i have a responsibility to the word
like weeders have a reverence for the herb

…they say the sensitive do drugs
cuz we find it hard to deal with harshness
cuz it’s alien to us
cuz we are not of
this flesh world.

i am Really sensitive
and words are my drug

..a daily habit have i
craving creative conjunctions to cram
or bind together my multi-threaded thoughts
then i read back my own lines
mostly disgusted at their design

cuz i don’t want to attach my name or any alias
to any scribbles less than perfection

…not that i ever get there but i know the neighborhood…

but for real
you almost didn’t see these rhymes
i must write a line a day
but when they grow up to be poems
most times i would rather throw them away

i have to force myself to share these inadequacies
these whispers of the words i really mean
and
because of my Obsession
i will never ever see that perfection
i am fixated on these letters that spill out of my pen
much more slowly than i write

and so i spend most of my day frightened that
i won’t get to a pen or keyboard quickly enough
to catch the dust that falls off my thoughts
and forms the poem you’re reading now

…i seek the solace of the alphabet
as a baby seeks the breast of its mother
not in awe of the a to z itself
but of what comes out of them
day and night as i observe life my oxygen
is
is
is…

DAMN!

…i lost it again
and the main fear of my life
is Still writer’s block
my GOD….

what if i touch ink to paper one day and nothing comes out
what if i step to the mike to freestyle and y’all don’t feel me
what if i lose track of time when i’m answering email or showing soemone how to use their internet browser or when i’m cooking dinner or when i’m on the subway and a line pops into my head

but
i can’t find a pen

what would i do if all my fingers fell off
and i lost my voice
and my nose wasn’t pointy enough
to poke out verse on the keyboard

…i fear the loss of the conveyance of my madness everyday
so i know my joints is long

but
i’m just trying to get this voice
out of my head cuz i really don’t have any other
option
but write
and right now.

I’ve been done with him long enough to know that I want the taste of you in my mouth like fresh honey. I can see your eyes every time I close mine. Falling under your spell

too
too
too

soon after this disengagement. Because I just don’t want you to be a rebound lover. I want to reach for you, apple of my high, sink my teeth into the delicious note of your apparition, still living in me. And I know I can’t have you, is the problem. I know it in every one of the molecules that collides within my body as they each scream your name.

I’ve not the faintest clue how to get you out of my system. Explain to me what makes someone sit around and read old correspondence over and over, smelling pages, draping paper across my arm as if I can squeeze your touch out of ink.

I can’t be like this. I absolutely cannot be like this. I cannot be brought to tears remembering the heat of your voice in my ear. Reason, sanity, unclouded straight-thinking – these are the things I ought to be clinging to, ought to be playing songs about and singing out loud. Songs like Slowly, Surely, I walk away from

but. Little “b” but. I can’t walk away from you, run, think, speak.

My first mistake was becoming friends. The first time you re-inhaled my voice I could hear the caution in yours. Like I’d be like danger to touch. Like our smoke meant fire. Like you knew better than to sip my poison.

And it would, is, does. That was the moment I swallowed any doubt that leaving him was right. And I didn’t know you were leaving her.

Yet from the first electric feather of your apprehension, I was back there again, back on my back drinking every word you ever said, letting you destroy me, recreated with your softly uttered syllables, whispering me into frenetic spasms that bordered on pain with their intensity.

How is it that I’m writing you again, writing poetry? – I can only write poetically, write poetry when I’m in love, with an idea, with a song with a

shit.

It is expressly forbidden to love you. I can’t even handle the idea that our skin might brush past each other in coming months. Or that our vocal vulnerability would waft in neighboring air. We can’t meet, ever again. Right now I’m losing control of myself, right now, thousands and thousands of miles split from you my heart wails a pattern in your chest, begging for release.

We must not be lovers. Both our worlds would cease in that shower of delight. And as the ebbing embers of each echoed eternity eventually eclipsed every elevation, all of the stars finger-painting in the sky would point at us

ending the world
ending the world
ending the world.

The best example of what I used to write I’ll do next.

Right now, I’m just remembering how open my mind and my heart were when I used to twist words on their backs and make them sing to me. Of course, if I didn’t have the ability to write every day somehow, I’m sure I would just curl up and die. I write because I must, I’m compelled to. And I’m convinced this is the gift I’m supposed to share with the world.

Part of the reason I’m retiring is that I feel like I’m supposed to be writing. Now, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be writing non-fiction about spirituality, completing a difficult novel I started back in 2000, about how a girl would develop into a woman if she traded her body image issues for a lack thereof, or just write poems.

But I intend to find out. One thing I used to do is write four poems when I woke up in the morning. I’d written over 3000 poems before I stopped counting. They’re usually about love, social issues, culture, or just funny. Anyway, you’ll see.

I feel like this is the most boring post I’ve ever written in my six years as a blogger but, blah.