To Poetry (Pompously)

I want to write you a poem.
It shouldn't be so difficult, I've done it before.
Write what you know, write where you've been, write how you feel.

I've been the ingénue, seeking a taste of glamour and gambolling in rain-soaked frocks. Chasing epiphanies and waiting for the world to reveal the secret blueprints that must exist for existing. (A girl can dream.)
Once, I believed in balance, in rhyme-schemes, and trite paths to trivial endings.

My words had to change with me. To give voice to the edges of my thoughts-- the things that fit nowhere, but begged sweetly to be said aloud.
I bombarded you with ephemeral eloquence-- glimmers of finesse.

I almost became inured to the face-crumpling regret of routine tragedy. Almost.
And almost, I accepted my own place in that flawed tangle of rights, and wrongs, and very wrongs, and seemingly inevitables.
Almost.

The deluge... was a stream... was a trickle.
And what is left?

I fear sometimes that I have lost you. That you have waited, and languished in disuse.
That I will never be able to capture a scintilla of your essence on paper again.

But you are here.
In the lilting tangential lines I struggle to subdue into recognizable diction.
In the way I listen. Sifting through countless ragamuffin syllables tripping over teeth like puppies to sleep, tumbling head over heels for the sumptuous aural fragrance of a graceful phrase. Mooning over the vestigial remains of you on my tongue.
In the truth I force myself to tell.
I feel you.

Always your gossamer strands catch at me. A cobweb of now unravelled, unrivalled beauty.
In rapture I remain, a palimpsest-- a pastiche.
A patchwork girl with poetry in my hair.

Yours, Truly.

And Now For Something Completely Different

"To Scale"

My littleness is not one-sided.

It pervades my every dimension, it colours my movement, it informs my mannerisms.

I live a little life.

But the slow pull of melancholia is double the gravity,

And the hole in my stomach echoes more times than a can in a canyon.

My raging pulse is an mad drum reaching a wild crescendo and that damn trickling fear

just sits in wait like an icicle

over my fragile spine.

It makes me wonder... Are my feelings immense?

Or do they only overwhelm me because I am... small.

Am I the only one?

I have compared myself to a moody ocean.

Sinking ships in the bay,

I beckon with the lulls and dips between waves,

Before the storm hits, and the sky admits--

it's just for show.

Pathetic fallacy calls for stormy skies, despair prefers straight pain.

My friends, you take your thunder-- I'll bring the hurricane.

Other times, I have cited a star--
A cosmic release, a bug in a jar.

Up and away from these notions
The motion of the ocean, and the commotion of
emotional turmoil.
There is a fire, making it's home in my bones, burning the marrow till tomorrow,

running on midnight oil.

You're too distant to see how it burns in me,

and the colours bleed;

There's a disconnect in my constellation.

My littleness is not one-sided.
But neither is my greatness.

Studies on Sleep

Tonight you elude me.

Forever your mysteries intrigue me.

I daydream (it's never enough):

You and I finally meet (the wait is excruciating) with no need for formalities.

You disarm me. Slowly.

We bathe, entwined in silence.

Only (my breath) filling the space between us.

- - -

The pilgrimage to your door is unpredictable and I, dressed for hunting, am sorely unprepared.

Like some mythical creature you stalk me, waiting to reveal yourself-- as always, at your leisure.

My fire burns low and red. The embers look like the insides of my eyelids, when the day rings harsh and you have left me.

I was never going to find you because you are never to be found.

And that, is the hardest part.

- - -

Touch me, I need it. I need you.
My body aches for your embrace.

It dwindles, slowly slumping into sporadic puddles of inappropriate emotion.

Wanting you more than any other basic need.

I can't think in straight lines, thoughts are singswoopjingleclomp-ing.

higgledy-piggledy-ziggity-zag.

The face, whiskers askew, jeers at my plight.

Taunting, ticking, talking, tocking.

When will you arrive?

Touch me, I neeeeeeed it.

- - -

Postcard From My Mother:

Hello my Pumpkin.

I am trying the snail mail because you never answer my calls.

How is your sleep? You know it's so important!

Enjoy as much as you can.

-Mom

Email To My Mother:
Hey Mommy,
Sleep is fine, it went on holiday for a bit, strangely at the same time I did. But has since returned and we are doing fine. I don't know what you're on about, I called you this past weekend. Remember we told you about our trip to Cartoon India and the flying carpet? And how I keep turning into a cat? And that doughnut sex tape?

Sometimes I think you don't care about my dreams.

Yours, Truly.

PS. Sleep says Hi to Daddy.

To Tears

Soft and salted caress, I know you're there; lurking just beneath the marble surface. The dark won't tell anyone you've come, it's safe now.

Tentatively at first, you're afraid someone might hear; might know that you haven't left town for good. No one wants you around, not even the one you've come to visit-- but once you arrive, you are invited in.

Embrace the swell of cheek and let yourself flow, you have no need to hide in the night, you can pour out your soul until you are empty-- begging to give more, but having only a dull ache left to give. Mingle with the whispered queries floating from trembling lips; shake with the fierce passion of loss and fear.

The world is a flat palm, holding its treasures. Sometimes the grief could sweep your rivers right off the face of the earth... into nothing. An eternity of falling, struggling for breath and getting lost in the rush of space.

You are at first a burden, and then a solace. Sometimes you could last forever.

But you end, like everything else. You do your part to soothe, to rage in tempestuous waves, to mend... and soon there is no place for you. The river has run dry and the heaving of earthly bodies slows to a mere tremble, a pulse.

Curving to envelop your absence,
Breath echoes your keening plea.
I thirst for you in hiccups;
And forever you indulge me.

-Truly