Never Trust Poetry (by Rebecca Chasteen) Friday, May 29 2009

For today’s prompt, I want you to title your poems “Never (blank)” with you filling in the blank with a word or phrase. Then, write a poem based off your title

Never Trust Poetry

Never trust poetry
to say the things you need to say
to the ears you need
to hear them most.

Never trust poetry
to tell the truth
without it’s own twist,
making pretty to the ears
even the sad and ugly.

Never trust poetry
to navigate for you,
to do your dirty work,
to make your mark.

Never trust poetry
to settle it all.

Poetry is options,
variety of choice.
Poetry’s the vessel,
the Poet, at the helm,
must bear the rain,
take the salt in the wounds,
the wind, the sun…

elements can’t be written off,
but are written out
until they’re
something else.

Never trust poetry.
It’s
barely anything
but imagination.

http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/2009/04/29/AprilPADChallengeDay29.aspx

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Untitled (by Rebecca Chasteen) Tuesday, May 26 2009

I can’t take
small words
out of your mouth
at all
anymore

don’t bother
I’m not interested
in anything
you have to say
that has nothing to do with
the things that are specific to
you and I

I know
what you’ll try
and I don’t honestly give a damn
about your weekend
or your day
until you can say the  things
I need to know

if you’re not going to find them
and spit them out,
you’re voice is an empty room
I scratch the surface
I look for a window
I go crazy in the nothing
as my thoughts echo off the tiny walls

Don’t say anything
if you’re not willing
to say it all

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Collection Calls (by Rebecca Chasteen) Tuesday, May 26 2009

“All I’ve got is what’s in my head
Please don’t go,
I’ve been trying to reach you through this phone” – Harvard

Collection Calls

I hope you
burned those letters
and poems.
I hope the words filled the air
from ink to smoke
from solid pen-on-paper honesty
to vapors of things
not free
just changed
just mistaken
for the kind of thing
that a good night’s sleep and a shower
can wash away.

I hope you burned them
and I hope it hurt you
to know you turned it all into ash
to know what you had,
could still have
if you’d just been able to hold on…

I tried to write the words
on your skin
on your lips
your cheek
your forehead
your neck

I guess they never took
I guess you never let them sit
I guess the ones
I pressed to your chest
were the first ones dismissed

and yes
I’m angry
and I will be
until I’m done
grieving this
and I’ll grieve it
as long as it hurts
and everytime you
half ass
an attempt
to normalize this
you magnify it

You can ignore this
as much as you want,
it doesn’t make it disappear.
I hope you burned
all the paper evidence
and still twinge
when you remember.

How long are you going to pretend
nothing happened
nothing mattered?

It’s the dumbest carousel we’re on right now
but I’m not leaving
till you finally make the jump
and say something
one way or the other
I don’t care anymore
what comes out of your mouth

just that
you pick the words you know you mean the most
and stick to them,
place them
on my head,
rain them down

I’m so thirsty for anything you offer,
I’ll drink whatever you’ve got
and if you finally pour out the real stuff
I promise
I’ll stop.

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Of Wolves and Words (by Rebecca Chasteen) Saturday, Mar 28 2009

I know I have fought this before:
the same wolf, wearing a different sheep suit.
And it took more time than I ever thought it should, but I woke up one day
and it was over.

So in the morning, instead of giving in,
I will aggressively argue against this.
I will win this with the words I choose.
Those I use as stepping stones,
I will lift from the ground and throw at my offender.
Those I use as posts to lean upon, to keep the weight of it all
from flattening me to the floor,
I will take into my hands and assume the ready position,
ready to beat back the unwelcome, the unhelpful, the unending.

And the words I define myself and my life and my day by,
the ones that color and shape,
that create,
I will push them out of the little space at the very top of my head, right above my brain
and I will push them down into the places behind my eyes, into my throat, my mouth,
my chest, my fingers, my stomach, my legs.
They will vision me and speak for me and breathe for me
and feel for me and fuel me and move me.
They will mean something.

and those words that wait in the back of my gut, the front of my throat,
expanding in my chest,
asphyxiating, tethering, marbleizing me
those words that pick at the loose threads and unravel me from the inside out,
I will not, I will not, I will not
give them room to move.
I will suffocate them before they suffocate me, I will deconstruct them
until they are just discarded letters,
meaningless, powerless, pointless.

I will actively seek de-escalation and safe places outside myself
that I can cross into and gather the resources to continue.
And should I begin to run out of words or reserves,
I will quickly and quietly make my way to one of these saving graces
instead of being immobilized and devoured.
I have but to everyday just make it to the next
until the day comes that the wolf has collapsed right outside my door,
beaten, dehydrated, starved, strangled, stripped of his sheep’s suit,
and weary from exhaustion, from being so constantly disproved.

And most of all, most of all
I have to believe that day will come.

One Response »

 

Semantics (by Rebecca Chasteen) Monday, Feb 9 2009

Honesty must be tempered,
cautious,
timely,
diplomatic,
and capable of adapting to the most appeasing shape,
the most consumable form.

4 Responses »

 

language capacity (by Rebecca Chasteen) Wednesday, Jan 14 2009

i think we are so funny, the way we communicate in codes, undertones and overtones.
analogies, metaphors, similes. every conversation
a new chapter in our spark notes. i take a good
half a day reviewing and extracting key phrases.  we are magicians
with words and we can create every illusion we choose and then
sandwich it silently into the things we lay out with our tongues
or fingers

we don’t omit anything, we send the soundless words on the backs
of the most rational and acceptable sentences, we mime emotions
we won’t bring up because we have yet to find a way to arrange them
just right with letters and vowel sounds.

occasionally,

after a late night or death scare or something equally inebriating, we
form our lips around all the things we have worked so hard not
to say, and we damn the repercussions, and the next
moment we return without speaking to our corners of the world, it is
the cautious language that keeps our distances safe and weaves
our lines of history into a durable, almost tangible
truth.

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