Short Poems 2000-2005

POETRY

Short poems written between 2000 and 2005

"AT THE FRONT"
November 16, 2000

I would like to freeze you in time,
to forever keep your words as a story to tell,
but I think I have lost some of my ability
and will not be able on this morning
to creatively hide what I could have last year.
For that I apologize.
How easy it was to tell you without hesitation
that we may be leaving, even though I haven't
yet told anyone who still sits on that list of people
I habitually call my friends.
For them I have little more than a few words of response
because I no longer have anything to say.
There is more conversation had with you
even when the pauses inbetween are kept brief
by the sound of your next stranger.
I write your name after five and six not because
you want to talk to us but because I want to talk to you.
Last night I finally found a story to tell.
For that I thank you.

"SOLITARY REFLECTIONS BY DEFAULT"
December 7, 2000

My toes are still frozen
with the wet chill of our delayed winter
that snuck through the edges of thinning rubber,
leaving them to swing over the hidden hole
that doesn't provide enough heat because it has no way
of escaping past the closed door across the hall,
but soon they may never freeze,
instead warmed by the eyes of strangers
who have forgotten the color of snow,
and today I have taken the first step.

“POETIC COMMUNICATION”
November 23, 2001

For a year I have been silenced
by voices of others that are
continually shouting their importance,
by stories that burned my tongue
with intensity and complication,
by changes that leave me lost
in the transition between light and dark.
A meteor shower-

For a year I have listened to
the midnight laughter sliding across
what stays buried underneath,
the habitual outbursts of anger
that remembered not to cross the line,
the repetition of mistaken maturity
confused by discovery of lost adolescence.
It was breathtaking,

For a year I have experienced
an inescapable scent placed under my nose
that weakened as it pulled away,
a hidden touch that held my words
beginning to fade in its silent memory,
a mind needing to speak but now only
occasionally remembering it was beautiful.
wasn't it?

“UNINVITED”
March 29, 2002

This morning I went to a party
but the setting was unfamiliar to my memory,
who quietly moved to the music nearby.
Vividness cannot be drawn
from an image viewed only once
with different eyes.
This time it was I who walked away
trying to escape the suffocating tension,
who avoided conversations attempting
to be spoken without a trace of the past
that leaves us with words still needing to breathe.
How many times can I ignore his stare
before becoming weak with the emptiness
that has forgotten to master his technique?
He falls asleep before I can find out
and never remembers losing control.
Tonight he will change the setting again
to make me wonder where I am instead of
why he is there, as he has yet to remove himself
from the one place I have requested.

“MISDIRECTED ANGER”
November 30, 2002

<>You agreed with me once, saying that
each begins with one sentence, one word, one idea,
maybe even just a title, but where have they been
in the days since that conversation? Stolen
by your silence as these words should be.
Before that I had rhythm and creative twists,
time that wasn't spent in bed afraid to speak,
broken lines happy to be shown to others.
Now my mind is tired without inspiration,
without another's understanding to keep it awake
through the hours when only memories exist
and better ones are rarely found.
My best words started with one stanza
that turned into a lie, and I think I may have left them
somewhere near the end of the bed, lost in the darkness
after forcing them to be understood.
It wasn't until those months that I saw a sunrise.
You said you wanted more, then closed your eyes,
leaving me to wonder who this is for.

"DISRUPTED"
July 26, 2003

<>Her laughter interrupts the quiet morning.
I try to ignore the sound and the sight
of her on his bed because I have not forgotten
the slamming of his door a few weeks ago.
Disgusted was the word I used
while feeling like a hypocrite,
but I would have felt better if
she'd laughed and made love to someone
for three months instead of kissing
a seventeen-year old stranger;
if he'd kept everything away from us
instead of crying in the middle of the house.

"DISTRACTION"
July 25 & August 1, 2003

I have wondered for two weeks
what changed that Saturday

when I received the long-awaited letter
from the first meaningful one

in a handful of a few.
Hours are spent in a familiar

but forgotten place with moments
I remember differently or not at all

having had no reason in days since then
to analyze a time period when decisions

were still two years away and choices
were daydreamed possibilities.

Pages of details that began when
they were interesting and occupied

every spare minute leave me content
with all that I have hated

in the two years since returning.
The days are no shorter than before,

the relationships no easier, the future no sooner,
but tonight has seven o'clock and tomorrow

has weekend minutes and next week
has silly music two hours from here,

and today I will receive another letter
temporarily distracting me from you.

"WINTER OF THE MIND"
March 24, 2004

<>I came in and had no idea how to describe
what I had just walked through.
Still wet and red-faced, I wondered
if there was one simple sentence
that would prevent any further questions,
that would easily create an image
of its weight and color, of a sky
filled with tiny floating dots,
of grass resisting being blanketed
after fighting to be remembered.
It could have been an indication of similarity
but I have never been able to understand
the importance of perfectly executed conversation
without substance. And yet I struggled,
tried to lick the bottom of my shoes
and spit white words across the room
before swallowing the evidence. And yet,
even though they have memories colder than mine
from winters I will never know,
I studied the remaining drops in my hair
and hid upstairs where I overheard someone say
that it was snowing like crazy outside.

All poems written by Alana Munoz