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I asked myself, why were we
so careful with each other, and

it was because we were young
and everything was infinitely
important
to
us

, including the poetry we wrote.


I put, in parenthesis,
(If I am going to be honest,)
because
that has become a disclaimer.


Two years ago,
you were beautiful
and I was focused.
Our places may be
reversed—

I am a fabulous girl
in my fabulous green-and-yellow room
with my fantastic red sofa and

the sign that says "IN DEFENSE OF HUMOR"
which, I'm not sure what it means,
but at the same time, I get it, and

the pleasure is in not having to explain

Red lipstick and curls and a wide, wide mouth:
the kind of mouth that you never know what will come out of it
A song and dance number on the Hollywood Boulevard?
A shouting at the pigeons to scare them away from our lunch?
A grin sudden and bright at the prospect of hot dogs as we pass the dance studio no one seems to enter?

I wear green, all the time,
and I argue with you, all the time,
and I bang my fists on tables
and I do not like the way you shrug
and I laugh when anybody tries to explain Life
because only sane people try to do something as silly as that

Everything is TOO EXCITING
Tomorrow you might not be here!
Or you might kiss a homeless person!
Or you might buy that really sleek set of headphones you've been eying in that shop window for weeks!
Or you might open the door and find a note and follow it to a bridge where there will be another message and you will follow that to a tower and there will be another message and you will spend the rest of your life trying to get to the bottom of this never ending adventure!

So you see, children—

I'm laughing because you thought
I was going to give a hidden meaning, a sweet succinct summary,
but instead I am laughing alone in my orange knit hat
as I listen to rap music and open my windows to cold Los Angeles air.

black-stockinged feet fall
off the edge of a bed reflected
in the mirror that lines
one wall

thoughts
are redundant, since
the time I turned fourteen,
I haven't stopped
once

earlier
I practiced pirouettes and
chaine turns without enough
room

I imagined
stuffing everything inside the
old, clumsy suitcase:
a sweater, a hundred dollar bill,
and leaving in
the night

I don't know anything, but
things aren't

always propelled by other things.



_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2011
please do not reprint without permission

Staring toward the location where the skin
stretches over the poking bones—
so tightly like plastic-wrap
over a bowl of yesterday's tuna—
feeling thin and skeletal.
I'm afraid you can see past it
to sense my erotic dampness,
lips curling when my breath hints at death.

Place me on a stage and I will fall.
Make out of me a light and I will flicker.
Call me an angel and my demons will arise.
Kiss my cheekbones and you will taste tears.
Sling a jewel round my neck and I will choke and bleed
as a gray fish longing for water's safe oxygen
on a salty white dock in November's frost.

I belong here, shameless in my visage.
Nose running. Braids torn. Ashes
in the shape of an X across my eyelids.
You may leave now, memorizing no guilt.
The reach of my breast does not extend
to your chest, its gaping cavity.

Everything in me is neither black, nor white,
but only cream and shadows.



_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2010
please do not reprint without permission

someday is a long time coming;
some days can be so long.

hear my words saying so long;
long for the day when you'll hear my words.

my words have no affect to you;
to you I wish nothing but to find affection.

nothing has different meanings in different minds;
differences carry such weight, now.

now is a time that stretches on;
on my eyelids in an ongoing march.

there are dog droppings
and dead birds
and this conversation suddenly
becomes about racism.

I thought it was pretty at the time.

darling, you take the rock
out of rock & roll.

buy me some seven-up and
we'll road trip to a lake,
telling raunchy jokes and
falling sick with too much laughing.

Now, you do nothing for me.

your anger lends to hurt,
same as my tears. stuff we don't
care to show but never fails to
spill out.

Looking poised is not the same as being.

hard songs of nails and blood,
drench my fingers in livid notes,
I can close my eyes and sing along.
you want me with your mouth


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2010
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Great Kids Books

i hate the color pink
i hate the way you used it against me, the way you wrapped me in its shroud and i felt like a corpse, bones and fading flesh the color of pale pink pearls or the gums above a baby's teeth when it lets out its first fairy-birthing laugh

i hate medicine and i wish you wouldn't make me drink it, it makes me shrink down down down to the size of entering wonderland except there's no door to find my way in and even if there was, there's no key in sight

i hate the day you took me to sea world and the dolphins were smug with smiling and they would've been beautiful if you hadn't been there and i hate that you ruined dolphins for me

i hate that i let you ruin dolphins for me.

i hate that i can't feel silk or smell roses or taste sugar or hear her voice or see the color pink without gagging at the thought of you.

"everything has meaning!"
she yelled it loud, one of those wild girls
whose smile never leaves her mouth

it was a rare moment when she stood still.
she held it out to me, the white box
texture like the bumpy paint on the ceiling
of the motel room we stayed last summer
off-white strap, black lens asking
a question I don't know.

she'd never looked so free,
handcuffs circling her wrists,
giving me the white box's secret evidence
while the star in her left eye
glowed at me.

I flashback to the day when she
took my chin between her fingers,
the signature smile on holiday someplace warmer
"don't make it about the seams," she pleaded.
"the stitches, the thread, the color
of died wool, the exquisite Parisian buttons.

"make it about the pearl necklace
he bought from the pawn shop on
your birthday last month, and the
moment you broke that manicured nail
and he kissed the blood and earth away."

that meant something to me, and
I thought I understood her,
but as I see her uncaring shoulders disappear
now behind strict black doors,
I wish I would've asked what
does it mean to you?


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2010
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Some Novel Ideas

even if what i say is not what you want to hear,
please don't spit it back at me.

haven't you ever heard fighting words before?
unwelcome packages show evidence otherwise.

(just don't remember my name.)
but it's not that I'm ashamed.
(just a little heartbroken.)

someday maybe we can sit under the hollywood sign
and laugh about that time, that time....

[image credit]


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Lee Wind

I told her, Listen.
Their faces are haunting me.
And she, because she is like me,
said back, They are haunting me, too.
We exchanged ghost stories, then.
(If only they were real ghosts,
maybe our stomachs could stop hurting.)
She talked about turning on the telly
and the shock of his grin
I said I went to the movies
where there was this enormous poster
with Angelina Jolie's name and eyes
next to the one about bones that are lovely
but when I turned around
(I swear I almost jumped)
he looked at me and I wanted
to say something back
but I couldn't, and so I left him standing there.
I've sworn off westerns, let's watch
a horror movie, or one about a planet of blue people,
only I'm not as strong as you,
so today I will search out those
I want to avoid.

If I was truthful--
If I was honest--
I would admit,
that's not really what I want.

Let the haunting continue.
It's all I can do.



_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Great Kid Books

anatomy is
bones and blood and
sea horses
and the tiny blue letters
i can almost read
when i look at their fat,
protruding veins

i ask God questions
when i look at the sky
even when i can't see
the sun because there are bunny rabbits
that are so silent and they
don't say anything

the patio furniture was old
and greasy, the linen
marred by the excretion of birds

but i sat there anyway
and you couldn't make me budge
even if you had started crying
(i knew all along i wasn't any good)

you're begging to be analyzed
until i start bleeding from
the place on my thumb where i bit
down when i wasn't aware

she asked for truth and i gave it
to her and if you wanted it too
you could search me out:
all i want is to tell the truth

it's the not wanting to hear it
that instructs us
not to go poking our noses
searching for it
or we might get scratched by
that funny-scented hedge
we left back in Herefordshire.

that was before i stopped the consumption
that was before i noticed the resemblance to the fiction
that was the before part of "before and after"



_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Great Kid Books

i don't think the way i feel should be dictated
by what you say you feel, by the words and
song coming from the expression on your face
and whether or not you are skipping or walking or lying down.

i don't think what I do should be dictated
by what he did, even though i admire him, or by what
she did, even though she's obviously brilliant.

i don't think the way i write should be dictated
by what you write, the long words and complicated
thoughts exposed on your smooth skin, tenderness
always open for poking and scratches by the branches
that hit you as we walk down the sidewalk together.

i don't think my dreams should be dictated
by what everybody else says a dream ought to be,
the growing up of a child to adulthood and the
responsibilities the depending the independence
the manhood of the money you carry in your wallet.

i don't think the way i deal with my problems should be dictated
by the way you deal with them, because i am not
you, and those things do not come easily
for me, and silence means something different to me
than it does to you, and so does touching.



_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at A Year of Reading

the world,
he said.
it overwhelms me.
the lights
and the prayers
and the little birds
against the sky.

and it's all revolving
around me.
the central pull,
the thing called gravity,
is me.

she was talking about me
when I came in the room
and you rushed over
to offer me a drink
and he winked at me
and told a joke,
hoping I'd laugh.

I want the whole world
to spend a month looking
at a glass of water.

mesmerized
by tiny droplets
of this wet substance
that, when combined,
become one
giant droplet
and we push it
down our throats,
gulping savagely
for the texture,
the taste,
the life.

it's clear
and it's magic
and it's all contained
in a jar of glass,
which is itself another miracle.

the water is what's important.
the water is what we should talk about,
and peer at,
and say our prayed thank yous for.

stop watching my movement,
stop asking me to dance,
stop caressing my hair.

look at the glass of water.

I want you to look
at the glass of water.

look at the water.

I'm asking nicely.
(and now you go
to look at it.
and now you are doing
what I've said.
because I've said.

and still
the world
revolves around
me.)




_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Random Noodling

I'm not this girl

hair falling across my face
into my eyes.

I'm not this girl

wearing pepto-bismol pink
rose-printed dresses.

I'm not this girl

posing with words
I have no interest in.

I'm not this girl

held behind a fence
where the music can't reach.

I'm not this girl

and I'm not sorry.



_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at GottaBook

slow down, little girl
take a breath, take it in
feeling lost and confused and gray
is not for you.
wait a while
your time will come
so wise and so childish
it doesn't matter what they think
or even what you do, yet
wait a while, young girl,
it takes your whole life to grow up,
and that is as it should be.
don't rush too fast,
don't fly too high,
nestle instead in this grass
under these trees
and don't be anything.

only be.


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Picture Book of the Day

I am standing outside of my cage.
For the first time.
It's only me.
I don't need to be hand-fed
Or cleaned.

Everything out here is so white.
And less clean than I'd imagined.

Losing my wings was a small price to pay
For feet.
For this dirty house
Instead of that dirty cage.

The light is unpleasant,
But it's better than none.
I don't think people realize the darkness
Metal and gray give off.

I almost touch it.
I pull away.
I have finished with that life.


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Crossover

and I keep repeating things.
you remind me, gently,
I've already said that.

oh. and I'm confused.
but there's something important,
I don't think you get,
this is important.
it is important for me to repeat.

you weren't there,
so you don't know.

please believe me,
this is important.
I need to repeat it.

But that's not the way it sounds,
I'm not getting this across very well,
so I apologize, again,
and stumble onwards.

I still can't find a way.
the trying itself is a redundancy.


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Wild Rose Reader

it's the same feeling
every time
the very air does something to me
turns my stomach
because I need it too much

the funny thing is,
I always think,
I'm okay this time.
This time won't hurt.
This time I'm better,
because of ----.
I'm always so
wrong.

hidden importance
drives by,
on its way to what I want
I can hardly breathe, the
aura of mystery
is too much like strong perfume
at the same time alluring
drawing me in
but making me feel
unwhole
showing me
my weakness

and I know you can't
understand,
even if I try to explain.


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at Live. Love. Explore!

yesterday
as I slipped out the door
on my way
to work
at the popcorn plant,

I forgot the shiny red
umbrella
that made
all the difference


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at allegro

1. AKIBA Scenario, 2. occhi di gatto...EXPLORE...#249, 3. 宮川町 Miyagawa-cho, 4. parasol, 5. It's raining here without you, 6. Lego ergo sum, 7. Cat in the Hat, 8. Le monde pourrait s'effondrer, 9. Look at your face in the Mirror...


Two happinesses
my pair of green, lush
eyes that see
more than the eyes
of a killer
or maybe just more

down a street
you walk, you hold
yourself straight and stiff
with your red thoughts churning
looking at something
you won't let me see
I try to glimpse you

but
consumed is a better word
than want or need

after all that,
I am grateful for
just this, just this
simplicity that cannot be
duplicated
as I lay my head
where you cannot
come

just because I look
down
doesn't mean I'm not okay

I can still touch
what I hold
and see
what I am
and gasp
because I feel,
not because
you are there.


_____
copyright Miss Erin McIntosh, 2009
please do not reprint without permission
Poetry Friday roundup at ayuddha.net

I'm sort of stealing this idea from cuileann, basically because she's brilliant.

Every week I'd like to post a mosaic of my some of my flickr favorites. I'm always astounded at the beauty in photographs I see there, and I want to share some of that with you all.

1. Vice versa Karen, 2. To command a Sun, 3. She brings the sunset, 4. 310/366 {swingokeh}, 5. A Handful Of Sparkle, 6. Up close, 7. Web in B&W, 8. All the days spent together [EXPLORE], 9. .talent.

wishing
for ok
aching
for light
it's better
than you dreamed
open arms
happiness
of the variety
that makes
you cry
in a moment
you've glimpsed it--
physical,
real,
touchable--

hope.


_____
copyright Miss Erin, 2009
Poetry Friday roundup at Adventures in Daily Living

I can hear Merrisa yelling for me, like she yells everyday. I can't remember one time she's lost her voice, or gotten a sore throat, or anything. I wish she would. I don't care if it's a bad thing to wish bad things for other people, because Merrisa deserves badness.

"All of this MUST GO!" she's yelling. She's probably talking about my room. She had this idea, the other day, that we should all empty out our rooms. Completely. No, really, I don't think you understand - she wants our beds gone, the shades off our windows gone, EVERYTHING. "I've decided," she began. We hate when she begins like that. I suppose if I don't go up there soon, she'll start putting everything that'll fit into those big black tacky garbage bags. When I first heard what the word tacky meant, I instantly thought of those bags, no kidding.

So we'll clear out all our pieces - the fat pink panda that Rainy gave me when he won that throwing-game at the fair, marm's old wedding trousseau, my collection of cameras. With Merrisa, you know you probably won't see any of it again, so it'll take awhile to say goodbye. I'll have to be sneaky about that, though; I've a feeling goodbyes would be going against the whole purpose of Merrisa's plan.

So I go up to my room, and I look around, and I decide - because Merrisa's not the only one capable of doing that - maybe not to say goodbye. Maybe I should just do as the Romans, stuff it all into the tackiness.

By tomorrow night, the room's lifeless, just like she wanted it. Everyone else's is, too, but I don't much care about them. It's mine I mean to mourn, although part of me says not to. Part of me is like Merrisa, even though I could kill myself for saying that, there.

I rub the fabric of my pajamas; the only thing that's left of what used to be. My nose starts bleeding, just like it always does when the dust is churned up, and goodness knows the dust has never been as churned as during the past 36 hours. I start to cry, which makes it worse, because I figure out there's not going to be any kleenexes in the house anymore. Oh, well, the carpet's going to be stripped out tomorrow anyway. A little red never hurt any about-to-be-ripped-away carpet.

But man, it hurts me.


_____
copyright Miss Erin, 2009

by Miss Erin

I used to think that fame
was one definition--
that if you were famous,
it would be so obvious

but now that I'm here
I know it's not like that
because I'm famous, yes,
just not to everybody