Clock

I still toss my glance to the bathroom wall
expecting to see the rainbow clock,
two minutes behind schedule (or something like that),
but this is a new time and place
and it isn't there.
It's funny the way my brain
flips the orientation of the room in looking.
But I wonder
how long it will be
before I stop.

Block

I wonder how you know
when you should listen to your head
and when you should pay attention
to what your heart's telling you?

Everytime, I tell myself I'll be all right.

Sometime
I'd like to take the time
to write real poetry
instead of these snippets of sentences
I pretend are some sort of art.


Tonight will be different.
How does one actually change?
Look at something
know it's wrong
and consciously work on changing?
How does one choose what to become
who to be
and turn into that?
I always wonder
about when people say
they want to change their heart
about something.
"Really?" I want to say.
"Really? How do you do that?
Because I've tried before."

Night

Hi, God.
I don't know why I'm still here.
Yeah.
That's all.
Bye.

Jumping

Remember how I decided
I was going to stay here
and make the best of it?
Well,
I question that decision
every single day
and wonder why the hell
I'm staying where I am.

Two plus zero equals
nothing in terms of a future.

Two poems

being alive
Breathing,
loving,
dying.
Pain,
hurt,
agony.
Death.
Despair.
Greasy stains on table clothing.
Bloody splashes stipple whitish sheet.
Darkness scratches me with talons fierce
and I relish red pulsing and flowing and beating.
Dance.
Death.
Eyes open
then widely shut.

new
This sliver of a moon
shines brightly from its cradle.
Tomorrow, it will be new
and it will be gone,
and the sky will be dark.
Maybe one of these days
it will forget to come back.

Yacht

This is not really a poem. It's kind of a collection of questions that I thought of stream-of-consciousness. I think. I'm sorry.
~~~

content to life let pass him for a while

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LIVE LIKE THAT.

and I might wish that I could,
like, that I knew how to stop.

But at the same time, I'm kind of scared of stopping.



You had a friend who died yesterday.
Sarah.
And I feel bad because you are in pain.

And I wonder if I would know how to grieve
if someone I loved died like that.
Do I even know how to love?
How can you grieve for someone
if you don't know how to care for them?
Am I emotionally grieving for you,
or is it just intellectual
and I am trying to make myself hurt inside, too?

How does one learn to love?

And how can I learn to live?

Die, vampire, die.

I haven't been writing very much lately.

It's been a while.

Can you love someone else
if you don't love yourself?

What does it even mean
to love yourself
or to love someone else?

The greatest thing you'll ever learn
is just to love
and be loved in return.

Yes
I guess it is
something you have to learn.
But how do you learn
when there aren't
books
and lectures
and words,
or something
- anything -
besides this fallible body
I call my self?

Prose

The pond about half a mile behind the neighbors' house was Magic. We didn't understand how, or why, only that we had been blessed with it. Sometimes it was there, and sometimes it was not. We didn't realize that the days it was not there were also the days when we could not remember the last time it rained, or a time when the air had not been so humid and heavy. And we did not connect that the times the pond was the fullest and deepest were right after a thick, full, heavy downpour. We only knew that sometimes, the pond was there, and it was amazing, and sometimes, the pond disappeared, and then, it was magic. It had to be magic.

Our parents never came back to the pond. They didn't like it that we went there, either. Often, they didn't let us go back there. "No. There are snakes." "There's probably poison ivy." "Oh, come on. Can't you just stay here and play in our woods?" But our woods weren't the same. This... this was magical. It was a Realm of Faerie or a Narnia all our own. And sometimes, they did let us go.

We would zip up our boots and plead permission to go in the woods. Our feet squished down in the soggy grass.

Sisyphus

So this brave new world
we call our own?
I don't think
I like it
much.


I like
to imagine
lines that curve.
This rigid rationality
leaves me to wander alone.

Confrontation

Fears
Worries
so often ungrounded
but sometimes, not.

I wonder
if tomorrow will be like that
if my fears have roots
that are growing into the soil now
and tomorrow, I'll go to yank them out
but I'll pull and pull
but it won't matter
because they
won't
move.

and they'll grab down
and pull and hold
harder and deeper and stronger
than ever before

then I'll step back
defeated
and facing reality
and the weeds will look at me
as they feel their roots
groping in sheer lust,
in some deep, dark place,
and they will throw back
their scrawny little heads
and necks
and laugh.

Propositions

Oh
Thirsty, thirsty, so thirsty
Parched

"Here. Have some milk."

You pour water
and try to satisfy
and Oh, I want it to,
but I stretch
and groan
and break
without really holding
much water at all.
I am a vessel
too weak to carry
even this little bit
of water you pour
and unless you can find
someone to strengthen my leather,
make it pliable and relaxed
and attentive and free,
and patch my holes and tears
that let water out in tiny trickles,
I cannot hold any of this
so it means naught to provide.

Come What May

So I guess
we don't just have
to learn how to love
but we also have
to learn to be loved.
Being loved,
accepting love,
holding love:
evidently it's kind of hard
and evidently you have to learn how.
That's kind of a comfort,
you know?

View

You try to run, nowhere to hide;
You want to crumple up and close that door.

I wish it was possible
to crumble like that,
y'know?
close the door
and then the next time
I open it to go outside,
none of this will be there
It'll disappear
like little cat-feet fogginess
that you didn't realize
had come earlier
by the time
you wake up in the morning.
and then everything
would be okay.

Secret

You know what? I have a secret.
So I'm going to whisper now.
(Shhh!)

I think it would be fun
to make up a bunch of words
with which to write a poem
like Jabberwocky
except not
because that one's taken.

And I'd write my poem
and everyone would say
"That
is Arielle's.
and she made it up
and it is amazing."

Twas brillig
and the slithy toves.
It's just fun to say.

Shhh! Don't tell.
Well
just not yet.

Cellophane

I feel
very ordinary
and very indecisive
very plain
entirely unremarkable
and just very blah.

The ocean is cold sometimes.

Last time
I started to feel
like my semester was going pretty well
and life really wasn't all that bad,
things got a hell of a lot worse
and I couldn't remember
how the other part of this antithesis felt
until I began to doubt
that it had ever existed at all.

Now
I really
don't want that to happen again
but part of me
is afraid it will.

I wonder
if life just rolls in cycles
like the tide of an ocean
going in
and coming out,
in
and out
and in and out
andinandoutandinandout...?

White slippers and tulle skirts, and lonely lullabies to the stars above

I wish sometimes
that I could be a little girl again:
Sipping cups of hot cocoa
by a warm fireplace;
Resting my head on my older sister's knee,
knowing I can simply sleep
and everything will be okay;
Cuddling in a chair
and reading chapter books
because they are big and important
and therefore so am I;
Wearing a ballerina skirt
with my cotton t-shirt
simply because it's pretty
and I want to.
Not looking at the camera lens
and just smiling up at the sun,
squinting my eyes so I can see
and not messing with the flowers
bobby-pinned into my messy hair.

Animal

If I hold my hand
in front of the fire,
can I still be burned?
I'm kind of afraid
I will be,
now as I stand here,
holding my palms
so they face the fire.
Funny,
I can't tell
if this part of the fire
fades into the darkness
or brings a spot of light.
You tell me
my palms are going to blister
but I like the way they feel
as much as
I hate admitting that.


Fire
is hot.
Part of me
is afraid
of being burned
but i feel
so warm
right
now.