EPTI'll looking to finish my manuscipt to publish a collection within the year (hopefully), so constructive criticism is welcome.
Snow
This winter finds me incomplete.
I wonder:
is there yet an outline of my hand on the doorknob,
foggily remembering where warmth once was?
Does the trail of my life leave such easy markers
as the snow, lined with the memory of my footsteps?
The cold has caught up to me and I am lost.
The path I have made is meandering and directionless,
and the unblemished snowfield before me
terrifies in its uncertainty.
But in myself I have forgotten a sort of consciousness
that once would have stopped me
and I totter forwards.
Still, I am all pieces;
change has not made me strong.
It does not comfort me
to flounder where I was frozen.
It does not comfort me
to have traded inaction for indifference.
My breath dies in wispy trails in my wake,
and when I turn to watch it fade,
I am divided.
I wish I had been like the snow,
cold and impenitent.
Though it falls unevenly, thick, then thin
beneath the steady tread of my boots,
it concentrates—
it is made compact.
+ Show Spoiler [Smile] +
Smile
Your smile is the only thing that fakes your age;
The rest of you shines in its place
Unseen in those old photographs.
There is a time, you said,
to put away your toys.
You swore, you crossed your heart:
clean laundry; washed dishes; graduation photos.
Your mother came knocking
and we were doing somersaults in the garden.
You will: we all leave some day
to find ourselves space enough to live.
Will you look back? When you do?
Ah—even my dumb scatterbrain heart
knows that it was too hot to touch
when you picked it up.
Your fingers are still tender.
Time will be the only thing that forgives us;
Don’t worry, don’t look back—
Just smile a new smile
For this time, for this camera.
Your smile is the only thing that fakes your age;
The rest of you shines in its place
Unseen in those old photographs.
There is a time, you said,
to put away your toys.
You swore, you crossed your heart:
clean laundry; washed dishes; graduation photos.
Your mother came knocking
and we were doing somersaults in the garden.
You will: we all leave some day
to find ourselves space enough to live.
Will you look back? When you do?
Ah—even my dumb scatterbrain heart
knows that it was too hot to touch
when you picked it up.
Your fingers are still tender.
Time will be the only thing that forgives us;
Don’t worry, don’t look back—
Just smile a new smile
For this time, for this camera.
+ Show Spoiler [Armour] +
Armour
You took your father’s armour, when the time came—
You, not one who was unprepared to fight.
And when he saw, how great the lamentations
That never reached you, vanished in the night.
Armoured and armed; your comrades did not know you
(Those self-made men, each his old father’s son)
But you declined the son of heav’n’s distinctions
And left behind the battles you had won.
When you returned home, you arrived a hero
And in the dust that shrouds your father’s grave
Traces of his smile still lingered. But your sister,
She fell for the guy she pretends she can save
And every day your mother worries her waist smaller.
There are things your father’s armour cannot take
(Your best friend says nothing, but you know; you know)
Though your mother keeps it polished for your sake.
What good is it, when you know she wants grandchildren—
What good, struggling in heels at the singles’ greets?
At night, you (you, of all people, can it be?) are afraid;
In your nightmares you take the well-lit streets.
You took your father’s armour, when the time came—
You, not one who was unprepared to fight.
And when he saw, how great the lamentations
That never reached you, vanished in the night.
Armoured and armed; your comrades did not know you
(Those self-made men, each his old father’s son)
But you declined the son of heav’n’s distinctions
And left behind the battles you had won.
When you returned home, you arrived a hero
And in the dust that shrouds your father’s grave
Traces of his smile still lingered. But your sister,
She fell for the guy she pretends she can save
And every day your mother worries her waist smaller.
There are things your father’s armour cannot take
(Your best friend says nothing, but you know; you know)
Though your mother keeps it polished for your sake.
What good is it, when you know she wants grandchildren—
What good, struggling in heels at the singles’ greets?
At night, you (you, of all people, can it be?) are afraid;
In your nightmares you take the well-lit streets.
+ Show Spoiler [Heritage] +
Heritage
I have been awake too long
I am too conscious
of the fabric from which I was made.
It does not prepare me;
I was cut so thin.
Perhaps I could not have taken
my inheritance of dissatisfaction;
all the legacies I have been left
in the margins of error
of these testaments.
But I have, and it goes.
I am a gap in the generation
my young empty heart
a vessel so long filled
with expectation.
I have been awake too long
I am too conscious
of the fabric from which I was made.
It does not prepare me;
I was cut so thin.
Perhaps I could not have taken
my inheritance of dissatisfaction;
all the legacies I have been left
in the margins of error
of these testaments.
But I have, and it goes.
I am a gap in the generation
my young empty heart
a vessel so long filled
with expectation.
If you're interested, you can find a lot more poems here. I update bimonthly, on the 1st and the 16th.
(I read a lot of poetry compared to how much I write).
