I started writing more poetry during the excruciatingly late nights in the news room. While I waited for edits, I brain barfed uncensored poetry into gmail drafts and lazily sent them off to friends and critics. Some are more eloquent than others, some more passionate than others. Some rhyme, most don’t. What I could extract from my gmail “Sent” folder is included below.
…
What If
Insomnia and loneliness dance through my veins,
And I let them permeate my brain, let them taint my thoughts.
I watch as my potential lives play like movies across the backs of my eyelids.
All the parallel universes that couldawouldashoulda existed… There as a reminder of everything I never did.
All the forks in the road, all the ultimatums, all the conversations I never had reclaim some remnant of reality there in my 2am brain spaz.
I carry on both sides of the conversation…
Things I wish I had the wit to come up with without forethought,
Things I hardly admit to myself,
Things I wish I had the guts to say rather than feverishly type them into a document that still exists only on my desktop and in my mind.
Words you know, but only because you know me. Words I never could say.
Because having that conversation in real life would mean relinquishing my control over the outcome.
Shouldawouldacoulda…
Here, in my half-lucid not-quite-dream world, I dance the tango with two dangerous words.
And let the possibility of what could have been color my darkened room.
…
Toes
I’m all wild
Red hair and leopard prints
Independence and big talkin’
I “dig” my own holes
And tread on your pretty little toes
With my garishly painted, toe-ring studded ones
Sorry if I offended you, dearest Napoleon
Sorry if you met your match
I’ll fight logic with emotions
I’ll fight your tactics with my words
And win
But winning is really losing, isn’t it
This isn’t litigating here
With you, toe to toe
I just scare you off
God forbid I not be some prim Southern belle
But mayonnaise with Jell-o?
Gross
And debutante balls?
Archaic displays of long-lost virginities
Complete with frills and baby’s breath
I’ll stick to my beer
And my outspoken, underdeveloped opinions
Sorry I scare you away, kid
But this isn’t the 1940s
I’ll let you let me be the girl that got away
But I promise you, Ace
I will not go quietly
…
A Taste of Fall
It’s like savoring a childhood ice cream cone,
when I watch the northern sun set.
After 72 hours of cloudy-with-afternoon-showers,
it’s a long overdue apology from Mother Nature.
“Sorry for the messed up makeup,” she says,
“the never knowing what to wear outside.
Sorry for the mud-stained boots, the chill,
the loads of wet, moldy laundry, the pneumonia.
Just sit with me a while, friend,
And enjoy your colorful consolation.
Pour some hot cocoa, pull up a seat,
and share some silent, sweet conversation.”
And I sit there, cross-legged and cold,
and stare into my her eyes a while.
I pull my Snuggie in around my goose-bumped legs,
and share a stolen moment with my new frenamie.
The conversation transitions seamlessly,
from tangerine to peach to pomegranate.
In the most delicious, sherbety goodness,
that my eyes have ever tasted.
And then she fades away too soon into the black,
the gray, the shades of winter cold.
And I’m left with a lingering fruity sweetness,
clashing with my hot-turned-luke-warm chocolate.
…
My Life in Lists
If I ever had the guts,
to just up and quit everything
and write a memoir,
it might not be that interesting…
Probably a female angsty
version of some Salinger story.
But I’d call it: “My Life in Lists.”
Because I have the annoying habit
of breaking everything down into
bite-sized lists.
I blame my mom.
Word documents fill my desktop…
Bucket lists, Christmas lists,
lists of boyfriends and books to read.
Ideas for a story, words I think are pretty.
Lists, lists, lists.
Somehow, writing a list feels productive,
organized, constructive…
when I know its just procrastinating,
not doing the things actually on the list.
But it looks so pretty. All the check-less boxes,
There’s so much damn potential.
Sometimes, I put things on the list
like “Wake up” and “Breathe air”
just so I can feel the satisfaction
of putting a tick in that tiny, perfect square.
If I ever die and someone gets hold of Lloyd
(that’s my laptop),
they could dissect my whole personality,
my hopes and fears and dreams,
from the contents of my desktop.
…
Thought Soup
Sometimes, in our instant-message society,
The words we mean to say become scrambled
Like a Denny’s breakfast (noms).
I try to fill the awkward silences with
Gilmore Girls-esque brain barf, unscensored nothings.
And my hands come alive, dancing.
I always speak with my stupid hands.
As a writer, my whole life revolves around words,
All the whos and whoms and whichs and thats.
I explain away the unexplainable,
And my head spins with song lyrics and stories.
I so seldom stop to listen to them, though.
I mean really listen.
I’m a Gemini, through and through.
There are so many different ‘Marians’:
The tomboy Marian, the writer Marian
The sister, the daughter, the scholar
The friend, the baby girl, the child.
I hardly know who I am, anymore.
I’m not comfortable sitting still and making peace with myself,
Whichever version of myself myself really is.
“I have so many problems,”
I say while sitting in a lonely newsroom at 3am,
Turning my psychological thought soup
Into sloppy, haphazard poetry.
No edits, I tell myself.
Let the stream of consciousness run its course,
Eroding away my sense of comfort.
Heck, maybe this is me:
Half finished thoughts, strung together.
All the pieces
With emotion and 3am logic.
(Whatever logic there is at 3am)
