The Point of it All…

I have been on plenty on endeavors in my life, and the reason that writing has remained a consistent aspect of who I am, is little assurances along the way that I may inspire someone in some way or form…

I performed a piece last Tuesday and afterwards my friend and fellow poet Danielle Bennett, who has been featured on this blog before, asked for the piece on paper so I obliged…

later on she tells me she wrote a response to it…this is the biggest compliment someone can give me, simply because that is one of the main reasons why I enjoy writing. I love the reactions and responses people have to my work whether they are touched or offended, I still got something out of them.

Needless to say our two pieces are not about each other but I felt like they should share the same space and my blog is as good a place as any, so enjoy…

 

I don’t know why she is constantly screaming at the top of her sand trap lungs

But to be honest…I wish she would let me speak

Long enough to tell her

That I’m listening

That I can hear her

 

We went from vague conversations about the weather and our favorite songs

To her looking at me

Dead in my eyes

And asking me if I have ever met a razor blade in person before

Like a real one

That sends flowers

And loves you till its ready to stop

And by that time

You’re bleeding

Pouring pain on to pages

Passing it off as poetry when in fact

It is a suicide letter she reads every week

Hoping that one day she has the courage to kill her self

Go to where the dead go

And maybe

She will find the love they once had there

But for now

She continues to try to warn men by giving them looks

That looks like the wrong side of a drive by shooting

Which is both of them

 

And unfortunately

Men like me will continue to miss read that

As passion

Or a land mine worth courting

Worth taking out to dinner

Then taking home

Undressing

And allowing her to explode

Leaving shrapnel and small shards of the last time she was happy

all over my dreams of one day having her take me seriously

 

She proceeded to tell me about the last person

She let her spirit get excited over

And mentioned something about hoping I like wall climbing

And I wasn’t confused by any of this

Just worried

That I’ve seen you before

All too familiar

But still different

Kind of like the way your car feels when you let someone else drive

i rarely look from this angle

but you still look like a clock and a radio

a radio because I didn’t get to know you back when you were any good

and a clock because even if I re-set you…it still doesn’t change what time it is…

and the funny part is

you let me think you were vulnerable

made me tred softly

worried that I would bump into a table rattle it…top over a rare vase

watch it drop with my heart in it like a roller coaster

watch it shatter like your heart did those many moons ago

 

but the truth is…I didn’t have to be careful did i?

the first time falling in love

felt like “walking” to love

no fall

no heart drop

no collision

just smiles

and a hug like a winter coat

but now

I understand why we don’t  say

Walking or strolling into love

Women like you sharpen their teeth on egos like mine

Thinking its fair since in time I will heal and you for some reason

Think you wont…

Playing spawn of karma trying to set the world right

Justice and revenge with accuracy of a tommy gun in an 8 year olds hands

And I swear

I would run you over with an 18 wheeler just to give you some idea of what the day I fell for you felt like…

But since I cant

I write you this instead

 

Dear jig saw hearted woman

With cross word lips

And magic 8 ball eyes

And a riddle for a tongue

Dear hop scotch lover

Of mine

I just wanted to tell you

That I understand

I really do

But none the less

I have no time for your games.

_________________________________________

To the men I’ve hurt

Why is it

I call myself the crazy one

When I tell you the first time we meet

That I have OCD,

Emotions messier than an unchanged diaper,

And a past full of blindfolded knife fights

And you respond as if your ears were clogged with dreams:

“Wow. That’s amaaazing.”

You wonder about the volume of my voice

I don’t know if you ever really heard me

 

But I knew you could read

So I wove my confessions into poetry

Printed them in yellow and black,

And wrapped the lines around my body like a caution tape mummy

Sometimes I forget

The way we like to go places

We’ve been warned against anyway

And in this city

Yellow means “hurry” more often than “slow”

 

So I took your persistence as a signed waiver

Said you’d met razor blades like me before

Who made you start stashing gauze next to the condoms in your pocket

Neither of which

I was ever planning on letting you use

I’ve become accustomed to tending to my own wounds

And watching you bleed

Gives us some common ground for once

 

Those are the moments you hold me like dawn holds the sun

Quiet and tender

While no one’s watching

We are both fine

With using each other like this sometimes

 

But unfortunately

Shell-shocked women like me

Don’t stay comfortable in safety for long

Our nightmares forge suicide letters while we sleep

And at this point it’s draining a lot more courage

To stay than to go

So I awake

Hoping you’ll come wrecking ball into me

Hurt me harder than I do

These walls are just fences

Sparing you the sight of all that wreckage I mentioned

They fall the same way I failed to say no:

Easily

And they break hard

As it was to introduce myself like an empty gun-

Unarmed

But still feeling fully loaded

I pegged you as the kind of guy that didn’t carry bullets

Guessing you would know better

Than to play Russian roulette with girls like me,

The kind that don’t fall in love so well anymore

I don’t fake vulnerability

But I do not blame you for frowning on my elementary education

For never teaching me how to see patterns right

Or else I would know we always have this coming

Right after the weather

And our favorite songs

I would flash the warning signs like fog lights

You would recognize you’ve been here before

And we would still fall into this

Clumsily

Toppling over each other’s fragile things

But I would leave before I could commit to the sweeping

And leave this behind instead

 

Dear Mr. Would Have Been Wonderful,

With arms like a buoy

And an ocean of promises

Any normal girl would love to swim through

Dear bee-stung boy

With a piece of me I cannot have back,

A band-aid heart,

And blame bleeding out your pen,

I know you said you don’t like playing games

But I’ve been trying to tell you

I never put you in checkmate

There’s a door

And a red light blinking EXIT from my chest

And it’s been your move

Since the first time we met.