The Bottle and the Seductress
I exist in the shadows of conformity,
Pretending that this dependency
On a bottle is the truest form love,
Instead of a curious addiction
To a world of bittersweet lullabies and dreaming
Of a universe that has grown selfless.
My bottle grasps for the term, selfless,
As I slowly drift away from conformity
And embrace my honest dependency
That has many times been useful in making love.
It is not that it is an addiction,
More like a dream catcher for my restless dreaming.
I cannot help but to keep dreaming
Of a way to become entirely selfless,
Like a saint refusing conformity
To follow her heart and break the dependency
To a substance of hate, filling herself with love,
Allowing her deity to become a new addiction.
I admit, I have this ghastly addiction,
It is getting in the way of my dreaming,
Forcing me to abandon hopes to be selfless,
To follow the rules of societal conformity.
I no longer live for this dependency,
To a bottle who knows lust instead of love.
I have found a seductress of love,
Who I call my new addiction,
And she allows me eternal dreaming,
Molding the word ‘selfish’ to ‘selfless’
With a lilt as she draws nearer to conformity,
Making her my new sensuous dependency.
Some consider this an unnerving dependency,
A horror of my tainted love,
A masochistic, heart-wrenching addiction,
That allows for continuous dreaming,
As I grow less and less selfless
And fall victim for the last time to conformity.
My addiction left me alone dreaming,
A dependency of pain and love,
As I became selfless to Death’s conformity.
Count the Days
Sometimes she skips meals,
stops herself from indulging
before she even walks to the fridge.
Sometimes she feels like
she’s in control over her body
when she skips a meal or two.
She doesn’t need it anyway.
She’s so busy these days.
She ate earlier, so she’s not hungry.
She rattles off these excuses
to cover up her stomach grumbling
in the background.
She can’t count the number of hours
she digs fingernails into her sides
just to keep the noise inside.
She can’t count the number of days
she smiles through the self-induced migraine.
She can’t count the number of times
she’s told that she is not anorexic
because she doesn’t look “thin.”
Sometimes she skips meals because
her doctor said she needed to lose weight,
her mother wanted a pretty girl,
her sister is a model.
Sometimes she likes to think
she has control over this one thing,
this one meal, that one piece of food.
Nausea starts to feel like power,
dizziness starts to feel like confidence.
She steps on the scale
weighing in at 201 pounds.
Today, she looks in the mirror
and her waist seems smaller.
She knows she doesn’t match the description
everyone is taught to look for,
but she’s grasping to hold on to reality
when everything else is falling apart.
She’s just counting the days like calories…
Eulogy for a Muffin
It was a good muffin,
the way it crumbled gently
as it touched my moist lips.
It knew no other mouth but mine.
It was made with care
and dedication and love,
baked from some kitchen.
I don't know who baked it,
but I like to pretend it was
a big burly man with a beard.
Something about this muffin,
it tasted like strength,
had the consistency
of my father's belt,
and taught me patience
as it melted on my tongue.
A beautiful muffin!
Its aroma filled the entire room,
smelling of sweet pumpkin
and spice and all things
naughty and nice.
It reminded me of Christmas-
the one we had at my grandma's
in Pennsylvania
after grandpa died.
It was sweet,
but had just a hint of salt.
I can't be sure if the baker
cried when mixing ingredients,
if he, too, had felt loss.
This muffin left its remains sticky
on my fingers
like ashes,
like play dough,
like muffin dough
if muffins are made
using dough.
(I'm not sure, I don't cook.)
I wanted to know
the man behind this muffin,
the great bearded one.
I wanted to meet the two cats,
calico and black,
that crawled up onto the counter,
blocking the view of
the recipe,
and made this man create
this muffin
literally by scratch.
I want to know this muffin man,
the one who lives on Drury Lane.
He created a muffin so insatiable,
metaphors won't do it justice.
A muffin like that would win
poetry slams
because it was so damn poetic
when devoured,
and the empty plate,
licked clean by two cats,
calico and black,
looked more like a broken heart
than a well-loved dish.
The plate and me,
me and the plate,
we tasted the tears
of the man behind this muffin.
We both knew tonight,
there would be
no more
inspirational muffins
to kiss us goodnight.
Jocelyn Mosman is a junior at Mount Holyoke College,
majoring in English and Politics. She will be studying at the
University of Kent in Canterbury, UK this fall. She is also a member of
the Northampton Poetry Slam Team to compete at the National Poetry Slam
this August in Oakland, California. She has published two volumes of
poetry and is currently working on a third.
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