Category: Penman Lounge

Write down your prospects
Your seeds of hope rest between the pad and the ink
Light hearted subjects are
Non-ending objects
Contours running deep into the sun’s gaze
Our theories on darkness can slow dance with our deepest thought’s silhouettes
Your mind can be still in your eye of the storm if your pen allows the silence to mourn
Parallels of unmarked synergy can be handed down like dowries
We can wed our unmentionable tensions
And learn of each other on time taken by an hour glass filled to the brim with compassion
Hands on the sundial under a horizon forever set ease the chains on running time’s boundaries
Forever we can drift away on a raft made of memories etched in enclaves of our mind’s crevices
Without missing anything

Lost in an ocean used for stationery’s compulsion
Black water never before used to restore life
Or what fingertips hold can jettison the sun and bring upon the night
If you need it
All emotions revisited but
Never repeated

It’s a nice fantasy:
Paris & Greece…
but I’ve got a shop to keep.
It’s a nice dream
that keeps the heart alive,
but I’ve got a shop to keep.
Sorry to lead you into–
thinking I meant I wanted to go–
oh no!– I always do that.
Anyway, it was just pretend,
but still you’re a lucky friend.
And the thought that you
would have and wanted to
give me the experience
is what really matters–
but I’ve got a shop to keep.
I guess I–just wanted to see–
what you would say…

Explosions going on around me
all the time…
I have to take cover
Explosions going on during my
whole life…
They followed me
out here…
Got worse.
I was surprised.
Or
Was I really?

The explosions are numbing me
yet they are hurting me
shattering my soul
and I can hear
less and less…

I don’t
like the explosions…
I hate what they are doing
to me…
I need to find strength
to stop
to end forever
the explosions
before they get me
and
I start exploding
and
I don’t want to explode…
I am better
than the explosions.

Never more will I let
explosions
happen around
me again.
It’s over.
It’s a new day.
A better one.

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2008

It hurts the most to think about how happy you made me at times, I can laugh to myself just thinking about the past, I honestly don’t know where things actually went wrong, questions I have for you like was it you? or was it me?
I feel so much pain right where my heart lays, I wish I could erase the memories and even erase your face, I just want to become numb so I wont feel a thing, but they say your heart cant pretend or lie, so I guess I cant act like I’m not hurting or I don’t care,
Why does the end have to hurt, why cant there ever be a happy ending, I guess that’s why they call it falling in love because it will put you down in the end.

I spoke with Travis tonight. Told him I might be in love with him. He’s the first person who’s ever validated me. If only Patrick could be a shell and I could insert Travis’s empathy, wisdom, and sensitivity into him. ‘Kurt is a very lucky man,’ I told Travis. And then I hung up the phone, after he hushed me with, ‘It was very brave of you to call.’ I sunk back into my blue chair and typed this single message of the day.

If you want my body
and you think I’m sexy
please DON’T let it show

If you want my body
and you think I’m sexy
please DON’T let me know

If you want my body
and you think I’m sexy
please GO!

I’m takin’ me a walk
and I’m buyin’ me a cuppa joe
I’m seein’ if you can keep up
and get in my flow

If you want my body
and you think I’m sexy

So?

I’ve got
3 lucky cards
in my back pocket
One is a Heart
Another a Spade
Third is a Wild
they can’t be outplayed.

I’ve got 3 lucky cards
in my Hair
I’ve got 3 lucky cards
in my Boot
They’re with me when I walk
when I dance
when I play
I’ve got 3 lucky cards
and they’ve got–
something to say.

Ring around the
Rosary your,
Mother left you, Your
Mother left you, Or
Taken, more like it
Faking, you strike it
Or try to
This curveball that life threw
….
Swing and a miss
No time, to wish
That second chances consisted of more than distracted glances
Love preoccupied by all the other things you have to deal with. In this life
Or out
And that’s the best of dreams
Nightmares turn out to be emulated by reality
So it hurts
Unbearably
To hear these voices telling me
When I just want to make it better, that I wasted my one opportunity
Cold and beautiful world
At least she rests, shh…
In peace…

I, still here
In this room, in this house
Home, no longer
Grown? No poem to,
Teach me the ways of saving face when it all falls down
So I lay here, in this empty space
Longing for a moment that has figures and fixtures that cannot be erased…

I wish our destinations were switched
I wish that was enough consideration to stop the pain
But it’s not
Cold and beautiful world
I mirror every one of your circumstances
But with my numbness in feeling,
Reverberating daily
Every minute,
Skipping very few seconds
I hope that there,
Up there
You can’t reciprocate 

I miss you

Layers…
I am covered in layers
Layers put on years
and years
first by them
then by me
Layers…

Layers
reinforced with pain
squeezed tight…
They pulled
I tried to push
I admit
I almost gave up
once

Then one day
from under all those
layers
somehow
I took a deep breath
a layer fell away…
and it felt strangely…
good
I wanted to do it
again
It was so hard
but
I did it again…
and another layer fell away…

Now with each layer off
there’s a deeper breath
and
discovery
of who I am…
and loving me.

Copyright Catherine Anne Hayes © 2008

Mastery of the conflict
Defense mode, all your moves encoded
In my movements
Follow blindly so you have the reinforcements
You don’t need
I’m down for, anything, you ask for
Until it dawns on me that I needed a little more
Than a brain of a drone that was a never ending problem that wasn’t my own
Gotta go…
So I wait on your call
I laid by the phone because I was waiting to fall
For you, and your pass times
Your trail, and my confines
Your disappearing act was damn sexy when the whole room was black
But when the sun comes up, I can only see myself
And the grasping for straws, the looks of my fall
The drawing your pictures on ceilings and walls
I couldn’t anymore
It’s hard cause I know you’ll be back, you’re sure I’ll be here
But the problem is that you know when and where
And I couldn’t keep a straight face if asked if you care
Mastery of patience, or obediently head whipped, pathetic
AKA
Not really, with the former
Was just being polite
I couldn’t… anymore
So this one will be different
I close myself off to not let her know that I’m willing
Unstable
Way more than able to be all that she doesn’t even need
So I’m out to show her that she needs to give it all for me
But me, she isn’t
And I liked her originally because she didn’t want to be
So she appropriately did what took me so long to do
Left, without all the baggage
Left, for me
My past apparently has perpetual consent to make my future have a gray heavy tint
You heard it
So no denying you’re your own reoccurring burden