Grandfather

Follow me until sunrise
when darkness tips his hat.
The world remembers
--to remember.
To remember what?
Humans forget
We reset at 12.

I tip toe on tick marks
until I find my way.
Each digit leans
upon the previous
Hoping to avoid
a collapse of senses.

I trace gaps with my fingers
to the proper term.
And it lands at the edge of a smile.
The rest of the world
does not follow me.
I hang in the air
motionless with you.

The Irvington Swagger

I am from an amputated skyline
borrowing views from distant cousins.
I am from the heart of Irvington,
where bandanas wave from faded stop signs.
Chalky brown brick walls
turn bright red from his insides.
At night the cops come to find his body
dead in the gravel.
it's another name printed in warm black ink
for the paper boy to throw at your doorstep.


I am from
THERE ARE NO SECOND CHANCES
.. but there are.
Neighbors who shake our hands
and take their hats off in our presence
leave their habits in my yard.
He gets taken away
and comes back tomorrow
with an anger so hot
it hurts to think about.
He's just an Irvington man
who sings the blues even on sunday afternoons.


Elaborate frames cradle your smile on the wall
I was the after thought, with no space left.
But music cures all
Dusty turn tables know our favorite songs
Hey, Linda the Beatles are singing to you today
So swivel your hips to the beat
Cause you've got no time to lose
on August Afternoons.



I fall asleep to garbled yelling
under a sketchy dimly lit street lamp.
The moon greets me at my window
to tell me I'm safe.
Bunk beds separate dreams at night.
I slowly suffocate myself in cloth
on the bottom bunk,
until the oxygen wakes me up.


Leaders, who do you follow?
A gun who wears the opposite colors?
I watch them chase each other around
until one falls down.
He is wrapped in shadows.
Welcome to teenage wasteland.
The golden age is over.


They can walk the walk
and talk the talk
without getting caught.
But I am just a kid
who learned to run before I learned to cry.
I am running
I am always running from prejudice
It's just too slow sometimes.
It soaks into my streets
my lawn
my pores.


I am from stunned
and grieving parents.
Whose broken sentences
can never be healed.
The tall man opens and closes his car door
and falls
to his knees.
All he can say is
"I'm so sorry"
as he runs his hands through his hair.

Tied

I feel anxious when I see you
at night.
Headlights fade into the distance
and here we are.
Alone.
I try to turn my hands off.
When will we ever learn
to hold our own bodies first?

An Artists work is never completed

Your typical "I carry" essay assigned for 12th grade

After reading Tim O' Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, it got me thinking. It had me wondering the things that I carry myself. I read about Henry Dobbins, Jimmy Cross, Kiowa, and Rat Kiley. I learned to respect the things they carried, and understand that I carry much more than tangible items. I not only wondered what I carried as a teenager, but as a human being.
I come from a home where winning wasn't what defined us, or made us great. I come from a pressure-less family that accepts what our own personal best may be. Whether its best in the state, or at a competition, or to a college is questionable. However, an honest attempt has always made my parents proud. I am art, I am a dancer. I carry the weight of my own need for perfection and control. I carry the weight of my own expectations my parents did not put on me. It may seem random, why out of no where I decided to place heavy expectations on myself in contrast of my family, but I don't think so. Wouldn't anyone want to light a fire for themselves? What else would?
I carry the burden of self discipline. I spend hours on end in a windowless purple room. After spending the majority of my day in a school setting, I am left to fight off the feeling of tiredness for the rest of the night. Dancers carry this because they understand they cannot just go home and complete homework. You don't separate the life into 2 blocks, School and Dance. Dance is always there with you as you breathe. I carry the darkness. As the sun fades away I am still working in that windowless room. The walls have 3 pictures hooked on them, of three dancers. I look into their eyes each day at the barre, and see the same struggle. The girl on the left is jumping. I would say she is flying, but I know better than that. At a first glance one would think she is free. But then look again, she is still chained to the ground by gravity.
It is a harsh reality that the girl next to me is always one step ahead. I think this can be a universal feeling. I have always been told, "Chloe, don't strive for perfection. Nobody is perfect." My parents have told me this time and time again. My dance teachers remind me of this because they just want dance to be joyful, its original intention. I carry the weight of comparison. No matter how big of an accomplishment I have made, there is always someone out there that has made a bigger accomplishment. It is a fact to me. To outsiders it may seem useless to "keep trying" at something you will never fully achieve. As a dancer I have a responsibility to perfect my art, similar to any artist. An artists work is never completed. Ask any poet when a poem is completed, or when a painting is done. I can guarantee you will receive a look of confusion.
My parents couldn't care less if I was the best or worst dancer. They do not give a thought to how many trophies I receive, or what color ribbon I get at a competition. (This useless stuff ends up in landfills anyway) What always remains is the experience of art. As Martha Graham said, "Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart." Dance is meant to express the human experience. I carry complex human emotions as an artist, as a human. I am my own instrument. I am what I have to work with. I can't rely on pens, paint brushes, or a camera to create dance. I carry the joy of movement.

A breath

i make a conscious decision
to breathe easy everyday
to not let jon tallamy
stop me from one right i have as a 16 year old
to let my lungs taste the oxygen on a wednesday morning
when coffee wasn't good enough
i make this choice not because i have to
or need to.
i want to breathe
instead of walking around daily
sunk underwater
tasting the salt on both lips
when it dries
who else do i have to blame?

No title

my inner language is wild
the hair on my head does not listen
because where it goes
i will too
i am tied to the melody
but ill never drown in it
At a young age is it fair to breathe
in the oxygen anyway?

My inner language is sense
and i haven't been making
much of it.

My inner language is fluidity
sprinting through my veins
i feel it most when the asphalt
and my face collide
The ride was worth it
I brush myself off
And get moving once again

When you think you've got it all figured out
its all left in a faded smudge.
And idea gone wrong.

But you don't even know
how big this iceberg of mistakes is.
You cant see what's not there.
Oh, but it can see you.

It's ready to pounce
like the southern winds
of a hurricane
pressing into the shingles of time.
Collected to create the roof
you rest your head under.

When you try to make sense
of this disaster, call me.
I'll be there to remind you
where my roof is.