Month: September 2010

Cotton

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

Try stuffing cotton in,
then maybe you could hear me better,
because even when I SHOUT!
you turn away and talk.

I have a bag right here,
fresh from the store,
shorn from the greatest
polyester plant in China.

Perhaps if I sent you there,
where students must stand
at silent attention when the
teacher enters the room,

and crowd into one hundred
lecture-style desks lined up
like building blocks in their
echoed cave, you would listen.

But for now, let me take a
piece of polyester-cotton ball,
one for each ear, so at the very least,
I won’t have to listen to you.

Twenty Clicks

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with twenty clicks
and a bowlful of anticipation
i await the shoes
that will take her
farther than my words
ever could,
even when i walked
alongside her jagged steps
and plucked her words
from the page into my memory.

i can already see them on her feet:
perfect and smooth, the bone,
perfect and smooth, the metal.
and her face? a picture
of deference wrapped up
in an ever-polite smile.

with twenty clicks
and a mouthful of anticipation
i await the shoes
that will take her
farther than my words alone
could carry her.

Advance Notice

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

with these words
that you think harmless
you have set the tone
for weeks of mediocrity.

thank you, however,
for letting me know
with advance notice
what not to expect from you.

Suffering

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

how it seeps into our lives
like acid rain in the gutter of our world
and though we scrub our skin
and mop the stained pavement,
it returns, dark and thick, unblockable.

how it creeps into our lives
with chirps and whistles, childlike,
hidden between the pages of our books,
behind the minor notes of major music,
its words and melodies compiled
into a cacophonous calamity of sadness.

how it breathes its life into our lives,
slithering snakelike into the brightest moments,
reminding us of who we could be,
of what within us we have lost,
of who we are in this moment, this
undefinable, sorrowful,
searching-for-meaning moment of suffering.

Drowning

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

i’m underwater
barely able to breathe
so stop trying to talk to me.

Birthday Party

/ lovizmytrio / 1 Comment

it is her first invite
(i wish it was her last)
and we sit in awkward silence
exchanging knowing looks

we’re surrounded by excess fat
skimmed off meat
once set aside just for the rich that has
oozed into our barely-middle class neighborhood

in gluttonous globs it surrounds
even the youngest rosy cheeks,
tripping and slipping their every step
as they unwrap, unwrap, unravel.

by coming here today, we are guilty,
and though our portion size is smaller,
it sits at the edge of the heaped-to-ceiling plate,
torn to bits in minutes by a ferocious four-year-old.

we take our leftovers in six baggies home,
but they are not for the dog. they are for us,
our girls, to chew on all evening, to try and
fill the growling hole in our gut-wrenched stomachs.

My Call

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

i can’t write these words
without the acrid taste
of your absurdity
resting on my fingertips.

you may think
your mightier-than-thou
attitude makes you
stronger than us lesser-thans

but no one could be
lesser than you
with your cold, know-it-all words
and your severe lack of respect.

you may think you’re
calling it like it is, but all
you are really doing
is being the pot.

i am not the kettle,
so don’t try to twist this
around with the knives
you’ve stuck in our backs.

we can play like this all night,
idiom after idiom,
idiot after idiot,
but i think i’ll call it a day.

Wild Waves

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in wild waves they come
splashing me with sticky, salty skin,
throwing me into the undercurrents
of what they think is right.

i stand on the shore facing their storm,
waiting for the moon to send the tide back,
their glistening white foam
tickling my toes with bubbles and warmth.

they push and pull and topple seashells onshore,
their distant fatherly clouds pounding down,
and they lap, lap, lap the sand at my feet,
not always waiting for my command.

in wild waves they come to my beach,
and though i try to clear the sticky salt,
it seeps in, breathes through my skin,
and together we intertwine our arms and swim.

How to Write a Poem

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

just take two words
something plus something
combine them together
in a mix of machinery
(metaphorsimileassimilation)
and you have yourself a poem.

Example:
my phone is a bleeping cockroach
hiding in the closet
all day long
creeping out on vibrating legs at night
and flashing its bleary eyes
at me when i open the door
and release it to freedom.

In This World

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with the words
O my brothers
O my brothers
Anthony Burgess
stings my ears with
a new kind of violence
just as the wind
stings my skin
and the sun
stings the cold away
and before i miss it
i stop, the rogue farm
on one side of my
place in this world,
the corporate conglomerate
on the other,
and snap the photos
to record the moment:
2,000 miles in
not twelve, but eleven months,
the same day i discover
i’ve walked fifty in seven days
(108,688 steps)
and though they are numbers
(just numbers?)
they represent everything
that is possible,
that i believe,
that i thinkicanithinkicanithinkican
do in this world.