I never found much merit in being secretive about my personal life. I don't think any good writers are.
This one is interesting because it was written out of frustration that I couldn't help someone and ended being written out of frustration with being betrayed.
One of the most painful pieces I've written.
-db
***
Pinup
Dear Inner Child,
If you want, in this poem,
I can call you an acid-tongued faerie
or a pinup girl for the damned.
(I knew you’d like that)
I am the yellow lenses in your sunshine glasses.
I am the seashell ashtray that rests on your chest
always knocked underneath your bed.
My lips will turn to ash
and you’ll kiss the carpet with dry heaves.
If you want,
I’ll help you eat those brownies we made.
I am the sprinkles
that you brush off the skinny jeans you bought
because you thought they made your ankles look thin.
So proud
you tally every intervention
laughing with the screeching chalk.
If you want,
I’ll watch the cyborg boy eat you
with his metal lips clutching you like prey
with eight spider-fingers and industrial teeth.
I’ll watch him devour you quickly,
like a praying mantis.
I will be silent
because I am just a picture you’ve taken
and shoved behind a pane of glass.
I will wrap my face in duct tape
if you’d have it that way
because I can’t spend another night
watching you drink from Wonderland bottles
waiting for the poisonous taste
of your kind of love.
So, I gave it to you.
He covered you in bluebird feathers
and his music filled your mouth.
In the end, though,
even after you lay on my side of the bed
even after you tore up the days of winter
on which I scribbled furiously,
the next month will come
with a new cover girl crawling out of the mailbox.
And you, suicide girl, you will find yourself
where you gave birth
among the discarded.
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2 comments:
wow.
"i knew you'd like that",
seashell ashtray resting on the chest, wonderland bottles, kissing the carpet with dry heaves, "because I am just a picture you’ve taken
and shoved behind a pane of glass." a new cover girl crawling with every month. you have such powerful language, i hope you know what a good writer you are and never stop. i often feel guilty writing about personal things, as if it makes me narcissistic, or i get worried what other people will think. but that must inevitably be the best material. i hope you keep probing and find you brave for doing so.
c
Thanks so much, Claire! It means a lot that you read and respond to my posts, especially since you know what most of them are about. I'd love to read your work sometime too!
-db.
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