Celebrate poetry and other writing
That perfect girl was never real
She never existed
I know how you feel
I thought she was real too
She was mine and I was hers
She was forceful
She survived it all
Tears never suited her choice of day
What’s so wrong with mediocrity
Such effort is futile anyway
I loved her
I miss her
I was her
-Jennifer Barajas
So what of the night sky
If you were anything
Then be one star barely breathing
When a million are almost deafening
I challenge you to live and beat again
To stomp out the embers of your burning rage
So live, for there is no future for me
If there is, it lives somewhere beyond your lips
Beyond your mouth that ate my grace
Be my eyes so I can see the world again
Sober and serene, I remain in you
Storming but unseen
It was only your gaze that swallowed me whole
But now I exist within you
I’m the tarnish on an
Otherwise flawless soul
I haven’t been able to change a channel or scroll through Facebook without reading about the death and probable suicide of Robin Williams. Last month I posted an article I found on suicide, refer to July 14th post to read an interesting perspective. It may be difficult to read or understand but it’s worth the try. But since his death was plastered all over the TV less than 24 hours ago, this poem came to my mind and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. This whole tragedy defines this poem for me. It’s sarcasm, the writer’s need for it to be true. Well you can decide for yourself:
The Art of Losing
by Elizabeth Bishop
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.
– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster
Regret is useless
But the value
We place on it
Oh so great
I made my own madness
I opened the door
As a savior to all those
That somehow still believe
In the power of forgiveness
In all its virtues
Without all the vanity of human existence
With pleasure and not disdain
Without pitiful sorrows arms around me
It knows about this particular kind of pain
It sees past all the shadows of faded, painted beauty
If you look, it still casts a glow.
Even with your distance, your humbling indifference
Inside-
Deep in the fathoms, you know.
-Jennifer Barajas
If there were something
That could thoroughly make you mine
I’d believe and believe
And pity all that seldom love
Maybe you could convince
My each sweet happening
My flesh and your blood
Humble, within a world so utterly closed
It takes you and
I to inherit the strength
To open it, again and again
As if marching into ecstasy
An unrenowned nobody
Becoming something in a distant air
You and I together,
Making jealousy stop and stare.
-Jennifer Barajas
In spite of this world
And my enemy which is love
Which is hate
Despite a forever that doubts
The minds duration
I’m blooming
Alive
Breathing April in
So this life is not for granted
Not for everything
Could this body live in grandeur
Just for the sort that I am
And just for the sort I try to be
It is bliss
Just to try is worth it all
Worth all of this
-Jennifer Barajas
I’m in between all I can stand
And
All that I can stand between I am
I do cry freedom
I do scream shame
But it is not all me
And I am not all it
I happen to be my own destiny
If I don’t make it
If I don’t see it
It feels me
It makes me mine
There are fevers
There are ropes to climb
But between me and indecision
There is salvation
And a new reason
Of life to find
-Jennifer Barajas
Once was I
Maybe talented
Definitely young
Don’t be afraid
Your time may still come
It cannot all be lost in one action
It will not change with one decision
But I will tell you what
I do feel used up
And that so little is really so much
Pages and pages of words
That don’t really say anything
Even if I screamed a thousand times
Still there are words left unsaid.
Maybe even actions undone
Definitely years yet lived
But if that time is up
Then what is really left
A girl with a pen and nothing
Near significant to say
So when I finally think
I’ve done enough with this day
I will finally know the way
To intoxicating sleep
Even though this night burns
And brings a fever about
I still can rest leisurely
Without usual feelings of
Imbalance and self-doubt
Its seems as though few times will pass
Minutes or Hours
Without unmended feelings
And jealous powers
Inflexible almost
Intangible things
And this is what lingers
And follows me
It is the shadow in my dreams
-Jennifer Barajas
So little you observe
And what you do is common,
Almost needless in its triviality.
Yet you appeared in the fire of my musings
When I still insisted
On unmade doubts.
Oh and meaninglessness- it crept
And found its way
Around my shoulders.
So still you stood-
Close enough to grasp
And hold in good fortune.
You seem not to worried that
My heart is in your hands.
Yet I can’t fully keep up with
The hope your spirit demands
-Jennifer Barajas
In your arms
Surrounded by love.
There is really nothing or nowhere
That could crumble me to pieces.
Except maybe the way you walk,
The way you look beyond me.
The way your smile unravels any reasoning
That ever inhabited this aching heart.
The way your gaze belongs to me
And only I exist to you.
I shake from joy
And from love.
But it is not enough
You keep me wounded.
Just enough from falling in too deep.
Not in love but useless guilt-
That decides it is not enough
To step aside and weep.
A Dead Language 