poetry, prose and brain dumps

poetry, prose, and little brain dumps he/him 🌈🔐

[bytheriversedge]

a seemingly unimportant moment in the film Fourteen

“Have you read any of my work?”

“No, sorry I’d love too!”

“Don’t read anything yet. Give me another ten years”

To write is to know yourself, and to know yourself is to criticize.

“My own brain is to me the most unaccountable of machinery--always buzzing, humming, soaring roaring diving, and then buried in mud."

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

1932

[bytheriversedge]

Unfortunately

my skin is cracked

unfortunately

I have never gotten over

anything in my life

unfortunately

I believed you.

[bytheriversedge]

I am split

open

all of my seeds have spilled.

[bytheriversedge]

9.2024

hope you know I would’ve peeled every orange for you and saved the rinds,

and I would’ve swung on every swingset with you.

hope you know I would’ve pulled out every last splinter from your aching bones—

been wondering if the shards go too deep

did you have to toss me too,

when you tore off the bandage?

do I belong within the remnants of the wreckage?

did you notice I was sinking along with you?

and I would have swam with you

pulling us both along

to the sandy shore

even if only to sit and watch

the devastation of a fallen ship.

hope that one day you make a beautiful vase out of those frosted glass pieces

and that it sits on a table overlooking the budding gardens of your mind.

[bytheriversedge]

9.2024

Did your heart find what it needed?

Are you happy now?

it always seemed too easy

to walk away

right from the very beginning

did you ever mean to stay?

all of those pretty promises that you spit my way

decorated in wrapping paper and tied with bows of reassurance;

were those ever real?

we were not tethered together

and I never wanted to be a cage.

I’ve gotten used to making my own goodbyes

filling holes in my mind with dirt and the words never said-

was I real to you?

does the destruction you left behind ever

cross your mind?

[bytheriversedge]

4.2024

untitled



When I was young, my grandma painted me yellow- and so I was the bright and lovely sunshine she saw me as.

Someone once painted me red often- and so I was the dark, resentful, ever unsatisfied corpse of anger they saw me as

My friends painted me a blushy purple and pink and blue-

and so I was the cotton candy colored person

easy to talk too

The person who sits and listens

and never says a word

the cupcake-baking-music-playing-coffee-on-the-stove person.

They painted me red, so I was red.

They painted me yellow, so I was yellow.

They painted me black and blue, so I was black and blue.

They painted me an orange sunset

and said something in it

would never be quite right.

I painted myself all the colors that I was told I was-

the color of anger, a defense- “just fight back, but not like that”

the color of happiness, that bubbly and attentive person- “you’re like a breath of fresh air today!”

the color of fear, a lost fox kit in the forest- he bites, but he isn’t angry.

Just show me your paintbrush,

I’ll adjust

I became a cog- use me, breathe me, see me, love me, hate me.

I’ll go where you tell me too

I can sit and stay

I can bite if you want me too

(please stop cornering me)

that kid is still in there somewhere

we’re all just clawing our way out with only the leftover stubs of our bitten down nails.

[bytheriversedge]

1.19.24

and here i am

I crawled my way out of the grave you buried me in with my bare hands

now my nails are broken and I’m full of dirt

how long was I sleeping?

life moved on

I was here

I remember it all, and yet nothing at all.

[bytheriversedge]

7.25.24

something in me has felt decayed for years

as if I absorbed myself before I even existed

I always wanted to be

an afternoon cup of tea / warm yellow light / a friendly smile / a gentle field of flowers / an anchor in the sea

everything

all at once,

all of the time.

My bones ache to the same beat as my heart

I do not want to decay / I do not want the skin to peel off this shell I have become

I can still hear the drums in my heart and piano in my mind

I was never gone.

[bytheriversedge]

5.24.24

remember me.

There is a patch of grass in Anaheim that will

Forever remember my skin

my snores

and everything I whispered

to the night sky

Nevada hills

see me

I can hear the breeze

its gentle screams

remember me

remember me

we left our mark

and our masks

on a bus in Yorba Linda

they ended up

in a box marked “trash”

and we ended up

five miles away

at a park

it’s 4am.

a road will always be a road and the sky will always be blue

and I’m reaching for that dream;

that deep blue-

the sun perfectly positioned in the sky and it’s exactly sixty three degrees

I didn’t find it in LA

where the angels never sleep

and the wind seems to stalk you,

screaming in a voice

only you can hear

rush, rush, rush.

It wasn’t at Cafe Marmalade inside our morning mimosas

it wasn’t at Panera in the free crossiants or baked deep inside your freshly baked muffin, disguised as a chocolate chip.

St Paul at night used to be

a certain breath of fresh air

the way the streetlights lit up

the sidewalk and the people

always looked at you with

this feeling I could never

really pin down. even in the

quietest of the a.m those

streets were never lonely

there is a place under the floorboards

hidden in a home in Detroit

right off Mack Avenue

and take a left

exactly 3 pieces

of beeswax

forgotten for the

last ten years.

I left my heart in

San Francisco

Dropped it on a sidewalk

on Columbus Avenue and

grew a new one from scratch

with the dripping ink of

every book on the second

floor of City Light Booksellers

every page of mine

a gentle crease at the top

creating maps of

where I’ve gone and who

I have been

there are patches of

grass and libraries and

trees and bookstores

and the wind, buses-

abandoned parks,

lost dogs and busy

streets at 2am

my heart remembers

even when my soul doesn’t.

[bytheriversedge]

9.23

I am not burning bridges. I am poking the ash caricature of those bridges with a stick and watching it collapse below my feet into the raging river below.

I am burning letters, giving back house keys and swallowing the past, manifesting as a lump in my throat.

I carry my sadness in the small pouch above my eyes

and you can see it there when it rains.

I have always pulled on the threads attached to people-

so maybe I can pull the darkness out

I’ve never been in the business of burning bridges

[bytheriversedge]

wrote this one a long time ago (Dec 2019 always wanted to share it with someone and never ended up- felt proud of it)

December 30th 2019 /// Fourty Three Things I Have Heard At Church Or In A Hospital

God, please not now / please give me another chance / please give her another choice / I want to climb Mount Everest before I die / I don't want to die / I want to die.

It's only Tuesday / it hasn't even been a month since she died / I was fired two years ago and I haven't told a soul / yesterday I tried to kill myself / it's Friday and you haven't sent me a sign.

Sometimes I only come here so I can feel better about myself / I have heard so many confessions of love, lust and cheating; as if that's what God is about / I don't understand what God is about / sometimes I wish time would move slower / I wish I had more time.

I finally left him yesterday / I told her the truth / my tests came back good / I walked for the first time today / my son was born three days ago / my best friend got engaged last night / I meditated yesterday and time moved slower.

I remember how to breathe again / I don't know where I've been for the past 6 years / I feel like me again for the first time in a decade / my mom called me a tree kissing hippie and she might be right / I can breathe easier in the fall.

my plane never came / the train I was going to ride crashed / there was an accident / she didn't make it / I am so sorry / I said what I said / I have never lied to you / I lied to you.

I almost went back / I took two weeks off just to pray / I should have come sooner / I missed you so much

[bytheriversedge]

4.21.23

open my ribcage

flames and flowers spill out

I am too many stories to be told in one sitting

too much food to eat off one plate

run your fingers along my bare ribs

feel my energy in my tired bones

the burning that’s always been

I’ll paint a pretty picture

with pressed flowers and your favorite watercolors

a pretty sunset, a stunning bouquet

anything to scream the words

“I want to be beautiful!”

open my ribcage;

a robin flies out

her perfect nest left behind

I promise I will nurture your babies

and teach them how to love

[bytheriversedge]

Flowers (circa 2019)

i lied

flowers are everywhere

inside of my lungs

they are very beautiful

but i cannot breathe

[bytheriversedge]

0.7.19

rambling prose pt. 1

sometimes if i sit very still and breathe very deeply i can transport myself back to my childhood best friends living room.

if i do this, when i do this, i see her smiling face again, a symbol of innocence and beauty. i feel the gentle sounds of her fingers plucking a guitar with the rain tap, tap, tapping on the windows. sometimes, i can even taste homemade pesto sauce, dairy free dinners and popcorn with yeast and butter. i can hear the sound of a doorbell and the smell of rain.

if i close my eyes and focus really hard-

i can be 14 again, and i still know my way around that small town. i can navigate through in my mind / it's interesting what time does to the brain.

[bytheriversedge]

10.20.19

anxiety is nicotine.

and by that, I mean the way it seeps through my veins faster than coffee but slower than blood.

Depression is lukewarm coffee at 9pm on a Tuesday.

and by that, I mean every day runs at warp speed / and I miss the milestones

my blood is made of

nicotine and coffee / muffins and tea / poison and toast

Anxiety is nicotine / and by that I mean / I am trying to quit / but like clouds before a thunderstorm / you'll follow me through

[bytheriversedge]

1.6.19

I haven't been able to write

and by that I mean

when I sit at my computer and try to get my thoughts out

my arteries become blocked and

nothing comes

It's like putting out maple syrup for bees / it only works 50% of the time.

I don't listen to 1985 anymore for the same reason I don't listen to 2012 pop songs

because every memory is tainted and I know I am moving on

I am getting through this

but that doesn't mean that I don't miss screaming along to the same songs

this year has made me

absloutely crazy

and by that I mean

I don't sleep anymore

I just lay in bed and try not to have nightmares.

I lost parts of myself

in the fight

pieces of me were

chipped away like

I am an ice block

being carved into a beautiful masterpiece

so maybe it's okay that I'm a little broken

[bytheriversedge]

11.7.19

in the darkest corners of my life

hope is hidden in a box

and rarely comes to play anymore;

but i was walking down the street one day and I saw hope in a sunflower growing on someone's fence, as if someone had told it not to grow and the sunflower ignored them.

I saw hope in the clouds in the night sky

covering every star

i tasted hope in

poems from my heart

words collected from the darkest corners of my soul

I found hope in a coffee shop in Michigan /

where the bread was stale and the best thing about the coffee was the cream

I found hope in myself when the darkness started to take over my mind.

I have raindrops of hope collected in the clouds above my head.