Architecture textbooks

I want to read this
eight hundred page/dollar copy
architecture textbook
so I can explain how
buildings make me feel.

I picked up a piano
to understand my ears;
I married a typist
for his perfect eppellage;
I take vacations
to take happy photos.

I majored in engineering
I do use things, after all
now bevels-- revel!

I read this book, I sit in the big X
library to read this book I want to explain
how buildings make me feel.


-Citron

can't sleep

face half our of pillow
like the earth half in sun

think about coffee-- still sending signals
like the lights on a globe at night


-Citron

My high school friends

I always wondered where my high school friends ever went.
Why don't I have them? Grades 9 and 10
None of my friends had friends like the movies either, there was---

My high school friends is a thing our parents say
and I look at you
and think
no wonder!

Without even noticing
(I was looking the wrong way)
I managed a group
that has changed me.


-Citron

The Generation Y Manifesto

I play theorist and comic
and lo-fi musician
I play regular teen
I play mathematician
I play poet and physicist,
polyglot, daughter,
cultural omnivore,
brave hater-fodder;
I play blogger and brand
and hot green activist,
I often pretend I’m
a photojournalist;
And all my imaginings
are quite sincere
and if you want to play too
well I post them right here.

-Citron

teal

i took an online test for fun.
huddled up in my cave
dying of boredom.

what color are you?
was the name of the quiz.
"now what does that even mean"
i asked myself.

the color of my personality?
color? what is color?
merely a concentration of light waves.
they have an aura i suppose.

i answered many stupid questions,
which adjective best describes you?
are you a morning person?
what animal most closely relates to who you are?

i answered honestly.
i began to wonder.

if my personality can have a color, what else can?
can voices generate the image of color?
can music indicate a predominant hue?

yes. in my opinion.

and then i wondered about myself.
is my soul patterned with illuminated yellow?
darkened and burdened with a black, purple or blue?
is it a passionate red lion?

and then the little box appeared displaying the results.

mysterious teal.

am i flattered or annoyed

-Pamplemousse

orange light

orange light coming from my drawer,
blueberry noise sounding from the walls

i have just dreamed of the armageddon.

where i drove off the highway and wept.

for all the dreams i will never realize

for all the newborn babies just born, who missed out.

reaching out for comfort i find
orange light in my hands.

-Pamplemousse

cracking pencils

this block of tree liver in front of me.
dry and cruel, is the surface for my work.

guesswork.

since the odious fumes from the grainy wood
silently expels any knowledge i have learned.

it has left me with two empty bubbles though.

logic and doubt

my two torturers.

-Pamplemousse

the mouth

the light hits the laminated postcard
just so.
in the glow of the broken bulb in my broken lamp.

the plastic concaves and convexes in such a way to create
two-toned rainbows, and hippie retinas.

it looks like a mouth, the way it reflects.

the picture curves in, in the center and in the middle of the sides
two lovely lips.

licking up the light like a hungry fox, it will disappear when i turn off this switch.

-Pamplemousse

at the dry-cleaners

Sometimes I want to tell you
how excited I am
that the rosin for my cello bow
smells like rosin

or that it got all over my black concert pants
just to tell you.

I wait and wait for
a hardcore
metaphor
implore
galore
please come?

But no,
I am stuck wondering at the
finger-sized-round-blue-plastic-tough-pop
dome I press to dispense detergent
and the bulbous shape, big drip, sliding fluid
so greasy it is wet.

Wait and wait,
for a poem to come. But maybe
the outside of the onion can crackle
like turning an old page of a poetry book,
before my love does or my hate, before I tell you all about Ge and Ares
in the armfuls of clean soaking laundry
maybe waiting can be.


-Citron

12/21

Today it rained; I took a walk to deliver letters and to breathe better. I often do this. On the sidewalk,
a few cars did a spittake in my direction. She's walking? In the rain? To deliver a letter?
I know.

So my shoes were soaked, and there was no reason NOT to jump in puddles.
Adults stared, or avoided staring. But see, there is nothing wrong
with an almost-grown person marveling
at the speed with which her volume
is attracted to the earth
to displace
deposited
precipitation.


-Citron

A Morning in Haiku (104 Poems)

[Note:  I understand that these are not haiku.  They are, however, meant to be able to stand alone as well as work together to form a cohesive narrative.]

12:47

bad days are

fortunately

unused.

Hope is God

I hope today is not like

yesterday—not bad.

8:23

I wake up to chatter

my own babble:

hungry, light, white

tissue paper

you. In it, between, over it all

I wake up to thoughts of you

like cloudy white tissue paper over life.

Someone below yells

for me. The holler runs up

the stairs, and I reach for the hand of

calm + quiet.  I twist in.

From my pillow I scream good morning

to avoid a scene.

I always have to be prepared

to walk down my own stairs.

No morning light is safe.

Still cloudy eyes I remove hard plastic case from

teeth cloudy too with

my own night saliva.

I run my tongue while

fiddling with its orange box.

Every morning I rediscover my own

alien teeth.  They are so smooth it

feels like kissing.

I’ve answered the yell three shattering

times, in contrast to the soft sun lighting

my room like a fairy crystal. 

I wait to go down. 

I’m hungry, and food is there, but

I write first.  Hello. 

8:49

As expected, I padded into the kitchen with the

bent back of teenage grogginess obviously mantled

over my body and hair and I was treated like

an awake person.

Emily Emily Are You

Please Hey This—

Dishwasher Going To

Church Wi

Ah! They’re going to church and it’s way too late to get ready

deep like I would need to pull.  Of course they still

try to convince me. 

please do says mom and “This is a

DeHority Family Day of

Obligation!” –Danny

I often want to go to church.  Alone. 

I hate that it gives her a smug

sense of correctness to go as

a family.  I am horrible. 

Danny, of course I will help you with some

personal project or another

later.  If I don’t you’ll ask for hours. 

mention of ukulkele recordings brings forward an old story

downstairs it is cold and as I sit on the chilling toilet I

count goosebumps and recount eloquently to an imaginary audience

her son had a beautiful but ponderous Hebrew name—

After several tries I got the third sentence right.  Ponderous.  It began with J…

I galloped up the dark staircase again to the brightening oasis

with a fading expo I wrote in curled hand over several panes of window

9:15

I pick up my silver can of

fizz-on-the-way-down

I marshmallow on my way down

puffing a soft barrier like in a microwave.

They all left for church, mom in a nice hat and Sam still in the recliner

in a disapproved-of ball, even worse than me 

because he doesn’t own an island

They left. I no longer wanted to eat so I made coffee with one cartridge of Morning Blend and a white hot chocolate set to medium. 

Instant coffee makers do not understand the words

STOP YOU’RE OVERFLOWING

2 concerned eyebrows

1 surprised gasp

1 set of mechanical problem-solving skills

1 turkey baster

1 sippy cup

1 spot of

2% milk

6 minutes

After the ordeal, I had the perfect cup of coffee. 

It woke me up.

The issue with the word “cute” is its ambiguity,

as the sunlight hit the disassembled newspaper in my quiet house.

Context means compliment or condescension.

These are not haiku,

my vocabulary is like a minivan.

I listen to my CD, which Danny left in the laptop

next to an apple juice box

in his haste.

This song is incredibly juvenile. 

I hope nobody I like hears it. 

Everybody I like was forced to hear it. 

Did that have a setting?  Of course it did!

The word juvenile means slight non childhood.

That’s a setting, right?

I will never be able to scribble forward

the things I tell myself.

9:36

I remembered then doing practice recording in the yellowing light of a song gift for someone.

My to-do list is in red ink but I will do this first. 

I practiced. Now I worry

I am offending.  Only give songs

to forgiving friends. 

She is one. 

Who isn’t?

Who expects their friends to be immaculate?

I expect my friends to expect me to be immaculate. 

It’s funny because they have no reason to. 

I only hate my own mistakes. 

I really like seeing complexity in others.

Only send forgiving friends to this poem. 

It is offensive.

Or maybe all friends are forgiving.

Do I lack learning from my learning?

Do I write bad sentences? (I do)

I live in the South.

Southers hate and have lots of bugs,

so I have double-paned reflections.

I’ll record that song now. I will mess up and possibly offend and

then thoughts of you reenter.

I have to stop working.

I have to lay down and revel in

your existence.

Somehow you are anti-offended by my complexity.

It is too much to hold

while writing haiku on a double-paned window.

I saw green trees and morning-blue sky,

brown grass and cracked windowsill paint

I thought and thought

My head was in a square of light.

My veins lit up like they had windows too.

Optic prisms up and down my body.

A cloud flows over the sun.

The dark blue sprawl on the windows appears.

I practice more. 

On the top panes, blue words

texture the blue sky

interjected by dark-trunked

bare winter trees.

Sir Thomas Moore said God puts metaphors there.

Creation is not a second Bible.  It is something else.

They just share archetypal morals.

Matter and energy are fun to think about.

I have physics to do.

If you were free today I would ask for your help not because I can’t do physics.

We don’t kiss in the hallways or hold hands in front of our friends.

I no longer wonder or sneer at those who do.

It is a strange time to be attached to another person.

My window hosts small plastic tiger figurines and adult syntax.

Shape and decoration do not decide the thing.

It decides itself.  Who are we?

Why am I spending my morning this way?

What do I expect to mean?

Out of love of what do I love you?

Do I love anyone? This is stupid.

The window sends glossy-leaved trees into sparkle.

My face is hit by a thousand moving pinpoints

of light.  Were it a watch and wall I would understand.

I remember finding the sun-watch-wall dance as a child—

chasing it.

This is something else entirely.

I often wonder if I am normal.

Unique but not unusual.

The word for us all is else.

You will not write a hundred haiku today. 

I will not run.

I can not.

I noticed, though the curves of the word will,

trees still have yellow leaves. 

Why did it take this long?

I have to work.  This is

an else day—free Thursday for Thanksgiving

I thank my brain, for you and for the sure did

that is not unusual.

However, I am not fiction

as I must keep reminding myself.

Were I this poem, I would have no homework between thought.

My English teacher says literal observations before symbolic,

but today I need to do college applications and care for children.

+I need food too, unlike my nonfiction which just needs ink.

They were home again

I picked up a box of crackers and

sat like a dejected person while she

explained how her children were

to learn a quartet

out of the Adoremus hymnal. 

If reference to childhood is not

setting, it should be. 

childhood is a time for haiku.

She set the hymnal down on Sam’s

combinatorics textbook; the red leather

and glossy blue a usual contrast

at this old kitchen table

She set George in a chair so I could

share my crackers with him.

He inarticulately asked for

cheese, so she set a cutting

board and large knife and block

of cheddar on my other side.

George and I munch quietly while

the printer spits, Danny asks for

the television, Brian obeys

a command to do dishes immediately. 

If nobody resists, nobody remembers. 

Where’s the top of my coffee cup?  Dad

asks him.

I can usually track the confusion here

but explaining it is worthless. 

You bit your lip!

No, it got trapped!

Your lip is bleeding! 

It had been chapped! 

Is it a -------ffsxedmmctionsnj

Danny—this paper is not

Blame Sam

Sam—We Have More

you used-----

No I Didn’t

Dad closes the crackers. 

We’re eating those. 

We’re going out to brunch soon. 

George and I stare at the closed packages. 

I write on.  He admires the window. 

Danny ponders over to do his portrait. 

There is complaint. 

Dad was on his hands and knees

cleaning this dirty floor just yesterday. 

mom’s chemo makes her feel crummy. 

Her voice is stark, logical, happy

on the phone with her friends. 

She worries about them like I do. 

Sam worries about his 2380 SAT score. 

I was writing and forgot to talk to George; I am not effective happy company. 

Do I forget to talk to you?

He grabs my pen and grins.  He grabs

Danny’s cereal spoon, the cheese knife too sharp

for cheese’s needs. 

George grins.  He eats Danny’s cereal from a reach of my lap. 

He could talk

and I would still like him. 

Did Music Paper Print Out Of The

Printer? mom asks from a room

away.  I wonder what of me others will see

in my way of saying

my family. 

George found the sound of spoon

and bowl to be shocking

but nice.  Sam tells Danny his eyes are white

uuuhhhh bluish greenish says Danny. 

George tries to put the cracker box

in a cereal bowl.  Then vice-versa. 

He reads the R     I     T    Z letters

Sam applauds.  George says my name. 

Danny asks if Everyone In The Same Family Always Have the Same Eye Color

Not Always says Sam,

but we do. 

Hey Emmie?

Yeah

Can You Write Some Music For Me

the hymnal is placed on my lap.

Blank white paper, a forgettable opportunity. 

Transposing is no fun, but zen

I just can’t haiku concurrently. 

I want Diet Coke. 

Mom made a dinner/supper pun

that also commented on

George yelled after Danny did when

Mom pulled his oxygen off. 

You were distracted too. 

George yelled again for effect. 

We laughed less. 

In Danny’s portrait book, his own face is the only without color.

I am thankful says Mom

nothing else

I am going to transpose quietly. 

11:03

We don’t have any Diet Coke

I thought and thought and saved myself about two hours

with a photocopier. 

Explaining my idea to mother made her offer the

last line of transposing work herself

because music is her gift to her children. 

I was problem-solving, not complaining. 

I don’t know where Brian went. 

George is screaming.  Sam hands

him to me and he clings to my neck

fast, like a mast or magnet. 

Quiet, but tense.  George breathes

two heavy upset breaths

We sit and talk for a moment instead. 

He wants milk. 

I hold him while Sam brings some. 
We’re out of Diet Coke. 

The morning accomplished nothing

besides taking a vial of now

for later me

or you. 

I lay in my bed.  Come up with the pretense

of getting ready for brunch, I need to though. 

My bed, as it happens, was once the most comfortable place in the world. 

(Then I tried your arms.) 

To he honest, I Holler Too

I Holler A Lot.  I almost did this morning. 

People listen to me when I holler.

I do not frustrate.  I work,

or holler.  I hold, I breathe. 

I say I did nothing.  That is not

true.  I thought and held and held

my holler.  I did no physics

textbook work, and those

are not

the same.

I doubt this is my hundredth haiku

but every poet needs to eat

and hold small children while

they breathe. 

Every poet wastes a morning

by the value system of their mothers. 

No poem ends as expected. 

Nobody wants to read others’ poems. 

I read poems like my life—my poems

but by someone else.

I will spend the afternoon typing this

in case someone else wrote it too. 

Then I will call you

from the phone by the window. 

It will be dark, and all these words erased. 

You will be calm.  I will tell you I love you

and smile. 

-Citron

domestic disturbances

the headband, swarthy and lemony
has painted designs of trees,
 rotating
violently in an invisible breeze
from some unknown tempest
in an unfamiliar dimension.

the picture,
frozen in time
a fist clenched
a scowl held
for eternity.
in the acrylics.

-Pamplemousse

three spoons

three spoons lying on the table
all identical, all different.

rusty from the years of solitary confinement on the shelf,
they are ready.

the first spoon:

the fog from the sighs of lilacs
it contains the smoke of the mind.
one tastes it in odd places
the gas station ladies' room
during a large assembly

it is a pleasure to feel the fumes burst into your mouth
and fill you will verdant thought and emotions.

it comes in unpredictable moments of peace.


the second spoon:

a paste of toads and doorknobs
it is the moment of shock.
not surprise, but shock.
this sudden punch in the stomach can be good.
but no one likes to be shocked, breath becomes scarce
sweat becomes present
and the mind goes blank

the acrid taste fills the mouth for just an instant.


the third spoon:

a liquid of metal and fungi
it is that moment of self-realization.
you become aware of yourself.
so difficult to describe,
it can be good or bad.

you feel yourself breathing
you blink and comprehend that you can control those windows to the world
an alien sensation fills you

and you either feel child-like wonder
or unwilling emptiness

-Pamplemousse

empty journals rotting in my drawers

time and time again
under many a different mindset
i have attempted to start a journal.
however, my inherent obsession with including the minutest detail,  the urgency of feeling that each second of my day must be chronicled, comes because i don't know what is important.

so i must include everything.
this philosophy of describing my meals and the ghastly skirt of my second-to-last least favorite female teacher is an unfortunate one.  i do not know how to distinguish the amusing from the meaningless, the meaningful from the idiotic.  my life is a riddle, a sudoku box (devilishly difficult) that i still can't solve to a level of satisfaction.

do i have a good life?  i suppose i do. i have parents, nice ones at that.  a brother that is terrific in his way.  do i feel joyous in my niche?  in this beehive of Being?  i would say that i feel unfulfilled. at times, monotonous motion dots more aptly describe day-to-day activity than a flowering descriptive passage.  perhaps that is why i have trouble.  i know i describe something uninteresting, that i do not care about.  this feeling in the seventh (or ninth) layer of my subconscience manifests itself and sinks through the stacks of paper towels that make up my mind.  maybe i need Glad.  it seems to soak up inconvenient liquids rather efficiently.  glad is what i must find.  glad is what i wish i was.

or do i?  isn't being unfeeling the best?  watching the world spin round its axis in a cold, logical way, shooting radars from those eyelashes, cataloging what is perceived.  i suppose it is, isn't it?  being sad and depressed, and lonely, is fulfilling for an afternoon each fortnight or two.  and then mixed in with glee, excitement, heart-pounding-joy that is unexplainable mixed in thrice or...frice (four-ice).  i suppose that is best.  i suppose that is best.

-Pamplemousse

triangles

His eyes stream mahogany leather stained with crushings of petal juice.

I don't like the hungry feeling that I get from his overly arched eyebrows.  There is a reason that The Moslems had arches.  how else could their sky high turbans brush the bottom of Allah's chin stubble, letting his wisdom rain down in the form of dead skin cells?

His eyebrows have no desire to catch the wisdom in the dna of God,
raining down to earth as pine needles from a cumbersome Christmas tree.
and his sneering mouth shouts obstreperously of his education, his breeding.

breeding is for wild beasts and aristocrats, have you noticed?

the gold leafing on your diary page merely masks the scrawl of your pen, allowing it to seem beautiful.  beautiful it is not, is an ogre dressed in women's clothing now daisy buchanan?
white as his pupils may be, his liver is yellow with the bile that has bubbled from his suppressed snottiness.

Drink the elixir from the ivy outside your bay window with the grecian statues on either side, and allow it to elevate your mind to a pedestal.  yes, you are now better.  a more perfect creature.
in your own raving mad fantasy, you are king.

-Pamplemousse

smile

the numbers on the receipt, do not add up to the number of branches
stemming from my ears.
the man staring at me from the photo looks creepy.  but he's really not.
shh
when i drift off into sleep, sometimes my plastic globe creaks and my curtains rustle.
is there someone in here?
the arches whisper
the doorframes giggle
and the floors groan.
smile

the world is alive, and envelops us like a tepid, glittering worm.

-Pamplemousse

the forest

Why is it, that in the gaunt, velvety depths of the forest,
where the old Black man dwells, you venture out alone, as a child, as a 
poor adolescent with rudimentary materials, and a fear of the ghosts and ghouls
that haunt the wooded paths, you venture out to seek the river of truth
and wander through the meandering streams.  why is it that you have no fear?


well, you see it's quite simple really. me being a warrior of a gang of lance-wielding bandits,
i ain't afraid of anything.  the forest scares my weary nerves, but the river, oh the river.  it beckons to me
and i know that when i hear it call, that i am right.  ol' jim here is with me.  i am not alone.  that black man you be speaking about.  well, you see, i'm not sure if you mean ol' jim, or that satanic devil man.  i've heard stories 'bout him sneaking around this island.  but i ain't afraid of him! i ain't afraid of no one.  because i am a lance-wielding bandit.

-Pamplemousse

3 a.m.

in the newborn hours of the morning
when it is still the old age of my night

i melt away the cocoon that envelops my neck
and from my lungs springs a new creation

in polar opposite to my pedestrian self
this beaded centaur gallops to the outskirts of my mental forest
and infringes on the wild and the spectacular

clawing at the whispering dust.

-Pamplemousse

I Like My Job

God beats us all the time in factory efficiency
profit margins.  He owns all the tree bark,
His version of laissez-faire capitalism
is hte only true model--
at least, it's the closest to theory
= an old idea
The ultimate beaurocracy, as everything
that exists
sits under these little rules
Love and gravity,
Nobody can mind either
He is the wind between each wooden eagle
painted on top of the totem poles,
even the ones who believe ice cracks
below the fire
just Because
I am Inuit. 

Try laws  Try moving  Try cracking  Try
even Try ice cream;
tongue. 
Cook, clean, wield power, find red hot buttons
60% of the energy in coal is lost to your
lung-air. 

The rule has always been
Try harder. 


-Citron

Structuralism

What an endeavor! 
Lego blocks were not meant to be pried apart
into so many wonderful rules,
instead, the little goals have
little assembly fingers. 
destroy their wholeness as creators
as they destroy, pry apart lives they lead
like so many colorful blocks. 
A leaf will never look natural
in your beautiful orderly science museum--
which is, after all,
a structure too. 


-Citron

The novelist- psychologist

If I walked in tomorrow
with pieces out my brain
You all would be real nice to me
cause its okay that I'm insane.
You know what makes a novelist? 
A person who just gets
that everyone is missing brains,
that noone's opened yet. 
So long as your head looks real whole
we all assume it's evil-ity
But maybe they can't change cause they're
missing the brains,
Does this make me a novelist? 
Well maybe now I will be. 


-Citron

4 + 3i

Math is not true in life
things don't exist
but to solve issue they
mathematically pretend to do.

equals
people,
          and insofar only true
          to the universe
          in that there
          are people
          there.


-Citron

babushka

hanging from your amiable line
your designs seem almost serpentine
and your borsht filled eyes seem sad
to see my door succumb to fad.

why would anyone name their child dolores?

-Pamplemousse

musings

i.

looking in the mirror in the middle of the night.
i always do that, no matter how tired i am.
perhaps i want to ensure that i am the same
as when i looked in the mirror before going to sleep.
that Time has not come and stolen away a score
from my smooth, unwrinkled brow.

ii.

you know how rock has layers?
and by looking at a peaking cliff, with ridges and impressments on the side,
and stripes of different shades and textures,
scientists are able to determine exactly what happened
in the years when those specific layers were on top?
what if the brain had layers, and one could dissect a human mind to see the passage of time?
what if one could physically see the angry years, and the happy years?

would not the mind be a fascinating timeline

iii.

can one cry with no eyes?
can one smile with no mouth?
can one understand with no body?

why would strong emotion be reliant on strange looking masses of cells.

-Pamplemousse

Greece and the Ruins of Missolonghi

Dear Goethe,

I have three subjects: 
women, politics and you. 

The women say I'm too poor,
the politicians say I'm too romantic,
you are forty years my senior
by the time I am important
you will be dead, as will be Fraule
and all the beauty in all the women
in all that house I did

This is why I paint. 

Sincerement,

Eugene


-Citron

salt + vinegar

Vinegar potato chips
have never been tasty
and give you bad breath. 
Today, that's all I packed for lunch
because it was early
and convenient.
I used to wonder at people
who lived like this. 
I'm glad it's only lunch. 


-Citron

Dear Gustav Dore

You're obsessed with Hell,
Gustav Dore
What a sad theme to
illuminate!
Factory children and
Where
there
parents
dwell
was your chosen
close-to-home
kind of Hell.

Frankly, I'm quite concerned. 
Are you so afraid to burn
or rot or freeze or not?
Then you drew all nine
circles described by Dante,
You're obsessed with Hell,
Gustav Dore. 


-Citron

(haiku)

Watching faded colors peel
"I painted that doorframe"


-Citron

foresight

tomorrow do you want to have a good day or a bad day because foresight is okay because i promise you notice days when they are present and words when they are being just figured out letters come in the post and you send them back but always like licking stamps so that someone else rips this open.


-Citron

Television

What have I left to do
she cried softly to her
empty living
room.

Nothing.

Nothing, The answer
was nothing,
so she bought herself
a television.


-Citron

I guess you can say I'm all that I can hold

I guess you can say I'm all that I can hold
I guess you can say I'm everywhere
and everywhen, everything
I've ever
been,
at least all that I can hold
I'm a piece of you too, a piece
of you is in me--
you're all my socks and earrings
cause we have lots of holes
stripes Germany bellybuttons
you can go in all of them
and I will try and hold.


-Citron

I usually anticipate boring answers

I asked the Frenchman whether
weather?  Whether my grammar
weather the second line was
correct-- he looked at me
quite seriously, like Baudelaire
he said it matters not
if I only sing.


-Citron

Stunted

No matter how tall I get
The floor drops with new weight
the sneakerview still


-Citron

Colons

Poetry:  is for the little bits
But no:  real living person cares at all
Not to say there's much in real.
But to make:  the bits:  a little bitter
The deal:  is we put poetry
and these:  truths in the batter
Cakes and fruitcakes
Books are all bakes
Not to say they should. 
Let's go. 


-Citron

in the bay

i left you in the bay
not wishing to see you again
and knowing that i never would.
you will die in the dark maelstroms
that have opened merely to accept you
into their caves.
i will think of you from time to time,
when i breathe air that you can never breathe again.
these clothes you wear,
i will remember them always,
though they are fogged from the dampness inside my eyelids.

now, i must pretend to be grieved,
to be anxious and distraught at your departure.
i will try to cry, or maybe it will just happen.
the tears will come eventually
to flood the prickly vines that have grown over my cheeks.

-Pamplemousse

three thumbs

three thumbs all lined up in a row
running through the streets
in the palid vanilla light of the moon.

-Pamplemousse

cool

I think I've figured it out.
A person sees a cool person and wants to be friends. In anticipation of needing cool conversation topics, they go do cool stuff. Then they successfully make the cool friend, who would have been their friend before but is especially excited to be their friend now, because in the process of doing cool things, that previously less cool person got just a little cooler. It usually works both ways.  The cycle goes on, because the more you know people the more you understand just how cool they really are. That is how we inspire each other to awesome.

-Citron 

BOMBASTIC

BOMBASTIC IS SUCH A GOOD WORD
LIKE THE PARADE DRUMS THAT FORCE YOUR HEART TO THUMP
AND MARCH

LIKE TRUMPETS YELLING YELLING
SO BRAVE AND PUBLIC THAT YOUR STOMACH
PULLS YOU OUT TOO

LIKE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE AMPS
AND JUMPING JUMPING

A GRAND EXPLOSION
GRAND
SO GRAND YOU HAVE TO SHOUT OVER

-Citron

Happy Birthday to Susanna

Susanna it's your birthday, and I know it's getting late
So I have to sing this song pretty fast, if you missed it today
I would hate that.
Happy birthday to Susanna,
You know I think that you're the man, let's
Go make some adventure plans
Susanna.
Susanna happy birthday
Did you realize how tres
difficile it is to rhyme your name
without sounding cliche?
Susanna.
I'm planning to write people songs
going on near Christmas time
so I'll save my better thoughts
for that occasion
But I figure I would send you a little
birthday card in rhyme,
Who's you're favorite booth, you're mine
Glad you're not named Ruth, but fine
Even if you were named Ruth
I would think you're pretty cool
We would still hang out at school
except possibly if that triggered a giant shift in how history turned out like in that movie about butterflies eating bananas,
Happy birthday to Susanna.


-Citron

Seventeen

I can do a lot of things in the next year. 
I can run away from home,
I can eat someone else's ice cream
I can, theoretically,
be arrested or sue someone for child abuse,
I could be called a child. 
You see, I am seventeen,
so I can be called a child. 
I can end my sentences with prepositions
or write ones like the following.
But.
I don't think I will.  I like a home, and a half-full ice cream box,
I like my skin and my poems and
being seventeen.


-Citron

not a stone unturned

if we were playing a game
under the umbrella of the fall equinox.
and you supposedly hid little notes for me,
written in devilish calligraphy, under certain rocks.
in my little english garden.

and if i were to try and find them.

and i picked up every piece of earth bone fragment i could find.
and i toiled for demi-hours trying to find these  messages.
turning the little garden into a trashed mound of earth.

would you not then


Reasonably


say that i had not left a stone unturned?
it would be no cliche.

in a perfect world, it would be merely an astute observation.
but in our verily imperfect bubble. it rolls off the tongue
with overused blandness.

-Pamplemousse

"choking murmur"

Hadn't slept, figured telling you "choking" was a Germanic adjective would be enough.
Didn't save the thought.  Figured I could get the little things right
but nothing worked, my essay didn't convey my ideas
about what this tea party means in context of the
Great Gatsby as a whole work
and next Monday at noon
I find out I failed. 
Great.


-Citron

A dreamer

What is wrong with you all! 
Come up with another way to say things! 
Find your own!
I don't want to be judged for using the word dream
if it it the right word! 
You screwed it up for me. 
Now I need to find my own,
and that's not how I want life to work.


-Citron

mirror images

backwards, times are happier,
in reverse, the past is aglow
with rosy cherries,
and chandeliers of bronzed glass.
the inverse of the present
is an enticing green valley
where i can be happy
among the thistles.
not knowing they will sting
my naive armor of skin.

turn your face
so that i can see my upside down
reflection in your earring.
i look more exotic.
more interesting
upside-down.
that everyone could perceive me
through your cheap and common
mirroring ear-ring.

things are better anyway except this way.
-Pamplemousse

murmur

there is an underlying noise.
a strange whispering.
i hear it at times.  when all is quiet.
is it the murmur of the blood?
pumping mechanically through the roots of trees?
or of the swish of the nerves.
the nerves of all humanity.
blowing out the fuse of the brain.
is it the creaking of the heart?
we have stopped using our hearts.
they are worn and rusty in that forgotten closet behind the kitchen.
in that old shed in the woods.
where we used to pretend there were spirits.

i hear these sounds, voices of inanimate objects.
at strange times within the screenplay of my existence.
walking away from a friend, after a fight.
angrily hurt. wishing i had not poured out my innermost emotions with such trust.
shown them my internal pages.
i stab the ground with my strides of sharpened pencils.
and instead of heavy footfall on the linoleum.
i hear the creamy swirl of vibrations.
my ear reacts to these disturbances as sound.
i never really stop to think about them for too long.
i stand, frozen, in the pit of a black charcoal maelstrom.
i look up to the light, hear the songs the light sings to me.

and then i am swept away again.

maybe one time, i can ponder the luz for long enough.
to hear what it is saying to me.

-Pamplemousse

Sorrow thoughts

I flipped through a quote book my grandparents gave me and saw a quotation about complaining.  About sorrow, really, but mostly about how if someone complains about something then they must think that their something is, on some level, a little OK.  We only talk in a big mess about what is not actually bothering us. 

I imagined telling you this quote or maybe just paraphrasing and you're upset because you think I am accusing you of being a bad friend.  Really I want you to ask me what I'm hiding even though there's no way I could tell you about why I am and always will be sad. 

Why am I not accusing you of hiding a sorrow?  You wouldn't tell me about it obviously.  Do you know how huge people are?  Vats of urine.  You took Calculus, I remember helping you after school and bonding like molecules do.  There's the opinion that people's nuclei can fuse but you know what?  Our electrons got into a working orbit or something.  I think if anyone knew anyone else really then there would be some wort of explosion.  Maybe that's what the soulmate love thing is.  You become some synthetic monster molecule or something. 

Anyway, you took Calculus, right?  Do you understand how huge people are?  It's almost disgusting.  We draw out of current thoughts and lives like a function of time.  And we are the area thus far under the curve.  I am an integral from today to whence I came.  I cannot concieve of myself because I am not smart enough.  None of us know ourselves, how could we possibly know each other?  And so much of each other is disgusting.  How complicated is a human.  Like a world.  Sure, there's a word for it, but it just works around it like those electrons.  The word can't connect to a thought.  You are empty, a few streaks of my integral. 

It must not mean much, this idea, because I told you about it. I thought about keeping it in my head but I think writing it down makes thinks a little OK on some level, even if it used to be too big.  Maybe that's the point of poetry. 

As sincere as I can be,


-Citron

destroyer of nature

lying on this bed of nails
she knows she has done wrong.

why does she not speak of the birds?
the storms and the blazes of the fires?
she has grown to forgive the bipolar
disorders of nature.

but, how can she forgive herself.
she can not
forgive herself

for trampling on that perfect flower.
alone and pure in the center of the field.

-Pamplemousse

the rustling of the girl with the pearl earring

in the dead of night, nearly falling off the precipice of slumber...
i start.
i hear a strange rustle.
i turn my ears,
and there, a strange wind has caused the bottom of the poster
the girl with the pearl earring to float
and she is breathing as the waves on the beach.

-Pamplemousse

electric violet

the pump, the beat
the noise.
the jungle inside of my head.

neon animals leap from branch to branch
as the harmonicas swung from the trees.

the dirt was covered in empty printer cartridges.

madness, chaos, frenzy.

call my name
for i won't hear you.

-Pamplemousse

harvest moon

peaking from behind the holograms of foliage
with gross bulbous form
and an unnaturally pallid, blossom face

the moon glared down at me.
with warmth in its cheeks
and red in its heart

isn't it pretty?
isn't it mysteriously lovely?
isn't it frighteningly bizarre?

the harvest moon is not a solid sphere.
it is a hole.
a hole bored into the sky.
the sky is merely a canvas covering the true nature of the universe.

didn't you know the universe was orange?

-Pamplemousse

Science

My family says the prayer before supper way too fast.
They can't be thinking at all, but then again
they taught me to say it at all;
I can look more carefully
and teach patience to my family
and my family doesn't have to say it fast. 


-Citron

You changed who I would have been to who I will be

My high school friends.

Weird, that they were important to the lady behind the something.
Weird, that's a thing people say. 

And I look at you and go
Yeah
No wonder!


-Citron

gee, the end of something

They think settling down sounds perfect,
and say I should carry my genes forward,
but I don't think that is my dream. 
Don't you ever want to be the end of something?
The tip of a root, the prick of a leaf,
the sentence's punctuation?


-Citron

The Postman and the Broker

The postman's wife tried her best to keep from shaking
the light plastic video camera as the postman
(through even what seemed in the video to be an earthquake)
walked his close-to-the-ground walk, stepped onto a brick stoop
and sent a tight handful of envelopes through someone's rusty mail slot. 

Did you hear, asked the broker's wife,
that the post doesn't come on Saturdays anymore? 
He barely looked up from his own face in their local Tribune
and she barely looked up from admiring
the contrast between orange juice and floral tablecloth. 
Ah, said the broker. 

The postman's wife didn't spend a second glance
on the YouTube side banner ad for a desperate

firm of some sort in New Jersey;

to budget they cancelled their newspaper subscription.  

She called her husband over;

they spent Sunday afternoon replaying "Jim's Last Saturday Delivery"

The broker's wife bought six newspapers that day.
Her name was Susan. 


-Citron

Moonbeam Tears

I am so tired of the poems I find online
Really, I can't take it anymore
The cliches are like little knives in my skin
Drawing one luscious drop of blood

With each new depressed word misplaced I read. 

I don't mind that you write poetry
I don't mind that you tell me
And the rest of the entire world
What it is that makes you sad. 
But please,
as you spiral downwards

and you cry in a corner

and the stars are as lonely
and you just

can't

take it anymore,

please don't write poetry

because it makes you cool. 

-Citron

shiver

you call me shivering
for i hear the tremors.
the rattling of your knuckles.
your moonlit town
will talk
but you see things
that give you life.
what did you see?
that makes you vibrate so.
was it the sight of the winds
blowing the water from the dim lake.
was it the smell of the the leaves
falling to the sky from their restraints.
do not be afraid.
the signs will come to nothing.
the will come to nothing.

-Pamplemousse

hospice

as the sea foam winds
swirl around my ears

and i look far into the hills
i know that this is the place.

this spot will be my hospice.
i will live among the jungle grass.
the hairy reeds and the gangly plants.
i will lie among the oaks
among the foxes and the mountain lions.
feeling my life seep into the undercurrent
of the creek.

kettering between life and death.
i will watch the blood orange
juice fall from the sunset sky.
it will fall onto my hands
and suck blood from my veins.
for that is the living ambrosia
for Ares' mantle.

but i am willing.
i have chosen this setting to breathe my last.
the pine needles will pity me here.
and the dirt on the ground will
lovingly embrace me.
and i will become the ground.
as i have always wanted.
to fall into the core of the earth.

-Pamplemousse

oh that i could...

oh that i could
write an emblem of my mind
a script from my juvenile thoughts
that i could put on print
something different.
an anti-cliche.

when i write
exactly what i think,
the words are commonplace
and they read illy.
it discourages my heart
and makes me sad.

in a reverie of extreme anguish
joy
anger.
i do not think in synonyms
i think merely in plain
letters. no complex sentence structures.

but if i blanket those words
in lavender smoke.
and i attempt to insert a copper tube
into my eye, to suck out a small amount of my emotion.
suddenly, metaphors and strange language
seep out in fragrant liquids.
i must compress my emotions
and squeeze them with my rough fingers

i must ball them up and throw them against the wall.
and then i pick up the remains.
rearrange them
and then.
only then am i satisfied.
only then do i have hope.

-Pamplemousse