I guess when I start writing again, I really start writing.  Make that 5 pieces (not all good..or even close) in a week.  Not too bad.
I wasn't going to post this...because it's pretty personal.  But I posted it at a poetry site I am a member of...and it got REALLY good feedback.  So maybe it's just that I thought it kinda sucked.  But whatever.

The Magnitude of Nostalgia

I asked her to remember me, in the way that
A favorite song would bring back the soft bite of nostalgia

I could see the pain in her half moon eyes
But could not discover the origins
(A cripple of heart, cannot read its own reflection)
I begged her not to turn, but to face, head on
The storm careening its way
Into our ever fading horizon
Reminding her, how she opened to me once
Before packing her smile and sealing
Our fate

And in those moments spread
I graffiti’d her silhouette
With works of love,
And placed marks upon
The stretches of skin I coveted most
Branding her, in contour and crevice
Something deeper than the darkness
I tasted

And in the morning, after I had
Grown tired of pushing down the sun,
She placed her thread bare fingers upon
The petal of my lips
And whispered how my love
Was too much for her
Bitter heart to bear

“See” she said “I have always loved
That you are a poet, but soon
You will write me beautiful, and gone.
And I hope you can scribe
Of the ache you feel, when our
Bodies no longer carve the valleys of this bed.
Or how it will resonate, when you reach for a
Memory in the middle of the night, only to
Find a shadow of my scent in its place”

I shook my head as the wind blew
Her sorrow with the gale of its force,
Until I found myself alone
With parchment and ink
Unable to speak of the way
She moved my entire existence
With the magnitude of her exit

I asked her to remember me, in the way
One remembers the feel of waning arch,
Against the waxing crave
Of what once was

And i'm off to our company Christmas Party.  Yay. (not really)  Hope everyone is doing well!

xo

Jen

Clarity as Afterthought

This is not some deep welled wish,
Where penny slides from hopeful fingers
Preceded with sickly trumpet blaring the impending epiphany.

I no longer seek a truth stuck between cheek and tongue,
To decode the lies thrown in random succession
In attempt to thwart heart and my own tangled idealism

No more hidden words to rummage through, found
Lodged in your eye and bat of lash, with an absent
X to mark the sharp edges of vowels, you slid
Down my veins with slight regret, and a shallow
Shake of pensive head; smiling cynicism while taking

Languid and bitter back-strokes, back- and two stepping
Tears left in the inevitable come down of your
Self consuming post presumptions, all the while
Humming “Buildings and Bridges” on your way
Out the door. What doesn’t bend, broken.

Because this is not some fly-by-night angst ridden fairy tale.
This is the ending in black. The final curtain call.
Obscure pain draped in a third layer of translucent memory-
Where, when lined up with the stars, make an impulsive
Pattern of weave and ravel, weave and ravel

Clarity has become an afterthought, something
Remembered in the ebb of this onslaught of desperate flow.
And there is no sign of deep throated secret,
Or bloodied lie to hide-and-seek at the count of ten.

This is my convenience running thick, and gone.
Shrugged off shoulders in a half hearted effort of
Nurture and neglect. Beautifully discarded, with
The irrelevance and lip biting of the perfect cliché.

Okay, so maybe i've written three poems, since I attended my writing class last week.  This makes me happy, in that way that I feel like the block is breaking, so to speak.

One of the prompts from class last week, was to write about something you're hiding...or something hidden.  Well..i took it and ran with it.  I will say, it's hard to write poetry in a good format when it's meant to be spoken word, but i'm really happy with how this piece turned out.  I think it will be the first words I read aloud to a group.

Is the question;

What is buried deep in the core of me

Or

The cigarettes I hide at the bottom

Of my bag

Do I tell of the darkness I wallow in

The unencumbered joy  I feel

At self deprecation

-after all, I win

if I say it first

Or.

The quiet cries. 

The,

Shadow dancing,

The irrational fear of balloons popping,

Of being rejected,

Of not being enough,

Of

Wearing white shoes, after labor day!

Or.

I could tell of a time when

A six year old toe head in

Cut offs and sunshine tangeled pig tails

Found the attention of a man

Could spoil her as fast as the milk

Pulled from the barn at dawn, leaving

Her summer sour, tainted, and tasting

As thick as the metallic guilt at the bottom

Of the dented tin pail.

When she realized: try as she might

She couldn’t tap (in repetitive, compulsive fashion)

Her dust covered sneakers

Three times… three

And find her way home

Because that field, it

Wasn’t covered in poppies

But in rotted hay, secrets

And land mines.

See, you ask me what I’m hiding, when

What I do, is hide behind a smile

A joke, a whisper, a laugh,

An attentive nod.

I can look you in the eye-and lie

And tell you I’m an open book

So you won’t be as afraid as I am

Of what’s inside of me.

So..that's it.  That's the poem i've been playing with.  I'm pretty proud.

In other news:  I'm taking a dating break.  I have three girls who want to hang out (date) a lot...and i'm not really into any of them.  At all.  Who knew, really.  It just overwhelms the hell out of me.  and I don't really like it.  I'll just hang out at home alone at night, and write.  And find my center..and myself...again.

I hope all is well with everyone!

xo
Jen