one liners

i think a human's worst fear is that he is more interesting when drunk.

NEW PANTS, GENTS

i am a girl in green pants
who wishes she were on a mountain.
a mountain
or a lawn,
somewhere
hard & public.
i'd swing my green legs
in circles
around the man with one green eye
and laugh at the moment.

"you are the limit,"
i'd tell the green eye.
"and you are dependable,"
i'd inform the blue.
"together you position me somewhere in-between
where i am
and where i may never go."

broken record syndrome

i'm trying to minimize my usage of the same words. i'll try to delete these from my vocabulary and, you know, become more worldly or something.

michelle's overused words:

• simplify
• usage
• aesthetic
• postmodern
• obviously
• begin
• yessuh
• intricate
• laced
• intertwined
• ridiculous
• sweet baby jesus (phrases are cool, too.)
• regardless

drafts #6- a summer's worth

91 days ago.
waking life

dr. j bonners colors noise eerie stillness powder burst graphic novel coloring vampires/transformers

80 days ago.
we feel the need to simplify. to minimize, to take up less space. whether words tumbling out of the crowded open mouth or hips in a bus seat. we quantify with numbers, find words and decimals. try to fit ourselves; to measure the immeasurable. we fear the open blank. we feel sorry. but i will not apologize for taking up space, for spreading my legs, for having broad shoulders. open. i will not be closed.

61 days ago.
june 5th
today as i ran past strangers and switched tracks just in time to save myself from being lost, i was free of panic. there were no threads of anxiety knitting up my arms like too tight sutures. no, it was fluid. an ethereal lightness that i can only associate with the ease of high friends. hallucinogen. i am here, today. do not panic about tomorrow's possible flaws.

37 days ago.
i see myself in her stainless steel coffee mug. there's something so mesmerizing about watching the wasteland we live in.

19 days ago.
three good jewish girls
with honey lemon curls
stare out our shared train window.
the three of us, sit between awe and apathy.

13 days ago.
here i am, sharing a table with a man. he is eating a pasta lunch that smells of pine nuts. i'm reading the AP style guide. both of us at a table on our lunch breaks with our headphones on. not talking, no eye contact. the fear of strangers. the apathy of human beings.

musical coding

i've coded melodies into my skin.
brush against me and you'll hear where i've been.

learning the language of "we"

i knew a girl who wrote words everywhere.
they were on her body and her car,
the inner lip of her bathtub,
and i'm sure, if you looked,
you could see them coagulated in her blood.
she used them to remember that she was alive
and when she hurt herself, used them as salve.
this girl scribbled them madly in old notebooks
and convinced herself that they belonged to her.

she convinced me, too.

i had once used words as ships.
they carried what i could not across oceans of conflict
and unease.
they used to soften hard eyes
and caused a few gentle boys to fall in love.
when i felt helpless
i'd craft a small ship
a few lines, no more,
and pushed them towards a drowning mind.

the girl meant no harm when she convinced me
that words could be owned.
like slaves, they were whipped and shackled
to singular thoughts,
a singular mind.
i scooped a handful of them into my mouth
and closed my lips;
i could not lose them.

every word that i spoke began to feel like hers.
the more i tried to tell the more lost in her i became.
my own words stepped back like the water body to an oil coat.
it was all black and slick,
a facade that masked nothing.
i reused and recycled the same thoughts and anxieties
different only in color or font.

i am her.
i am her.
i am her.

you slash and you delete but you cannot disregard the root.

seven months of poems were all about her.
poems of crippling sadness
and agoraphobic episodes,
poems describing drunken secrets
and regrettable intimacy,
the slivers of the pinkest, weakest parts of me
were all her, her, her.

i couldn't train my tongue to unlearn her language
and i couldn't forget how to write
so i learned hopelandic.