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Click Title to Download Microchap
Cover art: ‘Pentecost Dance’ watercolor
by Glenda Dietrich
www.glendadietrich.com
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Somebody Someday
I feel like I am somebody,
not that I will be somebody someday.
I used to daydream of perfect boys for me lined up,
And I could pick my soulmates out.
Time goes faster at night.
Maybe if my history books were written on your skin,
I'd remember them.
Flattered and flustered are the only two words I feel
Most of the time.
There is less oxygen to breathe
and no palm trees in sight.
Ich heisse is all I learned tonight.
Though another thing that doesn't count,
is that I haven't lived life.
Blue and red lights hung like blinking 3D glasses,
and a picture of burning ocean pink waves at the edges
reminds me of being alone in a tall lifeguard chair
as music played in the distance bouncing off silent sand.
The people in your drawings look like empty white ghosts,
I think that's exactly what the city population looks like.
Hollow, whited-out people.
Your number on a napkin like Beatles lyrics
on a flightless cancelled day because there was
snow covered up to our hearts.
And the way your letters dip shows you are an artist.
That not even the alphabet can hold you back.
And I wish I could be like that.
The old man in the taxi didn't say a word,
after an evening full of letter boxes.
I wonder if everyone is just as intrigued by
others listening to lips speak.
I want to know the secret of fame,
keep it once and give it away.
To cold outside for a flame,
too cold to have any habits at all.
I know I am somebody now,
just not sure I'll have something to show for it
someday.
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The Day Before I Went To The Mental Hospital I Wrote:
What Makes Me Curl Up In A Ball
- A List Of Sorts
God protects the young angel.
I can tell that some people have never felt real happiness.
They have just felt money, and the joy of greed.
I'm not afraid to show you off, I'm afraid to show myself.
I see the world through the eyes of a newborn.
As we get older we become more conscious of others being aware of us.
Eventually we just fade away.
I never touch my face because it feels like my beard will fall off.
Things I can never be, bumblebee in my mind, keep me awake at white collar dawn.
Someone said that I write love poems even though the love shatters into a million pieces,
the seeds of which make flowers grow, but yet, I write anyway.
I haven't been to any of the places the wind blew them, and I don't think I ever will go.
Even if I was stuck in a dungeon, I'd find a crayon box and make art.
I wish someone would ask me what each verse means, before I forget.
I think I stay up at night so the future comes quicker.
Everytime I take off my belt, I know it holds my jeans up.
Only, I must have a real odd idea of how the world works because of the movies.
I feel like nothing I do has an end. What is the end? What is living?
If everyone has their own definition of living, why does it feel like I could die tomorrow?
Will people at my funeral say, "He really lived. He knew how to live.”
I keep waiting for somebody to show me how to live,
or at least love my life. I don't want to live for somebody else.
I miss swimming and how tired and hungry it made my muscles feel.
I keep dreaming of being allowed in the boys locker room
and what it would be like to wear the proper uniform.
I never go to do it, and I dream of things I would never do and can't do.
I have qualms about them, how it's too late to do them.
And I'll never forget what I never did.
I can only face people when I know what they think of me.
I know I'll get through college but I don't think it's the right way to educate someone.
I want people I admire to use pie charts to tell me to stop admiring them,
and to admire myself, because I can read a pie chart.
I wish for streets made of ice and for all the dapper boys to stare at me.
We eat Zesta crackers in the mental hospital.
Poetry has it's claws in me, and I wish it was something you could quit,
because I'm addicted to it. Is there a poetaholics anonymous?
I made a vow to myself to never see my extended family again,
until I feel like my beard won't fall off. And so far, I'm falling forever.
I look for the perfection in everything, but what really messes up my screwed up timeline,
is that I look for perfection in people and I haven't found any.
I'm never sure about anything, my mind changes like traffic lights.
I never know what to do with money, and I'm afraid it will disappear, nobody deserves it all.
All humans have a war side. How am I supposed to know if you'd help thy neighbor?
Pay it forward it a load of horse shat.
Though I like the movie not the concept. Nobody ever does it.
I'm real harsh because I've never seen a miracle.
I realize children are the smartest among us, and they have no way to be heard.
I'm more lonely than a desert.
Impossible dream of two men laying on a cliff, holding hands.
And happiness, floods their house until it suffocates them, til' death do we part.
The rest of the fireplace smokes, signals and beats to heaven
until the last wispy grey sends a message to humanity.
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Jason Bartlett © 2014
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Jason Bartlett is a Fine Arts student at CCRI.