in, “I was thinking.”

In case of emergency, there are four exits, “you still, you know -

love me,” Two in the front, and two in the back, in case of

emergency, lights on the floor and roof “and I don’t feel they same”

will light up, leading you out, “we should stop hanging out for a while.”

you didn’t say any of those things, but i think we both thought it.

i’ve grown terrified of my own aspirations,

please leave me.

[rightintoday]

a short letter to everyone i've ever loved

Pigtails, we shared the same name, but nothing else -

you left a bear at my doorstep, I left an egg at your window.

I wondered what it was like tasting a good wine, Red, if it was like you

it would be twitching and erratic, we never touched, kissed, but you e-mailed

me a personalized mental disorder, signed and authorized.

You stuck to my heart, Rose, wrote you poetry and stuck it in pencil cases

gave me everything to accept who I was but still

loved me unconditionally.

Dear Bear Rug, you were everything I needed, but I was no where close

to your standards, your fingertips felt like sawdust and your breath

like week old taco bell, you were my everything never forget.

I’m sorry you were nothing but, a Copy, down to the very name,

I often wonder if my footprints are still stuck to the inside of your

car.

I hate everything about you, Yeast. You were a fucking jerk.

Dear Solitude, I wonder what would happen if I could touch your face

just once, instead of watching it sullenly behind a computer screen.

I found scars trickled down my spine. Clutched between each vertebrae

were your fingertips, Seventeen. Damaged, pretentious, deluded, I clung

to your very being as if your simple presence was my convoluted living space.

I could and have written ten letters to you, that will never be sent. 

Dear Mandelin, I’m sorry - I was confused.

Dearest, dearest, dearest Shepherd, thank you for confirming

that not all love ends poorly. 

You weren’t what I intended, Lip - I dived head first into shallow waters,

absorbed into reflective surfaces, cracking at the seams, you were fresh,

unacquainted, obsessive - you were damaged, but so was I.

Cough Syrup, I’m sorry I couldn’t fall asleep, I honestly, truly tried.

You lost me on the fourth floor of your empire, you will climb many more

stairs than I ever will, in the future you will realize - I was not worth it.

It burdens me each day that Seventeen, damaged, pretentious, deluded,

Seventeen - I quiver over dampened trampolines waiting for you to come home.

Dear Poet Boy, I write each letter for you - a small confession, a long list - I’m sorry

to have dragged you kicking and screaming, unlimbered, unready. There are 2000 miles, and

2000 people blocking what could be more, I’m sorry. 

[rightintoday]

(iii) a series of unfinished poems about a boy

Dear T,

There is truth in fear. Crawling through darkness, blind to opposition, there is only one thing we can see, hear, feel

                                   and that is our own presence.

My own skeleton is destroyed by many variables. There are tattoos inked across my many (prison) cells, I hold my reminders much like everyone else -

       through permanence.

On our second day. (I say our as if it was solely mine and yours, bundled up in the arctic, scrambling for heat out of desperation,) on our second day, I was told to write down your very being,

hang on to a superficial limb and climb down your spirit. I stare into your eyes for one

                     l     o     n    g      minute. 

hanging on every second, hinging on your humanity, scattering -

 - I am seconds from falling off a cliff -

- Bright blue eyes. Bright. 

I write it down as if were so simple, just oh so simple to say what I mean.

A simple adjective is never enough, but it has to do.

- Freckles

                 Ineffective. I trace words

I want to say to you like constellations against your arched cheekbones.

                      I am holding on, simply, ineffective,

   if only barely.

Dear T,

There is no need for fear. There is comfort in discomfort.

Like,

Sam.

[rightintoday]

(ii) a series of unfinished poems about a boy

Etches, carved into calloused skin,

a tattoo. It is a foreign conception

that plays on the ideals of admiration

I am not pounded with ink, slithered

in oil - not blacking out and petrified,

I am glistening. Not skimming the top,

not pollution our lungs.

                              It is an ideal.

Each and every love painted onto my heart

   obsessed.    compulsive.

I found a letter for each person           I loved, they convulse

my heart,

obtain my affection, and lose my mind.

--------

Dear [blank].

               Find me in a coffin with your 

hands around my neck.

               I found your t-shirt the

other day, thanks for the stories.

 Love [blank.]

[rightintoday]

(i) a series of unfinished poems about a boy

I watch people from the third floor window,

grated - foggy - fuzzy.

He touches her arm, it's soft

and gracious. she flinches backwards

                       I imagine he told her 

that, today, he doesn't love her 

     as much as he did yesterday.

what's different about today?

[rightintoday]

little girl

He started smoking cigarettes at twenty-two. She was made up solely of constellations, that much he knew - deep down, he thought that each puff of smoke was a signal to the skies above. If they did it in the past, why couldn’t he do it now? There were stories in each sliver, doubts in descending ashes. He once asked her - did you ever love me the way I did you? That night, he swore the stars shined just a little brighter. There were secret messages in nature that he had to decode, but he destroyed the universe with open flame just to say hello. 

There was an epic poetry to the way he lived his life. He no longer lived in

broken

down

lines.

But lived in long versed paragraph. He wrote novels, not chapters, said good morning but never felt the need to say goodnight or goodbye. There were privileges to life he’d never understand, but grasped them nonetheless. There was time to worship art, fall in love, be human - but more often than not, there was time to lay amongst the dew-stained grass, teetering in the grey swept wind and to connect each fragile star with his fingertips as the burned out.

Souls departing, each night he hoped it wasn’t her. Please, he signalled. Alright, she signalled back. He lived and loved amongst the stars. He imagined her dancing, though she wasn’t the type to - it was just more lively, more vigorous and he sat there, grass like coils across his ankles and wondered maybe someday, she’d be there waiting, until then - he swore he would always tell stories through cigarette smoke. 

[rightintoday]

kick a horse when it's down

You don’t want to be alone.

A vibrato ticks off your stripped down lips,

reading like a teleprompter, I don’t need your words to understand the way 

there are three pillows every night tucked up against your body’s natural

crevices so you can feel warm. Skulking like fog through a mid-morning

graveyard. There are ten tombstones implanted in my lungs, engraved,

made peace with - they say you can die in my kisses but these are my 

own trinkets. I’m not a flower, blooming outwards and open. Dust streams

through my veins, old and infertile, wasting away - I am not blood and love,

these are brittle bones buried deep among skyscrapers. 

“I can be” everything I’ve needed, stuck in a structure six feet tall,

tucked away in the back of civilization, put together with rope and glue,

every day I inhale you further, “different.” I can feel your footprints

dig shallow holes, your fingerprints tracing each letter written to every soul

I’ve ever loved.

You will never be one of them.

#prose

[rightintoday]

to be read

she shines on me with her crystalline figure

with jaded vase curves, reflecting across her

carved cheek bone, reads easily - striking me across

the face with every step. i imagine wind encompasses

her fragile being with every waltz through trodden

courtyards. there are twelve strands of silver hair 

that twist out of their canvas, each proposing a new set of adjectives,

conjectures, opinions, frameworks, additions to a leather bound

novel strung through her heart. i count six twitches of the hand,

watch as she grimaces at idiocy - i wait until one to say hello

and at one oh one she’s still awake telling me how - there are twisted tales that keep the dead awake at night, 

but there’s a rush to being alive. there are times she crawls into blankets,

creeps along snowbanks and thinks of shivering into slumber, crosses blackboards

and creates stories with washable chalk and let’s the tides of her mind wipe them away. 

i wrap her tales around fainting fingertips, twist off circulation with silken scarves,

curiosity strikes when she can’t read her own face, nor i hers, nor her mine - 

i think some stories have never been written, and it’s in those moments we mark them as 

to be determined, to be announced, to be read.

maybe just maybe there are some stories that will never be told, but she

collects them in her mind, abstract and full of stars - watches

statues and tells them what she knows to be true,

then writes them all 

on her own skin.

she’s a walking novel, there are ten worlds just in her fingertips.

#prose #writing #poetry

[rightintoday]

something i never finished

I ingest flu medicine like a heroine addict

shooting healing into my very veins;

last week a girl told me that

white people write too many poems about cigarettes,

“You’ve probably never even smoked.”

She’s wrong but, I get where she’s coming from

so I decided tonight I would write a poem that

doesn’t allude to fire. 

i couldn’t.