Freeverse Love

"My type?"

I got asked this question in a circle of girls who each knew their answer

Down to the shade of brown of their man's skin,

But all I could do was repeat the question: "My

Type?..."

I like, long hair, I like, confidence, I like.... girls?

But let's be honest that's not a "type", that's called an orientation

And narrowing it down to 51% of the 7 billion population

Doesn't really help.

I don't know if I really have a type, but there is ONE thing

There is ONE thing, when my chest starts filling up with words

And I want to write something real about love,

When I'm speaking only in iambic pentameter

And I want someone to understand,

When I'm quoting Hamlet

And I'm waiting: for someone to quote it right back

Then I remember

That I want to fall in love with a poet.

I want to be written love letters where every word is a prayer flag in the wind.

I want to send emails that are as eloquent as air

And text messages that connote something beyond one hundreda and sixty characters

I want to hold afternoon conversations in elegant freeverse,

Make "sleep tight" a sweet sonnet serenade

And stumble through our morning coffe in stuttering haiku.

I want to compare her eyes to storm-surged rivers and

Her body to Aphrodite's before the plastic surgery,

I want holding hands feel like pressing your palms against sunrise windows

And I want catepillars crawling up my spine when we kiss but mostlly

I want to be able to say "stop the date because we need

To go home and get in bed -

So I can write down this word-perfect line in my head"

And have her understand.

I want my wedding vows to be alliterative

And my adoption announcements to allude to King Solomon

I want her to be my rhyming couplet,

And I'll be her juxtaposition

And I want to fall in love with a poet

Because they know how to breath life into words.

Because they know how to make printer fonts dance.

I fell in love with a poet, once

But she started writing prose instead.

And these days when I read her dialouge

And mark her risng action,

I miss the hours we spent composing summer-soft sentences

Where daffoldils melt into sunshine

And never put a period at the end.

But life is no sonnet, it is freeverse

And it trails on past woe and joy.

And I still want to fall in love with poet.

Some days, my words take me high enough

That I wonder if I'll meet her

Through this poem.

XXX--

Bundle Me Up

In your fingers I feel like glass. Vulnerable

To the shakings and sharpness of life. In your fingers

I feel small, even though my sneakers

Make it obvious that I'm the taller one. In your fingers

I want to feel like a child. Bundle me up,

Tell me not to run in the street, and

Smile when I'm afraid to leave your side. Please worry

When I have been gone past supper. In your fingers

I feel young, like when I didn't know what loneliness was

Like when the future was more open than anxious. Please

Carry me up the stairs and tuck me into bed. In your fingers

I fit neatly. Bring your hand to your chest

And hold me tight against your heart. In your fingers

I am smooth-skinned, my elbows the hardest surface

On my body; in your fingers an arrow

Could slip through my skin like it could satin, so keep me safe.

Cup me between both palms and whisper nothings,

Like a gardner to their seeds,

And treat me like an egg within my shell. In your fingers

I lose my poise. I get nervous, so

Gently ease away the mike, and keep me silent. In your fingers

I just want to listen to your voice. Please

Tell me a story. I'll gather up every word

Until you say "Goodnight". In your fingers,

I might be able to sleep without dreaming. In your fingers,

I feel so ineffably safe.

Please, disregard my age. I know I turn

And adult, today, but in your fingers

I am still a child. Please

Bundle me up,

And smile when I'm afraid to leave your side.

XX---

Indefinitive

I am a child with a gun.

I am a war waiting to happen and a solution in one.

I am the sum of my parents.

I am the best two humans could do to recreate themselves.

I am the buds on bushes,

I am at the break-even point with the rest of my life.

I am the star whose light hasn't reached earth yet.

I am the edge of the known.

I am history's next Hitler, next Ghandi,

I am the orator with a world on her screen.

I am an exothermic reaction.

I am excited particles in an open plane.

I am homeless by choice.

I am a roamer of only the least travelled paths.

I am seventeen, for two more days,

I am a stereotype down to the quiet self-esteem.

I am late nights and early mornings and caffeinated tea,

I am pure potential.

I am purer than the devil, darkly chaste,

I am unmeasurable.

I am more than just the sum of my parents,

I am my own vector.

I am the child with a gun.

I am the war waiting to happen, and the solution,

In one.

XX---

From the Couch

Eyes close

My chin tucked to collar bone

One light is still shining through my lashes

Fists balled up

Curled into myself like a cat

Nestled here between pillows on the couch

Clothes on

Warm from my blood

Too late to change now, everything's soft

Eyes close

Mind blurs into dark

Remind me that it's late out tonight.

X----

What a TERRIBLE poem

It's History

Do you remember the night I fell in love with you
Under sleeping bags and high ceilings?
I lost my nerve when your fingers touched mine
I forgot how to breathe

Do you remember the night we slept in your bedroom
And stayed up with your arm across my chest?
I didn't mention that the bed was too small for two
I didn't want you to leave

Do you remember the night you kept giving me more time
But I still never gave you an answer?
I tried to figure out how I felt, I swear I did
But everything I came up with was lies

Do you remember the night I confessed it to you
And how I finally fell asleep on your floor?
I woke up early and watched you lying in the sunlilght
I'd been feeling lonely for months

Do you remember the night I insisted on staying next to you
And you didn't disagree?
You found me in the livingroom the next morning
I had to stop watching you sleep

Do you remember the night I told everyone about you
And suddenly everything felt better and worse?
You weren't there. There were twelve of us in the dark
But only one put her hand on my head

Do you remember the night she asked me if I called it love
And I admitted I still wasn't sure?
You were in Seattle somewhere
You didn't know I was moving on

Do you remember the night you held my hand as we walked
And I kept my fingers loose as you held tight?
You didn't notice my silence
Neither of us knew this was the end

Do you remember the night I fell in love with you
And never talked about it later?
I guess it was a long time ago now
I guess you can forget it if you want

XXX--

Stroke By Stroke

The blue and silver flowers on the envelope

You duct-taped every edge in purple

The way I read each word stroke by stroke

And held the crease between my fingers

There was duct-tape on every edge, purple

Like the color you are painted in my head

I held a crease between each finger

And read the pages two at a time

The color you painted in my head

Rust-gold, like your story about the wind

Reading pages two at a time,

I orient myself by your coffee stains

Rust and gold and your story about the wind:

Each traversed oceans to meet me here

If I orient myself by your coffee stains,

Will my world grow so far?

We traverse oceans to meet right here

Our letters are the lines through which we touch.

Will my world ever grow as far

As the way I trace maps with my fingertips?

The answer is this letter, this line that lets us touch,

With blue and silver flowers on the envelope.

It's the way I trace your map with my fingertips.

The way I read each word. Read stroke by stroke.

XXXX-

Honesty

There's too much on my mind to write a poem.

I don't want to write about college or the future or debt or decisions or deadlines,

I don't want to think about money or a summer job or unattainable friends or turning 18

Or any of the other thousand fingers of thought in the entrance hall to my brain, but I'd rather

Mull on any of those than think about you.

I don't want to dwell on facebook photos of you that wallpaper the back of my mind,

I don't want to tell my friends about your journeys or stories or life

Or mentally steep myself in your words and gentle reminders -

I won't be waiting for the next time your sparse quotes appear on my screen

And no, I wouldn't wish to say your name into the phone any more

Than the once I've said it this week.

I don't want to read my to-do lists or emails or award announcements, or even my blog,

But I especially don't want to read a letter from you

I especially don't want your name to greet me out of the mailbox at tomorrow's check,

And I don't hope you included lists and wrote stories and made promises.

I hate it when you make promises.

It's true, that I don't want to talk about poetry or companionship or my kayak,

Or about silence, or denial, or regrets,

But mostly I don't want to talk about you.
And god, I hope I don't get the chance.

XXX--

Twilight

I stepped outside with the
Recycling, and everything felt like
Twilight. The sky was still
A faded indigo, the color of
Twilight. The air was
Warm at noon, now
Softly chilled to the temperature of
Twilight - cans and bottles rattled
The air as they fell through the
Top of the bin, clashing through the
Indescript feeling of
Twilight. My feet were bare, sculpting to
The soft pavement of
Twilight, I stepped slow to the
House, and I pulled soft shut the
Door, cut off encompassing air
Of twilight.

X----

Scaffolding

I know it's technically April now, but I did write this poem on what is still MENTALLY March 31st. So it still counts as my Day 0 poem, darn it.

My thoughts are walled up behind

Rebar and concrete. Enclosed by

The shaky scaffolding of a future

Being carefully built towards the sky.

My words are wrapped up in

Blueprints, sheets of constructional 

Calculations, so esoteric the

English language can no longer

Translate them.

The clarity of mind I held in

Such high regard when my head

Was a meadow, an open field,

Undeveloped,

Has fallen by the wayside as bulldozers

Level the ground and architects

Draft piercing towers and engineers

Lay the foundations and the

Scaffolding. The miles of rickety

Planks on pipe on concrete feet that

Supposedly support it all.

Standing under these steel skeletons I

Can catch glimpses of the far-off

Horizon, and at the summit of my 

Scaffolding I can still reach to touch

The sky, but I know as the walls

Close up those open frames, my

View will slowly shrink until my

Gaze is stuck firmly to the

Sidewalk. I know my wallless world will

Become confined until I can't

Leave this city any longer.

I understand.

I want it to stay this way forever.

I like to scale the massive I-beams and

Sit above the world, feet dangling,

My hand holding a bit of rope in case I

Fall. I like to balance on these naked

Two by fours, walking the gap between

What will one day be buildings. I like

The way my scaffolding looks like

Spiderwebs, and with my hands reaching

Up to the next bar, I can become

The spider. I want my world to remain

Unbuilt.

Let's stop construction, at least for

Now. We'll throw up shanty towns

Instead, little lean-tos and shacks in the

Shadow of my skyscraper skeletons,

Only meant to exist for a month or

A year or maybe

Four. Nothing permanent, nothing

Made of iron or plastic or steel -

I'll live in wood houses with

Tin roofs and sleep under

Tarps when it's wet out, and every

Day I'll take my hammer and nails and

Walk through my unfinished towers to

Just keep on building my

Scaffolding.

XXXX-

2013 Kickoff!

I'm happy to be back in April 2013 for my third year in a row with NaPoWriMo!
Look forward to some angsty poems about the future, many dissertations on my current life, several idiosyncratic science metaphors, and at least one made-up word.
Good luck to all y'all fellow WriMos out there: may the poetry-writing begin!