You are dirty words written on my wrist

Your body is poetry to me and I want to write the words along your curves.
On your hips they’ll cascade down between your thighs.
Along your chest they’ll circle inward until no room is left.
Around your neck they’ll be written in blues and blacks tightly together.
A single word for each toe.
A single word for each finger.
My teeth will leave the words marked into your fleshy bottom, an unintelligible yet universal language.
When I’m done,
with the ink still wet,
I’ll have you on me and we’ll smear the words into each others skin
and fuck the poetry into each other’s sin

Royal

You look like a queen sitting on your throne.  All the spoils that go with the crown are at your feet, including me.  (Even if that isn’t much of a prize, owning someone’s willingness to do anything is a lot).

Your royal dress is down to its minimum, a pair of panties that are made of as little fabric as humanly possible, and that’s it.  Your nails are done, fingers and toes.  Blood red.  They look remarkable as they dance up and down while your foot bounces.  Your leg crossed over the other as you swing your foot like a conductor plays their orchestra.
There is only a silhouette of you.  The light is shining through the window behind you and I can’t see any expression.  All that is there is darkness and the occasional dissipating smoke from your cigarette.

Silence blankets the room.  The most prevalent sound is the smoke blowing from your lips.  My eyes are fixated on your swinging foot and your painted toes.  It’s hypnotizing.  Long live the queen.

At the garden’s gate

Can we overcome human nature?  Is there a point in trying?

When a little boy picks a flower, he picks the most vibrantly colored flower.  He doesn’t go looking for it, he just notices it.  It’s beautiful and he wants it, so he trudges through the garden and picks the flower for himself.

He doesn’t think if it belongs to him or someone else, or whether he has a right to pick this flower.  There is no consideration that other people might find this flower beautiful and they would like to enjoy it as well.  The little boy doesn’t stop to think of the flowers he tramples to get to the one he wants.  The path is now strewn with crushed stems and petals from his triumphant charge.

As the boy gets older will he stop and think that the flower does not belong to him?  Will he consider the collateral damage of trampling through the garden to pick it?  Can he consider other people’s enjoyment of the flower as much his?

Is human nature the destruction of everything in pursuit of individual wants?  Or is it the realization that there are other individuals with other wants that are just as valid as anyone else’s?  Perhaps its both and one overcoming the other.  That it’s the growth from one phase to the next and not everyone is able to complete it, and that’s why we’re in the world that exists today.

Hopefully we can all notice the flower and appreciate its beauty while, at the same time, allowing others to appreciate it too.  And, maybe more so now, protecting the flower from those who haven’t overcome the urge to pick it.

Creep

How long

have you been watching me?

How much

did you see,

and why

do you linger in the hallway

waiting for me

after class?

Better than being alone

“This strand of hair,” he slides his finger and thumb back and forth as the other piece of her hair fall away until there’s a single one left in his grip, “this one right here.  I love this strand of hair as much as I love every other strand of hair on your head.  Just as much as I love every freckle on your body and every angle of your curves.”

They were uncomfortably close, she thought.  Their foreheads only a whisper apart.  She could feel his breath along her neck and shoulder.  His eyes were too intense and she couldn’t take it, so she laughed it off nervously.

“You’re just-, no.  I’m-, um, thank you,” she shook her head trying to free her single strand from his pincer grip but he wouldn’t let go.

“It’s true.  All of it.  There are so many things about you that make me hunger to touch you.  To kiss you.  I can’t stop myself sometimes.”

His words weren’t helping her nervousness.  He always says them and they’re very nice things to say, but she can’t help but feel as if they’re just words with no meaning.  She doesn’t understand how anyone could say those things about her.  She’s nobody.  She’s nothing special.  All she wants to do is hide and he’s holding her up telling everyone to look.  It’s as if he doesn’t know her and makes the words he says feel painful and awkward.

She tilted her head away and pull the strand of hair from him, “I have to go.”

He grabbed her hand and held her, “you don’t seem as if you believe me.  After all this time and all the times I’ve professed my love for you.  The times we’ve made love and the times we’ve kissed.  The laughs we’ve shared and intimate moments, you still doubt that I love every inch of you?”

She sighed, “just don’t.  I-, of course, yes.  I do.”

He shook his head, “I don’t believe you.”

“Well what do you want me to say?”  He pushed her too far and the dam broke and the waters came flooding out.
“That I don’t think you’re sincere.  You say the words that you love me but you never seem to understand anything about me.  That when I laugh I do it out of nervous energy.  That when we fucked it’s because your hands wouldn’t stop.  When we kissed it was your mouth forced down my throat.  You’ve never known me, you’ve only ever known what you wanted and took it.  You never stopped to read my reaction to any of it.  You may say you love every inch of me, but only when you want something that I can give you at that moment whether I want it or not.”

He stared at her blankly and spoke without emotion, “so why are you with me then?”

“Because I don’t want to be alone.  I don’t want to be sad and think I’ll never find anyone so I would rather take someone who seems insincere but is nice about it.  I’d rather have a relationship I’m disappointed in than none at all.  And that might seem fucked up to you but, again, you don’t know anything about me so I’m not surprised you don’t realize that I would want that.”

Morning rush

I ate my breakfast standing over the sink this morning.  I guess I really shouldn’t specify that it was this morning because I do that nearly every morning, the ones I eat breakfast on anyways.  Sometimes I’ll lean against the counter with the sink behind me, eating a bowl of cereal.  The other times my waist is pressed into the edge and I’m leaning over the sink so anything that drips or falls out of the breakfast burrito I made lands in an appropriate place.

It always seems like the most practical thing to do.  Why dirty a plate when the sink is right there.  Of course the root of it all is the rush in the mornings.  Get up, get showered, get dressed, get ready and go.  Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.  Move.  Let’s go, time to leave.

Have to hurry kids off to school.  Hurry myself off to work.  Then hurry home.  Is dinner ready?  No?  Hurry up and make it, then hurry up and eat it.  Okay, it’s bed time for kids.  Get them in bed, don’t take too long.  Is it all settled yet?  Is there anything else left to do?  The dishes?  The laundry?  Did you schedule that appointment?  Okay, good, hurry up and relax before bed.

Is it over?  Okay, get in bed.  Pull up the sheets and the blanket.  Close your eyes.  It’s around 11 pm.   Hurry up and get to sleep because tomorrow’s Tuesday.  Tuesday’s are always busy.

Wake up.  Get in the shower.  Clothes on.  Breakfast over the sink. Out the door and do it all again.

It sounds crazy but it would be nice to eat breakfast sitting down once in a while.

Unshine

A woman’s hair used to be bright.  The colors were vibrant and glistened in the sun.  At certain angles the light would glint off the sheen and shoot a glare across the eyes of those nearby.  Skies were clear and sunshine birthed each strands lightened hue.  Life was full of cheer, skips and smiles.

But there was a girl who did not thrive under the sun as the others did.  The warm rays didn’t spread her smile.  The shining light only slowed her pace.  She wasn’t unhappy but the clear skies did nothing to improve her gaiety.

So she settled in the darkness.

While the others moved themselves to indoor tasks and rest, the un-sunshine girl found comfort in solitude.  The empty streets improved her grace.  The cool evening air roused her jubilation.  In the moonlight she found her smile.

She was drawn towards the sun’s antithesis.  Dark and cold became her comfort.  If the sun was bright she would look for shade.  She would carry an umbrella on her shoulder wherever she went and her eyes would be hidden by sunglasses.

The night held her heart and made her feel love.  With all her time spent in darkness’ arms she began to reflect it’s nature.  Her sun-kissed skin grew pale.  Her eyes lightened in color from brown to green.  Shadows weaved themselves in her hair and became a part of each strand.  No longer was it bright in color, but black as night.

She lived among the fair-headed women and her beauty spread.  The colors painted themselves in other’s manes.  Some were the sun.  Some were the trees.  Some were the flowers.  She was the shadows and she thrived.

Peony

The gods were petty when they made you.  They were filled with rage from jealousy, so you were hid just below the topsoil.  Now you bloom every spring and through the late summer, then die back as the cold resets dominion from petal to leaf.  Reds, oranges and yellows take from pink and white.  Fragrance is lost as crisp evening air blankets the sunsets.

Your heart beats a short bloom, barely able to take one breath among fifty-two.  Colors dying back to mush.
You come back though.  You need the cold to remind you how much you love the warmth, as if you could forget so easily.  The sun is your life and without it you would fall, or refuse to grow at all.
And although you display yourself in many colors of vibrant beauty, you do not long for attention.  Stealing away to anonymity.  You don’t mind being observed, as long as it’s without witness.

You are a bomb that was too much for jealous minds.  Healing gods with your beauty.  Now they’re all gone and you remain, year after year.  Beauty always wins in the end.  Beauty never dies.

An interview

“I know there are a lot of people who say they’re actors.  Actresses.  They all think they have the talent.  They all do.  How could you do it if you don’t?  You don’t get into film or stage, or really even television if that’s your thing.  It’s not my thing, it could be when I’ve had some time or the role is juicy enough or I’m doing someone a favor, just not right now.  Something on premium cable.  But if you don’t believe in yourself then you’ll never be more than a community theater stand-in.  You have to know you’re good enough.  In an audition you have to look at the competition and-, no, you know what?  You don’t even look at the competition.  They aren’t your competition.  You are the only person for that role.”

“I did theater in school, yes.  Of course.  It’s where we all start.  Or most of us.  It’s hard though.  It’s hard being at a level where you know you’re good and you can see yourself being up there.  High up there in the lights, while you have Johnny Football joining the cast because his girlfriend, the cheerleader, asked him to do something with her.  It’s difficult but you’re always going to work with obstacles and if you’re as good as you know you can be, you can look past it.  Right?”

“I don’t want to have that story-, do you know how many times I’ve heard it?  That story where the girl from Tulsa comes out to Hollywood and lands a big acting role.  I’m not the small town girl next door.  I don’t want to be typecast into being her, or anyone.  I want to be the chameleon who is unrecognizable from one role to another.  Everybody knows that when a woman gets to a certain age she becomes the mom.  Then the grandmother.  Then you’re out of the business.  Women don’t get acting jobs past 50.  I don’t want to spend my prime years being the innocent girl.  The victim.  The best friend.  I can do more than that.  I am more than that.  My talent is more than that.”

“I read scripts.  I go online and I print off my favorite monologues and I read them.  Or, not even monologues.  The best roles.  Sometimes, even, the male roles.  The ones with meat.  The roles that are remembered and have heartbeats stitched into the words.  I’ll read them into the mirror.  I’ll scream them into my window’s reflection at night.  I’ll cry them into my dinner.  Different scripts from different genres.  I’m trying to round myself into something that can’t be pegged by a look or a tone.  This business is so hard but it isn’t business.  Its art and you can’t stifle art.”

“I would never do-, or I can’t say I would do it.  Nudity.  No.  It’s not something I ever wanted to get into.  My body is-, I don’t know though.  You know?  I am not that type of actress.  I’m not the one who will do that.  It’s-, I don’t want to be the sex symbol.  I don’t want to be the pretty face.  I am an actress and I don’t need to show my body on screen to act.  There are roles where I would though.  Absolutely.  Yes.  Yes.  Of course.  I can’t say no.  No.  I can’t.  I can see myself doing a nude scene, or a sex scene.  Yes of course.  It would have to be integral to the plot though.  To push the story.  Or, if not the story then the character’s motivation.  I am a firm believer in the characters arc having to be fully told to truly get the most from a role.  If she needs to bare herself for the camera then I can do that.  I am absolutely able to do that.  Yes.  Oh yes, of course.  Sometimes it’s necessary.”

“To tell a story, that’s why we all get into acting.  It’s why anyone acts.  It’s why anyone wants to be an artist.  No matter if its a painting, a script, a dance or acting out a scene; it’s always art.  We are all artists bringing our tools to the stage and showing everyone beauty.  My tool is my depth.  The emotions I can convey through being everyone.  I can be you.  Yes.  Absolutely, yes I can be you.  With enough studying I can be anyone and redistribute that truth to the audience.  That is why we’re all actors.  That is why we do this.  To tell truth, even in the lies.  And it’s why I believe that actors and actresses are famous and need fame.  They need the attention of the people they are entertaining because if they aren’t conveying their art then they aren’t feeling alive.  We live-, we need to live through the expressions that we cause.  We need to see the effect we have on the people.  I am an actress because I am truth.  I am bringing you all the truth.  And, its funny you see.  I’m bringing you truth through lies.  I’m not me when I’m art, I’m everyone.  Yet, at the same time I’m a little bit of me.  It’s funny and profound and just, yeah.”