Day 2

So, unless I write a small one, it's going to be hard to put really unpolished, unfinished poems up here, I've realized. But that's ok. I can try to build some time in for editing and rewriting when I get a few more poems to play with, ones that I feel have a little life in them.

For now, a poem I worked hard on in college. It's not really indicative of my usual style of poetry - it's harder, less optimistic, less transparent. Actually, this one is almost as difficult to post as an unpolished, as it brings back a lot of uncomfortable, unhappy memories - and, in my infinite worrying, I find it hard to share because I'm afraid it will make the reader uncomfortable, as well. But I guess I should be glad if it does. That means it must be working on some small level.

A Daily Calculation of Value

For 2,000

oh that number
carves me quick, swift from the outside in,
snitching with sleet-cold shears
snapping and slitting with sharp silver shears
until it steps back and whistles
at the wonders it’s done
whistles and wonders at the wonders it’s done
but I still need a nick with the edge of a nail,
now and then.

oh that number
makes me brittle, hard inside ready to be broken
riding on a breath of brokenness
edging into the eye sockets of brokenness
so my anger can splinter out into shrapnel
fired not cleanly into passersby
fired in fact messily into passersby
until their bodies scream silently with outrage,
like mine.

oh that number
snatches me into its clutch like a seducer
calavera in Spanish, brother word to sister skull.
ay dios, con un calavera en la calavera (oh god, with this seducer in my skull)
there is no pleasure, no quick breath of bliss
only all day my mind full of twisted rusted nails
only all day my mind full of nails
bitten down to the quick
red and raw.

oh number
what more will you snick off with your shears
what more will you have me kill with my brokenness
what more will you have me bite bitter into nothingness
I am numbed to your seductions and just let you
take me
and have me
and starve me
and rape me.