Some Poems and a Promise

This is my first-ever blog entry! Yay!

I made a promise to myself today. I noticed (although it wasn't really hard to see) that the only things I write these days are sad girl poetry, or poetry about things dying... especially, um, birds dying.

I dunno. I guess I have a bit of a fixation on birds and dying. o3o Maybe. Well, no, not maybe, because in all (3) of the things I'm getting published in the lit mag, a bird dies. Or is strangled. Or gets crushed.

I guess that is an obsession.

But anyways, I made a deal with myself that I have to write two happy poems for every sad poem I write. This means I'll be writing 3 times as much poetry as usual. I think this is good. Healthy, even.

So here is a sad poem, and a happy poem to counteract it. The other one isn't quite ready yet, as I just wrote it today. :)

Phantom

I realized too late as I stood in the wings

Of the stage in front of a ravenous crowd

That I was not like them,

So I put on a mask,

A grin so disfigured, grotesque and plastic as to not appear human.

From the back of the opera house I looked just the same

As the actors who acted with cheeks rouged and teeth white

As tombstones.

The pearly beads fell--

Like tears from my eyes--

As I danced and leaped to thunderclaps of applause,

A soloist wanting nothing more, nothing more

Than to blend in the background--

And disappear.

The glitter went flying with sweat and my tears

Until nothing was left but the paper maiche,

Broken and battered and just barely hiding

My face,

All tear-streaked and desperate and brutally bruised, see.

They used me, confused me to play on this stage,

Dancing and prancing and aching and shaking

Until I collapse in the skinburning spotlight.

Now they shall see me for just what I am,

Different,

Ugly,

And all alone.

The Robin

Leaves twigprints in the morningmud,

Hopalongs a while in early light,

Onetwo-onetwo quickly steps,

Casts a glance leftright leftright.

Calls quietly, cracks dawn air,

Looks a beady eye my way,

Listens a while, answers, chirps,

Openwings and flyaways.