andrea gibson Quotes
The trauma said, ‘Don’t write these poems.Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.
I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speakBut I know now it doesn't matter how well I say grace if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eatSo this is my wheat fieldyou can have every acre, Lovethis is my garden songthis is my fist fightwith that bitter frosttonight I begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneaththe night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheekas i sang maybe i need youoff keybut in tunemaybe i need you the way that big moon needs that open seamaybe i didn't even know i was here til i saw you holding megive me one room to come home togive me the palm of your handevery strand of my hair is a kite stringand I have been blue in the face with your skycrying a flood over Iowa so you mother will wake to Venice Lover, I smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chestnow my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered bibleit is the one verse you can trustso I'm putting all of my words in the collection plateI am setting the table with bread and gracemy knees are bentlike the corner of a pageI am saving your place
..when a war ends, what does that look like exactly?do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves?does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glassand our reflection is not something we can stand to look atdoes the white flag make for a perfect blindfold?yesterday i was told a storyabout this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old,who cannot fall asleepbecause when she doesshe dreams of nothingbut the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor's corpse.if you told her war is overdo you think she can sleep?
I know this world is far from perfect.I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon.I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic.But every ocean has a shorelineand every shoreline has a tidethat is constantly returningto wake the songbirds in our hands,to wake the music in our bones,to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that new born riverthat has to run through the center of our heartsto find its way home.
Let me also say I wanna make you sandwhiches,And soup,And peanut butter cookies,Though, the truth is peanutbutter is actually really bad for you 'cause they grow peanuts in old cotton fields to clean the toxins out of the soil,But hey, you like peanutbutter and I like you!
I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak.
The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a dayI would be grounded, rooted.Said my head would not keep flying awayto where the darkness lives.The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do.I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.You will find a good man soon.”The first psycho therapist told me to spendthree hours each day sitting in a dark closetwith my eyes closed and ears plugged.I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinkingabout how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth.Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happinesswhen they care more about what they givethan what they get.The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.”The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help meforget what the trauma said.The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.Nobody wants to hear you cryabout the grief inside your bones.”But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumpedfrom the George Washington Bridgeinto the Hudson River convincedhe was entirely alone.”My bones said, “Write the poems.
I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean during a lightning storm cuz I'd rather be left for dead than wondering what thunder sounds like.
Remind me that the most fertile lands were built by the fires of volcanoes.
My mouth is a fire escape.The words coming outdon’t care that they are naked.There is something burning in there.
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