Some New Poems

All currently untitled, all typed up in a flurry this morning.

1.

I like to throw things away
Big bulging black bags
I like to throw things away
And pretend that it
All just disappears
And no one has to deal with
The remnants of me.


2.
This is what writers want
Quiet first snow New England
Alone in a cottage
city lights too far to see
Windows thrown open
Inviting the winter in
Saying a bright and happy “hello”
But then wishing at the same time
That my visitor does not stay long
And that it does not threaten
To complete me


3.
You, my first true love
I romanced and ravished with you
Then threw you to the drawer
Filed you away alphabetically
Now I drag you out
Dusty and remembered
To feed you to the wolves
And hope again that
You will make me seem more
That I will seem more
Relevant
With a history laid sprawled
And me standing so proudly
Caressing you for their eyes
Maybe they’ll think I’m brave
Maybe then you’ll somehow
Forgive me
For my lack of discipline
And commitment
And my voice will reclaim
And reconquer
As I learn to spell once again
Without red angry
Underlined reminders
Of the student I was
The artist I was
Backspace
Still not right
Then I realize I invented this word
And again we settle
Into a love
Poke and prod
A gentle and soft murmur
I will not let you down
Any further
And I will tell them all
With my hands on my hips

4.
I suppose I am to be inspired
By cotton balls of snow drifting
And landing and exclaiming
But I am me and with me there aren’t rhymes
I’m in New England
I feel a need to cling to tradition
And I giggle in glee when
I see the lobstermen and their traps
Before I have never spent so much time
Being the outsider inside
They ask me where I am from
In thick Boston tones
And I smile proudly
“Brooklyn”
then the questions and then
confessions
well, I’m really a farm girl
from up north
and driving back to my hotel
I have never felt so neither
Here nor there
And when on the phone with
My mom in Hermon
And my friends in Williamsburg
I feel pushed and pulled
Unclaimed luggage somehow
On an errant but gorgeous
Side adventure
I have never been alone this way before
I have and have not
It is a freedom and a delirium
And here I sit
In a room rented for me
Comfortable and warm
Watching the snow fall
Distance and insulating warm-cold
Onto the Atlantic
But not the Atlantic I know at Coney
Not the Atlantic I first put my toe in
In Florida
This is history.
I drive to the downtown
Sinewy, singular, stone paved
1623 Gloucester was found
pre- war, pre-America
and here I am
in a car rented for me
listening to late twentieth music
so out of place
and revealing and revering
I, exquisitely out of time
A traveler of clocks and years and space
My dashboard alit
My mind aflame
Pressing the accelerator
Breathing in the oldest that we know
And demanding to be heard
And to claim my belonging here.
To pull together past and present
Me and myself and I
To yearn to feel one for a bit again
And not drawn and quartered
Belongings and memories scattered
All over the North East.
In seventh grade I did a report on the
Salem Witch Trials
She-Ra dolls glued down firmly
Amongst twigs and crayon flames
Hanging from yarn knots
And sometimes
Now that I am here
I feel the need to apologize
For my simplicity.
I didn't know.

5.

Once upon a time there
was a girl I used to be
Once upon a time there
was a boy you used to be
and once upon a time they
fell in love.

It falls away then
It blurs
It is all relative
It is lost in physics
It is lost in E=mc2
And sometimes when
I shake my head and
try to figure out what happened
clutter clanks and crumbles
inside my head
and I knock against my skull
and say
"keep it down in there!"

and from here it all gets
philosophical

as i sit in bed and smoke
you see

most of the time i am appropriate
i am in tune and in time
and i walk about smiling
and not drenched in the
mist and cobwebs
rattle, rattle, rock and rattle
i glide and sail and exist
as one, at once
but then from outside
from a distance
the girl that i was
lets out a long, low howl
and i feel her thrash
i feel her scream
i can feel her panic
of being let in
and of having been grown out of
and faded
faded faded faded
she haunts
she marrows, she seeps
and then the fist around
my heart loses its grip
and i can stop telling her
i can stop soothing her
i can raise my voice
above a whisper
a desperate plea
and a loving condolance

my darling he is gone
he is gone
he is dead he is gone
you are dead
you are gone
and that's the way it is

and back in never never land
where memories play on loops
and the bad parts are always erased
the ghosts follow and refollow their
paths and when the tape begins to end
a splatter, a reverse
and they begin again

so whenever she steps out
whenever she catches my eye
i walk to her
under the street lamp
and i hug her
corner of grand and graham
and i point and say
that is where you lived
that is where you loved
and now we must all let it go

but it is in vain
because she is rewound
and in the haze
the skipping static
she is standing outside my old door
and he is there
as he used to be
and they are kissing
pressed against the building
new year's, drunk, champagne
and they begin to fall inside
the door flying open against their
heat and weight
and i turn and i turn
because i know how it ends
even if i can't warn them

it's a duality
especially when i come
face to face with your present
self and the bitterness of
constantly wondering how you
could change so much and
speed so far away

and i get so angry when she stalks me
the old me
begging answers
and i wonder what happened to the old you
back across the other side of manhattan
back across the hudson and the east
back in the spirals of jersey
back, caught in the stench of elizabeth
back, all the laughter fades
crashes, it's dust, it's dust now
that billows as you drive
as you speed down the turnpike
and never wonder where i am
and what ever happened
what could have happened
way across the lights
in the dark
in the heart
of brooklyn
where I still lay.

haunted.