before i die, i'll write some poems.

[Inspired by old bucket lists on YWS, I decided to join in. <3]



- Plant and grow a pink orchid

Summer at a cabin
where it always smelled like pine needles
and spiders lived in trailers of their own.
And they would sit together on the porch
and look out at the world, from their little place
on the lake, where I played.
And in the garden by the sump pump,
I grew a lily with my mom.
We found turtle eggs, my teddy bear,
and squirrels in the dresser.

- Plant and grow a pea plant

My pencil traced a curly q,
for I had nothing more to do,
than sit and stare at the back of you.
She gave us seeds and paper towel,
and told us to wait for an hour,
my plant it grew, life gave me power.
It curled and danced in stuffy white,
and slumbered when I gave it night,
but in the end, it failed.

- Raise a tadpole

I may have shaken him too much,
or tried too hard,
but he was dead by the time I got home.
And even worse than being dead
was the fact that I had no
opportunity
left.
So where could I go after that?
I let him fall into the grass,
and hoped that someday, frogs would come again.

- Save a black cat from an animal shelter

When we grow up, we learn to feel sick, like we got punched in the stomach.
"My cat died."
I let my cat die, whether I believe that or not.
He was smelly, and he wasn't fluffy, and I'm a girl,
and cats should be fluffy and cuddly,
but he was a boy, and he was skinny, and his nose ran.
So we let him outside, because cats like it there.
But then we wouldn't let him back in.
I learned it was okay to keep pushing him out,
and when my temper called for it,
I built up brick walls,
that no amount of mewling or nose running could break down, even if he tried.
I think he knew what we were doing.
I think he cried sometimes at night because we didn't love him.
I think if I let myself remember my cruelty, I'd cry, too.
I can't make it up to you, but I'll ...

I can't make it up to you.

- Sing at the Paris Opera House

In sleep he sang to me,
voice falling, sweeping over my ears as
soft as silk, as velvet, a cape in black.
I told him he could sing anything
and it would make me relax, let me sleep,
and I took CD's from the library
and I put them in my computer.
Sitting on my bed, I worked through the crevices
and the dips and the hills and the peaks
and the pure triumphs of vocal chords
that he gave me. And when she came along, too,
it was as if my world were complete in
two strangers. Her voice was like crystal,
like running your finger along the wet rim
of a glass you were drinking from.
She rang in my heart as much as my ears,
and she gave my throat wings,
and they give me hope and inspiration,
so I want to take myself home.

- Swim in the ocean, with somewhere to go

Because life's really like an ocean.
Always moving, always a fight against the rolling punches,
one after another, if they hit you right they'll drag you
down. But you can jump through and persevere.
Some people have never even seen real life,
they don't know what it is, where it is.
Some have stood at the edge and never dared to dance
with bare feet in the bald face of life.
Fewer still have immersed themself in life, a taste
of the salty catches (it's not smooth) and
only the true stars swim through life.
Who has swum through life? Who goes through the ocean?
Who can live that kind of absolute intensity?
I will spend my time trying to get back to life,
let me immerse myself for a day in true energy.


- Learn to play the piano

Stumbling upon pretty sounds, pretty sums of security
I never earned, I never asked for.
And I'm choking, freezing up, I feel the
solid solid keys pressing back at me.
I want to push them down once and for all
to make them stick, they make me fall
in love. When I heard your key change,
I felt something true that I never knew could come
from some strings and some fingers and you.

- Be taken seriously

I'll give you bubbles and colors
and smiles and cheers and wide eyes
and cat tails and lipstick and pink,
but only because that's your taste.
Behind my manufactured eyes
live peacocks, brilliant, proud,
and so very sure of themselves.
I like to wear sweaters and skirts
when my legs freeze, as long as they're
covered in bright tights. In bright lights,
you'll see I'm more than what you think.

- Have a personal library

In corners, an ever moving labyrinth
to get lost in and sit in an easy chair there,
something soft and old and loved already,
books up to my elbows, and that spicy,
home-smell [not new magazines, no],
and a soft yellow light,
and a couple of butterflies for effect.

- Be brave enough to do something scary

The kitchen sink is too high up,
and stools are known to fail.
You yell at me, I'll sprain my knee,
and so I stay on the ground.
And now I cling to the ground,
and now I live on the ground, but what
happened to learning on my own?
What happened to the sense of adventure?
To climbing in trees that had no branches to climb?
To two skinned knees, mosquito bites, missing teeth?

- Dance on pointe

Inside, I'm dancing, but my body can't keep up,
and the wind outside twirls for me, the leaves jump for me,
and the crickets play their dazzling, ribbed symphony,
but I cannot thank them appropriately, because
I haven't learned their rhythm and their movements.

- Visit a star

A meerkat looked up, and asked if the warthog could make them,
and in the circle of life, disney told me I could wish on them.
And every night, when the clouds go away, I can see them,
I can look at them, I can try to count them, but I know I won't.
And sometimes they scare me -- the empty space between scares me,
because what could be living there, staring right back at me?
I want to go and see, and be among the blazing, glazed-over
red-orange-molten candy, the metal and the golden sparks
in their vast, cold kingdom. Would I be permitted past the guards?

- Sleep outside without a tent

Well the wind's a tender blanket,
paired with a real quilt,
like the one my mom said she'd make from my childhood,
but the grass is a fine pillow,
paired with my arm, a flesh
I can always depend on to fit itself perfectly.
And the sky is a wide movie screen,
on which I can watch
my whole life play out before my eyes -- reflect.

- Fly

Every night I dream
of flying.
Like swimming through the sky,
slowly floating,
gently dipping,
confident of who I am
and everything I can do.
And why can't I
dream when I'm awake?