Book of Wretched Poetry

This first poem,Paperclip Waltz, is nothing more than a silly little thing. It's doesn't mean anything, and I didn't want it to. I was just messing around. Really.

Paperclip Waltz

Sitting Ducks Are Driving Trucks,
while Elephants Chew Their Ham.
Buccaneers with floppy ears are Screaming:
"Bam-a-lam!".
And all the while ,
You with gleaming smile,
stand there proud and tall.

Mr. Sir, I ask of you,
How do you deal with this odd few?
When one plus one still equals two,
but five and five's ten thousand?
How do you deal with the canned peas
and woman screaming on their knees
and masked men chasing bees
and dazed teenagers blinking?

This world spins and whirls,
Shakes the ground and then it twirls.

And yet you remain still.
Still, here.
Staying quite the same,
and think they think I'm the one insane!

December, 2008

This poem, Teen Angst, sounds exactly like what you might expect from the title...But give me a break, I was 16, okay?

Teen Angst 1

Restraints
Tied up and Constrained
Trapped in myself....

It's not fair
Just shut up
I am tired of you judging me
I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore
I don't know if I ever did

Then why won't you leave me?
Control over my own mind?
Is this an addiction to pain?

Something hard and solid
Smash into my head
Ears ringing

I am holding scissors and considering the worst.

September 2009

For Alan.

A Letter to Mr. Morell

Where did you go Mr. Morell?
I looked all over for you!
I searched beneath these,
And over them.

Oh, but Mr. Morell,
You don't seem to understand the trouble
That is, the trouble of missing you.
You see, there are no more.
And you know where the old ones are.
And you know where you are too.

I'm losing you, Mr. Morell.
Why don't you come by some day?
We'll have a splendid time.
We willl drink coffee
And talk mainly about the days.

And what days they were!
Those old days,
With the earl gray mornings
And Marmalade suns.

Will we go to the beach again, some day?
I want to see you again, Mr. Morell.
Will you come back?
Soon, Mr. Morell, soon?

March 2010

This one was inspired by my alcohol use and my mom's literal locking of the liquor cabinet.

Talk is Cheap

Today is the day.
The day I swear off all my vices.
I will promise “never again”.
But tomorrow I will be back to picking the lock
That was set there to protect me.

If you knew all I had done,
You probably wouldn’t be surprised.
However, what is left unspoken is left uncertain.
So I won’t tell you,
At least not all of it.

I am so sorry.
I never meant to disappoint.
I never meant to hurt.
But I did.

Today is the day I will swear off all my vices,
I will promise you “never again”.
But tomorrow I will be back to picking the lock
That you set there to save me.

August 2010

Outcasts and Old Magazines are about my friends that I made at a Summer camp at Vandy.

Outcasts

We are a group of pariahs.
We, essentially, ostracized ourselves.
Perhaps we did it on purpose.
We thought we were different.
Maybe we were.
Maybe it varied.


For whatever reason, we are here now.
And what was the point of it?
This is assuming that we tried to be this way.
So people would Pity us?
So people would Hate us?
So people would Mock us?


But we are here.
Do we deserve to be included in society’s thoughts?
Are we unique or not?
Maybe it varies.
What does it get you either way?
Nothing.

August 2010

Old Magazines

It saddens me to know that this is the last I will see of you.
Yet there will be another in the future.
One edition after the other,
Can I learn to love them too?

Colorful and bright,
You are what I will miss.
Time has grown beyond you,
But I haven’t.

Tomorrow is the end.
The end of our happiness.
I will never see you again.
You are reminders of the past days,
no longer found.

We are nothing but old magazines.
The next issue will be "better and newer" still.
It will have fresh adventures and interactions.
But I hope never to forget those I have had before.

August 2010

Grey was for a school assignment where we had to describe a color through poetry.

Grey

Calm, soothing, mysterious, like Windsor in the afternoon.
Solid sky, bright breeze, bleak light.
An old dog pushed aside by roadside snow.

Muttered phrases in the sweet, moist air.
Marching out into the wetness.
Umbrella open.

It is the color that fills those ancient family photo albums.
And the color of the pages in cheap paperbacks.
It is the color of the hair of an old woman, baking on a dreary day.

The faint glow that comes under the clouds,
The one that appears after a storm by the harbor.
Staining all that it touches.

It is often overlooked but absolutely everywhere.
A mediator between extremes.
The color of the very graphite used to write this.

September 2010

File A Good One, All Over the Steps, Manic Out of My Head were all written during the time when I was on Luvox, a very strong antidepressant that was added to my Prozac of already the maximum dose of 80 mgs It gave me what my doctors have described as a chemically induced bipolar disorder.MY writing and art were affected pretty strongly by the chemicals, and deteriorated and mutated into strange nonsense. These poems were awful, but I think they helped me evolve as a writer and allowed me to see things from a less literal and less cold perspective.

File A Good One

Help me cannibalize this filth,
I will mutate the night.
If the Heartless give me Hope
It transforms the crime.
A telephone larger than reason-
You devour hope.

September 2010


All Over the Steps

Sometimes I wonder:
Where is my Mind?
I believe I left it on the bus...
Oh well, enjoy your schadenfreude.

Keep the face of shame on,
and tend to the allure of irony.
Keep the whimsy in your head.
Rest beneath your cotton sheeted bed.

Yellow pudding as thick as wood glue,
with spoons as all to keep the dogs at bay.
Try your plan again.
MYOB.

December 2010


Manic

Heart beating brightly into its grand finale.
the dark covers the eyes.
And the skin goes cold in the perfect stillness.

Self destructive beauty.
Slipping through identities
Living it up, just for the moment.

Completely consumed by the fun:
sex, drugs and a gun.
Dying on the inside as you try to kill the outside.

December 2010

This is not actually a poem about doing drugs or drinking alcohol, this one is about the after worries of getting high.

Out of My Head

Oh man, not my voice, not again.
"I'm out of my head."
Wait, is that how it will begin?
I'd rather be dead.
I am not here right now.

Quick Check:
Pupils normal? Yes.
Jaundice? No.
Dry Mouth? Sort of.
Abdominal pain? Not really.


So wherever I am, I must be fine.
My eyes are watering now.
I clear my throat, the grunt isn't mine.
It sounds so far away; it feels like an echo.
I feel like I'm drugged, but I don't really know.

January 2011

My final grade school poem was actually three times the length of what is posted below. But I hated the beginning and middle of it, so i clipped its wings and was left with a bird that finally could fly.

Where I'm From Poem

I’m from more pills than I can pronounce.
From more doctors than I can remember.
I am from a new diagnosis each year.

I’m from suicidal to homicidal.
To accidentally bulimic to aspiring anorexic.
To sometimes schizophrenic to occasionally OCD.

I am from an internal wreck.
Heading towards clarity.
I am from this moment.

January 2011