Dreampoetrydream

September 12, 2010

Dreampoetrydream

You know what I love?
Waking up in the middle of the night to write a poem
because I know if I don’t write it, it’ll be lost forever.

You know what I hate?
Waking up in the middle of the night to write a poem
because I know if I don’t write it, it’ll be lost forever.

What happens to poems
that end up trapped in the vortex
of my sleep deprived mind?

Are they forced to sit in the audience
of a bad poetry slam and listen to all the poems
while sober?

Do they haunt my dreams
and fill my mind with beauty
only to escape me as I wake up
and grab for my pen?

Do they hang there like a sneeze
that never happens?

I woke up and wrote this poem
because I don’t want to know.

moving on

August 15, 2010

moving on

like time
we must continue.
nostalgia ain’t nothing
but an opiate
that stops us from living
presently.

drunk text message to god

after george watsky

dear god:

on the fifth day, you created birds. on the sixth, man and the animals

on the seventh, you rested, and on the eighth, i am convinced

that you created alcohol as a way to play truth or dare with me

on nights like tonight. tonight your kingdom is this party,

a warm dizzy midnight laying claim to something inside of our chests

a beer pong table built of natty ice and bleeding hearts

tonight your kingdom is this dance floor of a chapel

please forgive us

because this church was built on an r. kelly song

and what we will wear as regret tomorrow morning

is a crown built of magic tricks tonight

and i am too busy baptizing myself in somebody else's sweat

to notice you standing in the corner, god, but you're there

you bridge over troubled waters

you infinity batting average

you sunset graffitied wishing well of a thought,

you beautiful ghost, you.

when the party gets ugly where do you go to?

when the keg runs low and tensions run high

and my roommate is on the floor and whispering

into the porcelain ears of our apartment's plumbing

for the fifth weekend in a row

are you meeting with the scientists to try and prove your existence?

are you hiding yourself in the question marks of somebody's suicide note?

i could try and put you into every word of every poem i write and you

would still look best tucked into the "holy" of "on holiday"

dear god,

i'm trying to learn how to talk to you

because i know you can't be inside of me if i refuse you

but how can i love a god who creates frat boys who don't understand that idea?

who defy it on the weekends, whose alcohol tolerance is surpassed only by their egos?

these college kids are losing their dignity,

have left it dangling like a dotted line somewhere

in between their student loan agreements and their vodka-induced blackouts

truth or dare, god?

if a picture is worth 1,000 words and if man was built in your image,

then what are the other 999 words that describe you after "womanizer"?

guess two might be "drunk driver", another two "underage alcoholic"

just show me what the compromise between my faith and this culture

is supposed to look like and i'll make it.

i'm tired of building my faith on this indian graveyard.

dear god,

once i wrote a poem about how prayer was like putting a jukebox

in a home for the deaf and i told you that

i couldn't keep putting my quarters in

because i was going broke on silence

but just because no one's listening doesn't mean i won't talk

because i just chased vodka with moonlight

and in a minute, i'm going to go drunk dial my childhood

and she has an early bedtime

so

dear god

i know that you don't get this request very often

but maybe i could learn something in college

maybe i could learn to be better

tattoo me with boldness and the right things to say

make me honest like a plus-sized model

and hopeful like a lottery ticket

in a pair of blistered hands

give me faith that flows as abundant as their budweiser does

i swear i will drink it

strong woman's anthem

you told me that i couldn't do what you hadn't done

because i was a woman, but then i did it.

and better than you.

and i guess all along, it was like your penis:

that whole time,

i didn't even know i had it in me.

haiku

1. you're crazy as a

pinata, but i'll still

hit that every time

2. transcribe your sleeping

patterns into tongue twisters:

she sleeps slow and shy

You see,

the difference between pessimistic

and depressed is that it's never really

a question of half-empty versus

wait. where--

what...

my cup. I put it right

here just a second ago.

what??

where's my cup?!

day 7: he doesn't know it

He doesn't know it, but he is her tangled dream jungle of late night bedsheets, her goodmorning sleep language and her browneyed lullaby, her cigarette smoke promises, and her pounding black bass-tempo Monday morning -- a heartbreak laid heavy with tears.

He widows her when the weekend is over, doesn't meet her eyes when they pass between classes.

He doesn't know it, but he is her religion, and her prayers are always made on all fours.

Her church needs to go through the laundry again.