cradle

If I surrender to sleep
If I give up on this day
Risk the threat of sleepwalking bruised shins
If I lay myself down to bed and pillow
Just once can heaven cradle me to dreams
And promise that tomorrow will be better?

Insomnia be damned
Pills thrown to the wind
if only just once
if only just once
I could relive Christmas morning
and the joy guaranteed upon waking

2 am

Adderall powder
Blue, crushed, Sephora compact
Rolled rejection slip
Empty apartment
I consider finding some shoes
Perchancing myself to the bar
And seeing who wants to hear my theories
I have such grand things to say
but it's that lonely 2 am hour

I want to discourse quantum physics
I want to lick the corners of the night
I simply can't go to sleep yet
With so much chemical and so much
Brilliance bitter and biting at my tongue

It's now that I wish someone would answer
and we could sprawl on my sofa
grade school slumber party style
get drunk off Canadian Dry
and I wouldn't have to feel so alone

My veins are full of shuttles
The subway of my body
Everyone is off somewhere
But no one is coming to see me

I'm a nice girl, I slur into voicemail messages
I am polite and pretty and bubbly
Bubbles, irridescent, rising
my college graduation I sat on the lawn
blowing bubbles
bubbles
catching the sun
Watching, drifting, disappearing....
bag of soapy bottles at my feet
leftover from a wedding I never had

Oh Strange Little Girl
It's 2 am
You're high on the drugs
of your brief punk rock flirtation
You realize it's been weeks since
anyone held you, hugged you tight
it's been weeks since you
were the exception and not the rule

Tori sings, Tori sings
oh where are you going?
Where are you going?
Where are you going?

I settle my head on my keyboard
no ears to be seen, no eyes to be heard
I can't help but say
I don't know
I don't know
I just don't know

pause

A pause is not a settling
Catching your breathe doesn't mean
You're going to exhale back into my bed
And in the end, after you leave
I always ask myself
why I rub salt in my wounds
and why I keep asking you back
for twenty minutes of distraction

Seething Fiona (draft)

I seem to you to seek a new disaster every day
You deem me due to clean my view and be at peace and lay
I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way, and say,
I've been getting along for long before you came into the play - Fiona Apple

Oh my darling
I am, I have sunk, I am
Oh so sullen
I swallowed my rampage
And tore at my own throat
instead of those more deserved
those who deserted
and those who just couldn't
tongue my murky and
dynamic tastes

my darling
oh my darling
I am Tidal, I am emerging
I am on the verge, I am When the Pawn Hits
pretty pucker, folderol, so damn far left to go
a fondling trigger
oh yes, I am this Extraordinary Machine

I move inside and insiduously
under skin, beneath pretense and suspicion
I am a seething Fiona
I am vinyl on skip
I am stain on lip
oh my darling
oh my darling

You are to be warned
I am not to be underestimated
Let's not pretend, placate
Calm, riding, solid, writhing
Let's face it
To you
I am the scariest thing
in this room

I look so pretty
I look so soft
I look so goddamn beautiful
But only when I'm getting you off

I can eviscerate and castrate and assassinate
I have speech that I can no longer swallow
My voice is darker, deeper
Smooth in its uneven candor
Are you afraid
that I will try to teach you a lesson?
Are you afraid
that I am meek and muffled?

Your knees are shaking
Your eyes cannot leave my face
My silly, stupid passtime of mine
It's just lust. It's just rust.

I walk the white picket
between civil and unclean hands
Bipolar, pendulum swing, chicken wing
Perhaps it is time to slap

Clap. Snap. Trapped.
I am crazy
She's crazy, this one says
People tell you all the time what they are
We so rarely
listen

Listen
Sick in the head
Waltzing, prancing
Only you can decide
if I am to be feared
Only you can strike me
Only you can kiss me
second-handly
on accidental Friday nights

Hummmmmmmmm
Hmmmmmmmmm
Hummmmmmmmm
Hmmmmmmmmmm

Everything's going to be just fiiiiiiiiiiine

post-mutual

I missed you for the first time tonight
I'd missed you before but with angst
Tonight it was a fleeting thought
a sigh then a well, I suppose this is the way
it's going to be now
All italicized, drool, affected speech

I wished I could tell you that
but I guess that'd be weird
and you might not be that interested
anyway

smallest point

it's been raining for days
down below on the street
only an occasional umbrella passes
but no faces, no voices

out across the rooftops of Brooklyn
I stare and imagine myself magic
I am Stretch Armstrong, I reach, I step
building to building I hop
delicately, purposely
urban toadstools high up in the sky

Last week was March
and lightning lit up my bedroom
back on the farm
thunder sends chills to my toes
New York City I am the smallest point
I am fleshy and non-metallic
and I have no fear

the wrong one

I wonder if it was you that left this circle on my sofa
I don't blame you, we were pickled in tequila
Stretched out, legs for days, all a daze
Led Zeppelin had nothing on you
And I was amored with your dark curls

You have a tendency to spill
Red dixies perched on coffee tables
Your arms encircled me from across the room
oh no no no no no you are not the man
that i should be writing poetry about
you are not the man I should be falling into

You could take me or leave me
You can drag me all over this apartment
by the hair of my head
by the hook in my bottom lip
and when it's all over
you are remembered in short bursts
and no, you never stay

so tonight as you tried you hardest
to blow my house down and crumble my home of sticks
I could only trace this circle on my sofa
and wonder what other scars you'd leave
if allowed