i want to write poems that will make everyone love me.
i want people who have never seen my face to think of me as some
angry presence filling a page
i want people to see my face, too.
i am full of contradictions and i know it. i count when people realize this. it happens
more and more lately. i don’t believe in astrology but i believe
in wanting to be pulled to stars and defined
by them. i believe in being pulled by smoke, too, and pulling it into
empty clean lungs. there is a flower growing between mine and it is beautiful.
there are thorns and i can feel the blood inside me but i do not care
because it is beautiful.
i want people to wish they had my words
the way they wish they had my black leather boots. i want
to hold fire the way i hold words. this poem
tried to be about you but i wanted to write about me. i want
a lot of things. i don’t write about me enough. You has become a consistently capitalized word in my mind. i feels wrong out of lowercase. i think i feel things
more than other people do. i’m not talking about love or sadness. i’m talking
about feeling my own hair crawling up my leg
and the dust in my sweater. i want to write every day and i want to learn french. i want a lot of things. i already know
how to tell you i love you in french so i guess i want to learn how
to tell you i hate you in french. i want to be able to tell you how angry i am
in four different languages that i know you speak. i already have two and a half.
this poem is trying very hard
to be about you. i want a lot of things. i want a lot of things.