Two Poems from High School (2006, age 18)

Grace

This is the way
it was meant to be:
plastic bags and newspapers
neon signs and symphony
of homeless wind.

There's this girl screaming
"I'm never gonna let go of this balloon!"
So I guess it must be Mars
rising over us later on Main Street
Like the way your face shown
the first time I said your name
Under the sun on the best day
to ever grace the Park.

Sprawled in grass
bathed in the borrowed light
of our watches and windows up high
reminds me of a fish out of water
and I think of how I want to-
but there is this man whsipering against
the nape of my neck, saying
"I never want to let go of this
balloon!"


Finis.

The down is up. We wait at the dockside
since midnight. My 18th, threshold
of nothing really, but cigarettes and lottery tickets,
neigther of which I celebrate
and instead of parading down the lapped shore,
tightfisted and unruly, I have been calling my name out
to the water's edge for hours
begging my youth to remain attatched
to my branches like unripe fruit.
I hope I listen.

Simple

I missed you today
Similiar to how I miss
Jolton Joe and martinis
stirred, dry and never shaken.
Almost the way I miss
Marilyn, Billie, and Bette Davis
and the way "What Ever
Happened to Baby Jane?"
made me give you a stern
and steady look as if to
say "If that was us-I'd kill you."

I missed you today
the way Kansas missed
Judy in that little dress
before she went
Hollywood and Liza
hit Boradway like a fever.
I miss you in that way
where I know I'll never

see you again.