Echo & the Chapbook of Narcissus @echoandthechapbook-blog - Tumblr Blog

Honest

There are two worlds: One that includes finger paint, horses, firewood and Places where waves break, The other is you.

They are separate and yet one seems lonely without the other.

The world of you is no longer an earthen hollow in my abdomen, A place I run from, find myself fearful of being entrenched in.

That tiny world of you, how it bathed in it’s own sadness and mistakes as I lay awake, tucked in the comfort of small.

Now that world grows flowers.

They too dance in the dark with the cabs and the tears and the lights.

Rather, you are the soft hurt of “I tried.”

You are: almost, halfway there, subpar, just about, a step away.

Object manipulation, I guess this was the most masterful of all your pieces

one where we actually fell in love, And nobody would believe it.

#poetry #honest #moving on

Saw

I read a poem about seeing you standing across the street I did see you standing across the street, or across the square, I saw you and I spoke to you But I didn’t want to be sad and so I wasn’t and I didn’t even think about checking your Facebook, not for at least three days, and I didn’t because I didn’t think about it, or want to, what I did want was the vegan cookie in my purse, warmed from this morning, and I ate it because that was okay to want. Three weeks ago I was tired of only seeing you, and this week I saw everyone, all the people I really truly cared about, and a day ago I grew tired of only seeing everyone, and now I hope for a 24 hour cellphone virus that will wipe it’s memory, take away texts and contacts and then there will be nothing but a blank and happy screen with only my background of a pixelated Buddah left to obsessively check in on. Life always seems to have more kick when you’re trudging uphill, working against something, or steadily frog-kicking away from something so I guess you’re supposed to be my something but you aren’t you were a false cover, a quick treatment for the something that is me Being really great at hiding from myself and laughing about it, The fact I want a better job but I don’t know which flavor I want so I pretend a hobby is more important And I dream about being a choreographer for hooping and then remember I have a degree in writing No math skills Dogs to walk for a paycheck and a banged up knee And then I think about the poem about seeing you across the street but instead of the poem I think about a big cookie even though I’m not really into sweet things I think about the cookie that’s just a cookie and bland and that I don’t even care about eating it, I would just stand next to it, put it on my counter and leave it there, because it’s okay to do that. I would cross a traffic-filled street for that.

$1.99

I purchased a bag of facial cleansing wipes normally $5.99, now only $1.99 in a discount grocery in Oakland over a month ago, around the time we were already not talking whenever we spoke at each other. I picked at the wet and pulled a towelette out one for each night to clear away the camping dirt and the time you yelled, thought I lost your tooth brush in the desert. Each night as I extract one more Towelette I think, "this is it, the last one, has to be," as the next one shows itself underneath, separating from today's cloth. Each night it is much the same, I have grown used to it, the daily soil of back-in-New-York-City left like rust on the towelette as I look at the bag, each day being the last.

#poetry #clear #cloth

Revolutionary Messages [Edit One]

In lieu of Diane Di Prima’s REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS

#1 I barely feel the absence of you. Surprising, really, after all the years I sat in grim response to all of you, whoever you were, at one time or another. In your vacant place I feel a small tug, a short hand like a toddler’s hand reaching to my skirtdress, pulling, asking, curious, where we were going.

Whenever I try to write a letter to no one,

it always comes back: RECIPIENT'S ADDRESS INCORRECT. I figure there must be reasons love is weighted unevenly, mostly when it comes to delivering it (to) yourself.

#revolutionary #messages #letters #poetry #writing #vacant #curious #going

Poetry, Too

I will never stop reading

poetry

even while everyone tells me poetry is "over". It has always been over, poets know this. Poets hide, manning their battle stations, equipped, full, chapbooks and stool chairs and hoping no one will figure their true purpose or fix the low lighting. I will continue to read poetry on the subway. Even if commuters think I am fresh out of college, forever looking to impress college graduates on the L train, while my fellow graduates look over me, thinking, doesn't she know? College is over. I will continue to write poetry in small notebooks covered in purse lint, with pens I steal from banks and on napkins if the situation is dire. I will continue to write on them in front of friends on their way out the diner door egging me to come on because dinner is over. I will continue to read poetry just before I expect to sleep, just before my cheek presses to pages and I sleep on a pillow of words, my bedside light still dim and beaming as the night finds itself over.

#poetry #too #writing #lighting #steal #small #banks

Caged [Edit One]

I feel a novel sitting in my bones. She sits in proverbial crouch, occasionally licks at my ankles and reminds me she needs to feed. But I feed her every day more than I eat myself, as I drink mostly coffee and eat mostly B vitamins and she daily experience. She's getting fat, I can feel her breathing slow, tired of running small circles in my cage. But she knows she's allowed out whenever she feels. She is ill at ease, I think, wondering if she pounces, brings paw to print, whether that will mean packs of biting coyotes or worse yet, applause.

#poetry #caged #bones #licks #fat #feed #pounce #writing #edit

The boys young in shorts t-shirts laughing one white one black kicking trashcans screaming streets are empty the street lights don’t change they are laughing behind me kicking laughing at what? The years Don’t change. nothing becomes less funny, less worthy of being kicked, Less crazed than the fact you are smiling wearing t-shirts and it is freezing.

#poetry #echo #tshirts #crazed #life

#pomegranate #punica granatum #pods #seedling #known #meant #art #drawing #poetry

Heart, are you.. ...thinking?

#art #drawing #heart #thinking #love

Surfacing

I am tired of unseemly gestures. Of my palms left holding each warm. When, easily, it could be yours.

In this folk-tale, I hear no fall from grace.

We have already dove the depths, touched toes the bottom.

No hero-made tip of the iceberg, ship-wrecker below the surface; not here.

This story is one of the best kinds of stories, as it involves a lot of walking.

All foreplay on the novel ground.

I am tired of forgiving. Of my mouth herding words together as if my saliva field wields purpose without execution of its living subjects.

I am tired of making sense of

this.

I am tired of making sense.

I am tired.

I am in this, whole, I promise, don’t worry.

#poetry #writing #folk tale #palms #bottom #foreplay #living #sense #love

Whirling. your lines wave, your body my verb.

#drawing #art #stars #ocean #fish #universe

Ink cloud pen/sketch pad

#drawing #octopi #tentacles #love monster #ink

(An Old Poem) 3, 2, 1

I was busy placing detonators under the MIRROR FUN HOUSE, pitching piveting images of itself for and by itself, when I heard over the rusting intercom the main fuses were being turned off for a routine check up and I would be again left, as every one is, every night, in the dark and all the better. The bombs in my pockets reminded me they were awake and impatient or otherwise alive; otherwise, their life, like mine, wouldn’t growing steadily shorter. The ferris wheel in the distance without my glasses a slowly rotating flower of blinks; I wished I could hear the pistons the generator understand whatever is making that Big Wheel turn but instead I sliced at the end of the plastic ends of my explosives to make them a little more homely and different and mine. I looked up into the rectangle framing my face while behind me a rectangle framed the back of my head framing the front of my face framing the back of my head framing the front of me. I ran my fingers through the wires petting them something pretty then wished I could hang this night above my kitchen sink, just above my rubber plants, as good luck for the future, the wishbone of my gratitude. Instead I pushed some dirt with my fingertips purposefully without reason then let the wire follow me from my back pocket, leading the way for the end like I would lead a be-speckled French bulldog, if ever I would give in and purchase such a friend. I walked some distance I don’t dare guess and laid my body against a tree, I hope an Oak tree, the roots coddling my thighs and I can see my breathe in the darkness and I thought of the spinning, blinking stars. I took the detonator from my boot and before I pressed the don’t press red button I glanced over my shoulder wondering why I should make it, before, presto, everything shattered, every light seared the sky in a final collision with it’s end sister in the falling dark and every piece of my face and body leap from the ground with it, flying into a place the darkness seemed much brighter from here and I was happy someone had left the light on for me.

REM Relations

I will dream in your eyelashes, make sure they are never filled with tarantulas.

Construct walls of paper, at least, or something stronger, or, at least, more becoming so no snow, however deep, will crush your home. Nest. Cocoon. I welcome your arms about me- Sheets and blanket my hands and legs; all thick with heavy of sleep. Each to our own metamorphosis, we blossom and in our heads, we birth wings.

#poetry #wings #heavy #metamorphosis

Must (Part I & II)

I lay comforter to sheet and I don’t

miss you, now, because even without you here

you fill this whole bed, this whole room

myy hands are warm from your hands my cheeks feel yours. I am all four limbs splayed, full, so filled I need no food, no words; need no music, no stars, nothing excess to prove I exist or am worthy.

II.

My grey pillow in hand, I will sleep in the middle of my king size bed. I will sleep in the center I will sleep in it alone not because I want to but because I must. Just as I must have four woven blankets as my coat against the frigid room, Just as I must inhale two chapbooks of poetry, Just as I must take on everything alone. I will sleep in the center of myself, tucked in, warm in my self; long forgetting what it means to have wings in my dreams. The pang of ‘I have to’ forces its way into my stomach and pushes its way into my wrists. I miss the rented space in my bed, my head, The skin that felt mine and felt that it was. The whole person resting feet in-between my own. Still, in the laid wreckage I wrought with my own hands huddles me close in my own crimson sheets where I will sleep in the middle, where I will sleep alone, because I must.

I’ve hugged my heart into smaller ribcages so, I suppose, this really should feel no different. Tighter spandex, and maybe brown leather belt worn after a big meal, but, no different. A different brand of uncomfortable. It bares a similar perfume, and walks with similar gait. It has a quicker gag reflex and is less likely to run after what it wants.

#poetry #gait #perfume #run #gag

Cup

I have this cup. This cup—my body— it sits at the corner of me and says “I’m spilling.”

#poetry #cup #corner #spilling

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