Poetry 

Has the power to polish life

The world 

A fingernail brighter 

Enough to bring the sparkle out in your eye 

Draw your attention to the ravenings of your mad heart 

Enough even to highlight the flashlight shining from another mad heart 

But your insanity could be playing pretend with your brain 

Only the comets know what is real. 

Oh god I want to create 

And I want to live life I 

Want to be bright and fast and streak across the sky on fire

Madly happy

In love 

Laughing 

I want to get out of my own skin 

I want to burn away my bones 

And supernova my heart

Explosion of emotion 

I want to wrap myself in the cords of vulnerability and affection 

Honest to goodness 

I want to smile with firelight in my eyes 

No more polite grins

Stretched thin, 

Blue

And empty. 

I want to unfold my wings 

And take off, 

See the whole world in true clarity 

And heart breaking color. 

What am I? 

Nothing. 

What will anyone remember? 

What does anyone remember now? 

A lunatic,

Crazed, perhaps? 

She tore down the mirror with hand-tipped claws.

A /mono/ possibly, /Mona/

Up the tree, a little tipped in the brain, 

Simple. 

Or even a red star burning out, 

Terrible and sublime (sub-lime) for a while, 

But in the end, 

Quite disappointing. 

I really am nothing that is thought of me, 

Only a hollow voice and a thirsty ego. 

A little too eager to please, 

But soul-dehydrating fearful of 

Falling short of all of your expectations. 

I would like to see with eyes unclouded 

Clearly, truly

At my best, 

I am lucky, 

a star smiled gently upon me 

But really I'm just mediocre 

Ochre

Ocre

Nothing at all 

But a small heart 

Trying to grow through the cracks 

In the sidewalk 

Towards a sun 

A billion miles away. 

Egomaniac

If I am left to my own devices for too long
The world whirls out of focus,
I lose my balance

My mind
my mind chatters away,
Digging a hole to hide in

No reason why,
Only that I am paranoid,
and a narcissist,
and I'm not entirely sure I am lovable,
deserve to be loved
at the same time that I believe
Everyone should love me. 

Feck

Damn everything.

I'm listening to Leonard Cohen, I read the New Yorker article about his death this morning.

I drank jasmine tea, understeeped while eating oatmeal and reading "Walk Two Moons".

This thesis won't write itself, but there are other things calling, other things neglected in the neglecting of it.

Leonard's muse. My muse, I don't really have a muse, but I have a twinkle star that won't come to my fingers, eludes my veins.

Deeply feeling, do you suppose? Or just a twisted column, kinked towards the bottom?

Damn everything with a fork and spoon, my life will probably sputter out, ghost promises and cobweb hopes.

The Cripple of Inishmaan, brutal and sweet and cruel, feeds some of this, perhaps. Bitter.

All of the words that 

Want to come out of me 

Have already been said before 

Redundancies and cliches 

Slithering from my typing fingers 

A hollow voice repeating, chirruping anxiously. 

It's just that 

I want to love-

want to be loved.

But I become a hurricane if I see 

A drizzle.

Instead of a fairytale mermaid, 

Languidly brushing her hair on the rocks,

I am a siren, and my song is sublime and terrible. 

Galadriel when tempted by the ring, 

Perhaps a thing of ugliness and repulsion-

When all I want is to be by your side, 

And have you at mine. 

But really, I am none of those things 

I am a girl, ordinary, awkward.

At a point in time where my life 

Has intersected yours 

And I hear a song from your heart that I like, 

I am drawn to the light in your eyes. 

Maybe this is nothing, or maybe it is everything. 

All I ask is:

Can we walk together a little while? 

Why is my heart a 

Black hole? My mind a windy 

field of barley. 

I am not so sad 

As the waterfall world, but 

I want to wail. 

Final for Intaglio Printmaking!