norkiernan

[norkiernan]

WREAK HAVOC ON YOUR OWN MYTHOLOGY

a manifesto of sorts. by Kiernan Norman.

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPOSSED TO SAY.

Bite down. Spill.

Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,

you’re getting somewhere.

If it makes you flinch, you’re close.

If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.

Love with your hands open,

a pocketful of matches,

no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.

Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,

if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,

it wasn’t love—

just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY

What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.

Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry

and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.

You will feel the weight of years

in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles

before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,

and your skin will still tingle

at the memory of hands

that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,

and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.

No quiet exits.

No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.

Let them stare until their eyes ache.

Let them wish they had followed you.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.

The version of you that winks at the moon?

Real.

The one who writes letters

just to bury them under snow?

Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam

to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?

Also real.

You are a thousand lives,

and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.

You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,

telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other

at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,

when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician

playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.

Let them wonder.

Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

Let them carry it

like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.

Your ancestors are listening.

Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you

who didn’t make it past that worst night—

she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.

Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.

You are a Friday night

with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,

the consequence,

the aftermath,

the mess they wake up to

and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.

You are still twenty-four,

draping yourself around campus,

all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,

like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,

getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,

riding up and down the red line

just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,

kissing a face you’d been curious to taste

for ten years.

Still eleven,

jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,

waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you

who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.

Your skin is an unfinished poem.

Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—

they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.

There is a version of you

still laughing at that one house party

where you lost your heels

but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you

still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,

blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time

like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.

You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.

If they break your heart,

write them into legend.

If they leave you,

make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,

let it be in a ball gown,

mascara running down your face

like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.

Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.

Love like you’re starting a fire

in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.

Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers

like a well-kept secret.

Or better—

be the kind of catastrophe

they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU Will DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.

Parts of you will die

in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die

in the arms of people

who kissed you like they meant it

and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.

You still feel their breath in your hair.

The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.

Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times

you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier

than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.

Your mind is a temple.

Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.

Disappear into the night

wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks

like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.

Fading.

Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.

Make them see your silhouette

in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,

“Did you see her?

Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.

The past is a country

where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.

Stop sending postcards.

If you return,

take only your bones,

leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.

Your favorite books will betray you

by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to

will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin

left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.

This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ALIVE, IT WAS NEVER A WASTE OF TIME.

[norkiernan]

WREAK HAVOC ON YOUR OWN MYTHOLOGY

a manifesto of sorts. by Kiernan Norman.

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPOSSED TO SAY.

Bite down. Spill.

Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,

you’re getting somewhere.

If it makes you flinch, you’re close.

If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.

Love with your hands open,

a pocketful of matches,

no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.

Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,

if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,

it wasn’t love—

just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY

What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.

Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry

and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.

You will feel the weight of years

in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles

before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,

and your skin will still tingle

at the memory of hands

that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,

and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.

No quiet exits.

No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.

Let them stare until their eyes ache.

Let them wish they had followed you.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.

The version of you that winks at the moon?

Real.

The one who writes letters

just to bury them under snow?

Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam

to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?

Also real.

You are a thousand lives,

and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.

You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,

telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other

at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,

when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician

playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.

Let them wonder.

Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

Let them carry it

like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.

Your ancestors are listening.

Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you

who didn’t make it past that worst night—

she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.

Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.

You are a Friday night

with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,

the consequence,

the aftermath,

the mess they wake up to

and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.

You are still twenty-four,

draping yourself around campus,

all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,

like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,

getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,

riding up and down the red line

just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,

kissing a face you’d been curious to taste

for ten years.

Still eleven,

jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,

waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you

who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.

Your skin is an unfinished poem.

Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—

they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.

There is a version of you

still laughing at that one house party

where you lost your heels

but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you

still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,

blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time

like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.

You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.

If they break your heart,

write them into legend.

If they leave you,

make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,

let it be in a ball gown,

mascara running down your face

like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.

Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.

Love like you’re starting a fire

in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.

Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers

like a well-kept secret.

Or better—

be the kind of catastrophe

they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU Will DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.

Parts of you will die

in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die

in the arms of people

who kissed you like they meant it

and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.

You still feel their breath in your hair.

The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.

Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times

you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier

than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.

Your mind is a temple.

Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.

Disappear into the night

wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks

like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.

Fading.

Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.

Make them see your silhouette

in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,

“Did you see her?

Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.

The past is a country

where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.

Stop sending postcards.

If you return,

take only your bones,

leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.

Your favorite books will betray you

by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to

will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin

left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.

This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ALIVE, IT WAS NEVER A WASTE OF TIME.

[norkiernan]

I don’t want to write poems about breaking anymore. I’m so sick of my words weaving knots into the fiber of a noose and polishing the clip of the anchor it’s tied to in a dull sleep, a heavy, hibernation light-years deep in a cold, black lake, tangled in seaweed.

Reeling it in, (sweating,...

[norkiernan]

Forms of Unravel

I don’t want to write poems about breaking anymore. I’m so sick of my words weaving knots into the fiber of a noose and polishing the clip of the anchor it’s tied to in a dull sleep, a heavy, hibernation light-years deep in a cold, black lake, tangled in seaweed.

Reeling it in, (sweating, grunting, bellowing) it doesn’t budge. I’m figuring out how to stand my ground too. I’m done putting my books down for people who don’t need me, (people who like me but not enough.) I’m done with rope burn.

I’ve been wearing my stringy hurt as a badge all winter and it grosses me out. I keep mistaking eyes for hands, smiles and laughs for a net to land in; this free-fall for an optical illusion.

Awake, my mind is vigilant. It’s quick and fierce to bat away any thought that might land, wheels down onto bits of you, but I can’t guard my sleeping brain.

In dreams my mind circles back to quiet-night, November coasting. Back to my fingers carving out shapes in the steam fog of your windshield, back to each dizzy morning where I searched my phone for a ‘Good Morning’ text that I never found- (you never sent one, I never asked. We were both without precedent.)

How do I exist if not in varying forms of unravel? What’s the point of collecting the words pumping through and out of me if not to cover, shield, and serve as armor when I have no skin? There’s so much more than you and your fingerprints or me and my kaleidoscope mind. Sometimes the best part is no part at all:

I want to write a poem about the silence: the thick, metal tangle of wires that coil in my head- they swear they’re waterproof but I’m still terrified to sweat.

I want to write a poem about the before: before the envelopes were opened, before the kisses felt cautionary, before I threw myself in the kiln- when I was shaped but not permanent, when I could still make corrections.

Summer has been rolling in and getting closer to my tanning shoulders with each sunset and each curtain call. By the time its here for good I’ll be writing poems you can’t find yourself in at all. I’ll be writing poems that don’t begin broken. They’ll be poems that are whole from the very first line and stream words growing stronger instead of growing apart.

[norkiernan]

Shrinking to the Photo-Finish

Twelve years old and I knew I was too much. A body too much- a stomach that stretched and stuck and a waist left red, dented, stinging after a day in jeans. A brain too much- a thought process that took flight without permission and dropped rogue missiles of ideas in phone calls with great aunts, deep in essays during state funded tests and leaked from brown paper bags in middle school lunchrooms, leaving me silent and sticky and only just fitting in. Any conversation was secondary to the fuzzy way I could feel my mouth tripping hard to keep up with a dizzy brain and even before a sentence finished Feeling regret like warm honey coat my throat and seep down hot and solid to my roaring gut. I was a heart too much. Tears ran forceful and free for so long. There was the heavy, lonely feeling that grabbed root at my pelvis and lounged, languid for days- sucking any hope I could muster out of tan hide until only leather shell remained. Dawn would find me ushering in chilling spells of misery triggered by the whole wide world- a boy with a gun on the news, a teacher’s tight forehead while mean kids flexed their puberty, Or finding a picture of my parents before they were my parents, and wondering if they ever actually knew love. At twelve years old my soul was stretched out and sagging. At twelve years old I held tight to being less At twelve years old I knew only one way dull the aches sprouting as fast and fresh as ivy inside my bones. At twelve every birthday candle and eyelash, every wishbone and 11:11 was devoted to smallness and simplicity So certain that the less of me there was the less I would have to bear from the world. More than half my life I’ve spent in pursuit of sharp bones to shield and a lithe tread to conceal. I have itched to be a sole shrinking girl among the growing and gaining of peers- to finally find quiet in a body that was beginning to ripen in a shrill, panicky way that would just not do. More than decade I’ve spent with bile on my breath and scrappy knuckles desperately begging the arrangement of meat and bone I live in to contract; to fold back in on itself and strengthen into a place where I could catch my breath and learn to tend. Now, too many seasons and too many mistakes later- I do wake up in a smaller body. Twelve year old me is beaming as she sneaks glances the XSs stitched in labels and the chorus of likes that coo and comment how darling I look in dresses. Twelve year old me is quietly, solemnly psyched about the bruises that bloom across my paling curves after a good stretch on ground. She even nods her head gleefully to my swaying pulse as it dances to its own, faraway music. Twelve year old me could care less about the bone-buried knots entombed along my spine and the putty-snap cracking bones I show off like party tricks. She sees the yolky shimmer of eyeballs and trail of hairs I shed like bread crumbs marking my path and she doesn’t bat an eyelash. She’s glad she managed it- and anyway the price is worth the discomfort, health in youth is mostly over-rated. But I do wonder what greedy, vicious twelve year old me would think if she knew I am still, secretly, too much. Could she muster any pride as she feels my heavy, fatigued heart expand to fill the bits and dark corner secrets I starved away? Or any pity as she watches empty-word fog crawl between ribs and bellow out like a pirate’s flag under raised hipbones. She meets the murky mass that fills my frame- heavy and suspended like a dark towering cumulous waiting for the bow to break and the storm to fall. Maybe she’d find my brain chemistry unnerving. Seeing desperate fists pawing at ideas as they are born and implode and holding numbly to loose bits, reeling them in stunted fervor like kite strings. Thunder cracks and I’m not nearly electric. So I grip tight; sinking decalcified teeth into the catch of the day, rowing a rusty canoe out of the whirling, mirrored lake of my mind and back to shore. I will attempt to fit my hard won ideas into any and all variables. I will drive myself crazy with inspiration but never create a damn thing. The thoughts coursing through my almost-there body are flexed horses. They gallop around the same dirt track for days on end and I have bet what’s left of my youth on photo-finish losses. I’ve got nothing to show for who I am these days. Except for the dresses. I look good in the dresses. (Printed in Germ Magazine, 2014.)

[norkiernan]

Deep Down Dig

Sit down and begin to unravel the secrets you tried to bury inches deep within your thigh.

Remember the giddy hollow of after. How ringing out sheets and watching Polaroid skin as bruises, slowly, did sprout and spring was almost enough to quiet it some nights. How if only for a breath you could relish in the rapture instead of only diving through ash.

Discuss the way it felt to throw yourself away from the inside out- reaching and retching and clawing with chapped twig fingers at all those vile bits that bloomed inside of you.

You were just uprooting weeds.

You were just casting out veins.

Tell them how it was just like tossing a coin into a city fountain- but in reverse. (and how it’s okay to admit that you still miss the wishes.)

(Printed in Germ Magazine, 2014.)

[norkiernan]

Tinsel Loss

I wish I could write the songs I dream. I wish my carpe noctem sense of liberation woke up with me. I’d keep it on my finger and wear it as a ring. I would laugh when I looked at it because a ring that means everything is not what I am. I am what means everything. I wish our days were longer and the sunset lasted hours. I wish the sunset lasted one second. One second and only a handful of people are able to see it every night. And for that one second those few people would be completely and whole-ly of each other. And the dates we remember, the weddings and babies, the numbers on our gravestones, they’ll mean nothing because it is all about the times you saw the sun run away. One Hundred year old men will count their times on one hand. The few children, the ones the universe cradles, they will think it more than to see the queen, to be kissed by a president. Those stories will be the ones we tell. And if you’re lucky enough to see it with someone else- there is no point in staying together. Leave each other. Walk very far in different directions and don’t you ever look back. Do this because even with the oceans and masses and foggy memories between you- you are one. You live in each other’s wrists. You’re tangled in their veins and soon enough those ghastly bodies will tire, and you’ll be each other once more. You’ll braid together like tinsel and you’ll get your chance to chase the sun away, give your moment to someone else. Oh, to be them, to be the rings on their fingers, to sit on their eyelashes and watch a sunset last for hours…

[norkiernan]

Gypsy, Seventeen, Deeply Unhappy

It was the summer my feet tanned like a gladiator, my coliseum was more a city piled on dirt, dust, trash and under that; sand. It was a desert summer though pollution and global warming stole the 'dry heat' notion, burned it up between layers of humidity and buried it under the city- down to sand that touched jewels and biblical lust. sometimes I ate pigeons and sometimes I ate McDonald's. sometimes I was in love and sometimes I cried myself to sleep. my eyes were brown, my skin was dark and my accent was convincing. I could have been anybody tiptoeing between past-dead hatchbacks and stray cats- any lonely girl with sleep in her eyes and fogged up sunglasses, so why did I stay me? (Has been published in Southern Connecticut State University's 2015 issue of Folio.)