MISCELLANEOUS POETRY

Pulse
by Shane Koyczan

What I said was I'll miss you
what I meant to say was I love you
what I wanted to say was that I meant what I said
and it's funny how all those things I could have said
flooded my head
after we said goodbye
and I should have told you
I'l be willing to hold you
until my flesh crumbles into bone
because I'm willing to die alone
but god knows I don't want to live that way
because some say that the highway
becomes a flat line
if you travel it for too long
and I can't tell if they're wrong
I've seen the strong
fall to their knees and beg please
for some strength because the length of one bad day
had them ready to throw their arms up at life and say
I quit
I mean I have seen some shit

seen the sun bake the gravel used
on interstates and intersections
into fun house mirrors that cast reflections
of my three years on the road
when I slowed to get directions
just looking for someone to hold
they were all happy to point away from themselves
and say "maybe down the road somewhere"
who know that you'd be there
who knew that they were right
that my flag is a traffic light
at night it glows red amber and green
and I've seen them everywhere
so I guess in that sense
the road is really my home
but i've got poem after poem
of what it's like to miss a home cooked meal
of what it's like to wake up and feel
my arm draped over your absence
how i miss breathing in your skin like incense
i bet you never know that when I'm sleeping beside you
I wake up just to make sure I'm holding you
feel like a mountain that doesn't know it's being climbed
as your breath is timed with the in and out of mine
I run my hand up your spine
like it was the centreline of a highway with no stop sign
I hit the intersection
where your shoulders meet your neck
passing the car wrecks of ex-boyfriends
who parallel parked on the dead ends
and I hope your skin
lends me an extra mile
so I can slow down take awhile
to admire the landscape
drape my arm over your being there this time
when it comes to your skin
I'm a drunk driver trying to walk a straight line

I've been pulled over so much
that your simple touch is enough
to make me assume the position
wishing I could stay there
where your hand searches my body for the contraband
that could land me in the jail of your ribcage
because road rage is a sickness
and my medicine is your skin
so I'm constantly getting myself in trouble
double parking beside you
merging with the changing lanes
of each others veins
all highways leading back to one heart
because I end where you start
I could spend the rest of my life
circling the same block
wondering
where does the world hide its private stock
of people like you
and why do i get to be the lucky one
who learns how to do back to u-turns
and some days collapse on me like night
I can't tell I haven't slept
when the light peeks through the blinds
and finds me
with my eyes wide open
hoping I can take all these poems
I printed on post-it notes
fold them into tiny boats
and launch them toward the shores of your skin
where they begin to colonize
take up roots in your eyes
weigh anchor in the harbor of your thighs
until all the tiny hairs on your body begin to rise
like a million flags brought to mast
at long last
I know I no longer have to roam
and I finally understand those sailors
who plant their lips to the ground
I do the same to your body
it's because you taste like home

and what I said was I'll miss you
what I meant to say was I love you
what I wanted to say was that I meant what I said
I miss you like I miss my own bed
after too many nights of sleeping on couches
and hard wooden floors
or silently sitting behind the doors of hotel rooms
that became wombs
breathing life into this loneliness
I miss you like a burn victim
must miss their own skin
I miss you like a sad ending
must miss some place new to begin
because some say that the highway
becomes a flat line if you travel it for too long
I can't tell if that's true or false
but I'm racing down it towards you
trying to find my pulse.


* * *


Lineage
by Jeffrey McDaniel

When I was little, I thought the word loin
and the word lion were the same thing.

I thought celibate was a kind of fish.

My parents wanted me to be well-rounded
so they threw dinner plates at each other
until I curled up into a little ball.

I’ve had the wind knocked out of me
but never the hurricane.

I’ve seen two hundred and sixty-three rats
in the past year, but never more than one at a time.
It could be the same rat, with a very high profile.

I know what it’s like to wear my liver on my sleeve.

I go into department stores, looking suspicious,
approach the security guard and say
what, what, I didn’t take anything.
Go ahead. Frisk me, big boy!

I go to the funerals of absolute strangers
and tell the grieving family: the soul of the deceased
is trapped inside my rib cage
and trying to reach you.

Once I thought I found love, but then I realized
I was just out of cigarettes.

Some people are boring because their parents
had boring sex the night they were conceived.

In the year thirteen hundred and thirteen,
a little boy died, who had the exact same scars as me.


* * *


On Turning Ten
by Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.


* * *


Mad Girl's Love Song
by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)