Poetry since Creative Writing

A Poem by India

The porch swing bumps against the wall
gently like speculations against principles.
I should, perhaps, go outside for more than
cigarettes and obligations.
Hermits have it good.
I want to change
my eating habits,
my sleeping habits,
my thinking habits.
My living habits, really,
to be a minimalist in everything I do,
a tiny, subtle force to be reckoned with.
I raise my lips to his
as you raise a bottle to yours.
Sometimes you just go numb.

The never-ending to-do list:
1. write
2. recover
3. breathe

---------------------------------------------------------

I've dreamt often,
but not recently,
of hands sinking
into murky water
reaching up to me
pleading for my help
for a chance at the rest
of their promising lives.
I see no face.
I hear no voice.
I do not help.
Nor do I have any interest in doing so.
They are just another me
in a sea of mes
desperate
to sort out the illusions
and finding only
a clear dearth of reality.

---------------------------------------------------------

It's true I idolize that
dreads-wearin',
music-blarin',
blues-screechin',
street-preachin',
job-needin',
Kerouac-readin',
mainstream-hatin',
tambourine-shakin',
thrift-shoppin',
party-hoppin',
street-urchin,
soul-searchin' lifestyle.
But at least I'm no square.

---------------------------------------------------------

For now, I pause and for just a second
I can hear thoughts buzz
more slowly in my mouth
and perhaps a few settle
on dusty eardrum window sills
to rest their wings in the warmth
between heavy eyelid curtains.

Fear, fear only the spider's thirst,
the predator of my own conception
who lives to consume in the darkest corner.

Fight, fight the gluttonous fibers
that cling to leg and wing.

Beat, beat against the grave
lest I become prey to my own belief:

I am one of the doomed,
of a cursed breed,
condemned from birth or before
to be selfish, small, wrong,
and broken for eternity,
struggling against my fate
entwining my feet and fists,
I wrap myself deeper, tighter
into my own mortality
and finally
accept its poison.

I cannot live paralyzed by fear.
I will die paralyzed by venom.
The great Stomach growls.

---------------------------------------------------------

so many beautiful things

less appreciated alone

cigarette ash drifting off

the second floor balcony

coating an abandoned spiderweb

the hyenas never rest

always around to laugh at your expense

their voices the tamp, tamp, tamp in your ears

this place is too sterile for my raging blood

i long for the equator

my skin is freezing over

don't, please, don't reach my heart

ive given up trying to express

pain, longing, love, wonder

silence is adequate for you

darkness is just another truth

if there are to be any skeletons in my closet

its going to be me

---------------------------------------------------------

A subtle expression of unadulterated misery
is apparently enough to earn
1. misguided pity,
2. disgust,
or 3. (and strangest of all) a gilded idol
built in some perversion of your image,
crippled to submission
but materially solid:
a glamorous ideal of modern Ophelia,
floating so gracefully in her grave
trailed by silken gown and unbound locks
'neath the shade of trees dropping blossoms
to keep her corpse fresh-smelling.
Her lips, a fading rose hue,
her bosom to rise and fall its last,
and her tiny glass shoes slipping off
to be found downstream
and placed on another
who may actually appreciate her "blessings".
Did you know I had an ego?
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't madly in love
with your perception of who I am.