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letterstomonkey · 12 days

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A Rainbow From Roots

A rainbow from roots, you and I could grow into

A novel or two, bearing juicy, ripe fruit

Pink, yellow, or blue- color me how you choose

And watch me grow into your flowerbed muse

A rainbow from roots, we follow the trail

Around blocks of blooming, lucid detail

If business keeps up, you and I should set sail

With flowers in hand, any way the winds hail

A rainbow from roots, I follow your two lips

With the black of my eyes, and if the shoe fits

I could stick around here, for the next harvest

You be the gardener, and I the guitarist

A rainbow from roots, I settle in the dust

From the off-beaten path, beaming wanderlust

Writing you into my blooming, spring chorus,

Held by the rainbows you cultivate for us.

-Inspired by "Flower Fields in Holland" by Vincent Van Gogh

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letterstomonkey · 12 days

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Breakfast or Lunch

I love you like breakfast while loathing you like lunch;

Craving clarity with my first bite of today, a blend

of your strawberries melted in my honey, granola crunch

Residual and golden, how you and the morning transcend.

A swift, morning apple is my foundation for the day,

As a tight grip on your gaze starts me off the beaten path.

Surrounded by fine art, yet my hands beg me to portray

Your hands cupping coffee, as steam rises from the birdbath.

So scatter my remains about the whole backyard by noon,

As if I am your coffee grounds– a mess made just for you.

Slowly sip my ashes, while you reminisce on the moon

How I held you close like she did, until breakfast time was through.

How I love you like my whole life preceding you was blind,

So I welcome you to stay for lunch, should you feel so inclined.

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letterstomonkey · 12 days

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Mahogany

Picture me inside Mahogany for this moment:

Mahogany, on the count of Three

Mahogany, compress my restless knees

Mahogany, fold inward my Skeleton

Mahogany, I meet here my friend, again

Mahogany, hugging my chin tucked in

Mahogany, how my head Bowed in lament

Mahogany, hear me through leery Amen

Mahogany, shield me from wolf in sheepskin

Mahogany, my ankles protrude in my seat

Mahogany, I rest my breast plates at your feet

Mahogany, alchemize my Vulnerability

Mahogany, make light of naive liability

Mahogany, my hiding spot, burnt sienna colored

Mahogany, breathlessly, I’m locked inside your cupboard

Mahogany, whatever happened to me—

Keep me safe and keep it covered.

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letterstomonkey · 1 month

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Writing saved my life.

Thank you all for TWO YEARS of your gracious encouragement, sincere feedback, and of course, thank you always for reading me!

I’m so grateful for the supportive community of writers and creators on Tumblr that have inspired me to grow my creative garden into something much bigger than I knew I was capable of.

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letterstomonkey · 1 month

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Iced Out

As ice freezes sheets over surfacing history,

So an ice pick leaves shards of bargaining secrecy.

An ice pick bestowed under my pillow, breathlessly

Chasing the nightmares of tomorrow—

I awaken in a bubble of tornado rubble

Coughing up cauldrons of being in trouble,

I pick and I piece at safe keeping stories bound by

Numeric synchronicities, bought by

Skeleton keys overthrown in threes,

I am a misplaced houseguest wandering my stairwell alone

An ice pick placed in my pocket, I learned to

Aim for the eye of the flashbacks to stop it

Ice chips and ice cubes and torn soles of lorn shoes

An ice pick for nothing to do with me

A hole in the ground to uproot what bears fruit for me

A pick in the tree gushing honey veins ruthlessly

Leave me for roadkill with nothing to use of me

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letterstomonkey · 1 month

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Baby's Breath

A white flower grown in diffidence

If I was human, today I’m not confident

A ring too tight for my finger,

I couldn’t let your name linger-

Won’t you trust my infallibility?

Won’t you trust my authority on my own

shortcomings, when I articulate

such disdain for sharing a driveway with my brain?

Words sound pretentious, precarious, a waste of time and consciousness when uttered by these lips, tossed from these fingertips

Cartoons playing on the tv

The remote sleeps next to me, the length of my forearm

I have the tv turned on

But I will keep it muted, in anticipation

Of nobody wanting to listen

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letterstomonkey · 2 months

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Fun Home

When the fire department came into my home,

I did not know that boys could be so tall

My Mommy was the tallest

Until she was on the brown couch in the playroom

Where nobody would let me see her,

Somebody used the landline and called

911 because she stopped breathing, I think

I was standing on the arm rest of the couch in the living room

To gain a better view

of Mommy being carried across the threshold on a stretcher

Did I know that that was her first time being carried across

The threshold, because daddy didn’t love

Her until she stopped breathing the same?

Pneumonia and influenza

Were running circles around the town

that I was six inside

I painted a wooden picture frame light blue

Dipped ice cream cone shells in a dixie cup of glue

And I couldn’t handle the thought of losing you

Before I was old enough to believe that I hated you.

T.J. made me a turkey sandwich that

I stopped liking six months ago, but he was always a little behind

At learning my life

Mommy read a book called "The Help"

For months, and the dandelion

Paperback cover left paper trails across

Kitchen counters and coffee tables

Until Daddy bought the same book

From Costco for Mother’s Day and

She cried in the shower for a long time after.

I picked her flowers from the neighbors hydrangeas and

Put them in a vase along the windowsill in the kitchen

My denim mini skirt hugged six-year-old hips while

Sixteen-year-old T.J. brushed my hair into a ponytail

He wouldn’t tell me anything

Mommy was too tired

T.J. never learned how to do my hair

But he figured it out when he met a girl that he loved

More, it was never meant to be me

But he tried, before My Daddy chased him away

Down Rotunda, past the tree with a face

I am six years old and I listen to everything

It is a scary way of existing

I am learning my teachers don’t have the answers

To what is going on at home

And if my teachers do not know,

Then who do I ask? Or do I have to find out

Myself? What kind of game of hide and seek is this?

I know that, for me,

Mommy would get the pink rubber duck from CVS that lights up in the bathtub

And I remember that, because I wanted it more than anything,

And she said no. But she went back for it later and surprised me, and I

Was never again so happy, because

What is better than being remembered

Unintentionally?

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letterstomonkey · 2 months

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Saturn

I am one with sidewalk chalk and I do not know

How to skip stolen creek rocks

I am untangling their mess

And I sleep in piles of spaghetti noodles

Fallen hair and ink pen doodles

Fade into blue balloons behind sweaty palms that

Fade into backhanded slaps and pink lip balms

I am the self that knows not a self

I am second, yet

I am the self that is first and everybody else is quiet

They fall away into nothingness, all to watch me fall

To follow suit and It is okay, because

I am the self that is not here nor there

And I am the self that grows wisdom in her hair

And I am the self that observes thoughts and patterns

Curves and hurts and bursts of prayer

I am the self that is full of despair

The self that remembers everything, all the time,

And do I know what I wish to forget?

I am the self that aches to forget, that prays to come into some knowledge or quote

Some new niche some new shoes some new food

Some girls do not like me and I am the girl that wants to understand everybody

I am the student who walks the teacher home

I am the socks that do not fit my feet right and I am the

Words that sink back down my throat at night

I am waterfalls, falling down is my forte

I hold you in my hands and I pray not to let you fall through the cracks

Like sands

I hold you in my hands and I have something to pray for

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letterstomonkey · 3 months

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Secrets

In a perfect world, I was born in secret and I

Die, tomorrow, in secret

My life is written before me; Complicit in shielding

The world from what pity my presence elicits,

Shovel under my intestines and

Bury my opinions about the Day that I’ve been given

Capture like a rabid dog my

Raw intuition, first thing

In the morning when I am as

Close as I’ll be to dreaming or

Sleep-talking,

Find me and listen as my lungs

Speak;

Exhale in synchronicity

These secrets that I keep

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letterstomonkey · 4 months

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Here Before

A secret to protect myself; Can thy will be done?

Unearth within me what

Sowed glowing golden seeds,

The harvest here is come

Who graced the earth before me

to learn another land of heaven

to teach a long game kind of lesson

to redress wounds of her Son's weapon

to make better use of the juice of my family trees lemons

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letterstomonkey · 5 months

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To stand in your kitchen

To care about your lingering legacy, about what the

Next person to enter the elevator is thinking

To knock him unconscious

To be given a tissue

To give a head start

To take off your socks

To dress for the part

To check what time the sun sets tonight

To cross county and state lines

To seek guidance in street signs

To peel a second clementine

To touch your hair

To offer you a hair tie

To read between my own fault lines

To swim where my feet don't touch

To bite into a lollipop

To notice my sleeping breathing full-stop

To nearly rear-end an off-duty cop

To finish the laundry in one fell swoop

To tear up at the first chord on a baby grand

To watch the movie La La Land

To think about February

To sleep inconveniently

To listen to the entirety of a terrible song

To become a sponge for a new dictionary

To give up

To like being looked at, like really enjoy it

To honor the beginnings of individual weekdays

To float blindly upstream, wasting away

To reclaim blood rushing to your face

To face the music

To sing with your face

To start over midday

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letterstomonkey · 5 months

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Verse of Martyr

An overwhelming year for the peach trees, was it not

A harvest harboring high above what this town needs

To feed their families?

A basket of blessings and broken bread, be

Sovereignly devoured, be a feast evergreen

Be sticking to my skin as wet peppermint

Be tracing my name in evaporating haze

Be a date who dare stay on my calendar

Be incense soothing as somber lavender

Be a married man in hand a gold paint marker

Fall victim to my word by one verse of martyr

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letterstomonkey · 6 months

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Against Us

How old were you when you first hated yourself?

I could have stayed a girl of glass, but here

I was told to forgive those who trespass

Against Us.

Certainly, not soft enough for

Sea glass nor

Flimsy enough for seagrass

Bending windward while

Begging for one chance

To be lifted away to bed;

Focusing on my fluttering

Eyelashes finding stillness

As my mother prays over me

At my bedside, on her knees:

Forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass Against Us.

Forgive me for forging sleep,

For forcing the signature of my heart into heedless hands and

Fueling my feuding for keeps,

Forgive me for fixing foundational cracks with sands and

Forming my figure into statures mature, my

Attendance attesting my being impure.

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letterstomonkey · 6 months

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Paranoia

Fluorescently, I heard my name called

Like a rumor hovering over the whole school’s shoulders

Ending up scrawled upon walls of millennial pink bathroom stalls

Horrified, she holds in what today the voices told her

One girl walks into the word on the street

Winding herself up before releasing her grief

Like a patient erupts when asked what she needs

Horrified, she keeps secret what today the voices told her

Impatiently, I wait for my ego’s appointment

As the blue couch clouded my voices anointment

My vices paint melodies of watercolor incantation

I heard my ego’s atonement in my imagination

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letterstomonkey · 6 months

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The Sounds of Us

Meet me ankle deep in powdered sugar

Tongues out, eyes closed, stood at the side of the road

Atop the hill that got comfortable with

The sounds of us

Meet me in silence

One wicker chair, no sun, stood at the second story terrace

Meet me where snow falls and work never calls

With the world at its worst

Meet me where you still have firsts to unearth

Meet me in celebration, please

And I will monumentalize your bloodshot eyes

It will always be June, as I am running home to you

It was always you, stirring my soul

Making me wish I could stay

In a world eclipsing my worth

Meet me ankle deep in powdered sugar

If you let me, I would always put you first

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letterstomonkey · 7 months

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Hi friends! I am super excited to say that I can now connect with you all on my official Instagram @letterstomonkey !!!!!

I am extremely hopeful that this will be an easier means for me to converse with you guys, share some of the other poets/people that inspire me, and expand my connections within this beautiful online community.

I am so thankful and proud of how far Letters to Monkey has come.

Thank you for reading me.

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letterstomonkey · 7 months

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I am Second

I am a hearth first and a threshold second.

I am a fire first and an Irish exit second.

I emanate warmth at first, with one foot crossing the threshold from the first posed question-

I’m gone in a second.

I didn’t know what a hearth was,

Until I knew, that blood too creates a spectacle of art upon my face,

I know a fireplace does not insinuate a warm place,

and an audience doesn’t imitate the heart-to-heart I always chase.

Artists don’t know anything, except for how to create space

To perceive and be perceived;

I am an artist second, and first

A literary receptacle, or

A candlelit canticle, or

A memory semantical; I am

A digression indigestible.

I’m fascinated by perspective, popcorn and rare pennies,

My grandma’s orange lilies, and your lack of spatial awareness around me.

I named a garden after myself, and I damned every root and bud yet to bloom to Eternal Internal suffering.

I read aloud my words, then cleanse my teeth with antifreeze,

I bake inedible pastries for the sake of constant fleeting company.

Fringe jacket sleeves depict perfectly

my fear of touching what is forbidden, not realizing until it is too late.

I love Christmas, for I specialize in giving my gifts away recklessly

Abandoning myself,

And I am at home because I know how to do something right when I am second.

I still need permission to enter a room first, I beg for mercy over every mess I make.

I keep my blinds closed, wondering how to be perceived, comfortably.

I keep my door closed, wondering

Who will be the first to leave with the best of me?

If my words are my favorite part of me, then

What am I worth when they’re working against me?

I never wanted to become wild, when

I was seeking forgiveness before permission,

I was spoken to like a child as

My seeking acceptance gave way to remission.

I’m a teacher’s pet, and I’m not sorry for that.

I love learning and I hate being my biggest distraction.

I was a teacher’s pet until they introduced me to fractions.

I wanted to be a teacher until they all

Reduced me to a distraction wearing jean shorts.

They spoke their intentions, and

Eventually I learned to savor such adult attention.

Why do we keep pretending to care about intentions?

How they litter tainted, moral principle remnants?

I still don’t know if I have ever been a good friend.

I have yet to remember not to reach for bread and butter across the dinner table

When I eat with my elbows on the table, I think of my grandmother,

how I love her without needing anything from her,

how I have come to accept people that do not accept me.

Morally obligated intentions haunt my ancestry, but lightning struck my family tree.

It ends with me.

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