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January 20, 2017 Poetry

Two Poems

Emily Present

Two Poems photo

This is Me in Many Parts. Part 1

when the computer quietly fades
i am circling my brain
it is a light dull pink that fades into me
i am thinking of rooms as time
time as bedrooms
as spaces fluctuated in feelings

to quantify
walking towards
forward
a sheen that is purposeful
you can almost touch it
the silver lining of a gravitational
wave
a silken lining

can you surrender under a dustbowl uncertainty?
settling in for a long hyper sleep nap
a future that consists  of non gender specific names
a naked singularity
probing us under a cold soft rain

too cold for tv
too …. for…. tv

a women is
a wo-mean is

i want a distinct hagiography
i want to be an esoteric commodity
with a telepathic heart

teaching oneself to poach an egg is an art
he said:
you’re tender like roast beef
and sullen like wind

under a  teacup ceiling,
a rising yellow loaf
the room, the time, had flowers that wilted
under me

the holy water began to drip through my head

out my nostril
into a sun baked bath

everything is free when you pay for it
you cant make this shit up
is what my father always says
this is real life
if its free.  its for me

hold an apple in your pocket for good health
she said that. so now i do.

do i have to pay for a mantra
to become saved?
eat your self sideways to feel OK.

when I'm cold i remember why i haven't died yet

the delis of the past had better lighting
i try to remember the meaning of things
exact and precise
but my brain has too much carnage
and I've created a sort of pink fog,
one that i cant head through
there is a soft smoke, no mirrors
just antique gems.

i bought an essay with someone else’s money when i was 23
just to feel what it was like to steal words
it was the sickest i’ve ever been

sometimes i forget what living is
and then i wrap myself in a crocodile duvet cover
and feel the Scandinavian version of cozyness
and want to go to the idea Home
and live inside someone else’s quaint banter
sardonic and warm
a family shaped of 4
with candles and maybe, old guitars
road trips in the summer time instead of camp you hate
drunk on manishevitz
they like the sun,
we never liked the sun

i want to be so prone to living

that no one can attach themselves to me
i can not exist through an orange lens
just a turquoise one i invented in my head
though, you said i looked better in red


Printing Living

we’re stuck inside the tv screen
printing  our organs on the bio black market
unseen
radiating bladeness
trusting the girls in pink neon and gold,
living largely
alluding how to live
out their rhinestone vaginas
again on the tv screen
this is the real
the flat glare
the striped colors coming out
in primary
to pinpoint your delirium
the brain fog of your latter self
am i dumber than my smartest self?
can i be unseen to myself
self self self

the sterile clean lines of a weather that never changes
living in a vertebrae of sameness - a palm tree to hold a thousand life lines
houses of glory built on stilts
and styrofoam
what do you with sameness?

get a bunch of
hasids in pink kosher tanning beds
billboards to stop history

roll out of a dull ache on a phantom limb?

this is my something self
which self is this?
self self self

i am a prism seeking fruition
who am i to know myself. . .
better than the grocer on the corner
who sees my eyes light up by a chocolate bar when it’s a little late out

i have many protagonists but i am not one of them. . .
yet

i am radiating out the Anthropocene
silver bullets falling out my hair
as i learn how to die
on a heated Korean bath mat
sipping a foamed milk tea

 

image: Carabella Sands


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