A Narrow View of Verse

I actually managed to participate in a Tweet Speak Poetry Party last night. I missed the last few, and it took me a few prompts to get going, but I had so much fun. I found myself drawn to rhyming couplets for some reason. They're not my usual style, but they just kept popping up. The compilation poems will appear on the Tweet Speak blog soon. For now, here are my lines from last night:

Listening to a voice sing whiskey and gin, 
thinking about you growing up back then

Spinning our rhymes on the world wide web 

of verse and song, 

typing and singing all night long.

We plant these seeds and they grow into children and who are they? 
Them or us? 
Is the farmer his farm? The singer his song?

Tomorrow, maybe, I'll turn over a new leaf. Or, instead, perhaps 

I'll prop up the old one and hide in the weeds.

The leaves shed their green dresses, dawned red ones, then yellow, 
then they dried up 
and danced away.
Now, I am left with cold and empty trees, 
and I wonder if spring 
will really come. Am I waiting 
on nothing?

She has forgotten more than I will ever experience. 

Her brain spins webs I can only imagine. 

She is high above me, and I dream that she 

could love me.

I don't like the taste of alcohol, but I like the sounds of the names. 
I like saying Mimosa and Tall Gin Fizz and Sex on the Beach. 
I like the look of a martini glass with an olive and no ice, 
but I'd rather drink a Diet Coke, a glass of water, a V8 Splash.

Will her words come my way again? 

Did I say too much, spill out my broken heart 

too soon?

I try to be grown up, but I'm really barely two.

Today, my house smelled like a brown-sugared heaven 

with meat in the crockpot and Nikki's voice reading poetry.

How do I teach my son to write words 
that play across his paper and make him smile? 
Words are rocks to him. He throws them at me. 
Words are plants that grow in me and their flowers spill over, 
blossoms on the edges of my life.
The stems reach up to the stars. The petals float 
over my body like lace. Green leaves are my mystery.
I hand my son the soft petaled words of flowers 
and he rips the pretty things to shreds, spits them back at me 
like bullets.

It's so hard to keep my mouth shut lately.

Something inside me is screaming to be heard, 

to be right, to be 

to be to be to be...

Sometimes, 
the words paint my skin like lace, 
delicate tendrils of silk falling 
across bare breasts and hips and thighs. 
No one to see 
past shame.

Open your mouth, here, 

take this flame, lick it with your tongue, 

taste the fire of a moment, 

come alive.

I am a girl named Fire. I burn.
I am a girl called Flame. 
I burn my name.
Lava on my legs, lava pouring down 
and coming up and traveling 
through the night, burning away 
on the girl named Fire.
Magma, boiling deep down, 
pit of my stomach churning, preparing 
for the eruption that will end it, 
make it all, all of it finally
go away.

I framed her words on my wall.

I look at them and think, me? 

she wrote to me? But then 

the day takes over, 

waves on the broken shore.

My hopes are delicate and still somehow strong. 

They have survived all kinds of rejection. 

They still love to dance in the darkness.

A teacher told me once

that vases symbolize womanhood, 

empty and needing to be filled... 

up. 

I choose instead to shatter the glass.

Empty Vase he called me. Seventeen 

and oh so sure of who I was. 

I defied his need to define me.

Come on now, teacherman, 

tell me again that I am empty and I will spill 

out all over you, magma to lava to your own 

pompeii.

 I fill my own vase, thank you Mr. Teacherman. 

I fill my vase with roses and daisies and tiger lilies too. 

And who are you

but your own kind of empty, 

angry when we refused 

to fill you.

Mr Teacherman, you told me the moon

in poetry always symbolizes 

sex, and I still think you

have a narrow view

of verse.

My slippers are red and my road home is yellow. 
My twister is a 9-year-old smart little fellow.

Sorcery on the screen, scripture in his hands, 

poetry on the paper and strewn across the lands.

His smile was liquid hurt. 
It spilled over his lips like lava, 
burning up my eyes. He was the prize.
He was the ebony dagger I tried to buy in Mexico 
when I was only 16. 
He was the end of me. I was his queen.

He wrapped me up in thorny vines. I held his heart so close to mine.

I moved carefully, untangling vines, tripping my way while dodging mines.

Where is my tropical jungle of a man, 
the one who broke my heart with the dagger of his smile, 
the temptation in his smirk?

I am sitting on the edge of my broken memory, 

feet swinging, legs dangling, 

heart finally free.

He was sex walking and talking in the world, 
and I was just a lonely and broken little girl.
I was sweetly tart, oblivious, unknown to him for time... 
for time and time and time again, 
until I gave in.

She the poison, I the darling little anecdote, 

now that you have poisoned me, 

you became my antidote, my story to tell, 

my own little hell.

Most days, I never even think of you, but some days I do
The earth bubbles up beneath my feet, 
and I turn to greet
your memory, the old you alone
always waiting
forever waiting
for me.

I was the tiny little rosebud, and you 

forced my blossom much too soon. 

Good thing my God is practiced 

in the art of resurrection.

In my dreams I built you palaces
and pyramids of stone
where angels sang you home.
I painted rainbows on the palace floor, 
but no one lives there anymore. 
Polychrome has gathered up her skirts 
and journeyed home.
And now, a thousand songs lighter, 
I can lie on my back, gaze at the stars, 
pop the bubbles and dream of mars.

You stretched my skin out on your loom, 

wove your love like a fresh tattoo, 

till I was forced to scream 

and give in to you.

It was a violent sort of sorrow 
that held me at your tomb. 
I dreamed a violent sort of morrow 
for the baby in my womb.
There were fairy tales 
for you to tell, 
but you left us here, 
I birthed new hell.

Sometimes the words teach me things I never knew before.

I cannot know for sure how I feel about a thing
until I've taken pen in hand
and tried to make its memory sing.

Poetry, my medicine, 

the only cure and also the root 

of my private disease.

You perfumed by sleep with dreams of suicide,
trees on the dark road, driving alone 
in the middle of the night.

Echoes of who we were together 

show up in the day to day revelation of my work. 

I am always studying you. 

LostLoveology. Let's say adieu. 

LostLoveology. Let's say adieu.

I am one of the Weird Sisters. 
My caldron bubbles with this perfume.

Do not say the name. 

The Scottish play, 

the dead girl Ophelia, 

she breathes again.