the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me...

Years have passes since we graced the playground as younger, firmer hearts.
Although our hearts were not carrying much else other than pocket money and playtime, we all had such promise. We all held such potential.
We were funny, daring comrades in a world surrounded by baking and giant trees that now seem so much smaller.
Gentle voices, napping in a curtained room, pretending we were animals of a different nature in cares made of tables and giant blankets.
We were told how we came to earth, a myth later demolished by the natural process of growing up. But it stays with us.

We all took up hobbies. Some of us were far more comfortable.
We'd try, and quit.
But we'd try harder, quit better.
Does it really seem so far away? I beg to differ.
It seems only yesterday we were children. We were naive and unstable.
But we all held to each other, to songs and rhymes and handshakes.
Even through the most difficult of times there was hope.
We are a proud, hilarious faction--some of the finest fighters this world will ever see.
We hold our heads up high and titter under hung heads of forged shame.
There was a fumbling of lips and fingers (there always are),
but we soon found our blood was better resembled in humble, deeper friendships.

And so we sail.

We have left the docks!
Our sails swell with future wind which is so strong.
We are afraid, and excited, and our bodies bubble with the unexpected.
Some of us find ourselves meeting.
Hello there, I did not expect to find you here.
A familiar face is enough. So we may continue with courage.
With a much harder faith we may continue to sail,
knowing our friends' ships are not far away.

-Steph Wardle
December '11

These days...

...I am all about losing,

left and whatdoesntquitefeel right.

wilder shores of love (a title in flux)

in bed with a backache,

competitively procrastinating.

man my back hurts,

man i don't want to work.

this poem

should've been called

what else is new.

(it was acuff-rose)

"What else? What else did you get up to?"
"Well this one time a chubby fourteen-year-old who walked by me tried to steal your face."
"What? You almost got shanked!?"
"I said 'your face'. He was trying to steal it."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it was the day before my birthday, I was on my way to the Post Office down Mile End Road to pick up what my parents had sent me and had just handed a paper in late, of course, and was thinking a million things about all the ways I need to get my shit together and suddenly the last minute of the good times are killing me hit me, you know, and all I could focus on was how perfect it sounded...until a fourteen-year-old who looks like a young, chubby you walks by me and I can't stop staring at him. He looked so much like you that the longer I looked at him the more upset I got that it wasn't really you. So I guess he wasn't trying to steal your face. He was stealing my moment with Modest Mouse and giving it to you."
Her eyes drop from meeting his gaze to their cold coffee mugs on the table and then dart upward--with two nods and her gaze now fixed on the waitress, his has shifted to the window while the waitress pours refills.
"Anyways Jeff Tweedy came on shuffle only a few minutes later and I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That I had to come have this conversation with you."

canal quickie

swans land, invade
the smoke from this cigarette joins
cloud upon cloud jostling by
and soft piano chords remind me of you.
in this
mixed up
muggled up
messed up world
why don't you call me what we both know i am?

daddy's girl

I still remember
those creaky wooden floors--
uneven, unwashed, underneath me,
and how even they absorbed the smell of paint,
so I can remember
what it sounds and smells like
to be a tomboy in your classroom.
Some of the t-shirts you wore in old photos still
sitinyourcloset [who am i kidding] getwornontheweekends.
I think when I get home
I'm gonna steal one
and never leave home without it.

WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, 

"Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud;

Otherwise,

Someone would call the cops.

Still though, think about this,

This great pull in us

To connect.

Why not become the one

Who lives with a full moon in each eye

That is always saying,

With that sweet moon

Language,

What every other eye in this world

Is dying to

 Hear.

-Hafiz

the facts.

"Who knows how to make love stay? 
Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. 

It will stay. 

Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. 

It will stay. 

Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. 

Love will be there in the morning."

-Still Life With Woodpecker

it turns out
my exes
have great blogs,
blogs i would read.

it turns out
we still laugh at the same jokes
and have had the same ideas
for halloween costumes.

it turns out
there are pictures of me:
one accidental,
one i really love.

it turns out
i don't think i can finish this poem
there's too much
i can't figure out about

haiku of the day

i know i'm stupid,
but so are you-- i can feel
you love me right back.

stranger in a strange land

waiting at the crosswalk

over the edge of a black asphalt abyss,

an endless sea of rough pavement and

short white lines marking the surf.

i guess

people don't jaywalk here.

there is a time when it's all about

fairy wings

high heels

your mother's prom dresses

silk gloves

necklaces upon necklaces

your father's work boots

last year's halloween costume

fabulous purses

your sister's tutu

and more

one of the best parts

of being a girl is

never

being to old

to play dressup.

The Prettiest Mule

Sometimes a mule does not know

What is best for itself.

When the mind is confused like that

It secretly desires a master

With a skilled whip

To guide it to those playgrounds

On the earth's table

Where the Sweet One's light has

Made life more tasty.

Hafiz always carries such a whip

But I rarely need to use it.

I prefer just turning myself into

The prettiest mule

In town

And making my tail sing

Knowing your heart will then

Follow.

lost&found

The clouds part, and there's your Excalibur, waiting

to be plucked from the sky and played.

So you reunite with your beloved trumpet

and as you play,

I'm put under a magic spell and I fall madly in love with you.

So you do your magic schtick a bit more, then sell your magic empire,

(yeah, I said "empire")

and you buy us a sailboat.

But at the time you didn't know

that your magic spell over me didn't work on water

(oh no! a twist!).

It turns out, though, that while we were sailing

I fall in love with you forreals

and then we live happily ever after.

(phew!)

[for the commish]

we could start anywhere

Let’s see,

We could start anywhere,

With any word,

In this fertile luminous world in which I live.

What is the first letter of your alphabet?

A,

O—

That will be just fine.

-Hafiz

standing with an ocean in front of me

(standing there with primark plimsoles on my feet)

even

it’s vastness

reminds me of you.

late night story time

if they wrote about us
babes
they would think
they knew just what to say
like they do for all of
(his)story

(your)story:
dark and stormy
but i know
that one was for the lols
one truth
i can't tell if you keep hidden.

(my)story?
i felt something nice
with you

if you wrote about us
babes
what would you say?

lost&found II

haiku of happiness from once upon a wet, wet, wet day:

thinking about you

and something develops:

you nauseate me.

clearly only a girl gone through a heartbreakup could have the audacity to call that a haiku of happiness. but agh, cough, doesn't it aye feel so good sometymes to be sickaghcoughsplutter at the thinkering of a ghostexboyfriend?

(nothimwhowouldknowwhereinlondontofindyou)

a wish stirs to be what i would have been had i not known what is known

here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived to do had be believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as possible: things not known. (like a rock on the surface of the moon. simply there, motionless and trusting in the length of its shelf life)