itswordsalad-blog

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78 Orchid

The tea is too hot for me

Can’t you see you’re not ready

But she drinks it anyway

The conscious thought she can’t obey

And as I become saturated

I begin to see

It was never about me

The body, ideas and emotions

They’re all just notions

None of them you

The weight of all that ego

A lofty placebo

And so the tea is steeped

So where does this leave you?

I wondered when he jumped, if he knew

the unbeatable game

the taming of the shrew

if the teabag splits open 

there is no use for glue

what held us together was bound to undo

-C

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Magnolia

Hear the crackling of the fire

I get higher

Discussion of music

Thoughts of you

Waiting for this boy to fuck me

So I can feel something too

Something that won’t remind me of you

I’m taken back to a carefree time

The lake, the trees, the rocky shore

So I too return once more

An attempt to get back what I lost

Thinking about what those around me will gain

The swell of pain

The crackling of the fire

I get even higher

Distracting my thoughts from you

but the jump, the JUMP, I fell too

And I can’t forget it

You were alive

I held your limp hand and looked into your lifeless eyes

Too surreal to be real

Like a dream I’ve lived before

Return to the crackling of the fire

Soon to extinguish...like your life

What they see at the surface is not my life

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

ego disintegration 

self-immolation 

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The Bay at Night

Oh the joys of “who am I?”

sitting beneath a velvet sky 

the rock, the shore, the gurgling waves

the stark white lighthouse 

your intrepid face

close my eyes and count to ten

still can’t put you together again

he leaned his head on my shoulder

for a moment we were older

aged by experience, but still with restless mind

oh the things he left behind

looking at you through the rain

the tide goes out

exposing my pain

miles and miles of empty space

stretched out endlessly

what I can’t replace 

-C

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[itswordsalad-blog]

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

John Clare 

[itswordsalad-blog]

9 months

what is time, but a way to measure your emotional reactions to life, that is what we are doing, reacting, and it can be curt, endlessly drawn out, or just the right pace, but whatever the pace, it is yours, if you allow it to be, it is a privilege nowadays to live out of its confines, but when you realize it is yours to harness, you can stretch it out, or, end it instantaneously 

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

I dream of the peaceful times, the fair remembered years, when sorrow never came- nor doubt nor haunting fears- I dream of those times, forgetting, it was my mother's tears and my father's midnight fretting, that gave me , what time can't change, a peaceful time to remember

current source = my grandmother, although, she may have borrowed it

[itswordsalad-blog]

My conscience burning My eyes are too Cuddled up with hard contempt Does she love you? And, I swear I do

[itswordsalad-blog]

The Glass Piano

she once said she had a glass piano inside her

she said she was afraid it would break

a lone tear streamed out from the corner of her eye 

she said he was the only one who knew how to play on those delicate keys

even when a song demanded thundering emotion, he always played with such integrity, nothing was ever damaged 

she said when he jumped and died, the glass piano shattered too

she said ever since that day she could feel the tiny shards inside her

however she moved, wherever she went, on the sunniest of days and in the most kind company, she could feel the glass piano, broken inside her

there was nothing left to play

I asked her how we could put it back together

she said you can’t

that the pain brought her into union with him

each time she felt the sting of a shard, she remembered him playing the glass piano

she closed her eyes and pictured him sitting down, breathing calmly, then setting his hands upon the keys, the slow trickle of music beginning, and somewhere, amidst the pain, she felt a momentary peace

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

there was a girl they once all knew

she was very different from you

joy came flooding out her eyes

her brother and lover noted she had her own gravity

an intoxicating reality

she’d hold your hands and spin and spin

it seemed as if she were infinite

you wonder what that must have been like

how to capture such warmth and make it stay

your world is melancholy, you are always unutterably afraid 

hope is a painful sting

so is remembering

remembering that girl they once knew

because that girl was you

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

I think she thought she could save me through the painting

through the act

through the focus

the distraction

by being here

that with each dot, stroke, and line I set upon the paper

maybe

just maybe 

some of my pain would escape with it

I mirrored her technique

then eased into it and assumed my own

we started with a pine tree

then moved onto a spruce

the next was to be a maple

mine soon became dark, a lone, skeletal, and barren maple

I finished by painting a crow perched on the furthest branch

it was turned away from the maple, looking off into some unknown landscape

she was quick to shut down any talk of my need to die

but she was really taken by the painting of the maple

something about the crow she said

the painting was calming

I enjoyed her presence 

but my pain remained

like the wort I’ve had on my foot since Mexico

it’s roots had grown deep

become a part of me

and now I was no longer willing to part with it

saying goodbye to the pain meant saying so many other goodbyes 

I looked at her in all her aging grace, she would die too

there’s another goodbye

I pull myself back to the moment

I stare at my trees

I close my eyes and think of Norway

I’ve decided thats where I need to go

she reminds me I can’t judge my trees, they are mine, I created them, they can be anything and look any way

she says this about the trees, but her eyes plead, you have to live, you can’t hurt us like that

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

and I don’t think it will be fine

there is no “making it out” this time

the engine is running, but I’m disinclined 

there is no mastering “that state of mind”

what prevents YOU from leaving it all behind?

[itswordsalad-blog]

when you can’t manifest a feeling into something outside of yourself it pulls you down

it’s like laying in a bathtub while the water drains out, breathing slowing, you can feel the weight of your body, feel the pull, to be sucked into the whirl and down into oblivion 

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

it kind of felt like a spiritual thing

the wind chimes

the dark skies

rain pouring down on me

the cold crunch of snow passing into a green Spring

the dunes and the sand

strumming the air with my hands

enchanted moments

lost in it all

then came the people

then came the F

                        A

                        L

                        L

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

30033003

dates days years

burgeoning fears

stifling tears

your sister is no longer your friend

and your mother’s got her own issues too

it’s not the fable you once knew

the boy you loved jumped off a roof

death is an ever present view

the formality of family 

the sterility

dates days years

endless frontiers 

self abuse, social misuse 

ag aaa ah

rewind to that time in the tent, the descent off the cliff, the crowded bar, the smell of beer on his breath, the touch of his hand, swimming to him, kissing him, shutting my eyes to him     SNAP    him walking across the roof, folding his things, the arcing jump, the definitive landing

D

                            E

                            A

                            T

                            H ____________

it all goes back to him

it all goes back to

dates days years

-C

[itswordsalad-blog]

every day is a reminder

we were ordinary once 

there’s a perfect world ahead

but I don’t think that we belong