Ah, yes, poetic Thursday

where your tears have fallen
there are riverbeds
etched winding into the previously unmarred
landscape of my forehead
visible to me only
i can see them like a fingerprint
on the topography of my reflection
feel them like a memory
on the map of my soul
i carry them like a whisper
like a melody
like time
and smile secretly over the many small ways
you have already begun to change me

so altered, i am only yours

love.

On Beginning

6/6/10

i cannot speak to the you that you have been
cannot witness the unnumbered hours you lived
well before me
they are not and will not become mine to point to
and the pages and volumes that make up your once was
i can read only in fragments
scraping up sentences and coveting chapters
i may never see

but here, in this you and me standing
my face and your fingers
your laugh and my eyes
these few pieces of you are mine and mine only
your words and my hoping
my arms and your smile
they are only nothings, the smallest of moments
but into them i will start to carve my picture of you
upon them i will build my earliest knowings
the things in you i am sure of
the most in you i can see

these pieces of you i will use to begin it
add them to seconds, and somewheres, and time
and watch as the spaces that loom in my learning you
crowd up with memory
render you mine

love.

A long, long time ago...

Vintage poetry today...

10/29/06

you who has been always, and nothing...

you appear here in lines yet unwritten
offering a vocabulary i couldn't have anticipated

the heart of me knows what follows
it recognizes in you the ancient-once it has loved equally -
curiosity, undeterred by self-preservation, requests you

mildly

just behind my eyes
so subtle, your arrival there at the front of all daydreams
quietly quickly and
firmly denied

there are risks my body still cannot fathom
parts of my heart it can no longer trust, and justly

i who have broken you always, and never
can't be selfless enough not to risk you again

an improbable proposition - yours is the safest rejection, all silence and miles
would you hate to know there are parts of me that still wake up with your name

my lastly well-loved boy, imagine...

i may be sonnet to your prose
you, all irreverent language
i, always, the fear to oppose

love.

Thursdays I'm a poet.

7/13/10

some nights i believe i've only ever written what i fear
only ever recorded the ends or beginnings of feeling
the lost and the losing
the broken and the unclaimed
written only the empty space born of loving alone
of the restless elation that accompanies your hand on my shoulder
of the silence that follows the abrogated beating of breakable hearts

i am constantly to wonder if theses thoughts and the fears that bore them
are merely dog-eared pages of someone else's novel
tadpoles in the widest river
a wriggling army of identical echoes and photocopied emotion
my mind here written only the same drumbeat
heard by a thousand others a thousand times before

some mornings i believe i've only ever given what i lack
only ever offered empty vases and blank pages
the vague and the unworthy
the hopeless and the unnamed
given only the shadows of things you have left me
a woebegone recital of pieces i've cherished
a slapstick production of a symphony i can't begin to claim

i would have you dance where i can see you
in rooms where you have always played me songs
i would wrap your stories around my fingertips
and squeeze them into pencils
and rejoice in knowing i have nothing left to say

love.

Springtime Love Song

6/30/10

i will begin, as always, with words already written
unqualified, i, to redefine spring
but today portland is the sun-hungry skin of Your body
that something always that glistens justly
and i am
glad for the prick of grass blades on bare ankles
tempered by the nearly violent sting of midday on the back of my neck
composed of only lazy almosts and flirtatious possibility
cradled merely by a swaddling of wildly vibrating mazarine sky

i am captive to the birth of hand-drawn freckles
arriving on my shoulders like a signature
like stars

every miracle is You and You only
there is he, there is spring
and i am for You wholly
i will place Your songs in evaporating puddles and watch the city breathe them
i will write Your name on the pavement
i will wear You home

"You're not the person I thought you were..."

Tonight Caper and I were walking around the city, listening and thinking, as we do best at night while walking in the city.

I was thinking about how it feels sometimes as though I've lived several lifetimes in my short life. I have been the sort who changes things so drastically, blows massive holes in my routines again and again just to see where the pieces fall. Funny, really, because though I think I've grown as a person, I don't feel I've really changed much... just changed my surroundings, trying to make something fit.

I lose myself, always, in the transition... I become someone I'm not, forget who I was, and take six months off from my life to dabble in a new idea of what I could be. But I seem to return always to the same girl I have always been... hopelessly optimistic, shamelessly geeky, equal parts self-conscious watcher and know-it-all. I try to balance this me with the new setting and often feel the need to start the whole process over again.

Sometimes I think I had it right before I started trying to figure it out.

Strangely enough, I think Facebook worsens this cycle... suddenly I'm faced, daily, with every person I've known in every lifetime I've lived, everyone who has known me in every different phase, and I can watch them. I know how they are, where they are, what their new dog likes to chew, how they wear their hair. It's living my whole life all at once... a different person to all who know me, and different version for every year. Karyn 2.0, 3.7, 8.4...

I am always trying to be her, the girl you thought I was. That girl, the one who I've always been, the one I've always been running away from, she's the one I'm chasing. I'll keep trying to become her, get back to her. She trusted the answers... she knew exactly who I am.