Back in the early 1990’s I was very active on a BBS at the University of Iowa. Your alias included a profile – a space for you to write anything you wanted to – limited to 5 lines. I often used the space to express how I was feeling, and saved some of my favorite “prose poems” (you can feel the total Young Adult Angst). Here they are, for your enjoyment or ridicule, whichever seems most apt.
The top two actually made it into my current WIP, when I needed some poetry but didn’t want to worry about copyright issues.
So let me know – should I quit my day job and aim for next poet laureate?
Dip your fingers into my ink, spreading my flesh across your page. Smooth me, shape me, shade me darkly with your hands. Take my mouth and paint it raw, dripping oil down across your brush. Feel me rise under your pen, my skin an extension of your touch. Make me come alive, color my world, draw me in to who you are…
An arm passes a leg in darkness. I feel you move over me, slowly, carefully. I brush your face and your stubble kisses my fingertips. Your mouth descends onto my mouth in soft hello. I move my hand across your back, feeling the muscles turn as you dip to greet my stomach with your lips, your beautiful lips. Your hair whispers across my chest, telling me of love. I am listening.
Relatively happy, relatively sad. Relatively good, relatively bad.
Relatively dog-like, relatively cat. Relatively thin, relatively fat.
Relatively pretty. Relatively plain. Some say that I’m crazy, but I say they’re insane.
A splintering of rose-fragmented poetry raining down in the midst of inky moonlight surrounding and enfolding skin smooth as flesh lying naked on a rock in the summertime with daisies sprinkled all around gliding in the breeze bringing fresh scents of trees and memories laced with just a dash of old melancholy resting its dark head on my lap and singing to me of yesterday…
I got so used to having it that now that it’s gone I can’t cope. The craving is always there, strong and feverish. I wake up at 4 a.m. just thinking about it, fantasizing, remembering… Sometimes I’d have it two, three times a day. Each time it just got better. How can I return to a life of abstinence? What? Sex? Who said anything about sex? I was talking about Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.
I am everything you’ve never wanted. I am what you fear I am. I am the inner bitch you’ve tried to bury. I am the childhood you want to deny. I am what keeps you up at night. I am nothing. I am not who I am. I am not what you think I am. Don’t think you know me. You don’t. I am hatred. I am rage. I am a dark secret, seething alone. I am what you will not see. I am not me.
Rain, dripping, dripping down. Rain on my face. Gliding down my nose, falling from my eyes. How I hate the rain. Feel it coming – the storm’s brewing, even if you see no clouds. Opening, expanding, releasing a torrent, a tempest of age-old fury; my skin is exploding and the rain’s going to come, falling, trickling, dripping, dropping, until my eyes are empty and my world is dry.
You were my binge food. The thing I turned to when I wanted to go numb. I indulged myself in you ravenously, hungrily. I felt I could never get enough, panicky at the thought of you being gone. I ate as much as I could, terrified. You settled like acid in my stomach. I hated myself even as I worshipped you. Purging, I wanted more. I tried to throw you up. I still can’t.
I envy cats. Old or young, big or small, fat or thin, they are loved for what they are, and they know it. They are not ashamed of their bodies; they love to be stroked, and unabashedly seek out others to touch them. They purr when they’re happy. They choose to be alone when they want to be. They do not follow rules. They do not obey. They live for pleasure. They are not afraid.
October walked across my soul, leaving footprints as a reminder, a soft caress of yesterday. Night enfolded me in its arms, playing, teasing me with whispers of you. The mist slipped slowly around my shoulders, settling like a lover’s kiss on the back of my neck. I moved in darkness, feeling it follow me, and touched your memory. The water lapped at my bare feet, calling your name…
I think I saw you in each and every one…same, similar, different… 🙂
*lol* – the more we change, the more we stay the same? I had this fantasy for a long time that by a certain age I would be able to move past all the issues that bog me down. Hasn’t happened yet. Guess I’m me and I always will be!