Writing

Look in Your Pockets

Folder: 
2023

Once

when I was nine

I wrote a personal narrative essay

about a time that never happened.

 

I took home a class stuffed puppy,

dragged him everywhere for the weekend,

and lost him right before his return.

I panicked.

I looked everywhere-

the stairs,

the toy basket,

under my bed.

Then someone told me to look in my pockets

(like a medium-sized stuffed dog would fit in the pants pocket

of a tiny four-year-old girl)-

and he was there.

 

Maybe

the moral

of this story

is that I write-

draw out loveliness-

string together fiction-

to put in front of you

something I could never be,

bring you false gifts,

draw you a liar,

the only way to

make you love me.

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Written 10/23/23

View tallsquirrelgirl's Full Portfolio
tags:

I TRIED

I like to walk in the morning before most people and the sun arise…

while the last scenes of their dreams are still dancing behind their eyes.

 

Walking alone among the stars I feel alive….I feel free…

It’s where I do some thinking…it’s where I wrote some poetry.

 

This morning, however, I thought…I’ll just walk…I’ll enjoy my quiet time…

I won’t do any thinking…I won’t fill my head with rhymes.

 

But it’s hard, even in the darkness, not to think of all the beauty that I see…

from the stars that dot the sky…to the shadows of the trees.

 

From the clouds floating overhead that lovingly caress the moon…

to the owls and crickets and mockingbirds who sing their morning tunes.

 

From the sound the unseen ocean makes as she blends in with the night…

to the rabbits who, as they watch me pass, are illuminated in moonlight.

 

Yes, I attempted to walk this morning and just enjoy my quiet time…

for no particular reason and with no particular rhyme.

 

But with all the sights and sound around me…all this beauty that enchants…

Though I try not think or come up with rhymes…it’s obvious…I can’t.

View joy's Full Portfolio

Definitions

Folder: 
2022

empathy

I am human in the way of being you.

I am you in the way of being human.

I am human in the way that a lit match is a firework and the ocean is a pond.

 

birds, as kites

I watch you run with me, with us, with the risks we take every day, and it keeps crashing & floating & I feel like a bird

I watch from the ground as you and us and all the birds take flight.

 

anger

I do not feel like you

I feel as you

and my head is too too too full

I want to break all the walls until they are crystals, they are fixed again

until you are mine again.

I want to destroy, I am some kind of fist or candle.

I do not have any shallow left in me

I am drowning in reverence of this hate.

 

breathing

I’m still not sure how.

 

love

how to start?

not caring, or caring too much.

memories you want to live again.

throwing all of me into a song.

messing up again.

over and over.

hope.

 

missing/lonely

ache.

a hangover of strangers.

 

how to die

live.

 

how to not die

just keep living.

 

life

something I am

thrust into

  on

     this

         slide

and I wouldn’t choose it

but I have no other wants

than to be here and there and everywhere,

take it all in,

all at once.

it is burning

and freezing,

it is a squeeze to my heart.

 

how to almost die

fall again,

for everyone,

over and over.

 

rough edges

I feel more real at night,

less me and more pure alive

the dark has diluted something in my soul

I am made entirely of sparks

and if you touch me I just

might

splinter

 

poetry

does it ever occur to you

that the clouds are made of
the same parts as the ocean

and i can fly

or dive way down deep

quiet wondering

 

loss

scared we’ll get to a place

where all we have in common is

remember when

 

longing

that pit in my stomach when you leave

like I am missing something that isn’t there,

that I created

I am seeing fire in

not even embers

not even ashes

a pit of empty

it is letting myself love without the fear of falling

it is catching myself on a lifeline made of almosts

 

the collapsing of hearts

all of the above

 

poetry

fuck it I’m full of art

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Written 5/13/22

View tallsquirrelgirl's Full Portfolio

A Stage I Have Set On Fire (January day 31)

what I wrote is

not a bucket list

 

not something you should strive for

or be jealous of

 

what I wrote is

not a supernova

 

it is just

a rooftop where I sit and think

the flip of a switch

 

what I wrote is

not a black hole

 

it is just

a stage

I have set on fire

a day

stretching into pandemonium

 

and isn’t that

what all the lives are

everyone could

make a movie out of their moments

if they only

stopped to write it down

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Written 1/31/21

what I wrote

View tallsquirrelgirl's Full Portfolio
tags:

Walk Away (January day 19)

what if poetry is the way I see you

and the way you see yourself?

I usually can’t explain how

I like you because you are just different enough from me.

what if poetry is the way I stay sane

on broken bridges that threaten to take me?

I only sometimes have a death wish but

I drive on them anyway.

what if poetry is the way I walk away from everything

and end up right back where I started?

something I don’t take for granted

even though it constantly takes me in circles.

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Written 1/19/21

Walk away


 

View tallsquirrelgirl's Full Portfolio
tags:

When Words Fail

Folder: 
2019

My words resent being used like this,

stormy when I need weapons.

They want to wrap around you when you’re lost.

 

Cut me like diamonds,

when I feel the sting

my head in my hands but

I want you to stay.

 

My words want to love you,

let you stay,

surround you

until you’re mine.

 

When words fail

and we sit here like

all we know has been swallowed by swords

I don’t need steel to steal your heart.

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Written 9/30/19

View tallsquirrelgirl's Full Portfolio
tags:

About You

Folder: 
2019

tangle me in shadow and silver

lead me to where you lie

if you stop stepping in my footprints

maybe we’ll get to fly

 

speak with me till we lose something

my best friend my tomorrows

fall with me till I find something

better than the time I’ve borrowed

 

give me another day to matter

mess with me like we never wanted to

if we keep each other’s fingerprints

I still want to write songs about you

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Written 9/21/19

View tallsquirrelgirl's Full Portfolio

Like Blood

Folder: 
2019

I empty and fill

open and close.

I stifle the world with strong pepper.

 

You swallow me senseless

count the stairs, I’m still blind

and I can’t be apart from you.

They all forget my name.

I forget the sounds I’ve made

in every handshake.

 

I keep getting caught in their tears.

Maybe swords.

I keep writing the words,

Love is like blood.

Strong and helpless and falling,

collapsing over my fingers

to crawl out of me.

I choke on all the spoons

that turn out to be spikes.

I still don’t know how to write the words,

Love is in my blood.

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Written 3/25/19

Cut Me Deeper

 

I feel the ink flow through my veins,

After fearing it all had dried.

As once again, reality awakens muse,

When all hoping again, has died.

 

For a jolly poet, simply cannot write,

Unless it all goes tragically wrong.

So to hell with all the make believe...

And to hell with being strong.

 

I'd rather feel this release again,

As from me, this blood pours out.

A letting of this verbal plasm,

Pouring forth from an emotional spout.

 

A too-tight tourniquet of sorts,

Long staunched, a healthy flow.

But now, like before, it flows warm and red,

And eagerly fills again, a river of woe.

 

So muse, now cut me deeper still,

For we have poems to be created.

Since life prooved to us, yet once again,

The tempests will never, be abated.

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

No, I am not now, nor have I ever been a cutter. It's a metaphor for the poetic 'RELEASE'...ie: ink, like blood.

View cathycavalcante's Full Portfolio