The poetry portfolio/anthology of one Michou, the Poetry Shelf is the beginning and the end, the project and the conception. It is a work in progress, as various works are modified and sometimes scrapped entirely. It is waiting for you.

Poems are organized from most to least recent. Some of the poems are written for various purposes- these can be noted at the end of each poem, listed after "To be...". Comments are written in italics.

this poem sucks

Valentine's Day is hard.

dear Jack

imagine i am a lecture
and you are a pie chart
and if you look close at your littlest toe, it says
rain drops and jungle gyms and stones and city parks and open fields and street lamps and rivers and sand
because that is the smallest smallest fraction
of the things I want to do with you

I will pull you into a sticker booth and say “smile”
and poke the curl of your hair under your bellybutton
because you are just
that
ridiculous
and it makes you grin and look at me shocked
and I try to try to surprise you.

I will take you on a picnic in the middle of a forest
and feel the curve of your back when you sit
and feed you cherries even though I'm not particularly fond of them.

I will buy you a plane ticket to azerbejan
because I don’t even know where the fuck that is
but we should go there and it would be an adventure

let's go on an adventure
jack
your name is a type of cheese and a playing card and a euphemism for masturbation and the first syllable of what I wear when it gets cold and the noise I make when I’m happy and not paying attention
jack
and I love you
I should have waited until I had built up some sort of theme in this poem until I said it but I love you too much to wait
I love you more than I love cookies, and puppies, and stuffed pineapples
more than I love calla lilies and the Japanese
more than I love something else I really love
more than I could ever explain because all my similes really suck
and I love you so much it’s retarded
it’s frickin’ special needs and legally blind
(which is why I like to feel your face in the dark)


I will kiss the spots on your back until I stop feeling happy whenever I see the stars
and I will trace the spots on your face until time heals all the scars
and I will vent to you when I'm stressed
and I will love holding you close against my chest
and I will love it when you get me undressed
and I will laugh at the way you act when you get just—That—ridiculous
and you know what's ridiculous? today
it's four holidays and I'm giving you this poem
and I think part of the reason why I'm giving you this poem is because it's four holidays
because if it was just one we could probably get away with just having sex
but it's four, and I have this poem
and we can totally have sex later

and you know who's ridiculous? me
because I am a lecture and this poem is a pie chart
and if I was really going to fit every second of my love for you into this poem,
it would last forever. and be a list, of
running in the parking lot, and
going through your pictures on facebook, and
making out in the rain, and
laughing when getting your blitzes, and
almost falling off your bed, and
singing on the way to foco, and
leaning on you during a movie, and
hearing your voice on the phone, and
dancing naked in my room, and
watching you play guitar, and
holding you close and tight, and
spinning around on a wood floor, and
massaging your shoulders, and
lingering when I'm about to say goodbye, and
reading this poem to you, and
reading this poem to you, and
watching you smile while I'm reading this poem to you, and
because of you I can correct someone if they say "aloomni", and
because of you I can play a C chord on an acoustic guitar, and
because of you I can point out the nonsensical quality of the lyrics to "Thnks fr th Mmrs", and
because of you I can almost but not-really snowboard, and
because of you I can save the world, if the world is in danger from some death ray virus that is about to be unleashed and the only way to stop it is to type your blitz nickname, really fast—I would be in that room, and the evil supervillain would be laughing evilly and I would bitch slap that evil supervillain and say, "BAM, evil supervillain, your evil plots have failed once again because I have been training for this for three months now."
because of you I am happy even on days when I only see you in the math corridor, and
because of you, I am so
in
love
because you are you
and it’s hard to say more than that because if I mention some aspect of yourself then it will seem like I am neglecting the million other aspects I will not remember to say, because
when you are not around I find myself searching for the feeling I get in the quiet of night when I roll over and find you there—
I hate rolling over and not finding you there—
I hate you being sad and
I hate writing love poems— this poem sucks
because it's just a sporadic millionth of the things I want to say
like how I never thought I could look into someone's eyes and see that they understand me
but that even when I'm feeling off I look into your eyes and see that you understand me—and this poem sucks because I am too happy to use dark imagery or be evocative with my soul and
this poem sucks because it is a pie chart, and I'm not good at pie charts—I can't even draw circles when I need to do venn diagrams—and this poem sucks,
because I cannot quantify my love for you— it is not one-fifth luck and one-third feelings and three-eights experience and eleven one-twentieths "other"

it's just there
and it's infinite.

I am not insane enough to be a poet.

I worry about this sometimes.

I am not insane enough to be a poet.
all I can offer you is
half-shelved ideas that failed to come to fruition
broken tears that refuse to cry
an inability to look at the pictures around my room because everyone in them is
so damn happy
and loved

i offer you this
the girl
who isn't sure
if she's ever
been loved

the girl who can't slit her wrists because she can't stand the pain
but who can't let go and just spend the next day with you like nothing happened

even though
from your perspective
nothing did.

this is for you

"everyday martyrs (iii.)," except now it's a slam poem and I took out the stupid parts.

this is for the tiniest strings in the piano
and the intake of breath between them;
for the drops of the ocean we soak in
and our frantically closed eyes, as we desperately – seek -- ascension.
this is for the cries that were never quite loud enough; for our heavy breathing
as the chills run up our spine in perfect time-
rhythm, rhyme, meter in every exponential blink as everything becomes---
more.
This is your story, etched
in my fingers, betrayed by every tremble
and This, this is for you, who I hear
in your haunting echoes, the sound of you and everything we ever did to you
and everything you ever gave to us, in a night as cold as this
when the world could not scream loud enough
and the visions streaked in blinding flashes
to lay you out like a black and white comic book hero-
worlds burning
and pages turning in strobelight to
build, swell, crescendo and fall,
fall,
fall.
This is the story that no-one knows
and this is for you, my lost and silent friend-
for you and all the other souls
who knew, who know, who might have known-
you--
your damned, tragic, terrible beauty; your
every inch of bittersweet passionate, powerful, insane
and absolutely vivacious life-
you—
the notes you managed behind closed doors and longed to whisper into someone’s ear-
you—
the keys you danced on and locked away before the moon could burn your skin brighter than you could ever hide-
you—
the hopeless, tacit agreement you made with the asphalt four floors below
where you would both stay --- silent
and let the world find you there the next morning,
you---
broken
this is for you,
broken

this is for all that and all the things I do not comprehend,
like the nothingness we all fall into, someday:
this, your moment
when all the strings on the piano are struck at once
and fall into the sea.

just a poem

I just hate the ending of this poem. I am not done with this one.

at eight
a little man stands lonely in the house he made of all our conversations
where we talked
at one another- deaf
and dumb.

I want to write a poem and burn it, for the symbolism-
watch, as the words give themselves
up to all that- frantic
pain, and
pleasure
that comes from feeling fire in your veins.

I want to cut the sky open with the sharp edge of the moon,
slice that 4 AM blackness, directly between
the Big Dipper
and the Plediades.
I could make that incision with surgical accuracy-
antiseptic proficiency-
dissect the elegant corpse of the sky and feel nothing; in this life, baby
the world is my operating table,
and I could pull apart the stars and see the blankness in the sky
and I could make that shallow cut from your breastbone to your thighs
and I could sew shut your cold and focused eyes
and I would feel nothing, baby
nothing as I tried to excise
your still-beating heart, as you wake up and shout,
"I'M ALIVE!
...
Dear God,
I'm alive."
nothing, as I'd realize you
wanted to give us one last chance
to say our goodbyes.

I wouldn't feel anything
as I sutured the sky and put it in a box labeled "cremation"
but I could fake it for you, real good
fake pasison and meaning and sweetness in the trail
of frozen words I'm leaving behind, still
hanging
in the air..

Baby, I want to write so fast my words are the scorch marks instead of the road-
like I want to veer off the highway a million miles per hour and ride, higher, higher, igniting scraps that burn the sky as we
dance- baby, I want to play with the fire they built to burn our image
burning bright, not like toddlers or textbooks but bright,
like trumpets, like fanfare- bright,
like hospital corridors, like high-pitched tears-bright,
like stabbing pains, like the sun at 5 AM when you haven't slept for a WEEK-
baby, I want to watch flames jab at the ceremonial pyres of the sky.
I want to melt wine bottles and make them pop under the pressure of someone so hot
being - so -
cool, baby, I want to love you. I want to love you so hard Earthquakes scream our names and we only shudder, caught
up in all this silence. Baby, I want to love you---

but instead I'm sitting here in my sterile lab coat
over the operating table
writing a love poem
that became just a poem
when you
became dead to me.

everyday martyrs - iii.

One of those you write in the dead of night when you're shaking with tears
and everyone else reads it and goes, "Hm. Not bad. I get the feeling there was something going on here."
...There was something going on here.

this is for the tiniest strings in the piano
and the intake of breath between them;
for the drops of the ocean we soak in
and our frantically closed eyes, as we desperately seek
ascension. this is for the cries that were never
quite loud enough; for our heavy breathing
as the chills run up our spine in perfect time-
perfect rhythm, perfect meter, perfect realization
in every exponential blink as everything becomes
more. This is your story, etched
in my fingers, betrayed by every tremble
and This, this is for you, who I hear
in your intertwined songs, for everything we ever did to you
and everything you ever gave to us, in a night as cold as this
when the world could not scream loud enough
and the visions streaked in blinding flashes
that make this, our everything,
spin. maybe I overdramatize
and so do you, to build, to swell
to crescendo and fall, fall,
fall. This is the story that no-one knows
and this is for you, my lost and silent friend-
for you and all the other souls
who knew, who know, who might have known-
for that poet, that artist, that lover, that mind;
your damned, tragic, terrible beauty; your
every inch of bittersweet passionate, powerful, insane
and absolutely vivacious life-
this is for all that and all the things I do not comprehend,
like the nothingness we all fall into, someday:

this, my moment
when all the strings on the piano are struck at once
and fall into the sea. with the utmost love,

I Will Never Forget You

Boys. They really suck sometimes.

You always were one to wax verbose
but your silences have always been the more potent.
In between your overflowing syntax
I have been crucified
and left to myself.

Hello, young man-
here are all the words I want to say
in a story of love and loss
and even a little bitterness between the stars that mark my passing.
I will never forget you,
and the extent of this you will never know unless someday we see each other again
and, as I still fully believe, understand. Understand
each other; making up for the time we lost
after every hello.

I could write a number of songs about you,
but it's already been done- why should I bother? The energy
I would exert toiling over your name
has been spent already. Do you remember me?
I will never forget you. Your commas fell like stardust in my hair
lighting my dreams and text messages with the translucent moonlight and shades of blue only we could imagine- I will not discredit
the beauty of us. Hello, young man
and here is the customary pause. Hello
to your salutations and prosaic love. I swoon over your semicolons
and your gerunds form the train pouring delicately over the rest of me,
like the bowls of mist in Greece and like
your question marks, rhetorical and soft
and your periods, so final.

But all your sentences you ended with ellipses like my own
for we could never stand to finish a sentence
and end it. In our verbosity
we were young and beautiful and changed
like a celestial conjugation. I
will never forget you.

A Study of Proportions

I'm not sure if this is a poem or an exercise in imagery. (Or is that all some poetry really is? Whooo. Deep.)

1.
on the roof with vertigo in any direction
the capacious sky is limitless
and the wind is meant for your cool toes alone;
you and that roaring jet overhead
with your own empty, empty sky
the color of vastness filled only with wind and the occasional train.
cacophonic cry for your understanding,
your easing attent,
your eager spirit with its leaps and soars
surrounded by the emptiness of blank potential.
the hands extend without a thought
touching, making tangible the earth and its honest taste
taking the peripheral blanket of ethereality and drawing it
close, around your self
your burdened mind and your quiet heart
whirling, to try and take in the bigness of it all;
blurring, like a pastel easel under tissue paper.
in the person under your degree of brown
the passion is infinite
and the dreams are meant for your beauty alone.
you and that love you hold
with your own empty, empty sky
clamorous for your wordless understanding
your absorption,
your drowsiness in every direction.
with your eyes closed,
all you can see is the inside of your mind--
the color of vastness
the color of the sky

2.
when you fill your skin warm
the rhythm of your heartbeat is strong
and the colorful chaos around you of blank
faces and voiceless noise
parts,
the waves of salvation for
you. the sea that follows crashes
back together again over your drumming,
chimerical eddies that sough of sand and terra-cotta
and it's as if you were never there at all-
you (play count: 2157) have been erased from subjective truth
which is blindingly existential
and simletaneously liberating; you
are there for you,
you are your own beat
throb through the African heat of lights in every color
and dark in every color, too.
the waves part
so you can reach the quieter beach where chaos
is a just hum that lulls you to sleep
and you can light your signal fire
beat your drum
and sit on the wet sand crumbling
into your perfect mold; you sit
waiting
for a distant drumbeat in response.

3.
out the window the city of culture looks like fairy lights,
secrets crystallized in icy sapphires
dewdrops on the dandelions hidden in the fields on a grey morning
the effulgence of a couple of spotlights
and one or two houses across the street
that and mountains of expectations blown to pieces with dynamite
carefully dusted like the remnants of powdered sugar donuts
while they're still soft and fluffy like clouds. out the window
the clouds are gently gray like Grecian rain
the people walk in colors unassuming and draw
you down to a personal level; you are
small, small like glasses and freckles and moments you create yourself
glasses (half full- we are optimists, not engineers)
making the fairy lights appear at night amongst the coolness
the blankets always warm and cozy in the coldness except when
you lack the fire to heat them up yourself. outside
the window the world is cold and the small are lonely
curled up in corners and silently sleeping off their insomnia. small enough
to fit inside another heart and hibernate there like a baby
bear in its first winter snow; but a human cannot be afraid to go
into the wildness of chaos and change
and only on Tuesdays. it takes two days
to run around the word in your mind, it has been calculated
it's a record of exhaustion from looking outside the window
small as minituae and the minute hand
outside the window the world moves around
small enough
to notice the important things

Snow White

I used to think this piece was done, but now I think it needs refining.
It's a strong piece. I don't even know if I'm strong enough for it, but it picked me anyway.

That's an ugly word.
Just thinking about it now, I can taste it, like acid on my tongue
like the remains of Snow White's apple in the back of my throat
except Snow White was pure and innocent
and I bet you that apple tasted like the sweetest thing on earth to her
too good to be true
so that when she looked back at the old Queen and saw the malice in her eyes-
she knew she was falling,
she was sinking,
she was dying already.
'Cept this wasn't no random chance occurance
and this isn't pure, just clear
so clear
so crystal clear
and cold and hard and lodged in the back of my throat
until I want to get sick again.

It's like everything right now in my life is pointing to that ugly word:
POISON.
and it's not the pills you overdose
it's not the stupid chemicals floating around in your blood
it's a bottle
a nondescript bottle of acid to drown your sorrows in
make you forget everything and make you fucking crazy
until you're the queen and Snow White and trapped in the cycle—
Don't you know the story? That the queen went and dazzled her with ribbons
the pretty swirling colors everywhere
and then choked her with her favorite color ribbon;
that's how the dwarves found her when they got home that night,
pasty white with a bright ribbon around her neck
and luckily they could take it off and everything went right back to normal again because that's how it goes in fairy tales.
You go drown yourself in those swirling lights
and fun and happy and forgetting
and choking. Gasping. Dying. Like an overdose
on pills that never would help you in the first place. Like chemicals
turning your blood to bile, to bitter fire burning, pounding-
a long nail driving through you, right in the middle of your forehead
my head is killing me
my blood is killing me
I'm killing myself from the inside out.

It makes me sick, with shame and guilt and just plain ugliness,
it makes the lights burn my eyes and my head start to stab
because something happened last night
and it screams: POISON
it wails, the accusatory sirens ringing in my head.
It makes my heart feel like it's being pulled on either end of me
and there's a road to nowhere marked 'Morbid Curiosity'
and I wandered that way last night.
I haven't taken poison,
in fact, I think it's kind of fucking stupid,
but my heart has been estranged from me, locked in a glass wall
and all my feelings are so clear: shame and guilt and ugliness,
worry and fear.
I'm scared.
I'm scared of all the scenarios that love to run through my head
opening doors in the ominous forest by the road to nowhere
like I'm sitting backstage waiting for the main act,
TROUBLE and PAIN and HATE and CONFUSION and DEATH
and that hurt look in people's eyes
that says "I expected better of you."
And explanations are only further excuses
and my excuses die away into nothing.
And the stupidest thing is that I'm scared
I'm so fucking scared
I'm scared of what may or may not happen to me
and this isn't about me
except that I'm here
and I'm living.

And Snow White was so beautiful that the poison didn't even mar her
and her prince carried her away without a second thought
and she left everyone else behind. Stupid fairweather friend
and yet I envy her, to be so unattached and uncaring and so lucky and so beautiful
but I've got something she don't got.
I don't know what it is, but there's a reason why I'd never trade places
even though she's good at everything she does and pure and lucky and already winning-
because you know what? I think I'm more special
I think I'm more special than a girl who never really had to think about anything
I think I'm something new and I've got something different than miss Snow White
but I could be wrong:
after all, look where it's gotten me so far.

But I go on and on about me
when someone is lying in a white bed
when someone is not outside where I can hear the shouts of triumph and merriment
and I have to wonder about him,
and I have to wonder about me.
And I have to wonder about that bottle marked POISON
and what it really means.

A girl with skin pale as snow and lips like blood and hair like the raven's wing
innocently cleaning pots and pans and cooking supper
and leaving the dwarves to stay up all night worrying about what might happen to her,
leaving the huntsman to stay up all night worrying about what might happen to him.

Explanations are only further excuses
and I don't want to hear your excuses
I don't want to hear the reasons why sometimes you can get away with things
and even if you can, why you should.
I don't want to hear a thousand justifications for why I shouldn't worry
because I WILL worry
because I will fucking cry myself to sleep at night
because…
because I know how unhappy you really are.
because I'm not Snow White, not beautiful, not lucky, and definitely not unattached,
because I love you.
Pssh, go figure.
I WILL imagine all the dreadful things that could go wrong
and I will hate myself for weakening last night because I forgot-
because I know why you are the way you are:
because you want to reach Snow White,
you want to fly away with your arms around your prince;
The End.
Happily ever after.

Because ribbons cost nothing:
you watch the swirling lights and drown in your favorite color,
you fall down for a little and you lose a little time and when the worried dwarves wake you up, you're none the worse for it
and you get a ribbon in your favorite color, too.
And instead of realizing how lucky you are you continue,
because nothing happened the first time, and that makes everything all right.
But when you bite that bittersweet apple you know before you hit the ground
you know
you're falling,
sinking,
dying,
and when you wake up
[if you wake up]
you leave all your short friends behind.
you leave everything behind.

I hate that road
I hate that road to nowhere because it doesn't look like it will hurt you
because, what's to lose?
because, it'll never happen to me.
because, everyone else is fine.
because, why not?
because, what alarm bells, those tinny little whining sirens don't mean anything anyway
and aren't you wondering?
You know you're wondering,
and you can't judge until you try.
Go on, because on this road, we know
that everyone is Snow White- uncaring and unattatched and beautiful
and we say we're lucky, because nothing's happened…
…yet.
And if we're really lucky, nothing ever will,
because:

here we are innocent.
here we are pure.
here we take POISON
and hopefully,
someday,
we will wake up and find a cure.

Edge of the World and Beyond

This one made the cut when I was deciding that nearly all of my old work was crap. But only just.

Like the fleet of the victorious immortal
they proudly voyage forth above the horizon
past the twinkle of violaceous sirens
leaping o'er the bow in tantalizing song.
"They are but clouds
pushed to their glorious destination by the inconstant winds."
Hush- the fey and fickle spirits
gently blow their charges along
dancing like impractical guardian angels
as they summon power,
intoxicatingly terrifying.

The rustling of leaves like the roar of the seas-
cascading song to serenade the wisps of majesty
sailing, dignified, masts proudly learning into the wind
and the waves shall be as seaspray mist
I want to watch a shooting star fall overboard
and catch the rope they throw to guide him back
together we will sit on the wooden plank
and shyly rock in tune with the swells.

the sky is empty now

they sail so fast
but only because we need to believe that the earth is standing still