Tabitha Vohn's Blog, page 5
November 14, 2016
Poem: Wavering
I stood in front
of a mirror today
just staring the
wounded animal behind
her eyes brought tears
to mine I find the woman
I was most sure of
wavering
I've often
wondered what it's
like to reach the point
where I'd have to
search to find her
we only ever see from
inward out but I am not
so cleverly disguised
as to fool those eyes
I knew stepping on
the unmarked path
to you meant
getting lost along
the way but I forsook
the breadcrumbs fallen
blind at the last crimson
sunrise did not know it
was my inner peace
dropping sweetness I
took for truth in the
imprint of my footsteps
It was easier when
I hoped for nothing
easier when nothing
was all I had to lose
of a mirror today
just staring the
wounded animal behind
her eyes brought tears
to mine I find the woman
I was most sure of
wavering
I've often
wondered what it's
like to reach the point
where I'd have to
search to find her
we only ever see from
inward out but I am not
so cleverly disguised
as to fool those eyes
I knew stepping on
the unmarked path
to you meant
getting lost along
the way but I forsook
the breadcrumbs fallen
blind at the last crimson
sunrise did not know it
was my inner peace
dropping sweetness I
took for truth in the
imprint of my footsteps
It was easier when
I hoped for nothing
easier when nothing
was all I had to lose
November 11, 2016
Haiku: Silence
Your silence is a
Daily death each time a piece
of me dies with it.
Daily death each time a piece
of me dies with it.
November 10, 2016
Poem: Aria
I know...two poems in a week! Sometimes life demands it.
I dedicate this poem to anyone who's ever wished that people with closed minds came with closed mouths, and that we didn't always have to assume the worst of our fellow man (and woman).
My mouth is an Ariel
weary of arias
the only
notes I've known for weeks
are sour fruit
my tongue
would rather pen praises
my soul no longer has
liberty to sing those
affections that never feel
less potent truths I can't
escape from and
don't want to
I've boxed them up
pushed them into
cobweb corners their
pointed corners push
against fresh places
in fresh heart wounds
I'll keep them for you
it's sad that those
words meant to be
a nightlight
and pure
frighten blind children
who feast on lies they
tell like bedtime stories
when their happy endings
turned to tarnished tales
impossible to put faith in
they see what they want to see
the hymns they sing lyricize
love with sticky breaths
stolen tongues moonless
nights soiled sheets the
only thing they can conceive
is that the only way
I could take bullets for you
is if I used you
the only way
I could invite you to be
part of my home is through
the back door that for me to
acknowledge your beauty
so intrinsic it blinds to
look at you sometimes
is plausible
only
if I matched it with currant-colored
intentions
and criminal designs
I am death-weary
of them all
say let the lies turn back
on them like forked-tongue
plagues
let them choke on their
selfsame suspicions
that have little to do
with you
or me
and everything to do
with what's wrong
with their own hearts
their own sour fruit
their bitter-noted
arias.
I dedicate this poem to anyone who's ever wished that people with closed minds came with closed mouths, and that we didn't always have to assume the worst of our fellow man (and woman).
My mouth is an Ariel
weary of arias
the only
notes I've known for weeks
are sour fruit
my tongue
would rather pen praises
my soul no longer has
liberty to sing those
affections that never feel
less potent truths I can't
escape from and
don't want to
I've boxed them up
pushed them into
cobweb corners their
pointed corners push
against fresh places
in fresh heart wounds
I'll keep them for you
it's sad that those
words meant to be
a nightlight
and pure
frighten blind children
who feast on lies they
tell like bedtime stories
when their happy endings
turned to tarnished tales
impossible to put faith in
they see what they want to see
the hymns they sing lyricize
love with sticky breaths
stolen tongues moonless
nights soiled sheets the
only thing they can conceive
is that the only way
I could take bullets for you
is if I used you
the only way
I could invite you to be
part of my home is through
the back door that for me to
acknowledge your beauty
so intrinsic it blinds to
look at you sometimes
is plausible
only
if I matched it with currant-colored
intentions
and criminal designs
I am death-weary
of them all
say let the lies turn back
on them like forked-tongue
plagues
let them choke on their
selfsame suspicions
that have little to do
with you
or me
and everything to do
with what's wrong
with their own hearts
their own sour fruit
their bitter-noted
arias.
November 7, 2016
Poem: The Swimming Pool
You are the girl
I would have looked up to
in high school
Vintage tees and broomstick
skirts smell of the man who sold
them, the one that was with you
last night
old enough to be your father
and maybe recommended
by him
like good weed
a fix that keeps on giving
Your friend dragged you from
the swimming pool last night
where you--like Echo--unwound
gauze layers like peeling away
their pain when their eyes lick
your skin their charred fingers
raised poisons kept you afloat
a face-down Ophelia with hair
in seaweed tendrils
She would feel the heavy
carelessness of your
confidence that someone would
love you enough
to pull you out of it
It's that dancing that keeps your
ears clear of the symphonies
of phonies you're not trying to
hear
keep swinging
poll center
heart center
spread
dip
roll
find your center
warm chests you press to
it's not so different to close
your eyes under the lights
and feel the love
while they stick another dollar
bill in your g-string
anymore than it was to
free fall into that endless
ocean blue the chlorinated
hue of forgetting
that once
there was a little girl
with dreams of fairy princes
whose white horses
took a detour in middle school
when they realized it was girls
who'd get on their knees
for a hell of a lot less than
diamonds
and you
already knew
the feel of those carpeted
brush-burns
the education they sought
came from you
a fearlessness that was
a comfort to the rest of us
trying so hard to playact at
what we thought we had to be
our feelings fragile as loose
feathers the pluck and bleed
and all our hollowed-out insides
that growing up too fast demanded
you were a phoenix
and we prayed to be like you
even as we called you
slut
whore
home-wrecker
behind your back
our green tongues powdered with
secret love
we never saw the empty rooms
you went home to
or the used needles in the kitchen sink
or your panties mixed in with stranger's
clothing
or the diary you kept that said whether
or not today you want to live
all we saw were the rainbows the scarves
the beaded curtain framing your face
the wild abandon of your laugh
we ignored the urgency
with which you threw yourself
into that swimming pool.
I would have looked up to
in high school
Vintage tees and broomstick
skirts smell of the man who sold
them, the one that was with you
last night
old enough to be your father
and maybe recommended
by him
like good weed
a fix that keeps on giving
Your friend dragged you from
the swimming pool last night
where you--like Echo--unwound
gauze layers like peeling away
their pain when their eyes lick
your skin their charred fingers
raised poisons kept you afloat
a face-down Ophelia with hair
in seaweed tendrils
She would feel the heavy
carelessness of your
confidence that someone would
love you enough
to pull you out of it
It's that dancing that keeps your
ears clear of the symphonies
of phonies you're not trying to
hear
keep swinging
poll center
heart center
spread
dip
roll
find your center
warm chests you press to
it's not so different to close
your eyes under the lights
and feel the love
while they stick another dollar
bill in your g-string
anymore than it was to
free fall into that endless
ocean blue the chlorinated
hue of forgetting
that once
there was a little girl
with dreams of fairy princes
whose white horses
took a detour in middle school
when they realized it was girls
who'd get on their knees
for a hell of a lot less than
diamonds
and you
already knew
the feel of those carpeted
brush-burns
the education they sought
came from you
a fearlessness that was
a comfort to the rest of us
trying so hard to playact at
what we thought we had to be
our feelings fragile as loose
feathers the pluck and bleed
and all our hollowed-out insides
that growing up too fast demanded
you were a phoenix
and we prayed to be like you
even as we called you
slut
whore
home-wrecker
behind your back
our green tongues powdered with
secret love
we never saw the empty rooms
you went home to
or the used needles in the kitchen sink
or your panties mixed in with stranger's
clothing
or the diary you kept that said whether
or not today you want to live
all we saw were the rainbows the scarves
the beaded curtain framing your face
the wild abandon of your laugh
we ignored the urgency
with which you threw yourself
into that swimming pool.
October 22, 2016
Poem: Recollect
This isn't for the boy who's gonna make it
Although I write about him too often
To fill that empty heart space with daffodil-scented air
when he's gone This is for the one I forgot
A passing point of refracted light
in the peripheral
I read a poem today about a boy who stole things
and I remembered that night you called me and
offered to lift from Kmart anything I wanted.
Watches perfume...you laundry listed all the things
you'd liberated
Proud
Like a child with Crayola murals on the white living
room walls you wanted so badly to impress me
You showed up at the family reunion I hated to go to
the one where I felt as out of place as you cause why
acknowledge the moonshiners and molesters their
cans of cheap American beer and dirty mesh trucker
caps who threw your Pap away like graying meat? By
the creek you picked me up wedding threshold style
like I weighed nothing despite that you were slimmer
than me the energy beneath your skin like fire
brimming in iron chambers with no chimney raging to
get out
And I was snow white fifteen. And I was afraid of you.
I couldn't get you off the phone and wrote my dad a
note for once relishing those harsh tones reserved to
make me quake
I said "say I have to go. Now!" It was the only cruelty I
knew more subtle than honesty Of why--at fifteen--
animal wound open
I couldn't save myself let alone you
I was glad
when you stopped calling.
I feel like years later my mom said you'd been arrested
for drugs or assault or something of the like
the devil in me whispered to the angel in me
"see: I told you so"
the devil in me said "you could never have saved him.
He would've eaten your fear like sweet plum colored
candy."
"Like you," the light in me asks?
Maybe it wasn't the trembling or the cowering he
wanted.
Maybe it was the snow white girl who took walks by
the creek
and kissed all her stuffed animals at night
In a pink bedroom with clean sheets
and a mother who didn't drink or scream
and a father not as badly broken beyond repair
in the picket fence house with non shuttered windows
That he found sweet.
Although I write about him too often
To fill that empty heart space with daffodil-scented air
when he's gone This is for the one I forgot
A passing point of refracted light
in the peripheral
I read a poem today about a boy who stole things
and I remembered that night you called me and
offered to lift from Kmart anything I wanted.
Watches perfume...you laundry listed all the things
you'd liberated
Proud
Like a child with Crayola murals on the white living
room walls you wanted so badly to impress me
You showed up at the family reunion I hated to go to
the one where I felt as out of place as you cause why
acknowledge the moonshiners and molesters their
cans of cheap American beer and dirty mesh trucker
caps who threw your Pap away like graying meat? By
the creek you picked me up wedding threshold style
like I weighed nothing despite that you were slimmer
than me the energy beneath your skin like fire
brimming in iron chambers with no chimney raging to
get out
And I was snow white fifteen. And I was afraid of you.
I couldn't get you off the phone and wrote my dad a
note for once relishing those harsh tones reserved to
make me quake
I said "say I have to go. Now!" It was the only cruelty I
knew more subtle than honesty Of why--at fifteen--
animal wound open
I couldn't save myself let alone you
I was glad
when you stopped calling.
I feel like years later my mom said you'd been arrested
for drugs or assault or something of the like
the devil in me whispered to the angel in me
"see: I told you so"
the devil in me said "you could never have saved him.
He would've eaten your fear like sweet plum colored
candy."
"Like you," the light in me asks?
Maybe it wasn't the trembling or the cowering he
wanted.
Maybe it was the snow white girl who took walks by
the creek
and kissed all her stuffed animals at night
In a pink bedroom with clean sheets
and a mother who didn't drink or scream
and a father not as badly broken beyond repair
in the picket fence house with non shuttered windows
That he found sweet.
October 17, 2016
Poem: Revival
Last week
On the drive home thru un-changed streets
was the first time I noticed the leaves had changed. Maple trees sport bursts of burnt gold and ocher rust like flame
Patches ignited from within like they know these dying days with waning light are beautiful
especially when we let ourselves be reminded that they're leaving with it.
I can't help but think of you.
Birthdays bear less than subtle needle pain loss why your heart chose two days before mine to stop I'll never know but our birthdays and death days broke juxtaposed patterns like stillborn shutters those blind hands that cut threads saw a suture they could weave when you left.
And we stayed.
Reminded with our pastel candles that we are still here. Alive.
I didn't keep the Cranberries CD or that pair of jeans nobody bothered to wrap gifts that year the idea of our birthdays too vulgar.
[I just looked up that album on amazon bc all I could remember was War Child how I couldn't stop listening to it. To the Faithful Departed. Are you kidding me? God and His humor sometimes.]
But I remember that disc being plopped into my lap before or after your funeral I can't remember. But my exact placement on the love seat and that numbness of life with no taste is photo album vivid.
I wonder if that is why I always feel undeserving of presents?
I passed those clusters of shivering colors and the number hit unexpected as the phone call that said "He was headed out on his tractor and hasn't come back..." Twenty years.
That number.
We've been taught to revere the accumulation of decade days to take notice of the solidity of zeros like stones when I was 20 I was engaged I was on the scabbed side of those fresh wounds and I was scrubbing salt out of the angry skin of others I'd outgrown childhood a lifetime in the solid round numbers and now...you're 20 yrs gone.
More of my life spent without you than with but...you--permanent--.
So ingrained into the DNA of my days that I mourn the existence of that Oct 15th as it becomes the mountain that diminishes within its own horizon the farther away the road leads
To lose the potency of that day doesn't stick and the hit of that number is a glimmer in the rear view In autumn especially on birthdays --I remember you-- And we
Are the war torn past
The hope of that spirit world
And the fringe soul revivals
Of the present.
On the drive home thru un-changed streets
was the first time I noticed the leaves had changed. Maple trees sport bursts of burnt gold and ocher rust like flame
Patches ignited from within like they know these dying days with waning light are beautiful
especially when we let ourselves be reminded that they're leaving with it.
I can't help but think of you.
Birthdays bear less than subtle needle pain loss why your heart chose two days before mine to stop I'll never know but our birthdays and death days broke juxtaposed patterns like stillborn shutters those blind hands that cut threads saw a suture they could weave when you left.
And we stayed.
Reminded with our pastel candles that we are still here. Alive.
I didn't keep the Cranberries CD or that pair of jeans nobody bothered to wrap gifts that year the idea of our birthdays too vulgar.
[I just looked up that album on amazon bc all I could remember was War Child how I couldn't stop listening to it. To the Faithful Departed. Are you kidding me? God and His humor sometimes.]
But I remember that disc being plopped into my lap before or after your funeral I can't remember. But my exact placement on the love seat and that numbness of life with no taste is photo album vivid.
I wonder if that is why I always feel undeserving of presents?
I passed those clusters of shivering colors and the number hit unexpected as the phone call that said "He was headed out on his tractor and hasn't come back..." Twenty years.
That number.
We've been taught to revere the accumulation of decade days to take notice of the solidity of zeros like stones when I was 20 I was engaged I was on the scabbed side of those fresh wounds and I was scrubbing salt out of the angry skin of others I'd outgrown childhood a lifetime in the solid round numbers and now...you're 20 yrs gone.
More of my life spent without you than with but...you--permanent--.
So ingrained into the DNA of my days that I mourn the existence of that Oct 15th as it becomes the mountain that diminishes within its own horizon the farther away the road leads
To lose the potency of that day doesn't stick and the hit of that number is a glimmer in the rear view In autumn especially on birthdays --I remember you-- And we
Are the war torn past
The hope of that spirit world
And the fringe soul revivals
Of the present.
September 30, 2016
"Home" Makes Guest Spotlight
I'm honored to have one of my poems featured on S.K. Thomas' blog.
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Thanks, S.K. for being so gracious and lovely!!
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...
Thanks, S.K. for being so gracious and lovely!!
September 27, 2016
Poem: Media
We crave brokenness
like the mob craves the
arena
like serial killer lust
for that next victim
come on
make us feel better
about ourselves
tell us about the
shock over your fifth
failed marriage
show up meth-faced
messed up for that
DUI mug shot
wear pasties in public
proclaim it empowerment
inhale misery deep
hail to the
right of legalized
self-abuse with someone
else's forgotten daughter
down dog across your lap
your Rehab-Pride parades
merely symptomatic
of our voyeuristic tendencies
as we throw another log on
the pyre
and laugh while the witch burns
my soul feels
cleaner
when I leave the television off
and ignore the Yahoo news thread.
like the mob craves the
arena
like serial killer lust
for that next victim
come on
make us feel better
about ourselves
tell us about the
shock over your fifth
failed marriage
show up meth-faced
messed up for that
DUI mug shot
wear pasties in public
proclaim it empowerment
inhale misery deep
hail to the
right of legalized
self-abuse with someone
else's forgotten daughter
down dog across your lap
your Rehab-Pride parades
merely symptomatic
of our voyeuristic tendencies
as we throw another log on
the pyre
and laugh while the witch burns
my soul feels
cleaner
when I leave the television off
and ignore the Yahoo news thread.
September 16, 2016
Poem of the Week: Home
Sometimes
all I want is to go home
the place we're all trying to
get back to
it exists in those
moments memory makes
beautiful walks forgotten halls
in the hours I would spend
lying in bed
Mazzy Star or early folk Jewel
playing I would watch the light
display of moon and headlights
waltz on darkened dancefloor
walls the crickets' haunting cry
is still the lullaby and me with
nowhere I had to be the next
morning
but home
It's easy to forget the freedom
of letting your world weight
sink into plush carpet or hardwood
earth why are we so afraid with age
to curl fetal positioned surrendered
so close to the ground
we forget what letting go felt like
before our freedom seduced us into
different chains I miss when the
daydreams of the grind were
yesterday's stolen seconds reality
I would sit in the abandoned cemetery
with only the open hay fields and
woods and forgotten souls for
company when peace was its own
poetry the rest got lost with Barbie clothes
hides in the forest with The Last Unicorn
and sleeps in gingerbread houses my
mind used to color pictures of and if there
was a bread trail traced in moonlight
leading back to mother's arms anything
could fix would I crawl back into the
wolf's belly so warm captive but connected
to the part of me contented to just
--Be--
Sometimes I wish
she wasn't so hard to find
All times I wish
I could take you there with me.
all I want is to go home
the place we're all trying to
get back to
it exists in those
moments memory makes
beautiful walks forgotten halls
in the hours I would spend
lying in bed
Mazzy Star or early folk Jewel
playing I would watch the light
display of moon and headlights
waltz on darkened dancefloor
walls the crickets' haunting cry
is still the lullaby and me with
nowhere I had to be the next
morning
but home
It's easy to forget the freedom
of letting your world weight
sink into plush carpet or hardwood
earth why are we so afraid with age
to curl fetal positioned surrendered
so close to the ground
we forget what letting go felt like
before our freedom seduced us into
different chains I miss when the
daydreams of the grind were
yesterday's stolen seconds reality
I would sit in the abandoned cemetery
with only the open hay fields and
woods and forgotten souls for
company when peace was its own
poetry the rest got lost with Barbie clothes
hides in the forest with The Last Unicorn
and sleeps in gingerbread houses my
mind used to color pictures of and if there
was a bread trail traced in moonlight
leading back to mother's arms anything
could fix would I crawl back into the
wolf's belly so warm captive but connected
to the part of me contented to just
--Be--
Sometimes I wish
she wasn't so hard to find
All times I wish
I could take you there with me.
September 9, 2016
Coming Soon! Only for a Moment
Poetry is an act of survival. A cry to everyone and no one. Intensely personal, shamelessly honest, and oftentimes an admission of inner ugliness, Only for a Moment chronicles nineteen years of the author’s life. It explores ideas of transience, transition, and redemption through the battlegrounds of metamorphosis from young girl to woman. Each poem presents a snapshot; a puzzle piece of what ultimately becomes a collective consciousness. A road map to trace back through the labyrinth of people and experiences that define us.
This past year I made it a point to focus on studying and writing real poetry with my high school sophomores. I was inspired by the Brave New Voices poetry slams that were filmed by HBO, and my students were equally excited to see young artists expressing themselves in such a unique, freeing way. Poetry Fridays turned into therapy sessions, bonding experiences, and artistic showcases. By the end of the year my classes were two pretty tight-knit families, at least on Poetry Fridays.
I couldn’t resist the temptation to join my guys in creating poetry. As a writer, it’s felt like returning to my first love. Many of the poems in Only for a Moment were birthed on those Poetry Fridays. Many were inspired by my students’ experiences as well as remembrances of my own turbulent teen years. I decided to go back and polish many of the verses I wrote during that time, and this collection captures the best of my writing thus far. It includes many of the poems previously released in my “Poem of the Week” posts, as well as many that have not been released before.
I’m thrilled to be showcasing the amazing art of a dear friend, Zyrax, in this volume as well. He created the cover art as well as the illustrations that precede each section of the collection.
Only for a Moment will be released in Fall of 2016. Stay tuned for purchasing info and for announcement of Goodreads and Smashwords Giveaways!
