The Archives: Halfway Words

In other news: The Bingham Literary Magazine went to the printer today! Copies will be available in about a week and a half! I was published 3 times (once with a prose piece entitled "The Sea of Ashes" and twice with poetry pieces entitled "Painted" and "Release") and I put in one picture I photomanipulated called "Listless Wondering." Yay!

Now back to our scheduled programming: While looking through my GoogleDocs (otherwise known as my writing storage unit, or WSU), I noticed I have a bunch of poems I started but never quite finished... I'n't that a shame...

But I thought I might stick a few of them on here. Who knows? Maybe I'll finish them someday.

Free

Am I really free

When I have to watch what I say

The sounds from my throat

The words on my page

In case I insult someone:

“Dear Lord, how did you get so fat?!”

Or maybe I’ll say something wrong:

“I know, right?! I don’t know!”

I’m so limited by Propriety,

The things I can and can’t say

Because I shouldn’t drop my baggage on other people,

Even though most of us are smouldering from uncontrolled fires

And if you look beyond our empty words you’ll see

The pain and the hurt and the anger

And all the things we wish we could say to each other because

‘The truth hurts.’

I can’t trust anyone because I know I’ll find my mistakes on the airwaves eventually.

[untitled]

Please don’t touch me that way.

I’m trying not to care,

because caring hurts,

and I’ve had enough of that.

When you look at me with those satin eyes,

my heart wants to melt,

but my body resists.

It remembers what my heart does not.

My muscles ache when I think of you,

my bones break when I get close to you.

You’ve lost your chance.

As much as I love you,

It will never be enough,

Not after all you did and after all you didn’t do.

If you loved me, you wouldn’t hurt me,

and though my heart yearns for you I won’t fall again.

I’m caught in the loop between your indecisions, pulling one way and pulling another, and all it’s done is strangle me.

Words

Words are ugly creatures.

They slip over my tongue like serpents from an ancient curse,

They bite and hiss and spit and scream,

Slither around my teeth and on my breath,

Fly out of my throat and into your face,

And all they ever seem to do is hurt!

There’s no taking back these words.

Once I’ve released them, all I can hope is that they only get you,

And that they don’t end up back in my face.

Their slippery bodies are impossible to grasp,