Chemical

I am a chemical reaction
Fuming to the surface
A mislabeled concoction
That brings a volcano come to pass.
My sides are glass, see me boil within
Don’t tip me over or I might scald you as you pass.
You never know how stable the container is.
What color am I,
When you shine your pure white light through me?
There’s a symbolism there I can’t find.
Watch me react,
Like oxygen I cause decay.
It’s a slow,
Slow,
Process. But wait around long enough and all that will be left
Are skeletal leaves.
Perhaps there was too much chemistry.
You misread the label, sir,
I never promised I could fix things.
I am neither band-aid nor medicine.
Warning: may cause thing to explode spontaneously
(If not handled with care).
And you are no alchemist.
Don’t spill me, you can’t thrill me,
Since I am chemical but I am not toxic waste.

PS

I like
That e. e. cummings
That American literature
Is under PS in the library
As if
It’s the biggest postscript in the world.
(Or my world
Anyway.)
The postscript.
The afterthought.
That someone has stopped
Their official message
But not their thinking.
PS- a second thought whispering tickling your earlobe
You just have to get it out into the open
Where it can flutter shudder
Fly on its own.

Snuggle up in the comfy chairs stashed in the corner of the history room
With a book
And a coat-blanket
For a nap and a PS.

A Poem in Punctuation

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The Moon

I was praying
In my garden last night,
Kneeling,
Hands cupped and outstretched,
When the moon fell out of the sky and
Into my lap.
It was soft and warm
And fizzled gently on my skin.

I didn’t mean to
Keep it,
Really,
I just didn’t know how to put it back.
And it looked so pretty
Hanging in my garden
On the silver chain I bought
Just for it.

And,
Okay,
So the oceans went a bit crazy
And a lot of people drowned,
But you can’t blame me for that.
Things happen,
You know?
Now Manhattan’s underwater,
But I don’t know how to put it back,
And it’s soft and warm and lights up my garden beautifully.

Showering

Is the only meditative part of my day I have left.
I drop my clothes
On the floor
And grab my thinking cap,
Musty from disuse and too much bathroom humidity
In a five girl house.
I write grocery lists in
Fingertip smudges on condensation paper.
To-do lists, homework,
Stories to tell and poems
I’ve been meaning to write but haven’t thought all
The way through yet.
I catalogue the going-home rituals;
Prayers to transportation
And weather gods I make up on the spot.
(Just in case.)

Morning bus rides are
Music-filled hazes,
In vain
Trying to find someone, anyone, who will wake me up.

Afternoons are filled with
Tidy fifteen to twenty minute
Conversation blocks-
All that will fit in the
Nervous chaos of just another day until the end.

Nights are times
To drop the glass,
As my mother so carefully
Reminded me.
The heavy glass, finally
Letting go and dropping it
With a clunk
Onto the pillows waiting just for that moment.

But showering is still mine,
Mine to think upon and count down in
And tidy up for the next day.

I step out,
Regretfully remove my
Thinking cap,
And I leave my smudges
My streamlined stream
Consciousness
On the walls for the next girl to find.

I Miss the Creative Process

In the midst of my spectacular three week stint with no free time whatsoever (as one of my classmates put it, I’m giving up all hopes of a social life for Lent), I’m going crazy with ideas to play with but no time in which to do so. Which explains my current state as unproductive for the last two hours because I’ve been busy writing. Yay. I think? The timing could be better, but I think it’ll keep my (in)sanity intact.

But as I’m currently feeling as jittery as the white rabbit and for similar reasons, here’s a stanza from a poem I wrote quite a while back. The rest is kind of eh, but I really like this bit.

Beaches strip clubs bars and hills,
Cheap motels without the frills.
A little money can go a long way
In the middle of summer’s dog days.

New Beginnings

I am a disaster area;
Wrap me up in orange tape
And give me some relief.
The tornado blew right through my organs,
Leaving a hole filled with red dirt.
Dirty dusty tired.
I limp home out of the tornado warning.
Please collect my pieces;
They’ve dammed up the flood of my emotions
Leaving a barren and dead landscape behind.

Bring forth the flood-
It will wash away my sins with tears,
It will wash away the red dirt and fill in the hole,
Leaving only forgiveness behind.

Snapshots

The daffodils, the ocean swells,
The clouds above the canyon rim,
Light pours down and halos houses.
Grab your camera, take your shot.
Memories you’ve long forgot
Except the photos underneath your skin.

Two cameras for eyes,
The world’s fastest shutter speed.
Tiny bits of information;
A snapshot’s all you need.

Years from now, on down the line,
You’ll tell me everything’s turned out fine.
But you can’t remember more
Than what the snapshots in your brain have stored.

The Question that Drives me Hazy

“Am I or the others crazy?” Einstein, courtesy of Criminal Minds (new tv show I’ve been watching, nothing spectacular, but the group dynamic works well and they have a lovely habit of using neat music and quotes, both of which I’m crazy for.)

And there’s definitely a point during which you’ve watched too much of one tv show, especially one that gets to me as much as Criminal Minds, which is about FBI profilers who tend to work on serial killers. I guess I find it scary because you can see their origins; the bad guys are no longer scary faces, they have histories and personalities.

And I guess the scariest part is when vigilantes crop up, a topic which has always fascinated me. In Watchmen, Miller asks the reader when it’s gone too far, and there’s no one guarding against the watchmen themselves. The fact that someone can take justice into their own hands is frightening, because there’s a fine line between those who are vigilantes and do things that everyone accepts as justice on some level, and serial killers who have a type, enacting punishment upon people who look like someone who did them injustices. Is there actually a line at all, or is it just something we draw to make ourselves feel better about our lack of guilt? Anyways, with my current philosophical meanderings, a poem to demonstrate where my mind has been. (I also promise I’ve been working on some happy things lately to keep me sane. Hurrah for balance!)

Sorrow is contagious
It’s not a rare disease.
I’m caught within its clutches.
Won’t you come and save me please?

And pleasure is my business-
The sins of the “divine.”
I kill and maim and conquer
All that should be mine.

Cowboys, junkies, gypsies, thieves.
I cast a wider net
I cook up ways to make them pay;
They haven’t caught me yet.

I am the one within the shadows
I am the one who saves the day,
Because I’ll always be the man
Who calmly walks away.

Miller also points out, “The noir hero is a knight in blood caked armor. He’s dirty and he does his best to deny the fact that he’s a hero the whole time.” How much blood is worth it? Does quality count?

The Princess and the Gnome

Come come come away with me,
See the ships sail upon the sea.
Drop a bottled message in
And watch it float away.

The current draws them all together,
A glass army, through all weather.
You could’ve had the world, my love.
Instead there’s only me.

We, we are the princess and the gnome.
And neither more has any home.
And so together we will sail
Through the storms and calm.

Do you wish for something more?
What, exactly, do you wish for?
I am happy, homeless, free,
Here with you upon the sea.

I believe the princess and the gnome story is one of Neil Gaiman’s, though I’m currently having difficulties verifying that. (The plot, anyways, is that they can’t live with either set of parents because they’re too different, so they go off and live in a tree halfway between.) “See the ships sail upon the sea.” is a line from a traditional Celtic song called “Two sisters,” covered by the Glengarry Bhoys and called “Bonnie Broom.”