Tiptoe and Grab the Benadryl

Hives.  I get them without trying.  It is one of my many talents.  I am, at this point in my adulthood, allergic to a lot of things.  Sometimes, seemingly, air.  I found this while rummaging through files this morning and thought it appropriate.  I suppose it is not unrealistic to compare the attempt to examine ones' character as an act which can cause an allergic reaction... ah, character illumination via the spirit, which can make one itchy.

(she doesn't want to talk about it) 

I break out into hives trying to access you.

I itch and welt up as a victim of blood-sport, a

Whipping victim or recipient of masochistic self-flogging, depending on what you

See as pain or purpose.

Hives rise with each attempt to stop the habit, stop the fierce loathing striking bites.

The marks show up when I try to touch you, when

I want to get close but have to sneak up,

Impossible to sneak up on part of oneself.

I get (hives in my tummy.)

I feel hives in my mind, welts, as if beaten from

The inside, whipped from the inside, the deepest

youngest me does not want to be discussed.  She is not happy

With this intrusion.  She will react as such for how long? 

For always?  For now?  I can only keep trying, keep

Gently pleading, trying to take the whip out of her

Small hands.

Sem 6.15.2012

SaraElizabethMcNeillyAmmon 1.30.2013

Drums and Storage Totes

I have been going through fifteen years of boxes.  We moved a lot in my twenties and I am amazed at how much paper can accumulate and multiply in Rubbermaid bins if you do not pay diligent attention to it on a regular basis.  Not unlike the run-on sentences I am prone to producing, it just goes on and on and on.  I have, over the course of the last year, gotten rid of about half to three-fourths of my "stuff," not including paper, and about 70% of paper items have gone to the great mulch pile in the sky.  It's funny the things we hang on to, the things we don't.  The below poem was written on a scrap of paper.  So far, I have four file drawers in a large industrial file cabinet full of scraps of paper with scribbling.  If even one of them nets a poem or even a sentence that means something to someone, that will make me sigh with relief, as it will mean that I am some sort of writer.  And that would be very cool.

Note:  If you are wondering whether or not you are supposed to do something, look around.  Look around your home.  If you are surrounded by piles of paper with your own handwriting scrawled all over them, perhaps writing is the hobby or sanity saver for you.  If, while clearing up the wreckage of my young adulthood, I had found box after box of sewing patterns, I would be making a dress right now.  If you look around your house and you don't see yourself, look around inside your head, and note the things you love and tape down.  Please remember, as a friend so awesomely reminded me the other day, the only person who can see through your eyes exactly is you.

Okay, this ends our Lifetime Afternoon Special moment.

(scrap of paper #49823 or something)

All my life, emotions pulled taught

threaded, strained, toughened.

Emotions beaten by you, beaten

Out of me like a drum, pounded

And glared at.  Resented.  I will not

Allow you to play –

Your score is overplayed;

Your job to keep time, keep the beat, finished.

I walk away now with just what God gave me –

Those very sections you hate, the

unique beats, the

Skins I wear, stretched and bound.

About my soul…

Bound around my soul.

Your rhythm, not mine.

Your timing is off, off, my spirit won’t dance to it, not anymore.

Sm 5/18/2002

Until next time....SEA 1.28.2013

Read and Be Merry!

I will, from time to time, publish (with their permission, of course, silly) other peoples' work on this blog, because I will not always have the guts to jump into my head and pull something worthy out to show you.  Today is one of those days.  And why does this, below, make me feel merry?  Anytime someone tells on themselves, tells the truth, sees things up close or is not scared to be brutally sensitive, it makes me feel like celebrating.  Anytime any of us goofy humans actually happen upon what we, individually, were built for, that thing specific to each little one of us... it's happy madness, a jolly good time.

This day's installment is brought to you by our friendly neighborhood Brok "Tryst" Kerbrat, who is not only an awesome poet and writer, but posts his items on his facebook page, so that I have something awesome to read among the scary media fallacies, political rants, and diet updates.  Not that I don't enjoy all of the latter, but it is nice to have a poem or two sprinkled into the mix.  It is in my humble opinion that we need to read at least one thing a day that doesn't furrow our brow, but rather reminds us that we were born alive and are not dead yet.  Enjoy!

via FB,  Brok "Tryst" Kerbrat, 1/24/2013

‎: Someone asked why I didn't join the Marines.

I was not built for war.

I was built to watch. To see the everyday in things we overlook, everyday. Watching Lion King while your cat is heat. A stripper wearing a cross around her neck. A man entering Planned Parenthood, alone. To know that somethings are more normal than they appear.

I was built for sound. The bass drop as the music hits the dance floor. The vocalizations of those who do not grace the stage, but take it as an act disobedience. The little words we mess up but never enough to miss the point. Faith. Trust. Happiness. Unless we miss the point. God. Truth. Happiness.

I was built to conquer. To rise above the challenges of trying not to give up. To put my shirt on the same way I finally could, by myself, when I was ten. To drive faster than you, because I have lost the fear of speed through the survival of impacts one, two, and three. To stop faster than you, because I do not want to be your first impact. And when I am on that stage, I carry the body of a boy who has faded into the memory of shame and delusion and hold it to the flame of who I am today.

I was built to bleed. To lose and give away. To make mistakes. To pick the wrong times to say the wrong words to the wrong people. Please. Stay. Love.

I was built to heal. To grow and hold tight to the scars upon my bones as lines I will not cross again. To live for the right moments and right words, with the right one. Please. Stay. Love.

I was asked why I did not join the Marines.

Correction: I am not built for someone else's war.

receipt for bones and one soul, bought with credit

Daily installations of poetry from my personal stockpiles.  Comments are very, very welcome.


receipt for bones and one soul, bought with credit

while busily busting up my body
during decisions of the past
frying my skull or worse, rehearsing stunts, unqualified
ignoring
ignoring the tugs and pulls of important issues,
I checked the box marked
BILL ME LATER
and didn't care.
I loved and lived for BILL ME LATER.
later is nothing if
today means nothing, I meant nothing, needed no LATER to lean upon, hope upon,
feast upon, had no future endeavers to plan.
i ran.
fast forward to later, the later of now, to a life meaning something, everything, I have so much, and
bills pile high, body sighs and chimes in,
opinionated, of the thought that I do not get to complain.
broken as I am.
BILL ME LATER flashes across my mind as I laugh and creak and
bend my broken back.  I do not even remember all I bought.
Yes, yes, I know.  I learned so much.  I learned, I know.  The strength bestowed when tests are wickedly well-written, repeated, scale-graded
proctored by honor system yielding strength immense and unshakable.
Grateful, graced, thankful, blessed.         but in the sharp moments when joints lock and brain fogs,
I wish she had paid at the time of purchase, just for a moment I wish she
hadn't shopped at all.
How strange to wish she hadn't bought it all even as I thrive off the score.  I hate and love that store.
broken but not.  delighted and bankrupt.

1.23.2013 ©SaraElizabethMcNeilly