I used to write poems
I’m not saying they were all that great. I’m just saying that I used to write them, which is something. It is something because writing begets more writing. If it’s silly and meaningless at first it still has a purpose because it leads to other things that are much more great. I found this during my project of importing my livejournal entries into my wordpress.
i wanted you to hit me again to finish what you started.
i wanted you to hit me until whatever it was that allowed me to love you fell out onto the floor for both of us to see
for me to see so i might see it for how ugly it was so i couldn’t hide it deep in my bones anymore.
when i first laid eyes on you i thought i saw the potential for beauty in your face in puppy dog eyes like waking in the middle of the night because my body wants to know you’re next to me
like take out and rented movies and shutting the whole world out because you would be bigger than the world.
i wanted to love you like it was my religion.
i wanted you to hit until all the control that i took into my veins let me loose in exponential measures of time so that i was free to think
free from my own cage free to name my own emotions.
i wanted you to hit me until i couldn’t see your face anymore that used to be pretty.
i wanted you to hit me until the hurt turned into a wild fury that i couldn’t reign in
until i was so blind with rage that i hit you back to take that righteousness away from you like hitting you back for all the tyranny i accepted for all the terror you sold me like a drug,
like hitting you back in this moment for all the times my Mother never had the strength to hit back. like realizing the strength she gave me from womb to fist like getting physical payback from hand to mind, as if she knew someday i would stare you down like that.
i wanted tangible gifts to take with me for every time my body would tense in answer to the question of someone’s anger of someone’s tight face of moving too quickly too closely.
i wanted restitution for a skewed sense of balance
for not knowing anymore who to fear or who to embrace, for avoiding the wrong things for wanting the wrong things
like a man i met on the street once who said “you ain’t afraid of a black man from arizona?”
“no”, i said.
what i didn’t tell him was that i know where true danger lies because i fear a man that put the name love on his hatred and delivered his kiss through an open hand.
i fear my own sickness worse yet that lets me love him still.
Keep in mind that at the time that I wrote it I was listening to a lot of spoken word and was also a bit more young (and therefore a bit more ‘dramatic’).
