Sassy's Poetry

I happened across my college poetry portfolio... over five years since I've laid eyes on any of these and I thought I would share.
I'm awful at titles, so most of them remain unnamed.
Enjoy!
Here's my soul, GC:
Untitled
It's morning again, I am
a poet still,
rising above the fuzzy waves of catharsis
the remnants of excess slipping single file
beneath my skin.
The sun will not shine here today;
I will not shine.
It's morning again, I am
a lover still
slipping between body warmed sheets,
the remnants of excess
still bathing my thighs.
The sun shined all night
--All night-- and now it has set
behind a cloak of clouds,
morning's shroud clinging
like an infant's tight grip...
The sun will not escape today.
It's morning again, I am
a poet still.
Constructed of self induced disillusionment.
The sun will not shine today,
not here.
An Ode to my Father
Your feline eyes
See everything,
Even in the dark. Even when
I practice my lies in the rear view mirror
And meet your laser beam glare with
Artificial conviction.
I know you have spies.
Spies who follow me through life
Like lucid shadows and
Watch me trip and tumble
From backseat to bad motel.
Your spies send you monthly handwritten reports,
Embroidered with promiscuity and
Drug experimentation,
In the mail.
Like paparazzi and tabloid journalists,
They aren't there to protect
A damsel in distress. They exist
Only to taint, condemn, and exaggerate:
Spends her money on: designer lingerie and second-trimester abortions.
And you believe them because
You want to.
You want to believe
Im just like you.
Your golden eyes mirror my mistakes with
Stained-glass accuracy as they
Drip into your cheek bones.
Cavernous dimples, flaccid with age,
Hug your mouth
When you smile and smile and
You smile all the time because
You think you know my secrets but
You only know I lie.
Untitled
There's a band playing in my head.
Can you hear the fireflies
as they fly out of my ears
carrying shimmering melodies
inside their fluorescent orb
back packs?
Can you see the song
dancing through the sky?
A rhythm you cant anticipate,
regulation of improvisation,
scattered across the night
like snow flakes
in e minor
dusting the air.
I can feel the music
echo inside
my acoustic body.
Taut parchment
skin stretches over
my hollow frame and
my heart dances
just to take up space.
Untitled
Fog rolled over midnight like a wave
and I shivered on the street
beneath the arthritic oak trees
whose gnarled branches ached
and groaned with each breath of wind.
Through a thick layer of water vapor,
we walked over mirrored asphalt
that reflected our shadows
and the haloed sulfuric street lights
shining through the haze.
Headlights glowed,
sparkled, and faded
-like us-
like shooting stars.
Leaves danced on the breeze,
silhouetted in the lamplight,
and cast shadows on your face;
Cryptic graffiti
I couldn't decode in the dark.
And I couldn't look you in your eyes
because I knew, even through
the opaque air that
you could read my mind.
Untitled
Thirteen beats into
Billie Holiday‘s “Lover Man,”
shrouded in candlelight
and red wine,
electric heat jumped
from your fingertips and
filled me with fever.
Your eyes unfolded my thoughts
Like reverse origami.
You spread me
over cotton sheets and
traced your lips throug the labyrinth I had
folded myself into.
A Family Poem
Her short fingers
Slip over alabaster frets.
A rough chorus of Neil Young backed by
Crickets and crackling campfire.
Her copper hair shines like
A penny two decades old.
Lake superior falls like a photo shop back drop:
Climbing evergreens and birch trees embraced by
An illuminated sky.
The Northern lights stream around us,
A jeweled shower
Pouring around an invisible umbrella
Stealing the air from our lungs.
His legs outstretch from a towering
Six-foot four frame.
Arms thick with a quarter century of carpentry,
Tattooed and sun scarred, cross a barreled chest.
Gold and green cat-eyes watch from behind
A veil of mahogany hair that hides a face
His feet tap the beat as he sings harmony and
Watches me, his only daughter,
Dance around the fire like our pagan predecessors;
Singing along
Illuminated in an amber bath of firelight.
"Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you."
The flames burn three-feet high
Sending sparks to join the stars,
A spill of orange pierces through pinks and blues.
His olive-green eyes are bordered by
Lashes that flutter like monarch wings.
Dimples like dad's
Beam from his cheeks,
As he sings along
In an octave all his own.
Untitled
Unshaven words brush past
Smooth skin
Like day-old whiskers
Flushing pale cheeks.
Honey-colored curtains veil your
Blood shot eyes
As the bitter smoke pours from a smirking mouth.
Hands like sandpaper turn rolling curves to
Jagged, gleaming, edges.
Lips like a blow-torch,
Breathe dragon's breath
And brand my chest
Inside and out.
Teeth scrape trenches
Deeper than graves between my ribs
As I start to decay
And crumble to dust.
Encased
I bury you beneath blankets of snow
And layers of glowing lava.
I taint your shell with arsenic
Before I lock you inside
A gilded, granite, crypt
Further away from sunlight
Than the scarlet depths of hell.
Not one goddamn fiendish heathen
Will throw your fragile blood-laced form
under their dirty soles.
They would never even see your face
As it slows, stammers, and stops...
I hide you behind iron bars
and bullet proof glass
and I dip your tomb in asphalt
but it is no match for you
my heart.
Rejection
It's like sitting in a room
Painted in mirrors
It's like lying in the moonlight
And getting a tan
It's like narcolepsy
It's like finding a treasure map
When you're lost
It's like swallowing crushed glass
Pulling your own teeth or
Breaking your own bones
It's like slamming a jet into a brick wall
And living through it
It's finding out the world is flat
By falling off.
Ecstasy
It's fuzzy warmth
Like lying on a beach on the French Riviera
Listening to the crashing waves.
The rays of the sun soak
into your skin
Like a tranquilizer
dripping into your veins
and pulling you away
Dragging
Dragging
Toward the sea.
You can't resist
as tiny grains
of sun saturated sand
Mold to your feet.
You float in the breeze
and gravity doesn't apply;
You're so damn light.
It's a lingering grogginess
That rolls out like the tide
And pulls you in like a storm.
You're not strong enough
To fight the dark waves
As they embrace you in their watery arms.
Untitled
Off of a warm, sandy coast
Where the water never clouds
Or cools
They glide to a melody
Only they can hear.
---Underwater Mozart---
Dancing to a private symphony;
A harmony of wind
And waves.
Their massive, cratered bodies
Leap toward the sky.
Weightless,
With a ballerina's grace.
They pirouette over their
Sapphire-studded stage
In the spotlight of the sun.
Hypocrisy
They call it jungle fever
Like it's some sort of plague;
As if I am possessed by the
incoherent incantations of an
archaic witch doctor
Lost deep in the steamy jungle;
Who decorates himself in jewelry made of bones
And blood-based face paint.
They whisper their convictions
Behind translucent hands
Spitting needles and singing daggers;
Spreading words of poison while
They embrace their children as if they need
Protection from me.
Siren
Her song drips from her lips
Like a smooth red wine
And soils the bluesy barroom.
Sweet and strong like moonshine,
Her voice bleeds through the smoky pub like
Rays of sun through the stained glass windows of
Chartres or Notre Dame.
If you're not careful
She'll shroud you in a cloak of smoke,
Then swallow you like it's your first time.
Like a bubbling brook
Moves over stones and
Smoothes them with each pass,
My fingers pulse over ivory keys.
Glistening beneath the pale spotlight
That soothes me like lavender moonbeams.
I turn stabbing raindrops into a
Flowing river's symphony.
As the climax approaches,
Caresses turn to assault and
Frantic fingertips
Crash through the final refrain
Like a heavy waterfall
Plunges from a jagged cliff
Then melts into a translucent pool
Of improvisational opus.
Sugar Coated
Your melody pierced my chest like
A warm, smooth blade
-Anesthetized on contact-
And wrapped around my heart
Like warm honey,
From my fingertips
to the soles of my feet.
Like lying under the scorching summer sun
-it scarred me--
But felt so damn good
After a long winter of sleeping
In a hypothermic bed.
Your tattered tune, rough
Like a sizzling, scarlet, coal
exuded ultraviolet radiation;
My marbled, ivory glow became a
Bronzed, decaying remain
flecked by your harmonic rays.
Part II
The windows were clouded
By a thick layer of
Late February frost
That obscured our clashing bodies from
A hazy, amber, street-lamp, view.
You threw me down
On your black-leather backseat altar;
There you sacrificed me to your demonic deity.
Atop empty packs of Camels and sweat stained t-shirts,
You stripped me
Bit by bit.
Did you feel my flesh tear
As you unleashed your razor-fanged beast?
And let it attack,
Infiltrating my veins
-my fucking brains-
With poison
As it penetrated a delicate barrier I couldn't speak to reinforce.
Did your lashing tongue taste
The blood as it dripped from my pulsing wounds?
Did you know
Your body-builder's, tattooed, grasp
Stained my milky flesh?
Did you feel my lips tremble
Beneath your grazing, granite snarl?
Your smooth fingers
Melted into Cyanide on my skin as you
Pressed my face into the
Cold-hardened seat.
You left me
Jagged and torn
In an overflowing parking lot at twenty-two past midnight.
You thought you left your demon behind
But I know who left with you.

 

Bumpin case anybody cares.

 

Well thanks...I think.

 

I wish I could say I had anything new to share with you all...
But being a single parent has pretty much stripped me of any creativity and/or the time to focus and create.
I've been holding steady in this perpetual state of writer's block for the last 6 years (since I graduated from college.)
I'd like to return to my craft some day, it just doesn't fit too well into my life right now.

 

Alright... a minimal update.

I fell asleep in my clothes hoping you'd call
My last waking thought was of somewhere else
Where the trees hug the sky in an ever-open embrace
I only imagined the taste of the air
Felt it crisp and cool in my lungs
the taste of Earth and water on my tongue, then
consciousness slipped away

Too quick, too close, too tangled

I never needed a Knight
The armour - it never shines- has been mine to wear like
Joan of Arc
I wield the skin of a warrior by day
(a fool's smile)
and lay my heart out by night
(a fool's tears)
on the pillow next to mine.
It beats there, unrestrained, building strength
while whispering words of consolation.







A little free-write.


This room has no windows. There is snow falling. Inability to see it doesn’t make it less true. I’ve seen it hundreds of times before, in the amber street lights. I can feel it through the walls. I am a only slightly blinded.

I stumbled across my muse while pacing the halls inside of my head; He is locked up between passion, faith, and self esteem. I haven’t found a key yet, but I’ll call this a start. Maybe I’ll chisel it from the gypsum crystals that case the cavern where my heart used to be. There is no rhythm, just the hollow echo of what should have been. I feel nothing now, but I’ve felt hundreds of times before (more than it’s cracked up to be, if you ask me).

Fervor is fleeting and easily dismissed. Distraction drips from the door panes and seeps through the seams. How do I avoid preoccupation?

The filmstrip behind my eyes is constantly reeling. When I hum I can hear it in the background, especially the happy songs, buzzing away like a playing-card clothes-pinned to the chassis of a bicycle. I don’t often hum and I imagine the King of Spades is not so happy either. At least black and white will do one of us justice.

Abstractions are the breezeway to cliché but I’ve always been told it’s not what you say, it’s how you play the game.

I’ve never been a gambler.

I cannot master grace nor discretion. I waver without direction - guided only by whim and whimsy - it’s no wonder my train has been wrecked. (Hence the windowless walls.)

If it weren’t for my brainstem, I may forget to breathe. Even Mother Nature gets side-tracked from time to time. (After all, Father Time is perched atop the Maypole.)

For whom do I orchestrate, now?

There is a harmonica playing in the attic, and a blues guitar. The cool discordance rains down like water from the fountain of youth, dripping from a chalice in the clouds.

I am somewhere else. ***In a golden field where it smells of sunshine and lemongrass. I will braid my hair, paint it with pollen and fairy dust. This is where the magic is. There is no smoke, no mirrors.

I feel the honeyed warmth spread across the wasteland that was my sun deprived skin. (It is brown and freckled now.) There are no riddles here, no words out loud, just soul shine.

I dance across the strings of an acoustic guitar. Koa inlaid with alabaster that cries. We are accompanied by a flute carved from the bone of a cave bear. It is gilded in Rhenium, encrusted with opal and tanzanite. There is still a pulse streaming through this wind-bone and Ursa Major is waiting in the night to reclaim her single earthly remain.

***

The walls are not water tight. When it rains it floods. When I cry, it flows and the floor beneath my feet turns to quicksand. I am left in the dark, knee-deep in the mire. I cannot cry out for help. If I open my mouth too wide, I will be swallowed and disappear.

Do not try and save me, there is no damsel in distress. This is between me and God and I offer no forgiveness. Why can’t you?Make the sun shine - inside.

***

As the crow flies, it’s seventeen miles between here and Heaven. I’ve never been there, but I’ve heard of someone who has. The old man on the mountain whispered on the wind and she told the winter birds, just around the bend, but there is no bridge to tomorrow.

***

 

Glad you checked me out.
Thank you!