A couple of pieces I wrote for my spring spoken word show next week. :) Ohio Caverns took a little over a month, the Animal Crossing piece I wrote in one night. The theme is growth, and I've been having a really hard time with it. I'm supposed to write one more piece for it but my mind had been so preoccupied by other things that my poems have constantly just been ending up being about what I've been thinking about and dealing with, which is a little bit of a difficult to thing to fit into the show. I'm sure I can mold it properly, the poem I wrote today was kind of about what I've been going through while also matching the theme. Dunno. We'll see. Enjoy.
Ohio Caverns and Little Fires Everywhere
on wet, hot summer pavement
I am sitting there
in damp
dark denim
with red and
yellow and
pink and
green chalk
entangling itself in
tightknit fibers,
before reaching past
the layer of cotton
and seeping
into my skin,
which is tanned
unevenly
from a long, bare day
in the sun,
Who was my partner in crime
after i spent
hour after hour
with it
and a magnifying glass,
setting little fires
from leaves
picked off the neighbor's tree
in my grandparents' driveway.
i was always
quite fascinated
by the way
the greenish life
so quickly left
the thing
when you got
the light just right.
always quite fascinated
by the way it so quickly
crinkled and flaked
into ash, i found
it interesting,
that one of the four
essential pillars
of keeping this plant alive
could cause the sturdy structure
Of cellulose and chloroplasts
To burst
into a puff of carbon
if offset
in the proper way.
at my grandparents’ house
in the same driveway
i always liked
to coat my hands
in the chalk
that coated my
hose soaked pants
then clapping
and calling it
fairy dust.
i liked watching
the color
flutter in the air
i liked
getting a little
in my nose
and feeling the burning
like the magic
of the calcium carbonate
sneaking up my nostrils
Apart of it being
the very same element
that burst into the air
from the little fire of leaves,
the same element
that sneaks from my lungs
and out of my open mouth
like the magic
Carved from the stalagmites
And stalactites
i thought i’d never get to see,
and there’s something delightful
about the unknown,
that added to the magic
that i truly thought
was really working.
soon enough, or ten years from then,
when i finally got to see the stalactites
and the mites,
it made me believe
a little more
in the magic that spread
from the collision
of my palms
and in the magic
that sang from my lungs
and danced black and powdery
in the wind
seeing the CaCO3
come to a glowing point
like its own special mountain
in the dark,
seeing it as something more
than a stick of chalk in my palm
made me believe
a little more in the magic
when there was little else to believe in.
ON ANIMAL CROSSING NEW LEAF BEFORE SLIPPING INTO A STRANGE RANT ABOUT IDENTITY
splitting the plastic seal
surrounding the square case
that was sprinkled with two
little pink and blue
anthropomorphic llamas
and a blonde shih tzu
and a few other animals
that i cannot seem to remember the faces of
was an exciting thing
before i realized
the cartridge was maybe
a quarter of an inch too big
and not made for my console
but rather
my brother’s.
it was my game,
there’s no denying that.
my brother
would take no interest
in chatting daily
with his villagers,
or in attending
the tropical oasis of
Tortimer’s Island,
or in the joy
of getting your scout’s badges
for filling both
your bug and fish encyclopedias
halfway
then fully,
however there’s no way
i’d get my hands
on my brother’s blue metallic 3DS
that he may have thrown
off the balcony a few times
and that he may have broke the thumbstick off of
a couple other times
in a fit of rage
grinding on Lego Batman 3
or in the Angry Birds Trilogy,
because it’s possible that
at my infantile age of
6 years old
my finger could slip
and i could turn on the 3D mode
without realizing it
and end up shooting
ultra UV cancerous blue light
into my eyes
which would destroy my sight forever,
and we could not have that.
i didn’t really get into Animal Crossing: New Leaf
until about age 10,
when my corneas were
less vulnerable and my
brother was a little more willing
in his handing over of the traumatized system
that we got repaired soon after
each of its accidents.
it seems i am not
and have never been
the type of person to stick
in one place, in
as i reset my town frequently
and i have nothing that remains
from my save
seven years ago.
i remember the name of it being
“abbey”
in all lowercase
and not my actual name,
and i know that with each new town
the name was different
every time.
i don't know what this means for me,
maybe every one
was a different alter ego
and i played differently
each time,
or maybe i just liked to see
what it’d be like
to be someone else.
i often wondered about that,
i often wonder about it.
maybe i bore myself
and i want to embellish
by being an other
entirely.
maybe i enjoy the performance
of wearing another identity,
maybe i think i’ll find another part of myself
that hasn't yet been enlightened
along the way,
maybe i just like
dressing up,
i don't know.
i tend to look in the mirror
and feel like im looking at
something not quite uncovered.
something dying to be seen
but unsure how to
remove the sheet from atop its head.
something that suffocates
in the clothes it wears
and that trips over
the way it walks,
and im not quite sure
how to get out
from under it,
i am not very sure
how to look at myself.
but anyway,
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