More Early Morning Poetry
Sickkkk…sick sick sick sick. My head hurts, my body hurts, I don’t want to get out of bed today but I know I must.
I got six and a half hours of sleep last night and while I was trying to sleep I started formulating poems again:
If I could there is so much I would undo
I would undo the harsh words that fell from my lips
I would catch them in mid-air before they made their way to your ears,
And place them in a bucket where they would plink against each other, making a sound like the highest piano keys lightly brushed;
I would undo the scars from my face and those from my heart,
The ones that are not visible but undoubtedly are there.
I’d smooth the skin and muscle until it was once again whole
And I would remove your hands from her waist and place them on mine;
We would dance for hours until I was undone.
Insomnia
I cannot fall asleep before 1 am anymore. I can’t take naps in the afternoon because my heart pounds too loudly when I close my eyes. Last night I went to bed at nearly 3 am. I got into bed at 11:30.
As I lay there in my bed, drenched in sweat because the air conditioning in my room does not function, praying beyond all else just to drift off, I composed a poem in tetrameter.
[an indication of desperation]:
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Absence causes hearts to wander
Hearts to find other hearts to beat with
Hearts to abandon hearts replete with
Longing that the heart won’t wander;
That absence makes the heart grow fonder.
I know it’s redundant—-but life is redundant. Let’s just hope I get more than five hours of sleep tonight.
The Temptation of Adam—-Josh Ritter
If this was the Cold War we could keep each other warm
I said on the first occasion that I met Marie
We were crawling through the hatch that was the missile silo door
And I don’t think that she really thought that much of me
I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb
She just came along and started to ignore me
But as we waited for the Big One
I started singing her my songs
And I think she started feeling something for me
We passed the time with crosswords that she thought to bring inside
What five letters spell “apocalypse” she asked me
I won her over saying “W.W.I.I.I.”
She smiled and we both knew that she’d misjudged me
Oh Marie it was so easy to fall in love with you
It felt almost like a home of sorts or something
And you would keep the warhead missile silo good as new
And I’d watch you with my thumb above the button
Then one night you found me in my army issue cot
And you told me of your flash of inspiration
You said fusion was the broken heart that’s lonely’s only thought
And all night long you drove me wild with your equations
Oh Marie do you remember all the time we used to take
We’d make our love and then ransack the rations
I think about you leaving now and the avalanche cascades
And my eyes get washed away in chain reactions
Oh Marie if you would stay then we could stick pins in the map
Of all the places where you thought that love would be found
But I would only need one pin to show where my heart’s at
In a top secret location three hundred feet under the ground
We could hold each other close and stay up every night
Looking up into the dark like it’s the night sky
And pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead
And carve our name in hearts into the warhead
Oh Marie there’s something tells me things just won’t work out above
That our love would live a half-life on the surface
So at night while you are sleeping
I hold you closer just because
As our time grows short I get a little nervous
I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I.
Would we ever really care the world had ended
You could hold me here forever like you’re holding me tonight
I look at that great big red button and I’m tempted
well its 3 a.m again, like it always seems to be
drivin northbound, drivin homeward, drivin wind is drivin me
and it just seems so funny that i always end up here,
walkin outside in the storm while looking way up past the tree-line
its been some time…
give me darkness when i’m dreaming
give me moonlight when i’m leaving
give me shoes that weren’t made for standing
give me tree-line, give me big sky, get me snow-bound, give me rain clouds give me a bed time…just sometimes
now you’re talkin in my room, but there aint nobody here
cuz i’ve been driving like a trucker, i been burnin through the gears
i’ve been training like a soldier, i’ve been burnin through this sorrow,
and the only talkin lately is that background radio…
you were my friend, and i was the same
riding that hope was like catching some train
well now i just walk, well i dont mind the rain
but i’ve been singing so much softer than i did back then
the night, i think, is darker than we can really say
and god’s been living in that ocean, sending us all the big waves
and i wish i was a sailor so i could know just how to trust,
maybe i could bring some grace back home to the dryland for all of us
say what you say, you say it so well
just say you will wait, like snow on the rail
i been combing that train yard for some kind of sign
even my own self, it just don’t seem mine
give me darkness when i’m dreaming, give me moonlight when i’m leaving
give me mustang horse and muscle, cuz i wont be goin gentle
give me slant-eye looks when i’m lying, give me fingers when i’m crying
and i aint out there to cheat you, see i killed that damn coyote in me…
I Wish I Were A Kid Again
I always did excel at climbing trees (or anything else in my path), imagining, coloring pictures with crayons, and pretending I was anyone but who I actually am.
I miss the days when school consisted of doing tangrams, when an entire part of the day, “recess,” was blocked out so I could run around outside, when love and loss were so far off on the horizon that I barely knew they existed…and when I didn’t have to worry about the past and the future, as long as I was enjoying the present.
Will someone just invent a fucking time machine already? Please?
Well, you kind of have to be in a relationship to have kids.
– My mother, upon learning of my biological clock’s wish that I have childrenFive Days
I am so bored. SO BORED. I know it is possible to literally be bored to sleep—-sleep has become my default setting in order to stave off boredom. Even my dreams have become progressively more bizarre and nonsensical to counter the boredom.
I took a half hour nap today and I am already exhausted again. Is it possible for a severely bored and under-stimulated human being to become a hibernating animal? And, if so, perhaps they should make me the test subject in order to answer this question.
