Long Wharf

[a sonnet done for poetry class. I didn't know what to write about, so of course I would go straight for the obvious...
There are only seagulls in it once.]

So every time I come here, every time
I run up to that corner granite slab
and trace the compass rose laid in thin lines
across stone paving, weathered down, made drab
by winter snow and roaring salt--where boats
are fighting Boston wind and seagulls hang
in auris, puppet-like, or land, or float
on stone blue waves that carried me, that rang
off, out away, to skies the sun can't clear
from hoary mist--I know the fog is old.
My feet are not the first ones planted here.
My hands are not the first gone numb from cold.
But I am young, and I can still pretend
that water stretches on without an end.

Distance, and not

[written for poetry class as an Ashberry imitation]

This was our ambition:
Find fulfillment between textbooks and videogames
And 3AM conversations online,
Communication was in characters and keystroke interactions
And then it was summer when you were face to face
With a tree. Computer screens morphed into clouds and back again.
Bytes flew at you in binary and grass spoke a different
language, antiquated beyond comprehension.
Dandelions waved at you with diffident indifference.
Their cousins were pulled and put in
Blue bottles next to the windowsill.
Didn’t we all look for some connection between moments
Plucked out of glassed over memories
Tied into a fraying quilt, patched, flowing through months?
Each new season, though, each time we were transplanted
From place to place, our world suddenly seemed
Like a whole new planet, and the last one
Became a painted backdrop in my skull.
Was it any less real? It was easy to wonder
If they actually did exist, or if they were
Figments in a fairy-tale imagination written in
Smoke smudges, a chain pulling the façade along the track
That changed at the close of every scene.
The images were bright, though.
My surroundings seemed to reinvent themselves
Every time I looked. Fascinating, no?
We pulled each other through our scenes
With black marks on white and that vertical line
Flashing behind blank walls of space yet to be filled
With our words. We were a group of people
Reaching out through wires to satirize what was
In front of us, condense our scenes into one, or
Maybe create one in common.
The summers were something to sail through.
Somehow summer just came to be friendship.
Somewhere down the line the backdrops, painted, remain.
Maybe they’re frozen but we look back and see them there,
Sometimes held together by the letters folded into gigabytes
Somewhere floating in cyberspace.
None of us ever graduates from college.
None of us ever leaves our individual summers,
Still in that room swapping jokes with uniforms
Rolled down and quick bursts of laughter.
The laughs are pulled out and maybe we are still—

Inhuman

[Written for poetry class after Lucille Clifton's "the times"]

it is hard to remain human on a day
when the sun catches
right on the tip of a rooftop
and there’s a breeze
calling the dead leaves on the ground
to come up with it
and my hair follows
or it wants to.
another sunbeam
is pinned between branches
and i can’t help but
stop.
and i want to do something
besides smile
but i don’t know what.
if this day
could articulate
in a way that
we could understand
i would climb up
to listen;
in my mind
i see myself dancing
like i want to
not just walking through
with the feeling of
wings on my ankles
but twisting
turning and spinning
around in a blur
on the same feet
that have
propelled me since i
knew what dance was.
now the breeze tastes like sun
and the air tastes like last month’s cold
and warmth is coming; i can feel it
and blades of grass slowly rise upward
and everything stretches out its hands to be gilded
in the light of something as far from human as we know.
somehow it tells me:

you have no control and that is all right

Body Issues

[This is really old, actually. I found it in my drafts from last January. I figured I'd throw it on.]

My friend has body issues.
I don't know what to say.
I have ballet's built quadriceps and asthma
and I can't breathe when I try to work my lower abs
so I haven't lately and I can tell.
My joints crack when I stretch out my back.
My hips pop.
My kneecaps try to strain themselves off of my femurs,
and I ignore them.
I feel like an old musician with a beloved instrument--
I know where the notes will split and sometimes
screech off balance, and I feel like a professional
when I warm up. Plies. Tendus. Port de bras, splits,
stretching out my hamstrings against a wall like worn out, stiff elastics.
Isolations. Roll my neck and my shoulders and straighten them out until they crack,
Releves with my ankles popping like old floorboards.
Splits again. Stretch my quads. Abs work. Water. Breathe. More water.

New England Weather

[Written for poetry class]

I found it so amazing
that these particles could
hang
suspended in the air,

shining like dust.
On second thought,
I take another look.
They’re falling as haphazardly as I am.

Weather, I salute you—
I know your snow,
New England—
your rain, your fog,

the mud puddles
on the sides of the road,
your indescribable
summer glory days

that Adam would recognize.
I get caught up in them,
thinking that the trees and
breezes and leaves are mine,

something I can
hold.
You come back to me.
I make sure not to miss

those long walks in
a cotton tshirt
down dirt roads with
a glowing green canopy,

because then I think
I’ve captured something permanent
in the sense that it always
returns.

Seagulls

[Done for poetry class, imitating W. S. Merwin]

Gorgeous things despite what they say knights-errant
     amongst the car exhaust and blowing litter
you take it with grace and put on your rags scavengers like
     the rest of us scavenging from the rest of us
snatching food from hands as a fine for those tourists
     using your space feathered amoral vigilantes
natives of the sea now parking lot flockers kissing the pavement
     with webbed feet wet with brine like teenagers spitting on
sidewalks courtiers ruffling cloaks rustled by breeze
     old men shaking their heads shouting invective at
the cars that drive past too fast for their liking
     sharp beaked, taloned, witted in that particular vacant way
hollow like your bones and hollow with the truth in promises
     never made and never broken and the accusations
dirty loud trashy things roll beaded off your feathers
     with a disdainfully dignified twitch of the head and a spread
of painted markings underneath wings take a pier for your perch
     launch out into salt and take a blanket of moisture and sand
begrudge us the land you masters of sun and waves
     you know more of permanence and value it less
alarm clocks for the world a sound that sticks in the brain
     heralds of ocean to those adrift on the vastness of land gatekeepers
to the resounding compass that points me east towards home

11th resolution

[Something needs to get written. I'd like to start my poetry again =) ]

For the chick who's supposed to be
that one with the poetry,
obsessing over words like they're something uncommon--
like they're not kicking around every
damn street corner--
she sure is bad at living with it.

Come on now,
they don't mean anything,
all those words--
unless they mean something.
And they don't mean something unless you make them.

I can never decide whether it's better
to attack with the message like a sledgehammer to the forehead
or whether to cover up an ice pick
in a pretty wrapping paper metaphor
and drive it through the base of the skull.

Anyways, maybe she should try
feeling what she's feeling
and let the words her head spits out
stay there, not push them back;
that way they can tell her something.