Tabitha Vohn's Blog - Posts Tagged "poem"

I'm honored to have one of my poems featured on S.K. Thomas' blog.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Thanks, S.K. for being so gracious and lovely!!

Last week
On the drive home thru un-changed streets
was the first time I noticed the leaves had changed. Maple trees sport bursts of burnt gold and ocher rust like flame
Patches ignited from within like they know these dying days with waning light are beautiful
especially when we let ourselves be reminded that they're leaving with it.
I can't help but think of you.
Birthdays bear less than subtle needle pain loss why your heart chose two days before mine to stop I'll never know but our birthdays and death days broke juxtaposed patterns like stillborn shutters those blind hands that cut threads saw a suture they could weave when you left.
And we stayed.
Reminded with our pastel candles that we are still here. Alive.
I didn't keep the Cranberries CD or that pair of jeans nobody bothered to wrap gifts that year the idea of our birthdays too vulgar.
[I just looked up that album on amazon bc all I could remember was War Child how I couldn't stop listening to it. To the Faithful Departed. Are you kidding me? God and His humor sometimes.]
But I remember that disc being plopped into my lap before or after your funeral I can't remember. But my exact placement on the love seat and that numbness of life with no taste is photo album vivid.
I wonder if that is why I always feel undeserving of presents?
I passed those clusters of shivering colors and the number hit unexpected as the phone call that said "He was headed out on his tractor and hasn't come back..." Twenty years.
That number.
We've been taught to revere the accumulation of decade days to take notice of the solidity of zeros like stones when I was 20 I was engaged I was on the scabbed side of those fresh wounds and I was scrubbing salt out of the angry skin of others I'd outgrown childhood a lifetime in the solid round numbers and now...you're 20 yrs gone.
More of my life spent without you than with but...you--permanent--.
So ingrained into the DNA of my days that I mourn the existence of that Oct 15th as it becomes the mountain that diminishes within its own horizon the farther away the road leads
To lose the potency of that day doesn't stick and the hit of that number is a glimmer in the rear view In autumn especially on birthdays --I remember you-- And we
Are the war torn past
The hope of that spirit world
And the fringe soul revivals
Of the present.

This isn't for the boy who's gonna make it

Although I write about him too often

To fill that empty heart space with daffodil-scented air

when he's gone This is for the one I forgot

A passing point of refracted light

in the peripheral

I read a poem today about a boy who stole things

and I remembered that night you called me and

offered to lift from Kmart anything I wanted.

Watches perfume...you laundry listed all the things

you'd liberated

Proud

Like a child with Crayola murals on the white living

room walls you wanted so badly to impress me

You showed up at the family reunion I hated to go to

the one where I felt as out of place as you cause why

acknowledge the moonshiners and molesters their

cans of cheap American beer and dirty mesh trucker

caps who threw your Pap away like graying meat? By

the creek you picked me up wedding threshold style

like I weighed nothing despite that you were slimmer

than me the energy beneath your skin like fire

brimming in iron chambers with no chimney raging to

get out

And I was snow white fifteen. And I was afraid of you.

I couldn't get you off the phone and wrote my dad a

note for once relishing those harsh tones reserved to

make me quake

I said "say I have to go. Now!" It was the only cruelty I

knew more subtle than honesty Of why--at fifteen--

animal wound open

I couldn't save myself let alone you

I was glad

when you stopped calling.

I feel like years later my mom said you'd been arrested

for drugs or assault or something of the like

the devil in me whispered to the angel in me

"see: I told you so"

the devil in me said "you could never have saved him.

He would've eaten your fear like sweet plum colored

candy."

"Like you," the light in me asks?

Maybe it wasn't the trembling or the cowering he

wanted.

Maybe it was the snow white girl who took walks by

the creek

and kissed all her stuffed animals at night

In a pink bedroom with clean sheets

and a mother who didn't drink or scream

and a father not as badly broken beyond repair

in the picket fence house with non shuttered windows

That he found sweet.

You are the girl
I would have looked up to
in high school
Vintage tees and broomstick
skirts smell of the man who sold
them, the one that was with you
last night
old enough to be your father
and maybe recommended
by him
like good weed
a fix that keeps on giving
Your friend dragged you from
the swimming pool last night
where you--like Echo--unwound
gauze layers like peeling away
their pain when their eyes lick
your skin their charred fingers
raised poisons kept you afloat
a face-down Ophelia with hair
in seaweed tendrils
She would feel the heavy
carelessness of your
confidence that someone would
love you enough
to pull you out of it
It's that dancing that keeps your
ears clear of the symphonies
of phonies you're not trying to
hear
keep swinging
poll center
heart center
spread
dip
roll
find your center
warm chests you press to
it's not so different to close
your eyes under the lights
and feel the love
while they stick another dollar
bill in your g-string
anymore than it was to
free fall into that endless
ocean blue the chlorinated
hue of forgetting
that once
there was a little girl
with dreams of fairy princes
whose white horses
took a detour in middle school
when they realized it was girls
who'd get on their knees
for a hell of a lot less than
diamonds
and you
already knew
the feel of those carpeted
brush-burns
the education they sought
came from you
a fearlessness that was
a comfort to the rest of us
trying so hard to playact at
what we thought we had to be
our feelings fragile as loose
feathers the pluck and bleed
and all our hollowed-out insides
that growing up too fast demanded
you were a phoenix
and we prayed to be like you
even as we called you
slut
whore
home-wrecker
behind your back
our green tongues powdered with
secret love
we never saw the empty rooms
you went home to
or the used needles in the kitchen sink
or your panties mixed in with stranger's
clothing
or the diary you kept that said whether
or not today you want to live
all we saw were the rainbows the scarves
the beaded curtain framing your face
the wild abandon of your laugh
we ignored the urgency
with which you threw yourself
into that swimming pool.

I know...two poems in a week! Sometimes life demands it.

I dedicate this poem to anyone who's ever wished that people with closed minds came with closed mouths, and that we didn't always have to assume the worst of our fellow man (and woman).

My mouth is an Ariel
weary of arias
the only
notes I've known for weeks
are sour fruit
my tongue
would rather pen praises
my soul no longer has
liberty to sing those
affections that never feel
less potent truths I can't
escape from and
don't want to
I've boxed them up
pushed them into
cobweb corners their
pointed corners push
against fresh places
in fresh heart wounds
I'll keep them for you
it's sad that those
words meant to be
a nightlight
and pure
frighten blind children
who feast on lies they
tell like bedtime stories
when their happy endings
turned to tarnished tales
impossible to put faith in
they see what they want to see
the hymns they sing lyricize
love with sticky breaths
stolen tongues moonless
nights soiled sheets the
only thing they can conceive
is that the only way
I could take bullets for you
is if I used you
the only way
I could invite you to be
part of my home is through
the back door that for me to
acknowledge your beauty
so intrinsic it blinds to
look at you sometimes
is plausible
only
if I matched it with currant-colored
intentions
and criminal designs
I am death-weary
of them all
say let the lies turn back
on them like forked-tongue
plagues
let them choke on their
selfsame suspicions
that have little to do
with you
or me
and everything to do
with what's wrong
with their own hearts
their own sour fruit
their bitter-noted
arias.

Your silence is a
Daily death each time a piece
of me dies with it.

I stood in front
of a mirror today
just staring the
wounded animal behind
her eyes brought tears
to mine I find the woman
I was most sure of
wavering
I've often
wondered what it's
like to reach the point
where I'd have to
search to find her
we only ever see from
inward out but I am not
so cleverly disguised
as to fool those eyes
I knew stepping on
the unmarked path
to you meant
getting lost along
the way but I forsook
the breadcrumbs fallen
blind at the last crimson
sunrise did not know it
was my inner peace
dropping sweetness I
took for truth in the
imprint of my footsteps
It was easier when
I hoped for nothing
easier when nothing
was all I had to lose

There's a reason
I took to you
You were the girl
crouch-kneed
in the corner
I was the ghost
on the moor
You arranged dolls
gym class popularity
order on the bathroom
floor I loved him
for what I saw
We both clung
to silence as
to an absent father
sometimes pressed so
spirit bone deep we'd
feel the need to rattle
pots break glass scream
our voiceboxes hoarse
in starless storms where
he was nowhere to be found
You and I know the
Greek myth purgatory of
grieving the loss of the
living having failed him
already though the home
of his body was within reach
you knew the only thing
to do was hum lullabies
in salt-soaked clothing and
let your eyes swell shut
that surrender to the inevitable
the only two good choices
this false hope-held breath
or false pretense of healing
every lowering rock or
grey sky a mockingbird
every cave you let your
legs bend inward a
reminder
that if you let yourself
be honest about
how much you miss him
you'd let sulfur streams
surround you let the
roof fall snuff out that
impostor pinhole of light
and let the cave
swallow you.

Enya singing
Veni Veni Emmanuel
I can pretend that I'm
not behind a desk
that I'm not getting some
foreign toxic dye shot
up my veins at 2:30 pm
and have no idea what
that's going to be like
just know I plan to spend
the night watching Little Women
and wishing for snow and
flooding those neon veins with
cranberry and water
til I'm cleansed
but when Enya sings
Veni Veni Emmanuel
I'm surrounded by forest
watching the red slice of
cardinal graze ice-tipped
branches and plum-silvered
snow catching the light
from the clearest sky
just before the sunrise
when Mother Earth is as
clean as my veins
untainted by man-made
poisons She's fine-cut
blue
lazer-edged crimson
emerald haze the
clarity you only see in
winter only see when
tears turn to lace and glass
covering our sins
like Christmas
promises we sing in Latin
and in language not dead
breathing in the spaces
we so seldom stop to fill
I hold those moments we
sit around the stone-rimmed
fire
smoke kisses and carols
Christmas is our remembrance
that the truest necessities
are gifts.

The past few months
have been some of the most
painful of my life
Horror made flesh
thinking I'd lost you
my heart and head in
constant combat
warring over footsteps
traced back overgrown paths
that led us here
I dissected every fallen branch
fleeting white bird
trying with my fingers to feel
the indents of footprints
where I'd misstepped
was it too many texts?
not enough space between
my exhales to give you room
to breathe? did my desperate
attempts to keep you
smother your lungs with shadow?
was my imprint in your heart
merely an inlet
a temporary crevice
to let the light in?
Truth is
none of it matters
I dream a life so impossible
wanting to fold you in it
wanting to reinvent home
a place to call yours and
this connection of ours to
stretch in symphonic chord
eternal
always calling you back to me
I never stopped
to consider
that I made my steps rocks
at your feet
my tears tidal fetters too
vast of an obligation to
wade through
These past months
I've cried enough and
died enough for
both of us
lost in the labyrinth of
this nightmare I feared would
put on human skins
of
losing you, losing you
losing you, losing you...
but love, you are not mine
to lose
and you never were
and love
damn...I miss
calling you that
telling you good morning and
wishing you goodnight
Sometimes the need to
tell you I love you
swells in my throat like
panic constricts my lungs
and so I say it to a piece
of jade to forsaken air my
prayers become pleas
God, let him know how much
he's loved today
my sweet wonderful gift
I tell you that too often
but that
is truth
mirror brother
whose bond I feel
deep as blood
that space you carved
is always yours
and I hope you have room
to breathe now
I hope from now on
to love you truer
to my word
no strings attached
setting aside my covetous
self
allow the chaos
to have its course
I've never doubted
for a single
minute of it
that you're worth it.