all my metaphors

a collection of poems by ali mollhoff

[ali-thoughts-blog]

You and I could get drunk on anything. We breathed fire, saw the future, opened the gates of heaven and walked away. How could heaven contend with life when I know that a big bang lives in my heart ready to explode like a great jellyfish expanding across the bloated sky. I am everywhere and nowhere at all pressing up against myself until I choke on recycled air. I think my chaotic blood has known from the beginning what my heart learns one arrhythmic flutter at a time: we gain so little from peace. In haunting hours and mad seasons, after I grow restless of you, myself, everyone, I quiet enough to wonder if it's enough to leave the door unlocked to a house at the end of an abandoned road. I don't want to be alone, but I've seen the future. I've watched a billion atoms fly way from each other until you and I are nothing but glittering flecks dusted across the universe. We will never be this close again.

Would you raise the cholera flag? by ali-thoughts

[ali-thoughts-blog]

DAMN, you should watch her walk away…" We are a generation of women who stiffen backs, tighten lips and think, "really... I can't remember the last time I stayed." I left my dad when I was twelve. I crossed seven states by back roads, traveled the twisted veins of my own heart and swore to die before I created another millimeter of space in my life for men like him. Whose shot-glass promises rolled off the tongue bitter and shallow as the nights they threw back, laughing at life like a sick joke. Meeting you was a sick joke. When they ask if it's hard to walk away, they mean from love. At first I call it impossible, unbearable. I tell them it tastes like swallowing glass and makes about as much sense to the part of your heart that wants to keep beating - the part that doesn't believe it can. But then I pause, swallow my fear and say I didn't walk away from love. I walked away from the knot in the pit of my stomach that took root and grew with every wandering eye and missed call when I knew something I couldn't admit to myself. I walked away from the relentless corrosion of inferiority - from the part of me that tried to hold a flame to all the other girls without realizing they were gasoline - without wondering how a man who never learned how to fight for what he wanted could treat me any differently. Now they ask if I'll ever be done writing poems about you and I ask myself how I can put out the fire that burned the house down - how I can stop thinking I'm the house. But you spend enough time carrying yourself around like a victim, a weapon, a martyr and eventually you make yourself sick. I am the fire but I am also the sea. I am the fire, but I am also the sea.

“THE TRUTHS OF EXISTENCE ARE COMFORTING TO SOME AND TERRIFYING TO OTHERS” 

by ali-thoughts

[ali-thoughts-blog]

This poem is about warmth,      A word I only ever knew to mean     skin and skin, you and me,     tiny kisses that tip-toe across skin,     the touch and go flutter of butterflies This poem is about fire,     the cosmic energy that hangs in the air when you talk     until birds sing, skies run pink and red. I'm talking about sunrises, fresh starts, a blossoming fire     that kisses your skin good morning and leaves orange     impressions sprinkled across your nose,     a reminder that     not all imperfections are flaws. I used to trace the veins of your heart with my fingertips,     feeling for every aberration,     I emptied myself into the valleys of your heart because You are more than skin and bones and mistakes and     I wanted to swim in the tedium of your     inconsistencies but I am molten lava,     an indomitable spirit which demands to be seen,     heard, felt. I am fervid smiles and hugs that smother and      energy - that fiery enigma     of childhood that doesn't know how to walk without     running,     with every movement proclaiming, "I AM, I AM, I AM."     How strange and comforting it is to wake up to the     realization that I am not plaster, not tar I was not made to tessellate your peaks and valleys. I am wild, untamable fury.     How strange and comforting it is to discover my own     warmth.

“This poem is not about you” by ali-thoughts

[ali-thoughts-blog]

I once translated the language of your skin and discovered a man who searches for himself in shallow things. You carry yourself like an empty promise, but I've heard all the apologies that stood on your tongue, begging for life. You washed them down with a shot of something cheap, said three Hail Mary's, and asked if I believe in forever. I said: I love the part of you that chases birds down empty beaches. Sometimes you run when there's no hurry and laugh before the punchline and the way you sleep reminds me of the quiet moments before a heavy storm. but, I should have told you that you've grown so accustomed to being misunderstood, you avert your eyes from the intimacy of everyone who might recognize your tenderness. Can you remember the last time you felt at peace? Who was standing next to you?

4/29/17 9:42 p.m. by ali-thoughts

[ali-thoughts-blog]

Find me where belief sleeps, exhausted under flowers fetched by a man who misunderstands his own chaos-- he misremembers mine. Find me where lilacs grow, cautiously leaning toward light like moth to flame. I never tasted fire till I met you. You set yourself on fire just to watch flesh burn I would swallow whole to extinguish. I never found a lack of lies in your furrowed brow-- eyes, playing at sincerity-- no, soliloquy. A sunrise without end that listens without understanding, knows without remembering. Where do you go when sunsets fall? I want to go where lilacs grow.

4.25.17 by ali-thoughts

[ali-thoughts-blog]

I don't know why some (flightless) part of me is always jumping off cliffs. I sometimes wonder if I let go of all the apologies my nagging heart demanded, the thread of my disposition would unravel like a prayer flag, flapping away in the wind. You're the frantic prayer lulling me to sleep I never believed would come true. I'm told the way I talk about love fizzles; it hangs in the air like the looming fear that the worst of it is all there is. but I'm telling the oldest story in the world: just another girl who never believed she could be happy in a world where she's not in love. I promised myself I'd stop writing sad poems but this was always more than a few uncertain stanzas, because in an instant I felt prepared to let go of all the self-destruction holding me together. Sometimes angels are devils to the wrong people.

“Hell is where I dreamt of you and woke up alone” by ali-thoughts

[ali-thoughts-blog]

I looked down and noticed I was boarding a plane, thinking about not landing. I still love everyone my bare hands have ever touched. I am layers of scar tissue and tenderness; purple skin wrapped around bruised muscle -- I am the mark of my own survival. I sometimes wonder where love goes when it's done walking us home. I find it nestled in hooks of familiar songs, clinging like dust to notes that say simply : i miss you and hope youre ok. Forgetting you is the closest I've come to a fairy tale --let me explain: I forget the heartbreak first, the jealousy, the drunken arguments and carelessness. I'm left with tenderness that carries on and on, with the persistent tugging of memories that intoxicate. All great writing is rewriting --I think I love you more now. when stripped of habitual run-on sentences and split infinitives, ours will always be a story about love.

ali-thoughts

2/27/17, 10:45 p.m.

[ali-thoughts-blog]

I've been talking fast and drinking fast and living fast—seen too many sunsets to believe in Sunday mornings—heard too many promises that slipped away like balloons through the careless fingers of youth. I wonder if it's enough to leave the door unlocked to a house at the end of an abandoned road.

Fresh air and the things that spoil it, ali-thoughts

[ali-thoughts-blog]

hearts die so young these days, still beating, but no longer burning for that bittersweet magic I shed my old skin and become the python, offering Siddhārtha shelter from the torrid sun. What did lao-tzu mean when he said all lasting things are flexible? I light fire to my old self, smothered in decayed leaves and beg to live forever.

who did I belong to before time?, ali-thoughts

5/30

[ali-thoughts-blog]

I woke up this morning and thought I could fly. As if the only thing affixing my feet to the ground were my own lack of faith. As if that hadn’t always been the case. Now I know my own wings but you are the wind and each time I catch myself spinning round and round I wonder why this flightless bird subjects itself to  such harrowing weather.

If I were a house I’d be home now, ali-thoughts

4/30

[ali-thoughts-blog]

How to Gracefully Accept a Compliment: a coming of age story 1. Laugh it off like a tired joke. Pretend you don’t care, never even thought about it before now, but shrug anyway. Pretend you didn’t fall asleep begging some higher power to make you pretty like all those girls who know how to kiss boys and make them cry. 2. Date the first boy to call you pretty. Straighten your hair and paint your lips and pretend he sees the best in you. He doesn’t, but neither do you. 3. Make grown men cry. Watch them beg. Let them take everything except your heart. Flip your hair and leave before you change your mind. Pretend loneliness is empowering. It isn’t. 4. Say thank you. Wish they noticed your quick wit and big heart. Know they’re missing the trees for the forest, but say thanks anyway.

How to Gracefully Accept a Compliment: a coming of age story, ali-thoughts

3/30

[ali-thoughts-blog]

I keep asking myself how I can write a letter to a ghost. what earthly words could transverse the semi-permeable membrane between is and was? I look for you at the bottom of wishing wells but you asked me once what heaven was & I told you I don't care for empty promises. will you take me with you?

where do you go to be alone?, ali-thoughts

2/30

[ali-thoughts-blog]

My mom never warned me that there would be nights I’d find myself in strange rooms laughing at old wounds, exchanging jokes with strangers as dark as the walls that envelop us and I’d forget to ask myself who I am. I came here looking for you, but I fell asleep trying to remember the color of your eyes. I remember the gentle way you used to touch my waist, a cautious venture from a friend, now I reach out to a stranger and wonder and wonder. If I could forget you I would.

stop saying yes when you mean no, ali-thoughts 

1/30

[ali-thoughts-blog]

Every day I'm more convinced that happiness lies in that perfect balance of sun, sweat, and the sea.

[ali-thoughts-blog]

may poetry challenge

in which I attempt to write a poem every day in the month of may! There are many versions of this challenge out there with parameters which specify form, length, subject, etc. but we’re going to keep it really really simple because most everything’s better that way. I encourage anyone interested to join me!

[ali-thoughts-blog]

one day  I looked outside and all at once it was spring and I couldn't help but wonder if those tender branches were surprised by my blossoming

ali-thoughts, 4/10

[ali-thoughts-blog]

This city is always burning. Smoke stacks devour themselves,  puffing away at crumpled cigarettes, stamped out under shoes that have known only pavement. Will you abandon your old ways and sit with me beneath the sky?

ali-thoughts

a poem I wrote when I first moved to the city (2010)