church preschool libraries never could
hold hearts this big, and heavy,
i don't respect people
nearly as much as i should
it's too bad i always wait
until things like tragedy
strike the people around me,
it's like learning about war
from the safety of a television set.
i seem to get lessons the hard way
OR
second-hand.
we call this a high school small group
we pretend we talk about jesus
really just not saying,
that we are all trying to fight
impending adulthood
but Libby's dam has just burst.
my high school has seen
too many deaths this year -
7, at last count -
this one was drunk driving.
with sirens like symphonies
irresponsibility randomizes its victims.
so when the media tries to bully
"us kids"
into submission
with Libby's best friend's dead body
i want to throw tombstone missiles
at who's in charge?
she is sobbing,
for a girl whose reputation
can't quite rest in peace
why are we left to apologize
for an execution that didn't
fit the crime?
why can't we just mourn
with the respect i'm learning to have?
we're being taught to behave
at the expense of the ones who have lost
just about everything,
and Libby stopped drinking a long time ago,
but she feels guilty
for things she thinks she could have stopped.
and i'm stock-still, again,
just able to watch,
not even able to comfort.
i have nothing to grieve.
so what is this poem about, anyway?
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friendship. Show all posts
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
a.r.h.
for my birthday,
you and your four best friends
beat the living shit out of me
with water balloons, volleyballs, and a garden hose,
all in the good name of the construction
of my self-defense abilities.
a year later,
for my birthday,
you and your four best friends
threw me into a lake, fully clothed,
the previous year's mission apparently unaccomplished.
i don't quite remember
at what point
we became each other's record-holders,
and secret keepers,
but we always did listen
with tape recorders in our ears.
this was children's trust,
as we were quitting childhood
more quickly than we wanted,
something sacred,
found nowhere else in junior high.
there was one trust
you never extended to me
but i wasn't hurt
the night you called from outside
the interrogation room,
because no one deserves to remember that shit.
shame as sharp as it was helpless
you said you couldn't hate him
no matter what he had done to you,
he was still
your family,
you know, danielle, you said,
you really can't see through the one-way glass
it's just like the movies
but this one isn't worth its ticket stub,
it just hurts.
with courtrooms like war zones,
like finding justice
down the barrel of a gun
these were your secrets,
pedestaled like a lynching
for all to see,
a mother's instrusion:
you didn't dare trust written records
for years after that,
a brother's conviction:
a restraining order
twelve years too late.
you wanted to run from it
like you were the one betraying someone
like you were the one laying landmines,
i don't quite remember
if this was between the reign of
father number two, or father number three
but no one deserves
to be dragged back through that.
it was just a journal, you said.
it was just your way of forgetting.
so when it came time,
when i had grown enough history of my own
to jail up and forget
i knew to tie it with a bow.
they call this voice a gift,
but there are arrows
i aimed at my heart.
maybe this is why we both write so hard.
your brother
taught me how to be angry
for the people i love
and
your mother
taught me to never say things outright
so i can thank them
for my loyalty
and this stage, respectively,
but you,
despite all that had happened,
hadn't outgrown your innocence yet
and to me
it would be worth it
if i could take back all those lessons
i gained at your expense
because no one,
especially not you,
deserves to have to remember that.
you and your four best friends
beat the living shit out of me
with water balloons, volleyballs, and a garden hose,
all in the good name of the construction
of my self-defense abilities.
a year later,
for my birthday,
you and your four best friends
threw me into a lake, fully clothed,
the previous year's mission apparently unaccomplished.
i don't quite remember
at what point
we became each other's record-holders,
and secret keepers,
but we always did listen
with tape recorders in our ears.
this was children's trust,
as we were quitting childhood
more quickly than we wanted,
something sacred,
found nowhere else in junior high.
there was one trust
you never extended to me
but i wasn't hurt
the night you called from outside
the interrogation room,
because no one deserves to remember that shit.
shame as sharp as it was helpless
you said you couldn't hate him
no matter what he had done to you,
he was still
your family,
you know, danielle, you said,
you really can't see through the one-way glass
it's just like the movies
but this one isn't worth its ticket stub,
it just hurts.
with courtrooms like war zones,
like finding justice
down the barrel of a gun
these were your secrets,
pedestaled like a lynching
for all to see,
a mother's instrusion:
you didn't dare trust written records
for years after that,
a brother's conviction:
a restraining order
twelve years too late.
you wanted to run from it
like you were the one betraying someone
like you were the one laying landmines,
i don't quite remember
if this was between the reign of
father number two, or father number three
but no one deserves
to be dragged back through that.
it was just a journal, you said.
it was just your way of forgetting.
so when it came time,
when i had grown enough history of my own
to jail up and forget
i knew to tie it with a bow.
they call this voice a gift,
but there are arrows
i aimed at my heart.
maybe this is why we both write so hard.
your brother
taught me how to be angry
for the people i love
and
your mother
taught me to never say things outright
so i can thank them
for my loyalty
and this stage, respectively,
but you,
despite all that had happened,
hadn't outgrown your innocence yet
and to me
it would be worth it
if i could take back all those lessons
i gained at your expense
because no one,
especially not you,
deserves to have to remember that.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
girl please.
We’re sitting in my car.
The freeway above us
is roaring like man-made thunder
because trains went out of style
with handwritten letters
and high school sweethearts,
and she tells me,
they don’t believe her.
We’re seniors in high school,
and we both know,
that’s just another word for
broken-record questions
of college-bound degree-expectant
salary-hungry achievement-bullshit,
like,
“why don’t you have your life
figured out like algebra?
Why aren’t you fitting
your hearts for the boxes yet?”
This poem is dedicated to many things,
among them,
finals week.
Shrunken behind stacks of
information I didn’t learn
God knows when I should have,
we begin to ask ourselves
why we signed up for us,
and they continue interrogating,
“Why do you dance like Armageddon is coming?
You’ll know, soon enough,
stupid kids,
you’ll have bills to unwrap
you’ll have shoes to fill, big shoes,
and they are stiff,
so iron your face to match.
Be an adult.”
This is dedicated to childhood,
and I don’t remember mine
so forgive me
for making one now,
she wants to be a screenwriter.
She wants to save Africa.
She wants to build a homeless shelter
to keep out the winter
faces kept strong fighting things like
cold and poverty
don’t have need for reshaping,
yet they have the nerve to continue,
“You’ll never change the world.
Stupid kids,
stop wasting all your sparkle.
Stop playing pretend,” they say,
like childhood doesn’t have
life measured out like sugar cookies,
like birthday candles should never
have been wished on in the first place,
successful lives are bred
in library halls
that laugh at the thought
of ever housing a fairytale,
you’ll thank us,
they say.
We build you these libraries,
these playgrounds for
economic stability,
we built this freeway
that your dreams are parked beneath,
we pragmatists,
with our suit jackets
with our ironed faces
and box-fitted hearts,
not the travels
we forgot to map
when graduate school came knocking,
nobody flies.
Nobody sings.
These are the things they tell us.
This is dedicated to the girl who let me know
that these things they tell us
are lies.
Libraries aren’t libraries
without a little bit of impossibility,
and she reminds me,
they are wrong about the sparkle.
Maybe she'll never be a screenwriter.
Maybe I’ll never write
myself into those libraries,
but it won’t be for lack of believing,
see,
the stars in the skies,
are really already gone,
but their legacies have outlived them
light-years still channeling their
mysteries our way,
so, Emilie, I don’t wish
on falling stars anymore
I just keep stacking up doubts
you've helped me displace,
naming all the possibilities left over
in your honor.
The freeway above us
is roaring like man-made thunder
because trains went out of style
with handwritten letters
and high school sweethearts,
and she tells me,
they don’t believe her.
We’re seniors in high school,
and we both know,
that’s just another word for
broken-record questions
of college-bound degree-expectant
salary-hungry achievement-bullshit,
like,
“why don’t you have your life
figured out like algebra?
Why aren’t you fitting
your hearts for the boxes yet?”
This poem is dedicated to many things,
among them,
finals week.
Shrunken behind stacks of
information I didn’t learn
God knows when I should have,
we begin to ask ourselves
why we signed up for us,
and they continue interrogating,
“Why do you dance like Armageddon is coming?
You’ll know, soon enough,
stupid kids,
you’ll have bills to unwrap
you’ll have shoes to fill, big shoes,
and they are stiff,
so iron your face to match.
Be an adult.”
This is dedicated to childhood,
and I don’t remember mine
so forgive me
for making one now,
she wants to be a screenwriter.
She wants to save Africa.
She wants to build a homeless shelter
to keep out the winter
faces kept strong fighting things like
cold and poverty
don’t have need for reshaping,
yet they have the nerve to continue,
“You’ll never change the world.
Stupid kids,
stop wasting all your sparkle.
Stop playing pretend,” they say,
like childhood doesn’t have
life measured out like sugar cookies,
like birthday candles should never
have been wished on in the first place,
successful lives are bred
in library halls
that laugh at the thought
of ever housing a fairytale,
you’ll thank us,
they say.
We build you these libraries,
these playgrounds for
economic stability,
we built this freeway
that your dreams are parked beneath,
we pragmatists,
with our suit jackets
with our ironed faces
and box-fitted hearts,
not the travels
we forgot to map
when graduate school came knocking,
nobody flies.
Nobody sings.
These are the things they tell us.
This is dedicated to the girl who let me know
that these things they tell us
are lies.
Libraries aren’t libraries
without a little bit of impossibility,
and she reminds me,
they are wrong about the sparkle.
Maybe she'll never be a screenwriter.
Maybe I’ll never write
myself into those libraries,
but it won’t be for lack of believing,
see,
the stars in the skies,
are really already gone,
but their legacies have outlived them
light-years still channeling their
mysteries our way,
so, Emilie, I don’t wish
on falling stars anymore
I just keep stacking up doubts
you've helped me displace,
naming all the possibilities left over
in your honor.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
hoy todo está bien.
"You're a complex individual, and emotions are some of the baggage that come with being who you are! Some of the other baggage is the fact that your friends love you and want to support you, so fuckin' deal with it!"
-timothy riggs
i survived the year. congrats me? perhaps. vamos a seguir adelante! let's go forward.
-timothy riggs
i survived the year. congrats me? perhaps. vamos a seguir adelante! let's go forward.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
tengo muchos pensamientos hoy.
i wish i had said half the things C.S. Lewis said. quotes that have helped me a lot lately to keep myself in check with my stupid self:
1. "legalism is feeling conviction from God, following it ceaselessly, and then projecting that conviction upon everyone else.
2. "temperance is not abstaining, but going the right length and no further."
3. "the mark of a bad man is that he cannot give up something without asking everyone else to give it up as well."
not only Lewis, but his godson as well:
"christians today focus on the trivialities - not smoking, not drinking [at all], dressing appropriately in church, and so on. Jesus doesn't give two hoots about that sort of bullshit. if you go out and DO christianity, you can smoke if you want, drink [moderately] if you want, etc."
mark terrell:
"the most wrong and hurtful thing i have ever heard one person say to another was, 'shut up,' because it implied intrinsically that that person had nothing of value to say and no worth at all."
++
mark 8. the pattern: three instances of 1. Jesus predicts his death, 2. disciples fail to understand and, 3. Jesus teaches discipleship, these three instances bookended by healing of blind men, respectively. in the middle of it is the caesarea philippi confession, followed by Peter's rebuking of Jesus.
Jesus predicts his suffering. Peter pulls him aside and beings rebuking him. Jesus interjects, "get behind me Satan!" because of a collision. Jesus is teaching the kingdom, and Peter has a different kingdom in mind. for Peter, at that moment, the cost outweighed the benefit, and he was looking to negotiate with the kingdom. and i do that. the cost of the kingdom: "you must forsake all of that which would promise security to oneself."
Lewis: "Jesus says, I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it."
i'm more than certain i've been doing a lot of cost-counting lately. but the kingdom is non-negotiable.
++
i've been friends with austin for over a year now. he was my first real, true, close non-christian friend. and it tore me up, you know? i can look at old entries from this blog that are nothing but agony over him. i had forgotten what that feels like. and now, who are my friends? agnostics. atheists. people who are ANGRY with god, if they feel like believing he exists. sheez.
"he only believes in God when he believes God is tormenting him.
it means a lot to suffer when all you can suffer is divine retribution...
did God create suffering in order to spend the rest of his life
trying to overcome his ability to feel guilt?"
the person who wrote that is one of my best friends. an amazing poem. maybe my favorite of his. it's called "what he learned in sunday school." but shit. i don't let myself think about it much, but when i do it feels like a train just ran me over. i'm not angry about it. i can't be. but, man, it hurts. it crushes me. i love them all so much. i'm certainly glad they aren't my only friends, without my small group i'd be nothing. i love tuesday nights in the janzen living room. but i love my friends. post-slam hangs at the satellite, team piece writing, macy's storming to save kurt, a walk of life i'd never have dreamed of.
so it hurts. they have time. i only hope [read: pray] time does them good.
++
one last bit, then i'll upshut.
it's funny. because i don't like john riggs anymore- thank god, the man's 22, which isn't even legal. but being around him reminds me that dating eric would be a bad idea. i already know that i don't want to marry the kid. i can't marry someone who's jewish. but for whatever reason, being around that ridiculous friend of mine has reminded me of the kind of person that i do want to marry, and that pretending anything else, even in high school, would be... uh, stupid.
sucks though. ahhh, the loneliness of a high school girl. maybe i should write a poem about it.
JUST KIDDING.
1. "legalism is feeling conviction from God, following it ceaselessly, and then projecting that conviction upon everyone else.
2. "temperance is not abstaining, but going the right length and no further."
3. "the mark of a bad man is that he cannot give up something without asking everyone else to give it up as well."
not only Lewis, but his godson as well:
"christians today focus on the trivialities - not smoking, not drinking [at all], dressing appropriately in church, and so on. Jesus doesn't give two hoots about that sort of bullshit. if you go out and DO christianity, you can smoke if you want, drink [moderately] if you want, etc."
mark terrell:
"the most wrong and hurtful thing i have ever heard one person say to another was, 'shut up,' because it implied intrinsically that that person had nothing of value to say and no worth at all."
++
mark 8. the pattern: three instances of 1. Jesus predicts his death, 2. disciples fail to understand and, 3. Jesus teaches discipleship, these three instances bookended by healing of blind men, respectively. in the middle of it is the caesarea philippi confession, followed by Peter's rebuking of Jesus.
Jesus predicts his suffering. Peter pulls him aside and beings rebuking him. Jesus interjects, "get behind me Satan!" because of a collision. Jesus is teaching the kingdom, and Peter has a different kingdom in mind. for Peter, at that moment, the cost outweighed the benefit, and he was looking to negotiate with the kingdom. and i do that. the cost of the kingdom: "you must forsake all of that which would promise security to oneself."
Lewis: "Jesus says, I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it."
i'm more than certain i've been doing a lot of cost-counting lately. but the kingdom is non-negotiable.
++
i've been friends with austin for over a year now. he was my first real, true, close non-christian friend. and it tore me up, you know? i can look at old entries from this blog that are nothing but agony over him. i had forgotten what that feels like. and now, who are my friends? agnostics. atheists. people who are ANGRY with god, if they feel like believing he exists. sheez.
"he only believes in God when he believes God is tormenting him.
it means a lot to suffer when all you can suffer is divine retribution...
did God create suffering in order to spend the rest of his life
trying to overcome his ability to feel guilt?"
the person who wrote that is one of my best friends. an amazing poem. maybe my favorite of his. it's called "what he learned in sunday school." but shit. i don't let myself think about it much, but when i do it feels like a train just ran me over. i'm not angry about it. i can't be. but, man, it hurts. it crushes me. i love them all so much. i'm certainly glad they aren't my only friends, without my small group i'd be nothing. i love tuesday nights in the janzen living room. but i love my friends. post-slam hangs at the satellite, team piece writing, macy's storming to save kurt, a walk of life i'd never have dreamed of.
so it hurts. they have time. i only hope [read: pray] time does them good.
++
one last bit, then i'll upshut.
it's funny. because i don't like john riggs anymore- thank god, the man's 22, which isn't even legal. but being around him reminds me that dating eric would be a bad idea. i already know that i don't want to marry the kid. i can't marry someone who's jewish. but for whatever reason, being around that ridiculous friend of mine has reminded me of the kind of person that i do want to marry, and that pretending anything else, even in high school, would be... uh, stupid.
sucks though. ahhh, the loneliness of a high school girl. maybe i should write a poem about it.
JUST KIDDING.
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