This Winter, Two People:

This winter, two people
edge upon edge
and the slight misgivings .
on the lawn the boy is rushing up the frost bitten lawn
his red button nose and pinched smile:

“what did you want from me?” he asks,
but soon all the boy remembers
is his father clutching his mother’s hand
(that’s him, that’s him, now hold it in, hold it all in)

why do all these idiotic
moronic
stupid
people
want a way out?

the world doesn’t come naturally to anyone!
when he was younger the boy lived in a strange world
full of awe at the bustle and life of it all,
in that dreamworld world where you forgot your own name
in the fancy of it all.

This winter, two people are on edge.
that delicate flower you were trying so hard to preserve
like melting snow, soon gone
and not till he takes her through the second barren dawn
will it lift her from the sleep again.

The mother will see the smiling boy
And she painfully
regretfully
remembers a lost moment.

Kissing is that act of sheer remeberance
as the two people edge upon edge
topple against the sunlight,
exposed and bare, unable to
remember anything, but trying so hard…

The boy enters the house,
his breeches worn from the wind
and the wintry weather.

Night falls on the county town,
and the homestead will slowly quiet down within the hour,
The father in his armchair, reading by firelight,
will see his son’s ruddy chapped face
in a bright white silhouette
imagining for one single guilty moment that he is his son;
and his son will catch a hopeful glimpse upward
and imagine that he is his father.

Copyright 2014 Golden Star Poetry

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Untitled-poem written at age 11

Last night I was reading Pablo Neruda’s translated work “Extravagaria” translated by Alaister Reid (which you should really make a note to buy, if you are at all interested in poetry), and then I suddenly got in the mood to read some of my older, more random poetry. I have spent a good part of the night and early morning sifting through old binders crammed with small poem fragments, half of which really make me realize how far my poetry has come in almost three years! Then I found this one, which is frankly one of my long lost favorites. I never get tired of this poem, and I thought you might enjoy reading it. So without further adue, here is me, writing poetry, age 11.

Untitled

Trees with stemless
leaves
grow in summertime.

finding the rainbows in the sky
the love, the war
and the blood of mankind

I am the orphan
lost in time
taking in the sights

of eternity

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

Monolouge-Bad Influence

I felt like writing a monologue today. Don’t ask me why.

BAD INFLUENCE

You wanna hear about it? Ok. So basically we had this big barn in the backyard when we were little and Emma would always pretend to be a chicken in there. And she would flap her arms out like an idiot and say things that chickens might say if they had brain cells. But she would scream. When we went into kindergarten it was the same torture all over again, only she wouldn’t let me speak. It was her game, she said. Eventually she just didn’t want us to be friends.  It was weird, you know, cause most of us would play in our little groups, and we didn’t, so it kind of made me feel special. But then she turned out to be some brat from the valley who had no clue on how to get by in school. She was like that all through Junior High even, I remember her getting three D’s and she didn’t even know it was a bad thing. She ended up going to Juvie or something. Wait, no, Sarah told me about that. Sorry,  that was a rumor. Anyway, I guess I’ve been used like that most of my life. And I never get any wiser after,  And then came the whole problem of relationships, which, on the whole, do make me want to gag. But Paul was different at first, you know? He loved me so much it was almost Ethereal. Well, that’s what Amy and Daisy and Leah all said about him. So that’s that one. And the rest of my girlfriends have all gone to become waitresses at some dump restaurant at I don’t even know where, and they’re just making minimum wage on the side so that they can even afford college. It’s sad, you know? My friends. I was the only one who ended up with a A in any of the classes they failed last year. No, actually, It’s pathetic. I can’t make friends with one  good person, and it’s really itching me to know why. Can you get the hell out of here?

Ruby Fly

She was only five at the time, so it seemed natural. Her feet were like turrets on old english castles.

But they had five toes each, that she knew

ruby touched the ball of her foot and squealed. It was ticklish.

the end of her toenail glistened int he sunlight

it was a bright reflection

but she couldn’t quite see her face in it.

Likewise, her toenail couldn’t see her.

The magpies on the street were all a hollder

the murder of crows darted through the unblemished sun scrapings

that were inevitably burnt into a sea gray sky.

the butterfly nest is now filled to the brim with wings

and ruby is a child again

feeling soft orange feathers flutter on her cheek.

She squints, and sees a shard of glass in the grass

she can’t see her face in it,

and the glass can’t see her.

She smiles, because life seems so funny.

She puts the shard of glass on her sill

and her mother doesn’t bother to spot

it’s invisible light shows.

her brother is a magpie

her mother is a crow

and she, a butterfly.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

Innocente

The rich students in their infantries

crawling, wading in between trees.

Half of the crowd is digesting light bulbs

and the other half is downing helium,

coughing up lights and stray flashes

and hiccuping at a high G above G flat.

I’m currently at the edge of the forest

with my lover

touching the string of light bulbs

that hangs through the leaves

and unscrewing the sockets

feeling the sting and the burn that breathes.

I realize that

I’m not even a child!

I am the product of a small embryo

that was formerly a fistful of green wadded bills:

what else could i possibly be?

in this forest full of strings and lights and crowds

we found the unexpected windfall

of littered cash on the forest reserve street the next morning.

The rich students line up by the roadside, and

lights bleed from they’re tentatively strewn hands

to catch it.

x x x

in another place:

a lone girl on the hillside starts feeling her eyes

(I just want to soothe her like a mother with a quivering whisper

and shaking hands that reach out to hold

this beautiful pale fragility)

Do not squirm, I say,

the money was left by the roadside

(she knows, and she feels her eyes once more,

checking to see if she can still see)

She knows the greenbacks have been run over by horses

and that might mean a starting over…

well,

it’s just that-

the hill covering her house

is only a flat shape of an unreal childhood

she was soon to forget.

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry

Despondency- A Poem For My Friend’s Birthday

Despondancy

a landsacpe repeatedly seen
not to be drawn
but to be wondered on

the glass window was her quiet companion
and from her ledge she saw two lovers
who were shyly agreeing on nothing.
(her dress billows, she sees, yes, a nice girl having a nice time-
a fire and a cloudy day rounding out the appetite. I like fires when I can share a fire
when clouds make the milk for my tea and the red leaves spread out in warm blankets)
moments pass, it seems, now she eyes
the second orange sunset rise.

Nostalgia was the gut feeling.
She wanted to be herself at seven
carrying the oval sky in her pockets
in handfuls of cloud
leaning on her mother’s skirt
Looking out at the green plains
crying but not knowing she was crying.

a flock of Ewes go down the mountain
and now the nightwatchman carries his torch to the river, to drown himself.

she opens up a bright scarlet box
(come, hold the cold jeweled nest, and feel something inhibited)
“it needs care,” she says as she looks at it
“it needs to hold an emptiness”

Copyright 2013 Golden Star Poetry