I usually don’t post poetry to the web–not for free.
But then the words “usually” and “poetry” have not come from my mouth in the same sentence for a few years now. I have done very little new writing.
Like the shallow breathing I have refused to commit to for the last few years, this silence is not an effort so much to stop the words as it is not putting forth much effort to make them happen at all. Because like the breathing, they don’t feel good. But–again like the breathing–they will and do happen. Shallow though they be. Whispers though they be.
I know I will live forever regardless of whether I put forth the effort to build the monument or not. And so, the words y’all…Here are some of them. Not that this is a celebration. Yet. Sometimes the oasis in the middle of the desert is nothing more than a mirage.
Blah, blah, I ramble. Here’s the show you came to see:
Hangnails
will not
be that girl;
feel that thing,
know that
like
that.
so i
keep you to myself
closet you
in a bin
of unused things
pass you cautiously
smell you, stale,
every time
i
open that door;
ignore you like
i can.
my hands
will not be stilled;
mock me in hang nails;
drift
into emails
i delete
you
like the
recycle bin
is not already full
of you
like
new;
you never left.
won’t be that girl.
brown of me
spreads like
rice
whole;
too much
to thin into
cracks
where you
won’t find this girl.
30 August 2007
______________________________
Yellow
for Newark
summer sweet corn and sunshine
bright like
promises broken, shattered
turn diamonds beneath its rays.
i stare into you;
wish this kind of forever
wasn’t the blinding kind.
hope commission reports
“okay” has been legislated:
five years for a nine, deuce-deuce—numbers with new names;
after school songs, high stepping sass;
winter.
in time yellow fades
into the white of
clouds.
even granite is tested;
cracked by time.
rain downpours, then spits,
then drought.
but first,
the band bows;
stadium sleeps
before an eruption of cheers
and sanctioned body to body combat.
you become a silence
painted into a mural
of yellows,
reds, oranges, royal blues, and emerald greens
screaming for “okay” to take on a new face.
i see yours.
i hear you laugh.
know you’re still laughing.
and really:
that’s okay.
4 September 2007
darlene anita scott 