The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Okay, so I know I said poetry was on Thursdays but I wanted to write an Obligatory Thanksgiving Post as I tend to in order to thank people for shit. So, you know, you get a poem today. Here you go!

The Finest Things

Look out of the car window
at the blur of the city.
Can you feel it?
There’s a certain speed
where you lose track
of how many splatters of blood
drip out behind you
with furious acceleration,
and start thinking about
the finer things in life.
Some people prefer wine,
selected from among many
and poured into glass
endlessly
poured again and again.
Others prefer a fine dining experience
with fluttering cloth napkins
and an army of waiters
desperate to rid themselves
of course after course.

I, of course, prefer freedom.

It’s delicious,
looking at a wall,
resolute,
and knowing that
it could no longer exist.
And if it no longer existed,
that it could,
masons struggling to build
fast enough to your expectations.
Someone is a someone
as fast as they are not
with the ringing snap
of my fingers.
I find a goal
and it is completed.
Conquests are a vapor
inhaled quickly,
and dealt with just the same.

This, my friend,
is life,
not screaming,
not surviving,
but being free
to knock down everything in your path
or go around it
and enjoy the view
at your own pace.

I guess I am following a certain kitten’s advice and making this an every Thursday thing now? In any case, here’s a prose poem.

The Power of Invisibility

One minute you are seen by those who hate you and the next you are hidden from those who love you. Hugs and bullet kisses fly through the air, trying to encircle you, capture you, and you are missed by all of them. You sit there as you shiver and shake, ass on hard, cold concrete, always wondering whether it will wear off, if you will be found out, if your last resort has finally failed you. Good intentions stumble with arms out, feeling the air, calling your name. They know you hide, but they cannot fathom why anyone would hide from such perfection, such love, such excellence, such help. Yes, help, the aid you so desperately need, that you keep yourself from being administered. A shot in the ass that will protect you but sting for a long time to come, and you like sitting, even here, on the unforgiving concrete, the concrete that refuses forgiveness as well as does not give it, and you attempt to do the same, but cannot. The aid weeps and cries. You try not to let your personal sobs be too audible, compressing them down with desperate hands. Eyelids drop shut, and for a moment, the world itself is as you, gone, unavailable, but when you open your eyes, it is there, and you are not. It spins by at such a rate that you feel your stomach become a faucet, the world’s rotation at just the right movement to turn its knobs, and your illness becomes apparent. Gravel digs into your palms as you try to steady yourself, sharp edges rubbing against lines of fate. You breathe. You blink. You watch existence move along without you, a conveyor belt carrying everyone along to the sorting chute, a ride you need to regain your footing on. You retch, and are covered in what you tried to swallow.

I ended the week of poetry. If you came here for a poem: TOO BAD. No poem for you! Ha, totally burned.

But seriously, that was an interesting experiment for me. It felt… nice. I really did feel that compulsion to write like I feel the compulsion to write these blogs every day, and I was thinking all day about what the poem I was going to bang out was going to be. Sometimes I got caught off-guard, and did something completely different, but, you know. I was working. Planning. There was creative output to it. That’s… really neat.

One of the reasons I always loved doing workshops was the demand that I create something. That demand made it happen. I so often had plans and ideas that I wasn’t putting down on paper, and suddenly I had a deadline where I had to. I loved that. (I also loved discussing all that stuff with like-minded people, too, of course.)

This really worked that way! None of the poems I wrote were totally great, perse. (I liked the one about the shoes.) But they were all certainly poems. I’ve written worse first drafts in the past. I created! It felt good.

Basically, what I’m saying is, you’re probably going to be seeing more poetry here. Not all the time: during the experiment, I really did wish I could have written some old fashion style bloegs. You’ll still see them too. But I’m thinking maybe a poem a week? Maybe more if I feel inspired? I don’t know. It was nice to live up to my screen name again. I think I’ll keep that up.

It’s the final day of poetry week! I made myself write a sestina, probably because I hate myself. Enjoy!

Calendar Application

Reaching down, I check the screen,
seeing when I need to be gone,
away from this place, on time,
to my appointments happening then.
It’s a complicated list and I
am unable, sometimes, to comprehend.

I’ve no time allotted to comprehend
as it clearly blinks on the screen.
The day moves quickly, ahead, and I
manage to breathe before it’s gone.
The air bounces around inside, then
escapes, too quickly, on it’s own time.

You see, every action requires time
burning inside to make muscles comprehend
so they can push you forward and then
the miasma of tasks on the screen
can be completed, crossed off, gone.
Clicking, typing, erasing the last, I

feel momentary freedom, but, still, I
know that even if I feel done this time,
my daily grind will never truly be gone.
The minute voice I don’t comprehend,
attempting to distract me from the screen
and all the work being added then,

will whisper in silence, then
grow louder into a rumbling shout and I
will finally put my fist through the screen,
electric jolts making me shiver as time
for a moment, breaks, and I comprehend
the meaning of my schedule being gone.

My focus, ambition, lifeblood is gone.
While freedom brings smiles now and then,
an open life is hard to completely comprehend.
I sit here, unmoving, while I
listen to tick marks, counting time
and staring at shattered, fragmented screen.

The craving to comprehend is gone.
I shouldn’t fight the screen then?
I must embrace, but focus, this time.

Only one more poem left after this! But that’s in the future! For now, here’s a poem about a tree. Nature poetry! ALL OF THE GENRES, amirite?

Atomic Bonsai

Hidden beneath ceramic pot
lurks a terrible power.
Throbbing, thickening,
as it curls through the available soil.
Trunks, limbs,
spastic
surge forth from underneath,
becoming green
with undeniable energy.

Waves of it
irradiate
and I feel it in my paws
fingertips trembling
as I reach closer
picking it up
making it hover and spin above my palm.
I’m electromagnetic,
charged.
My glasses crack.
Wind swirls my hair just so.
There is life here,
contained,
and restricted,
atoms bubbling with power
waiting for
release.

I have kept this tree from flourishing.
I have dug claws into it
and squashed dreams of swaying in the wind
tree sex in the air
intoxicating,
and it’s need to be
another tree
refills my batteries
as I cough,
hair falling to the ground
in clumps.

It’s poem day! (Like every day this week!) This poem is about… well, you figure it out. Maybe you’ll know.

Failure to Adapt

It always starts as a good idea.
Genius, really,
a thought of kings,
balancing a crown atop
curvy cloud bubbles,
the sort of thought that injects
straight into your face
until you smile.

But there’s consequences.

A boulder rolls downward
and you stand to face it.
Stalwart
you stare into impending death
without showing fear.
The bubbles should be enough,
murmuring happily before you,
and if they don’t protect you,
nothing wrong with being a bit thinner.
Rolling, it picks up speed
soap impacting its surface.
A crown bounces on stone,
denting.
Compressed, you become batter,
stuck to ungreased pan,
and now is the time for regret
again.

Oaths are sworn.
Never again is the mantra
chanted among the cavern walls
and yet
it does
seem like it would work
next time.

Here’s a poem about my puppy dog! I think pet poems are right up there with love poems as the BEST POETRY GENRES, don’t you think?

Running Away

There’s a constant
ka-thunk
ka-thunk
ka-thunk
as I re-enter.
Waiting until the hatch is sealed
I open the door.
You run in circles,
paws at my legs,
wanting to feel me,
know I’m real
and not an illusion after
having been alone for so long.
We sit on the couch.
We sleep.
I feel like you’re content, surely.
A nice little world
with me in it
that I made for you.
Blankets, food, affection,
everything.

Then I open the door and you run.
I chase after you,
yelling,
tripping over myself
socks slamming against dirt
as I move across the wet grass.
You see something,
a glint in the distant freedom,
and your paws cannot stop,
tongue flapping in the wind.

I finally catch up,
breathing harder than you,
and you roll on your back,
happy,
or so I think.

I don’t know what else to give you
that could compare to unknown horizons.
I had thought a lack of starvation
and lack of loneliness
would be enough.
You pat my leg,
wanting,
and I am useless.
I have never been an open road.
I’ve always been a bottle,
contained,
waiting for my seal to break.

I am hitting all the major genres! (?) Well, anyway, this is a poem in response to something my psychologist said to me, which is the title.

“Those Shoes Look Very Feminine, But You Could Go Further.”

Thanks, I guess?
To be honest, my current war
is being waged against overcompensation.
When starving, you want to gorge,
food shoveled into throat
without swallowing motion.
It creates issues.
Vomiting, projectile,
leaving you worse than before.
I will not lose my new-found womanhood
lurching over a toilet bowl
because I had too much cake too fast.

I understand your advice, though
as I really don’t fit enough stereotypes
for my new life.
Too tall, too geeky,
uninterested in makeup and dresses,
I break the illusion daily
by not playing into the reasons
everyone claims to know I’m doing this.
If I was born correctly, nobody would blink.
But now? Well.
Surely I could be more of a woman,
but here’s the thing:
Being a woman was never the goal,
just a visible side effect
of my real aims,
a beautiful, obvious scar
of the self-surgery I’m performing.
It’s life-saving
and the pills I gulp are oxygen,
keeping me alive.
Each inhale teaches me happiness,
previously unthinkable,
and each exhale
removes the constant urge to sleep
and never wake up.
I look in the mirror and I don’t see tears.
It was always about survival.

The breasts are nice
and the pronouns a godsend.
I should experiment with my options,
the new multiple guesses on my test,
and I do, daily,
but it’s less a mad dash
out of control.
It’s a marathon,
finding me in the sea of my world
and my female existence,
so if what you see doesn’t fit
with the supposed ideal
and I’m crashing into walls,
flailing into furniture,
with my chances of passing shattering
like so many vases on the shelf,
well,
I am alive.
It’s my mess, for once.
That’s why I’m smiling.

Yep, love poetry. Here we go.

Work Schedules
For Brer

A vague feeling of neglect
injected through asthma inhaler
as another window passes
and I’m stuck, employed.
Our respective masters
walk in different lights,
yours, artificial,
mine a burning fireball
of incandescent gas
I can’t hold in the sky for you
no matter how many oven mitts I buy.

Thus, another day cycle gone
with no you in sight
and I cling to others, available.
We kiss. We use.
And I don’t think of you
while I’m panting and moaning,
short of breath,
lungs failing to function as prescribed,
until I can finally breathe in
with the thought of you working.
I know you don’t mind,
doing the same while I earn,
and I shouldn’t feel bad.

But I do.
You could have watched.
You could have joined in.
You could have been part
of my life.

Physically satisfied,
I give in,
unsatisfied
without you,
knowing tomorrow
I’ll miss you again.

Well, sort of. Anyway, here we go.

Stuck Clock

Time travel is nothing.
Eyes closed carelessly,
you’re propelled backwards,
pinballing, ragdolled,
against the colored lights,
endlessly spinning over and over,
turbine creating hydroelectrics
while you try to breathe,
lungs burning,
each finger cracking in half,
forces making grip impossible,
and that’s just the first tick.

Caffeinated, nervous
I spin in my office chair
licking cracked lips,
claws digging into padded arm rests.
The alarm clock blinks
trying to bring me into focus
but it’s futile.
I’m in the future.