A Story
i.
It’s raining again, the very air
bunching up and snagging in itself,
falling hard to splash against the roof
and dribble down. I half-want
to slip through the red-painted creaking door
and stand ankle-deep in black wet grass
with my arms stretched up to the cloud-dark sky
and the rain soaking through my clothes—
but I won’t, never will, never let myself,
and I can’t think of a real reason why.
I live within a cage. That’s what I called it
even years ago as I paced around the trampoline
trying to explain why I faded into the walls,
invisible, unnoticed, unable to be seen—a round-faced specter
hiding behind books. I didn’t know
how to be anything else.
I was scared to venture out beyond the bars.
ii.
And I thought “Fuck this” and I wrote just “Fuck”
and I walked barefoot onto stage
and read eleven little parts of change
and took a shaky breath and left the cage behind.
I could see it rust to fragments on the floor.
iii.
I broke free but now I think I’ve gone too far—
too loud instead of silent, grabbing for attention,
vindictive and jealous and clinically insane
as I dive across the line between
brave and—just stupid. I’m becoming
exactly who I tried so hard not to be.
And watch me as I build another cage
of steel and high-tech plastics and my own
idiocy. I’m absurd. And watch my eyes
widen as they see the bars click into place,
realize—finally—what I’ve done—again—
another cage to beat my fists against—another identity
I don’t want to have.
But now that’s all I am.
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Gorgeous.
Gorgeous.
It's a little sad, though, that you seem to be so angry with yourself. You seem to think you're not worthy of some abstract thing, but we love you!
Gtalk?
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"Heehee - I love the word assassination. It's like two asses, me, and a nation!" -gradster1
Gorgeous.
Gorgeous.
It's a little sad, though, that you seem to be so angry with yourself. You seem to think you're not worthy of some abstract thing, but we love you!
Gtalk?
________________________________
"Heehee - I love the word assassination. It's like two asses, me, and a nation!" -gradster1
Not angry--just realizing
Not angry--just realizing where I am now. "What happened to the old Bridget?" Greenie asked on Friday. Old Bridget had died.
I said I missed her too.
She was as nonoffensive as she could be, confining herself for fear of becoming one of the people she'd hated and envied all through middle school. And in breaking away from that fear, I've turned into one of them. Or close--close enough that I can't hear my own voice now without cringing from how fake it sounds.
And I can't go back. 'Cause I've built this new identity for myself now.
This new cage.
Oops.
This is (as NS said)
This is (as NS said) gorgeous.
_____________________________
"When you live for the fight, for the blood, the relationships you form are tenuous and easily broken."
-Jasper Hale (who I like more than Edward...)
A pleasure...
...to read. Really. Though the subject is sharp, edgy, strong, the words and rhythm work so well (from a reader's perspective.)
A couple of thoughts...
I confess to a slowdown at this point... my little brain had to keep coming back to these lines to try to figure them out. I realize that poetry is supposed to be obtuse sometimes, but nonetheless, this is where I slowed down...
and I walked barefoot onto stage
and read eleven little parts of change
First I had an image of you going on stage and saying the f-word or, perhaps, the f-word 11 times (which is kind of a funny image: High School play, parents assembled, usagi walks out on stage and yells: F@#@ 11 times and then walks off.) Then I wasn't sure...
Another point... (and please excuse if this is off base)
why have you written this as verse?
would it not work as prose? And if you had written it as prose, would you be able to take it further?
Anyway, thanks for sharing this.
Hope all is well.
gg
Sorry, gg--though I like that mental
Sorry, gg--though I like that mental image, sadly it's not what happened. I'm talking about a poem I slammed at the writer's conference. It set off a whole chain of events I'm not going to get into, but it was freeing for me--that risk; that act of doing something I would've been too afraid to do.
I wrote somewhere else
"I was tired of being scared;
of looking in the distance, weighing outcomes,
concluding the best course of action
was nothing at all,
and, consequently,
becoming nothing myself.
Normally, I sat passively,
never taking the wheel, never walking on stage.
Normally, I let my days roll themselves past
with no intervention from me.
Normally, I never would've read the poem.
That's why I did."
Prose? I don't know. Part iii would probably work better in prose than it does now. I was thinking about podcasting this piece actually. It's got some screwy pauses in the middle of lines I didn't know what to do with.