Swan Lake on a Sunday Night

I poem and I poem,

I poem to no end

except that there is an end,

because it's a poem.

76.6

not even close to a thousand i know it makes a difference it has to.

i'd hold my breath but that is not human and i would die.

Hey guys, I don't usually do this non-poem-y posts (well I guess anything can be a poem...) but I decided this was important. For those of you that have not yet listened to slam poetry, YOU ARE MISSING OUT. It's probably not for everybody, but I think true poets like yourselves should at least give it a shot. So if you just need a little motivation, I'm listing a whole bunch of my favorites, so all you have to do it *click*. Enjoy =)

**most of these are explicit ;)

Andrea Gibson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPDVNvhKomE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0EIRwgXVOU&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoWNnt4Fdh4&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZg0ZCYDnaY&feature=related

Anis Mojgani:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ-Ox5uH3FM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQAC3WXOOWE&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvruwi211fU

Carrie Rudzinski:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3kzw0YcAgc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFAWLVqX_q8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V45pd3Y4XjA&NR=1

Taylor Mali:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnOrrknTxbI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpog1_NFd2Q&feature=related

PHEW. So i gave you a ton of options... check it out!!

Piano Skeleton

My elbows and my lungs agree,

I hold a newborn the same way I hold my breath.

Days can pass by the hundreds but seconds are only measured in fireworks;

I can't see the castle from here, but the moon was brighter than ever last night and so were your eyes.

It's okay if you leave me shattered on the floor someday as long as my pieces are stained with your fingerprints,

I think my fingerprints would be more natural printed on your ribs than on the ivory keys.

You will soon figure out that I can tiptoe down the stairs in the dark of night

and I can leave a whisper hanging like a dead man.

I can dive under the water without making a splash.

But look how I make a ripple

every

time.

The day was sunny March, but I know you felt me shaking under your hands.

I once found a ladder tall enough to crash through the atmosphere.

I climbed it until I could reach the tallest star of the big dipper, and I stole it out of the sky.

Then I swallowed it.

I could feel the star glowing all the way down my esophagus, and I never even stopped to worry that my stomach acids would devour its shine.

I know that my star found the secret cavern in the darkness of my body where the gum and the watermelon seeds hide.

I would say I was free but I still can't escape the moon's pull of the tides.

I'm still a slave to gravity and I couldn't divert my path from the north star if I tried.

Orion's belt may be big enough to hold us together

but I doubt it is tight enough to hold our pants up.

My star shines outside of my skeleton sometimes.

My light escapes through my throat when I sing sad songs by myself.

My light escapes through my eyes when I describe my best friend or my mother.

My light escapes through my pores when summer rain and soft words spoken with timid lips fall on my skin.

My grandparents have never spent a night separate from each others heartbeats.

This May will make 58 years.

My grandmother still cried when she told me the story of how she met my grandfather.

Some stars never burn out.

I'm offering you the lines on my palms, if you'd like I can show you:

My star shines outside of my skeleton sometimes.

(untitled)

If the feathers

and the beads and the songs on my hands were enough to catch the look in your eyes,

I might dance at night.

Instead of writing you midnight poems.

My fingertips are graceful as they connect hearts to pages,

but if you open up your pupils in the dark you might notice my calloused palms;

I've been pulling ropes and hopes and miles.

Fragile (Handle with Care)

I poem in my bed, like maybe real-world sunlight will never come.

I lock rhythms in my head, in case the real-world sunlight never comes.

When I breathe sometimes,

I think I can feel the universe pulsing,

I check my pulse when I breathe sometimes to feel the universe

I am also too careful, like my mother.

The seconds on the clock harmonize with the raindrops on my driveway,

tick turns to drip as drop turns to tock,

the entwining of nature and science is beautiful sometimes.

If I ever write the beginning of this poem it's gonna be great.

I've only waited 6 days but I think that you should know that the rate of diminishing hope only increases.

A Poem About a Railroad. Psych!!

Why do I love to write poems about people with a y chromosome?

And think about them, and dream about them...

I should like very much to write a poem about a railroad.

And think about the raindrops and dream about time.

But then the next thing I know I dreaming that in time we will sit under the raindrops as you read my poem about a railroad and then I am disgusting myself because I am so girl when will I be woman?

Human Scales

If I were fish,

then I would would swim and swim all through the night.

If I were a fish,

I would make love to an octopus, and hope he wouldn't eat me, or ink me, just to see what we could create.

If I were a fish,

I would breathe like a superhero and zig and zag between the teeth of whale because I would be invincibly vulnerable and I would be cute like the goldfish my best friend won at the fair and I would be fierce like a piranha, fiercer than Tyra Banks, and I would take so many goddamn chances I would be right next to Nemo swimming up to that boat and then eventually I would swim into the open mouth of a shark because what are the chances of a fish like me surviving anyway and only the good die young.

Window and a Tall Mirror

Shout like the lightning on your skin

for the millions of readers that just thought of Harry Potter and

for the millions of bedroom poets trying to find something.

something

deeper

something

more

something

real.

Shout like the daisy on your tongue

growing faster than you can keep up with.

stumbling on words

experimenting with words

experimenting

with the boy in your basement and the girl in the nighttime car still hanging secret on your lips like the crescent moon still hanging in the indigo sky.

Shout like the paint exploding onto the canvas onto the walls

the walls in your brain

the walls in your heart

paint them down like the Berlin wall

paint them down

until it rains.

Catch a raindrop in your eye

and then maybe you can see

the colors running together because they were never meant to be apart

because the clock and the music note cannot coexist

because this world is our childhood coloring book-

paint over the lines.

Shout like the man that gets taken to the zoo

and taken to the playground

because they do not realize he is an adult

because they do not know about

respect

like he does and

shout for the person that wakes up in a cloud and

shout for the person that can't sing out loud,

and shout for the person staring back at the crowd

because he is not a she and she is not a he,

and they are just people,

or dragonflies,

tired of the staring.

Shout like the boy that walks in on his sister kneeling over the toilet, finger down her throat

and shout like salty tears he still remembers how to cry.

Shout like the girl

for the day she realized her veins were the chains holding back the bird,

she finds the school bathroom on her 16th birthday to cut the chains so the bird can fly.

Shout like the Titanic hitting the iceberg

hitting his heart

when he realized he would never see another sunrise and the sparkle in his wife's eyes.

Shout like death

Shout louder like life

Shout like the millions of bedroom poets

writing their world on their closet doors

the words come too fast

too strong,

all I get down is a single line:

I dive under the water and I stay there until the screaming of my lungs reminds my brain that I am human.