poemsforkitty

[poemsforkitty]

Treasure

I wrote down my sadness and rolled that up and put it in a bottle the bottle being that sort of kind of blue not green just the same blue as the ocean's waves in the dawn light like the light hits it and it's just a spark in the water and I tried to let it go out there it was the best I could do with no one else to tell it to it said I want to unburden myself of this but I had to send it to you (the you being you who are reading this) and I hope that it will not be your burden the sadness of a stranger from wherever but maybe like a treasure like a quaint thing? an ordinary thing with great mysterious meaning that you can tell the story of and i can still be free in some way having told the sadness and not the story of it that should be enough I hope I will feel better soon

[poemsforkitty]

Mustache

I just want to look stupid but to still have people tell me they like the reason I look so dumb I can look good and I don't look old but when I have a mustache I look bad and old but and this is crazy I know I want people to look at me and be like dude I think you look great with a stache It's this lie that we're all leaning into It's a challenge I'm asking you to think I think I look good But it's ok I know I don't I look bad and dumb with a mustache But I've got to grow one That's the style.

[poemsforkitty]

Blue Volvo Eulogy 2

I want to thank you for being here today. As the Volvos biggest fans, I am grateful that we can gather to celebrate the legacy of this unique and beautiful car.

The Volvo was the fourth in a line of Volvos that I drove, starting with Stan the Sedan, then Frank the Frankenvolvo, followed by A Blue Sedan, and then The Blue Wagon. While it remained unnamed throughout its time with me, it will be the car I remember the most fondly, as I drove it for 12 years and it is deeply tied to many memories from that time.

The Volvo is so intricately linked with Tooth Lures a Fang that I think I will always associate them. I got the car around the same time that the band started, and it drove gear to nearly every gig we played in Cincinnati, and even took us on our first two regional tours, packed to the brim with men and gear, fitting everything snugly. I’ll never forget pulling into Youngstown, Jordan VonWahlde crammed into the backseat, using one PVC pole from our sign to make siren sounds out the window. The countless road jokes, the long drives with music too loud. The Volvo had no working air conditioning, it begged you to play the music loud enough to be heard over the howl of the wind through the open windows.

It featured in two music videos, first as the spaceship in Ronald Raygun. What an apt role for it to play! An odd, boxy, anachronistic vehicle for a band, and a man, who often felt that same way. Absurd in the twenty first century landscape, but being true to itself and doing its best.

Later, it played the part of the daily driver in the Real Love video, about two best friends. The video ends with them having a small picnic of snacks on the tailgate of the car after one of them had a difficult day. This was another easy role for the Volvo to play, because it has seen so much love and friendship, including many memorable moments between me and my best friend Darya. 

I need to recognize and thank Darya at this time. Not only is she my best friend, but she was always appreciative of the Volvo. She was one of the first people who told me it was a cool car, and not once did she disparage it as being old or clunky. She recognized my connection with the Volvo and loved it as I did. Like Tooth Lures a Fang, she is connected to so many vibrant memories of the car, from small things like Michael’s and Taco Bell runs, to filling it up with costumes and gear for video shoots, and helping load it up with classical guitars for Guitar Ensemble tour. Perhaps most importantly, the Volvo will be the reason for the best-friends-high-five-out-the-open-sunroof, which will be a legacy I hope that we can continue for many years. We are not best friends because of the Volvo, but it was the setting for many yaps, laughs, big and small chats, and even tears. I want to also thank Darya for the replica of the Volvo, because it will remind me of the car, it will remind me of her, and it will remind me of me and her in the car.

I am saddened that I can no longer drive the old blue Volvo wagon. In its age it was not perfect. However, it always got me home before it broke down and never left me hanging. I accepted its imperfections and it always accepted mine, whether I let the gas or oil get too low, or left the window cracked in the rain. I am worried that I will be a little less cool without it. Strangers driving Volvos will not recognize me as one of their own. College boys will not go crazy when they see me roll up to the stop light. I worry that the double hang loose tongue out “whaaaaa” move will hit differently or fail to land completely. But I think I get to carry some of the clout with me, like it rubbed off in a way. The memories are indelible, cast in permanent ink invisibly in the mind. Real ones will know, and if they care to ask, I might say “Yeah, I used to drive a 30 year old Volvo Wagon, it had like 320,000 miles on it” and they’ll smile and shake their heads. 

We don’t get to keep cars forever, but we get to keep the memories, and we can go to those at any time. We can put the windows down and crank the music, we can feel the wind in our hair and on our faces, we can sing too loudly, and we can reach up and high five out the sunroof. Those are moments the Volvo taught us to love. And when we remember those moments we will be somewhere else, but we will be in the Volvo, too.

[poemsforkitty]

Dear Blue Wagon

By Darya Tsoy

The years that I’ve known you have been some of the best of my life.

The late night pizza shows at southgate house revival the flea market trips the high fives out the sunroof. You have served me and my best friend well in our laughter and our tears. In vulnerable moments. In iconic trips and memorable jokes. You have been there for so much of what has mattered to me and I will always think of that when I think of you. Though we must part the times that we’ve shared will live on in mine and Zach’s friendship as a reminder that all things good will continue on in the people we’ve served and that continue to love us. You have had a good life filled with fun and adventure and now go on to great dirt road in the sky. Shaded by leafy green trees and gentle sounds of laughter and rockin tunes.

Thank you for being the wheels beneath us on the road of friendship. May your memory live on forever

[poemsforkitty]

This is a Sincere Poem for my Best Friend

You will never be my best friend just because you are the best friend I have had so far or the best friend currently or the person I hang out with the most You are not the best based on a ranking of people I have met or friends I have had before Number one of one thousand or however high that number goes You are not my best friend just because you receive a perfect score on a rubric I created with all the qualities a best friend should have You are my best friend because I am certain There could be no better friend than you You made me reconsider what it feels like to have a friend or to be one Like there were colors with no names that I had never seen Like we named those colors together You are the kind of friend who has allowed me to grow into a better version of myself Who maybe saw that within me and helped me find it Who is there for me on the other side I struggle with this poem because I want to edit To subvert my whole process To make it mean what I want it to mean What I want it to mean Is that you are the best friend I COULD have You are the best friend that could be There needs to be more than words for this Like the music swells here and the sun pauses its setting to paint a more perfect picture Before the night bugs start their song Before that first tip of pizza dipped in ranch after dark You are my Best friend through all of this And this is Just in the language I speak the best The best I can do to tell you so

[poemsforkitty]

This Sandwich Got a Standing Ovation!

I sold my voice for a life of convenience Started with a picture of the hypothetical baby I would have with Scarlett Johansson Then difficult e-mails and conversations Until I never spoke at all And that baby had grown up In a thousand imagined universes As Scarlett and I grew old In one we were so proud He was a famous actor like his mother He married the child of overseas royalty! In another she turned out just like her dad Uncanny and decrepit Lit by screens and scrolling Tired eyes and full of candy Growing out and out But never full I didn't like that one And I requested to never see anything like that again And I didn't! I sold my voice to the algorithm So it could speak for me And it was worth less to them Than to me One voice is all I ever had And they collect more and more It balls into the child of printed circuit boards A million voices One voice of humanity Beige and plain My famous sons and daughters Laugh in strange metallic tones in every video they sent me Please Father tell us the story again of how you met our mothers I ask them once again to figure out the most appropriate response What would a father say to his many children when they ask him questions about themselves

[poemsforkitty]

Men's Pants

Who makes these pants That ride so low They're not for work They're just for show The boxers peek From up the back And then above The top of crack The men who wear them do they care They show the fold and underwear Or do we blame for top cheek flashin' The brand that made this awful fashion

[poemsforkitty]

Potatoes

Some boys are sad Like it's not even their fault Just a lives of sadness on lives of sadness added up over generations so they have no choice but to live a sad kind of life and what to do with all that except make it anger and spread it around to anyone who might have a little more room to fill with something dark So the saddest boy in school sat behind me in home ec class in seventh grade and he asked me for a pencil and he asked me if I was wearing a bra and he asked me if I wash out my ears because "Boy there's so much dirt in them ears it looks like you could grow some potatoes in there" And sometimes I worry when I think about my ears that maybe still they're shameful and dirty but no adult is going to tell me now and the sad little kids in middle school aren't really tall enough to see inside them

[poemsforkitty]

Rinse

The dirt falls from the skin water tracing rivulets down the arm and through the fingers and their fingertips in dark brown streams to the drain The skin is still clean and fresh under there like maybe it was never dirty just had dirt on top of it There's nothing to scrub just the water takes it off The saturated skin swelling and pruned until it too separates in large chunks and falls from the muscle each little piece falls and gathers at the drain and then the muscle is also washed clean the blood running clean like the dirt before it then the tendons lose their grip and peel off from the top down until organs are revealed they fall out all at once from the great hole in the abdomen one wet splash in the gathered water around the bony feet two smaller ones maybe for each eyeball the long nerve trailing down each cheekbone more cartoon than macabre and then a skeleton standing in its own ornaments the water washing and polishing each bone until they each erode the marrow scooped out the inside now clean except the skull the brain is absent it is full of a thick dark liquid that has swirled inside and gone bad the relief of the water cuts and dilutes it it flows slowly down the bones and finds its way to the drain beneath the viscera and out into the sea where the salt will ruin and subdue it where it will become food for smaller things where it will no longer be mine

[poemsforkitty]

I don't know who I am in my new car

I have a nice new car I do not recognize myself in it It doesn't look like me yet and I don't know if I will change to become more like it because a car cannot change to match its owner What will anyone think of me when I pass them in my new car Will they probably think nothing because I am essentially anonymous now I passed my wife on the road She did not recognize me Even as a driver lifting his hand to wave And I do not know if I don't feel like myself But something is lost.

[poemsforkitty]

Your Hatred of the Suburbs

That choking feeling you talk about with your friends in your jaded way just as a segue to a conversation about your dreams it's not the spindly arms of tired failure of the doldrums of the greyest life or whatever reaching out to twist you clean to drain your light to push the words you want to sing back down inside you it's actually no arms at all it's your arms folded on your chest clenched fists in armpits and never reaching up to knock on that door or to open yours it's your hands that are none holding your phone or down in your pocket or reaching up to your own neck to silence your voice from fear that it would what resonate too clearly in the bright morning against the rhythm of the runners' feet in harmony with the lawnmowers and the morning cars the song of the world is different where you live and it's different where everybody lives but don't you think for a single minute that no one drowns in the bright lights of the city

[poemsforkitty]

8th grade

Nothing takes me back to the beginning faster than being reminded that the most normal of the artistic things that I do Are still weird.

[poemsforkitty]

Dig in the Dirt

My hands have been down in the soil to rearrange nature's order the work still visible on them in caked dirt under the fingernails and specks upon my flesh a deeper stain that lives in the smaller creases of my hands which cannot be scraped or brushed away I take them to the bathroom sink and wash them quick rivulets running to the drain frothy and brown the ghost of work running away visible in splatter on the porcelain and a marbled stain on the soap brush to the nails to scrub away the last evidence to make the hands new out in the garden the flowers neatly arranged under fresh new rain but who did that? was it nature's own device? these hands are clean they tell no story at all.

[poemsforkitty]

Old me and Now me

Old me and now me how we'd've argued not an arguement rather old me pushes back against what he knew was true but maybe not because he believed it but maybe because he wanted someone to remind him that love is real and the depth of happiness is no less than that of sorrow and Now me knows Old me and knows he always needed a firm hand on the shoulder and to be reminded of those things and can finally love him back

[poemsforkitty]

June 1

Boy slips out the backdoor catches the frame so as to subvert the creak and the slam slinks to the edge of the forest where he disappears into the great verdant green of his childhood the scrubby brush disappearing now only tall tall trees so thick at the top only the slightest sunlight marbles the forest floor in undulations past the memory of each tree to the forest's other edge where it is cut through by train tracks long disused he balances his walk upon a rail to the bridge where he sits upon the old planks arms folded on the rusted beam and looks out over the water that is flowing from behind him to somewhere far away downstream overcome he stands and mounts the railing! and shouts downstream "I don't know what I want to do!" a frog plops disturbed "is that OK?"

"Is that OK?!"

[poemsforkitty]

His favorite flashlight

The technical specifics of his favorite flashlight are his favorite poem He reads them prayerlike in the early dark of his bedroom with the beam of the thing shining out a beacon of its own prowess He recites the range of lumens as he focuses and unfocuses the beam the ray of light visible in the air the circle on the wall anecdotally as bright as the noon day sun itself! The catch of the button so soft and secure under his thumb He clicks it in time with the words which are its length and weight now and then waits in solemn silence as he cycles through the several flashing light modes Then placing the flashlight lens down on the nightstand an offset halo cast around the room and then darkness as if extinguishing the fire himself a soft click and finally "goodnight flashlight."

[poemsforkitty]

Exit the Megachurch

Exit the megachurch In athleisure casual The just tennised look sported by the never played Smiles like knives straightforward strolling four lanes to the trampoline park parking lot cafe latte in hand lives in god's Six splendas no coffee taste and no look no wave just walk to the car to honk at careless pedestrians