Flowers and Tears

I was reading The Great Gatsby earlier this semester for my American Novel class and it gave me the inspiration for this poem:

Flowers and Tears

If personality 
is an unbroken series
of successful 
gestures, 
I am
a continuous middle finger
not tiring
from standing
tall,
even when slumped
in my chaise.

Exempt from
consequences
all my actions
steeped in
dirt.
Maybe my baby
is crying
somewhere,
in this drunken haze
I can't tell if these
tears are mine 
or hers
or the country's.

They don't belong to
the slaves of America,
but slaves 
of the American Dream.
When I smile
the S's,
two vertical blades
slicing through,
sparkle in my
irises.

The sparkle
is drunken
in thirsty gulps
and
when only ice
is left
my eyes reflect back
this 
dream of America,
devoid.

Broken Brick Red

I want you
but what is this want 
and how do I know it?

The lust thick in the air
making me thick in the head
I claw at it, feral

The sun swollen and high
like us
threatening to explode 
like us

I feel the grit on my skin
and the taste of your sweat on my teeth
as we paint our town
broken brick red

I feel your eyes down to my bones
this humidity, to my bones
it just sits
and it waits
watching Urgency pass, with a smirk

I know this want
when my skin is alive
humming and buzzing
like a swarm of angry bees
and I can shed it and
still climb your body 

Ten thousand miles and two boyfriends
away,
I sit in the heat
panting,
wanting you.

I Will Never Be Your Bride

I know what is in store for me
I know what is the reason
these bruises on my skin
from white
to purples and the blues,
swirls of red.

I walk slowly up the stairs

Step by step I feel it,
my heart,
the sound of horses hooves
against hard dirt.

Step by step I feel it,
This excitement like hand
pressed to my back,
pushing me forward

Tomorrow I will feel it
when someone hugs me,
skin pressing my skin,
I'll be reminded of you.

Tomorrow I will feel it
when I have to sit slowly
consciously remember
to watch where I am walking
But who has time for that?
I will bump into things
I want to be reminded of you.

All these dull evocations.

Still
I will never bring you home to my mother,
I will never be your bride.

Alive

The wind whips at me
Like I deserve it
It is bitter
This medicine, going down.

Monsters
Everywhere I go
Arms stretched over their heads
Their leaves ready to grab
at me

Lights flashing, on and off
But I keep walking
Too many SOS signals
Not everyone can be helped

I see a white man
Start to walk towards him
His hand starts flashing
Red
Breaking into a run
I stop on an island

I have a pulse
On the boulevard of death

Inspiration

I went to the Book Expo America last year and received a ton of books, some I am still getting around to reading. One of those books is a poem, titled To the Barricades, by Stephen Collins. I am only a few pages in but I am loving every second of it. My favorite stanza is the opening stanza, which is written as a letter:

Dear Common
                after Gerald Raunig's Art and Revolution

I had thought this was
Outside the barricades
No street in time
But a space left
Uneven and cluttered
With broken ballot boxes
Like a poem with
Everything in it so
Nothing you write
Isn't it and
Nothing you write is
But everywhere your
Hand over the page
Is shadowed by
Another hand taking
Up what you've written
Down and finding the
Spatiotemporal scale
At which it
Makes the most sense

I've been reading this over for days and loving every line of it.

No Man's Land

I heard screams and crying all night
Their tears left on car windows
It chills me,
This windless cold
I don't think my bones
Will ever remember warmth

Empty streets
Only last night's ghosts
Departing
As that ball of fire
Stretches high,
Melts them away
Leaving these frosty puddles
littering the sidewalk

Where are all the old people
playing chess,
All the old people
usually on the benches?
I am
Before their time.

July 4

Steel wool
Dragged across my skin
Ripping off a layer

Thinking about our last words
I bite my tongue

Every chain link
Digging in
Bleeding me out

I pound away
at the metal
Sparks fly
Fragments everywhere

I stop
Sweating, spent.

I will let
The shower
The change of seasons
The kindness of strangers
Return me to me

Kitchen surface tops
Will collect dust
Without your condescending eye
I am no longer
Bound to a broom
The apron
Permanently untied

I can wear my highest shoes
Without fear
Of making you little,
You do that fine
By yourself.