2016

First

January is
an aching rib cage,
sore throat
frost bitten feet
I have learned
to feel the storm coming
from years of
chattering teeth
never bought into
what could warm me
but have tried endlessly
to contain my own heat
winter wonderland
causing dizzy spells
has only lead to
too many snow angels
with their enormous wings
clipped and plucked
the most wonderful
fetal position prayers
you’ll live to see.

January is
displaying seasonal disfunction
for all the absent hearted
window shoppers to gawk at
slow improvements
and hard decisions made
for the sake of mental stamina
unfamiliar homes with
untold consequences
hidden beneath icy concrete.

PHLOG

“If we constantly shower others in the very essence of ourselves
we will one day end up feeling as empty as we want them to believe we are.”

The words you speak only sound good in your voice.
They only make sense in theory, or when I’m not really listening.
Prospective love is a role play, with or without the damsel
or the prince you’ll always get your happy ending.
You left without ever really arriving,
the most beautiful double standard,
a broken moral compass that I will never forgive
no matter how you beg me to forget you.
I hold my breath and watch the water swirl down the drain,
lust is not a stain that comes out easily.
We spend much of the morning in separate ends of the city,
wiping each other off our collar bones, the backs of our necks
, behind our knees, not out of shame but necessity.

Early Bird Song

This morning
I could have sworn
I heard you singing,
waking up happy,
echoes emanating
from the basement.
I swore I heard
your voice ringing
through layers of glass
and doors and floors,
so I adorned
your bedroom doorway
to find you still
and softly snoring
beside the empty space
I had abolished
earlier than usual.
This morning
you look exquisite
in the sunlight.
Soft breathe is
almost as precious
as your booming,
the voice that only
comes out when
you are dripping
in happy.

Rampant

Someone should have loved you
in exactly the way you asked them to
you deserved it
someone should have
taken photographs of you exhaling smoke
in golden hour light
someone should have
told you in more words what they meant when they said
I love you
someone should have
never left you in the dark or the middle of the street
but no one knew then
someone should have
caught the hints that you were in pain in ways that
they’d never comprehend
someone should have
loved you like it wasn’t too late to stop you from drowning
you deserved it
someone should have
brought the evidence out of the darkness, out of hiding
should have protected you
someone should have
told you they were waiting for the light to return
when you opened your eyes
someone should have
never left you as bait, vulnerable and naive
you don’t deserve that.

Shutter

What are you waiting for?
Feel the weight of the pack
on your shoulders,
an extra gram for each
new photograph you take.
These moments savored only
in heavy breaths between
drags of smoke,
in files kept nowhere within reach
for fear of fires.
What are you waiting for?
Feel the weight of the words
you’ve been exhaling,
a pat on the back for each time
you choke on your own pitch.
These moments savored only
in sharp tongued monologues
with no audience
in a dim waiting room,
I slide these photographs back up my sleeve.

Manic

The few and most delicate wounds on us
are self-inflicted and match the moments
when the valid answer was violent.

As I run my finger over a shallow
6 inch long laceration across your chest
I feel an angry heat rise from you.

The few and most accurate ways we have discovered
to express our love for each other
end with one kind of scar or another.

As I slid down the wall at the top of your staircase
around 1 am I left seven sets of teeth marks
on the top side of my left hand.

Revisited

There is a seven year old layer of dust on every memory of ours
and it scatters in the evening sun
as we pick each of them up to be examined in the right light.
I cough and have a bitter taste in my mouth that I can’t spit out
and this is the flavor I attribute to love.
Even though we cross paths maybe once every three years,
we are incapable of creating new memories together.
We simply play back our old emotions like scratched vinyl records.
You are crossing a line drawn so long ago it has practically petrified
and I am not sure if the ground will shake
and crack open further between us intent on creating a sand storm.
I don’t know why you do this to us both, blinded.

Actualize

A place is poisoned
as easily as a human
I can still smell the fallacies
you slipped off beneath my sheets
there is nothing pure
about the way we arrange each other
all mind over matter
in corners of our lives
at the edge of our vision
in outer orbits
feeling stranded
in a poisoned place is
no comfort for an
already building hurricane of anxiety
I am not afraid to look myself in the eye
and tell me the hardest thing I will ever do
is accept the painful truth
this was never about you
after all, actualization is a
process of elimination
on its best days
the poison was in my veins all along
seeping out of my skin
in the heat of a moment
we humans are fallible
I can still smell you in my cells
I am not the ideal place for you
to arrange yourself
and the truth is, I am stranded
on the outer orbit
of your short term memory
if you look me in the eyes
I might just cry
knowing this was never about me anyways.

My Career as a Storm Chaser (Comes to an End.)

I heard the thunder across the valley and
at first I tried to ignore it, let the sun have a chance.
I started to count the seconds between claps,
knew there was something massive coming for us.
I used to be a storm chaser and
I called you my “calm before the storm.”
You were all dew drops and cloud breaks
and summertime until the sun went down.
I missed out on a lot of stars that night
on account of all your lightning, all your tears.
There was too much electricity
running through you to put you to bed.
Around 4 am I was out in the street
pleading with the sky to let you come down,
metal arms outstretched and waiting
for the downpour I deserved. What a shock.
I regained consciousness propped up in the hospital hallway,
not a drop was falling outside, only blood on my hands to show.
I could hear faintly your voice in the next room.
You were an echo across a valley to me now,
nothing calm or pure about the ways we accumulate.
The sunshine didn’t stand a chance in storm like this.
I used to be a storm chaser, I recently resigned.
The way you turn tornado in a matter of moments
excited me to the point of becoming a hurricane.
We are spinning in opposite directions, you know?
My lack of composure brings water works
and yours brings destruction.
We missed out on a ton of sunny mountain mornings
and rolling plains sunsets, missed a lot of shooting stars.
I was too busy looking straight into the eye of a storm,
watching two fronts crash above the Rocky Mountains,
about to swallow me whole.


-C. Foster