Sit down. Don’t move. Breathe. Look around. Close your eyes. Open. Now write. Stop. Come back to it. Later-time, revise.
A Poem, by our founder:
The poem below is a special one. It was the poem I wrote after my high school sweetheart took his on life. Let’s not sugar coat this, with a bike chain.
I remember going back to school two weeks after the incident. We were reading The Crucible (I was also acting in it at the time. I was Abigail.) and Ms. Untract was showing the film in class. I walked in on the hanging scene. I left class.
I ate pineapple in my room that night. It was extra bitter. I went to church the next day (even though I hated church) with Caitlin Abdo (hey Caitlin). I pretended to pray. Tried it again.
I felt like shit.
At M’s (that’s what we will call him) funeral, we spray painted his casket with paint. The synagogue smelled of toxic rainbow.
We ate cheese. Watched Along Came Polly. His house-keeper told us about the note. We got a ride from the police to a restaurant. Armonk was extra hilly. It was unexpected.
I felt like shit.
That night I went home, and for whatever reason, I wrote this poem.
It was the first poem I wrote. And really, it saved my life.
Puppet Theater
As if you float among men,
your winged-whiteness drapes
above my everywhere
supermarket, carside,
outside my-side
marks no body
the bed.
And now, I gaze
upon suspended hope
its coldly afflicted and hanging
my hope that you once dipped into your
toolbox of paints, as if pastels could stop
world spin.