WRITTEN WORDS
…rotating selection of unpublished & unfinished poems…
untitled (autumn 2023)
What if they knew
That I am pieces of a puzzled person
Hiding behind empty spaces
Afraid of being solved
Rigid tear ducts that take up my whole face
My facade isn’t nearly as complex as how I feel
Even I don’t understand the nuances of that knowing
When the glowing starts in the lungs
My stomach gets vertigo
And my jaw shuts
Teeth clenched
Tongue tasting everything it wants to avoid
What if they knew
That I am ashamed of being a hurting person
But even more ashamed of not wanting to show that
I am all splashed mess and table stains
Gutted fish mornings and finger painted portraits in the afternoon Every evening doesn’t want to be what I project onto it
Tries so hard to get me out of my own way
But my right hand is trapped suffocating what I wish to say
So much of my shame has been handed to me
So much of it I hand over fist consume
But it doesn’t pass like good things
It takes root and grows into something that I call mine
I’ve always felt more comfortable naming things that scare me into something I can’t describe
It is on purpose
It is a way to avoid avoidance
It is a word I use often to do this
There are so many words I say to avoid saying anything
Like word
Like solid
Like floating
Instead of I don’t know how to respond because I’m distracted by my own dissociation right now
Like
I’m all kinds of fucked up
Instead of
I’m so heavy of heart that I feel like the home is going to fall through the floorboards of the house
Shame is a gateway
Into understanding shame
What is the gift?
Something that opens
Or that which feels more like love when it’s left hidden
untitled (winter 2022)
In every orange walled motel room I stay
There always seems to be a small blood stain somewhere
Sometimes I don’t notice it until I’m leaving
Or rising from the box springs in the morning
It’s a game we play
The walls and me
Playing tricks on each other til we both fall asleep
The bathrooms are always too bright
Too few towels
Too many reasons to use a towel
Three sixes aligned in a row of tiny bars of soap
The door that doesn’t look closed even though you feel the lock latch
It’s a game we play
Whatever moves outside
And us in here
Boots covered in salt and melted mud signal a cold hearth
The bridge between
Every room is a smoking room
When you have an empty bottle for an ash tray
Everybody is an empty room
Or a bottle full of ash
Or a lost name in a frozen form
sitting up against a door that won’t shut
Staring at someone else’s blood
Telling the walls to write more
It’s a game we play
Pretending to be poets until a poem finally breaches
Says “I was here all along, you just called me sleep”
Now I hear it
Hours after
Days later
The walls whisper miles away
Praying for an ear to eat
And I oblige the psychopathy that self-affirms itself a muse
Says it symbolizes the arriving of a kind of smiling death
That arises serenely in broad daylight in a golden and very pure light
That leads to the following reflection
Is this madness what makes a genius of an empty room?
It’s a game we play
Whatever moves outside the walls and me
The salt
The snow
The blood and the soap
We all pretend to be each other.
Always end up as ourselves.
untitled (spring 2021)
Words follow me the way I follow them.
So do butcher paper table cloths and poems about death,
Friends who don’t know how to love themselves on purpose,
And an abiding stench of stale cigarettes.
The only thing I want to do in this life is forget my name in a city I’ve never heard of,
Sipping water and gulping wine
With the flavor of some sea on my tongue.
Words are wasted by their very definition,
And all of us become a shadow
Of some self or another.
I feel like a stack of 27 books
On a window sill that nobody can reach
Without climbing.
People are always climbing something to reach me,
And even when they do,
I usually remain unreachable,
Just keep floating toward the ceiling
Until the roof melts away
And the timelessness of the sky
Takes the metaphor of me for its own,
To have, to hold, to hide from home.
Anywhere can be home if nowhere is.
Everyone can be family if anyone is.
Family is a word most of us don’t know how to say, when the fog falls upon our good hand, and the past points itself in the wrong direction, always walking west even if home is to the east.
In language,
Loss lingers longer than laughter.
In life,
Laughter doesn’t know what loss is.
A look from across an empty room
Is an open window at sunrise,
All too brief
And full of fierce color.
We shine when we least expect,
And because of this I never expect much,
I just dream of cigarettes,
With stale wine on my breath,
Staring at a blank piece of butcher paper,
Feeling 27 books tumble out of my throat;
An arhythmic heartbeat.
Today I am glad to be alive,
Even if I’m not glad.
Today is neither a bad day
Nor a good day.
Today is simply another day,
And for this I am grateful….
all featured work is written
by Gabriel Kittle-Cervine
published here April 2024