Easy

“You’re so lucky,” they say. “The words come so easily to you.”

Easy.

This poem took me three days to write
and I carved out my insides with a pen like a serrated spoon attacks a grapefruit.

Easy.

The hopscotch jump from bottle to cigarette to coffee to knife drawer…
My every sentence a secret suicide note written in the blood type of ink.

Easy.

Pushing past the hunger in my belly that punches me like a fist,
Convincing myself that if I can only keep writing the desire to eat will fade,
The fear of poverty will evaporate,
That the Universe will move so that my rent will get paid
Just this month…just this month…just this month…

Easy.

Words don’t just “come” to me like a sheepdog bounding towards his human companion –
They are chipped away from each of my bones like ice from a wedding sculpture,
Melting before I can even hold them in my mouth.
Poems do not arrive with grace:
I pull them from me with tweezers and rubbing alcohol like splinters from infected flesh.
When I stand before you with a piece in hand,
I am more propped up than a corpse in a Victorian memento mori photograph,
I’m leaning on a bewildering sense of self-satisfaction that comes from stringing sentences together like patio lanterns.

Easy.

It’s easy not to write another poem.
It’s easy to believe that the new poem will never be as great as the last poem.
It’s easy to believe that words are like bombs and that poems are PTSD flashbacks.
It’s easy to believe that no one reads what you put down on the page and that you will be forgotten.

But the words…
The way the words come…
The way my thoughts manifest into lines for you to read…
Those are anything but

Easy.

Image by Mr Fox Composting

This work, “Easy” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

It’s Not THAT Corny. Shut Up.

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “I heard that song on the radio again and it reminded me of that line you get on the left hand side of your mouth when you are thinking really hard”.

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “I smoked too much weed and now I am feeling nostalgic over 1980’s breakfast cereals”.

When I say, “I miss you,”
what I really mean is, “I like how you hug me with your full body like you have nothing to hide”.

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “If my day were a sketchy basement laundromat after sundown, your smile lights it up like one of those buzzing, florescent light bulbs and all those little dryer sheets make me think of your teeth, all square, white, clean, and perfect.”

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is “Gawd, love is such a petty bourgeoisie emotion and here you are making me feel like a real lady.”

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “Am I being awkward? I’m being too awkward. Why can I be like a normal human being? Why am I so awkward?”

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “I’m fucking this up by feeling too much, aren’t I?”

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “I want to fall in love with you, but I am scared for you to find out that I sometimes eat ice cream for breakfast, and I might sabotage this relationship so that I can go on eating ice cream for breakfast without fear of judgment.”

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “Stop whatever you are doing right now and kiss me. Hard.”

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “I hate how lonely I feel when you aren’t around because that means I am vulnerable and vulnerable people get hurt.”

When I say, “I miss you”,
what I really mean is, “That sweater is really ugly, but that’s okay, because you are really cute.”

And sometimes, only sometimes, when I say, “I miss you”,
what I mean is, “I miss you”…
…except for when what I really mean is, “I hope that you miss me too.”

 

Images and trademarks property of General Mills. No copyright infringement intended.

This work, “It’s Not THAT Corny. Shut Up.” by Beth Murch, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.