[x]

whoever isn't youcould have made you a mixtape but i curled up on the toilet seat in my brother's brown sweater and chewed my swollen lower lip so the cut wouldn't heal. watched the pieces of my hair fray in the corner on cold tile like a nest for ants or roaches.
it's the kind of day where i screw the crackers and eat nutella straight from the jar.

epiphany #019: pulling out your hair is never as poetic as it sounds

love poem.she is sick into a poem, she
on desert elbows, the tracks of her
bones swearing gashes in wool blankets

she bruises fingers on
string butterflies, fashions mirrors
of their twisted wire torsos

she is streets, foggy or
hell-sacred and almost ready to be
left, she some butchered queen

she is a sometimes mechanism,
she an eight-minute record, excessive
and muddy with feelings

she violates the chrysalis,
she a cream-skinned queen yet
child, she waits and waits.

leave my heart out of this.so i recycle the past, compost your coffee
grinds and wear your work shirts to bed.
i try not to notice the lines of dirt
on the backs of my hands, the spindly
crimson streams in the whites of my eyes.

so i imagine electric fences beneath
my temples, surging lightning breakdowns
in every synapse. seconds cannot split
fast enough, i pull away before
neurons start to translate pain.

so i reinvent the sting every other
breath, i redesign my grimace for a
studio audience, i rethread needles with
camels inside. so i understand
biology but only in theory.

so i deconstruct the wheel, lovingly carve
the d from

:the last one who knew
me has died: if you don't tell,
i am going home

; all i ever want
to hear about is dying
and i can't seem to

get it right, you said
someday it happens and you're
wearing that old shirt

, maybe a yellow
bird, but it's pretty, do you
know, your dying face

x rays.you take a boat or
plane to the seahorse neck
of somalia to shake
hands with pirates, they lift
rubies from your pearl bones, they
cultivate drought in your limbs,
nurture parasites in the walls
of your womb, you take
a boat but there is
no adventure, instead
you crawl with
tumours, instead you
watch the world grow
smaller, instead
you shake
hands with biologists,
instead you curl
over a microscope and
your fingers tremble, focus
the edges of the crucifix.

makes your heart feel dead.i write in pencil real dark until i can't feel my fingers.
it's something my grandmother used to do, i found her
letters in the shapes of strays, blacker than the nights
those dogs bark and they sound right outside the window.
it's something she used to say that i can't remember.
i can't remember her, but it feels like she's holding
my hand, putting red shoes on my feet and lifting me
up to dance. it feels like her stray cat in me and i
can't go back. it feels like something she said but
i forgot, like she said it was fine which i inherited
from her. like her shy stray cat eyes and her hopelessness
and her red shoes. like her scar

made you a world but it endedi ran to the backyard to break a chair and write on its legs. no one told me we were getting rid of the swingset but someone collapsed it across the gravel, spilled over weeds. the lights were all on in my house and at dinner i didn't mention it
i didn't mention it at all.

epiphany #587: i'm seventeen and i'm not ready to grow up

sketchthere are owls fighting outside.
knowing very loudly that i never
finish what i start. i give you
no more than ideas, brushstrokes.
from this you get the outline
of a city, nameless, the sound a
wrist makes when it cracks
open like a lobster shell, less red.
from this you get a vague
moon-shaped shadow, lingering
as if on a smoking break. or
eyes that don't reflect light, or
someone cooing at my window.

here be dragons.in the places where elephants are born there are humans carved from monsters, not the other way round. where people by their nature wonder what it is to feel a heart in their teeth. people are dangerous enough without weapons, without voices for killing.

i am finding out worlds in you, the kind where monsters are not humans first and colours are not derived from colours and light. it is sometimes the edges that come second and sometimes not, when you begin the forgetting, the distances from here to edge, edge, frightening your deep self.

someday we are elephants and we know the places to be born

hey seattle slew,baby girl or boy,

i never planned on you.
i am seventeen years old and i want to adopt children because i'm afraid of bringing you into this world, i'm afraid that you will end up like me and i'm afraid that you won't. i might have named you elías. i might have named you nothing at all and let you choose.
i am seventeen years old and terrified, for you, for me. i hope you will have the chance to do the things i never did before now: read every last one of tolkien's books, bake a giant cookie cake, whelp a howling dog in your basement or backyard, tell a stranger your complicated and unadulterated feelings or thoughts on a whim, eat a

lullaby nouveau.i know a graveyard
plenty riddled with pox scars,
lousy with birdbaths.

it is too soon after the rain
for stripes, this time of year we
get stuck remembering things
like when that lake flickered
wings out of me or
i noticed a circle onto the
pads of my fingers so
when i touch you everyone
knows me for you.

goddess lately so fickle so
injured, you prideful scheme,
these things i get stuck
remembering you know,
like when i knew a
graveyard lousy with your
fingerprints and there were
no circles on them.

how to greet a dead fishwe strap metal blades to our feet, thought let's skate on this frozen water, before us no one remembered to be suicidal. we cut patterns in the ice and they are not beautiful. they are not beautiful at all. like the scars on the tops of my feet they are all wrong and require stitches but i am lying.
there is deep deep mud in this lake not wet because it's solid through. but we still call it a lake and we still cut patterns in its ice all wrong.
we cut patterns in the ice like trying to swim closer to perfect breathing seaweed except we don't get very far since we're just pretending, actors at wanting to die.
we don't get very far since w

there's blood in my hairsome nights i drive all
the way home and then cannot
remember how it

was i got there or
how many people i left
behind; some nights i

feel like i could run
every red light and never
think of going back

letter to a psych somewhereafter my mother told me i would be getting a shrink, i daydreamed of all the things i would tell you about myself, how i am sometimes irreparably lonely and how on long car trips i sometimes stay awake for periods of time training my eyes to be unfocused over the white lines on interstate highways, or i sleep with my feet tucked underneath the floorboard carpets, or i read kurt vonnegut novels. after my mother told me she wanted me to talk to someone, i panicked.
here are some things you should know about me: i memorise poetry for fun. i would have an entire vonnegut novel engraved on my tombstone if it would fit. i am good at lying to oth

why we installed curtainsit sucks. not letting people in.
it sucks.
also the reflection of your chair in
my window looks like
one of those funky spiders,
the scary ones.
with big eyes,
small mouths,
and no teeth.

i don't know, it's like
putting all these things around
your name so people won't say it and
it's like guarding yourself asleep
and not knowing how long you've been
dead, or how many minutes per snooze,
or if you're even dead at

all the time, i'm wasting
all the time in the world
with
stretched earlobes
and stretched leatherskin
and stretched leopardskin
and stretched yyyyy's
(but only sometimes;
sometimes is more than never;
sometim

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letters to cleo.(and other assorted finland code names)

dear prince charming,

so i guess what i'm trying to tell you is
this is hard, this is hard, this is hard.
i got dolled up and i wore mismatched
purple socks and pear-scented perfume
and a little bit of pathological bereavement.
i know that i curled my hair and that i am
neurotic and helpless but i want you to
know that i am handling things. i am
taking care of myself, if you cared at all.

i could not tell you whether or not i am
heartbroken but the way this is going

i am falling
i have fallen
i fell.

dear prince charming,

i could not find the courage to speak,
to get my words ou

cadenza.i.

i held ice cubes and salt in my hands. squeezing tight they fused together.
thinking of us i left them in a potted plant so the aphids could freeze, leaving ladybugs to starve.
i never wanted lightning storms but after the rain you skipped out and we’d grow tulips in cardboard boxes.

you always found my irregular pulse the scariest part of leaning closer. arias in minor keys lit flames
underneath cold violin strings and the pale ivory of your favourite piano.
bold words were written on my fingernails,
breathing june and sunshine daffodils. i’ve been thinking that lately you seem to have become
cracked, dry. like t

your blueeyed boy.i.

somewhere between lost and found
you sailed away on a pirate ship with
a black flag and a hidden mystery.

ii.

i have an obsession with neat lines
that does not extend to my room,

which is a mess of gifts i always
meant to give you and things i never said.

but i meant to.

iii.

a butterfly spreads gossamer wings in
a wondercloud of frozen winter breath.
alive from its small crystal world, seeing
colour in highest definition.
thousands of eyes birthed from
a silver miracle chrysalis can see

silken threads bridging the distance.
a nympha made of impossible circumstance,
incredible chance.

iv.

and what i want to know is

status of girls.autopsies and shadows of squirrels
remind me of summer days spent
in a sea of white coats and a pristine
prison cell. italian last names claimed
by roses with sharp thorns reminded
me of home, and we took tourist pictures
so that we'd remember to make scrapbooks
documenting our fantasy endeavours

and inevitable successes. city avenues
stayed pent up in anger, bursting with
life and useless trash for which you would
have found some purpose. i never did
like walks through the park, if only
because no one ever stops for modern
pedestrians and poodles dyed pink.

this might be a collective fear, a silent
scream you never had t

dividing by zero.lately i have been thinking in terms of
the colon-hyphen type of division and
implicit differentiation. i might be able
to understand the most complicated
proof or that you can't divide by zero,
but i cannot comprehend the thoughts
inside your head. but then again,

nothing is impossible. maybe maybe
one day magical thinking will catch up
to you somewhere in heaven and bring
you back to me. trains on tracks run
miles before realizing that they could.

could, could, could. believe it more
than you've believed anything in your
entire life. believe it more than when
your best friend collapsed in the street,
more than the time

ojos que no ven.somewhat like mourning and melancholia,
the ocean falls in waves, crashing fierce
over your shoulders and weighing you down.
it's possible that somewhere along the way,
you lost sight of the importance of things
like children and caterpillars in the grass and
days at the beach spent filling swimwear
with sand. you didn't mean to, honest.

if your eyes couldn't see, i imagine we'd
still be okay. i'd sing to you instead of
dancing and laugh in place of smiles.
we could make it work. but if you had
a defective heart, i think you'd need a
transplant. beating and bleeding and
feeling don't get lost in translation, and
all the b

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[x]

places worth growing up in.

by ~anyimacielgray, Nov 9, 2009, 10:24:19 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

it doesn't help that i've been here, this place worth knowing or growing up in, it doesn't help at all. i am so
proud a buddha, i need no temples or holy trees. people here, we dig the right graves our whole lives and we are all the right contentment, we fuck
up and yet here we are, this place i say is worth. this is the second part of
seventeen so we rent one year graves, we sit on
our hands and yell precious things up the stairs, we keep from
falling, we keep from digging our lives up. we
keep from talking through our fingers though sometimes not. it's the second part we learn about growing up in places like these that become worth it, though
everyone confesses to boredom like it is no
sin. we are dissatisfied with worth, it is nothing to us. we have been here, digging our whole graves these lives, here have we been so grave, digging our lives from worth, finding out where we're from in the ground. it is nothing to us and yet
here we have been and are.

places worth growing up in.by ~anyimacielgray

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

©2009-2013 ~anyimacielgray

_{angsty teens, the sequel

we take pictures of flowers up close}

*ohsostarryeyed Nov 11, 2009

"we sit on
our hands and yell precious things up the stairs,"

good thing we're married, else i'd ask you right now to marry me.

Reply

~anyimacielgray Nov 13, 2009

marry marry mar

oh

Reply

~etre-aime Nov 10, 2009

it's the second part you learn about growing up in places like these that become worth it though
everyone confesses to boredom like it is no
sin.

=]

Reply

~anyimacielgray Nov 10, 2009

<3

Reply

~ChloroformBoy Nov 9, 2009

suck and fuck in the same line ?

you naughty, naughty girl

Reply

~anyimacielgray Nov 10, 2009

okay not anymore i changed it

Reply

~ChloroformBoy Nov 10, 2009

whyyyyyyyyyy

Reply

~anyimacielgray Nov 10, 2009

oh because i didn't think it fit anymore
i already wrote you a poem about sex !

Reply

~ChloroformBoy Nov 10, 2009

BUTT IM HORNY
haha butt ! >:l

Reply

~anyimacielgray Nov 10, 2009

typical

Reply

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