Failed Fifteen

failed fifteen
(poem / 2008)

Fifteen years and habits form
Lightning pops and songs can break
I am the one who caused this storm
Fifteen more years and hearts still ache

To be at fault is to give in
or so life's competitions teach
To win! to fight! to go down struggling
that's all my mind can seem to reach

That word called "sorry" never matters
(at least not following "goodbye")
I'm sick of following these patterns
It's too clichéd to turn back time

What happens when a winner loses?
The game just never goes away
For what my confidence refuses
I can't deny, I'm scared to pray

Writer's Aftermath

writer's aftermath
(poem / 2007)

When I got back from my room
((which had been quietly and unstoppably reigning over me
like a lover - the way i loved a girl once -
seductively letting me leave and expecting me back)
I found the rest of the world was all too real...
it hadn't really missed me too much; anyway,
hundreds of candy wrappers sit mob-style on a side table
there's Christmas lights strewn all over the floor
clothes claim areas of the floor and inch toward each other like floodwaters rising over islands
the keyboard, now superseded, sits in a reveredly empty section
of the gray carpet (a novel's been through it so it earned some prestige)
the eight-inch cable-ready tv, the '90s stereo relic, the blankets, cables, telephones, cds, books, books upon books, notebooks, dr. pepper cans, stuffed animals i pretend i don't still have, chairs, bed, the duct tape book, pen, ipod, skin, muscle, bone.
These things clamor to be paid attention,
(they're lonelier than i am) and they abound like tides rising and failing
will i ever leave for good?),
I sighed.