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A Year of Poetry by Amanda Paweska



PASSAGE OF TIME
A new year,
a start over
but don’t forget
those old friends,
those old memories.
Look back, fondly,
even if they’re not,
remember they were.
The passage of time
colours the present,
it’s what influences us now.
The new year
is an extension of the last,
of the past.
Learn, from what you saw,
grow, from what you did,
be, from what you made.
A new year
to start over,
but never forget:
the past, the times.
As the passage of time,
is that, the passage,
to a new start, the next start,
rotted in the past.

01/05/06




BLOCKED
Fighting for words
against an empty page,
searching for meaning
on blank lines.
A writer without words,
without breath,
without a lifeline.
No way to reach you,
no way to speak
- silenced with the lack
of meaning, expression.
No beautiful turn of phrase,
fumbling through
overused clichés.
To be new, to be fresh
to be just like everyone else.
Finding your voice in a crowd,
your words in a book.
Scrawled out
and scribbling, screaming:
Someone read me!
Someone know me!
Can’t anyone hear me?
Fighting against a blank page,
a blank feeling.
Locked,
and blocked
without an outlet.
Struggling to speak,
to mean and understand.
To say
something, everything.

01/12/06




NEW
In funny dreams,
times quick.
As fantasy
seems forever,
the playback, on mind’s screen,
is clearer, more crisp,
a clean image.
An easy task.
It’s the reality that’s hard.
The possibilities,
the endless what ifs
and maybes.
And what if it goes wrong?
What if it goes right?
Too many options,
with no control,
too many curves,
without traction.
Starting is simple,
try seeing it through.
The worry and wonder,
and it lacks.
Lacks the beauty
of being understood.
The safety of the familiar,
no hidden secrets,
nothing to disappoint,
nothing uncharted,
only the clear course.
Only a path home.
How do you reach
familiar?
Reach through the new.

01/18/06




LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE
And she goes,
like everyone else.
Without warning, without notice,
without word.
And the blade of a knife
sparkles like starlight;
mysterious, beautiful, friendly.
It’s a sharp edge,
is a double edge –
to get out you must go in.
A cold comfort,
but still a comfort.
And it’s kiss
is like a bite,
sharp and steel.
That’s how you know its real,
that’s how it leaves it’s mark.
And it tells a tale;
a story spilled out,
a life in angry red scars.
But no one reads it,
few would understand it.
And the past repeats.
With no lesson to learn,
no one left to learn it.
A cold comfort,
a sharp kiss,
just like everyone else.
And they’re gone,
like everything else.

01/23/06




COMMENT
Inside the walls
of my head,
dark, with shards of light
like reflections of stained glass.
Beautiful, but deadly?
A sight to witness,
a cliché to behold.
An overused image,
a reissued idea,
just like everyone else.
Turns of phrase, spun,
spun out and spun over.
Written words of ‘ol,
unable to be fresh, new.
The voice lends youth,
a search for energy,
the new life.
Another cliché.
The blue sky over grass,
a cloud-covered moon,
two lovers, one heart
All over wrought,
all written over.
But their truth remains.
Human existence,
there’s your cliché.
The daily grind,
the rat race,
the sun rising.
Day in
and day out.
The trick,
to make it yours,
to express you.

02/08/06




PAST TENSE
I did,
I was
but that was then.
I would have,
in a heartbeat,
with that look
or those words.
I would have dropped
to my knees
to be with you.
I would have changed
to be yours
for a while.

She was than,
I am now.
It’s harder,
it’s more complicated.
It’s about me.
I still do,
a little like before.
I still could,
to feel that way.
I still am,
in these moments.

I did,
I still might.

03/26/06




HAUNTED
The image that you make,
the pretty ones,
the ugly ones,
that you called up, conjured.
Memory is created.
Remembering deep brown eyes,
imagining their heated stare.
Fiction can fulfil
more than reality,
it haunts just the same.
With a tilt, a spin
a world axis changes,
history changes, memory solidifies.
Filling in the blanks
of missing memories, missing moments.
Making lies.
Or was it truth,
once upon a time?
Too long to tell,
too thought of to know.
Memory
is an influenced medium.
A touch,
real or imagined?
Can’t trust,
it lingers, it haunts,
it poisons.
Infected all the same.
Memory, lies as truth.
A trick, a game
played on yourself.
A haunting
When the spectre is you.

03/27/06




COVET
Forgive me father,
Great mother,
for I have sinned
or would, given the chance.
I love
nothing pure, but raw
and needy.
I lust after
the pushed off, sent away,
and now unattainable.

It’s been years
since my last confession,
of throbbing, exposed nerve
and emotion.
And no penitence can repay:
I wish to sin,
long to, to be damned.

Hail Mary,
all fathers of grace,
save me
from where I put myself.
Grant me the strength
to turn away from,
to forget.
Banish the memory
of touch and taste.
Save me with purgatory.

Forgive me,
or damn me just the same.

05/05/06




MISSING FACES
To everyone I wasn’t able to meet because of HIV.

The hundreds,
the thousands,
the millions;
it’s the missing faces
I can’t stop thinking of.
The voices
gone silent,
the hands
gone still,
the friends
…gone.

You hear the stories,
read the statistics
but forget
that they’re faces, lives;
Each story a person.
Every line a breath.
Human,
lovers, children, parents,
friends never met, known.
I wonder about you,
I miss her,
I think about him,
I worry,
I worry about us all.

Gone,
are the friends unmet,
still
are the lovers’ caresses,
silent
are the parents’ lullabies.
It keeps me awake,
searching for missing faces
in millions,
in thousands,
in hundreds,
in one.

07/24/06




DOUBT

I doubt that I ever loved
That I grasped it correctly,
that it was real.
When I saw you, I saw stars,
my stomach flipped.
A thousand little girl ideas
came to life.
But what does it mean,
when nothing else happens,
when no one else is there?
Who’s there to tell you
it’s real, or isn’t.
Who’s there to remind you
you had nothing to start with.
You have nothing, in the end.
I doubt that I felt it.
That it’s a heartbeat,
that the sensation was ever felt,
ever lived within me.
When you’re the only one,
that feels anything,
who says it’s real?
who says it ever happened?
I doubt your existence,
the on from my head.
Never known the truth,
blind to it, bind to it,
make it up as I went along.
Proof, the tangible,
no beat from my chest,
no idea in my sleep,
a thousand little girl ideas
frame you, form you,
found me, fool me.
It’s all fake to me.
By putting loving you in question,
I doubt me.

07/26/06




GOODNIGHT SWEETHEART
You can sleep now,
it’s all grown quiet,
this peace is for you.

There was no hand
that reached for mine,
but your head
nuzzled in my lap, claiming your place,
in my heart, in my life.
Never called mommy,
or said you loved me,
in big brown eyes
you said it all.

Sleep now, it’s night,
time to rest.

A corner sits empty,
still expect your feet
sounding on the floor.
The nights are still, silent
but they are yours.
I’ll miss you forever,
as my heart’s missing piece,
shines on.

Goodnight now, Sweetheart,
rest your tired head,
close your eyes,
and worry no more.

You’re among the stars now,
Sweetheart, goodnight.

09/04/06

this took two weeks to get out… I love you Raja ‘96-‘06




SCATTER/ DROP
Scatter
Drop
Cry
Scream
‘Round it spins,
through my head.
Beats
Eats
Rots
And raves
Free me
Say it, write it
Express it
Fear it
Run
Hide
Scatter
Drop
Cry and fall.
Cycle in my head.
Breaks…
Smile and go on.

09/12/06




STRANGER
Fear the foreign,
invading my body,
taking me over
- eating from inside out.
Scared of what lurks
under the skin,
in the blood,
but to know
would be worse
- fear confirmed, reality.
The chance is slim,
but there,
the stranger lurking in an alley,
the stranger lurking in me.
- rotting from inside out.
The strange.
Fear, anxiety, death.
The unknown
becoming known.
Scared
of my own body,
frightened
of my own will.
Punishment?
Justification.
Bad girls finish first,
even in the eyes
of others.
The stranger,
always there.
The rot,
always feeding.
The end,
always near.
It churns,
from inside out,
this stranger
takes me over.

09/26/06




NIHILISTIC
From the outside,
looking in;
A window pane
against your own life.
You can look,
but you can’t touch,
it’s not really yours now.
It’s them, it’s theirs.
Just walk away.

Pretty lives in display cases,
like Christmas store fronts;
fake snow, fake people,
fake emotion.
Nothing’s real anymore.
The real fades, it melts.
It’s not always pretty,
not everyone likes that.

From the inside,
looking out,
searching out.
It’s cold, it’s dark,
and always, with the other side,
it’s greener.
It can never be yours.

11/21/06




TRANSITION
Love,
the fallacy,
the game
- the lie.
The new, hateful eyes,
the cold world view:
Say lesson learned,
a new skill set
(and you said I wouldn’t learn).
To act without emotion,
to breath without feeling,
to live without being hurt.
(cold, isn’t it?)
It’s a hard fall,
a fast fall,
a needed fall,
makes you real.
But sets you up,
sets you in stone.
(I doubt you’re real now).
Love,
the word grows cold,
a foreign idea,
- an ideal –
Like everything that glitters,
it fades.
A mythic cover to wrap lies.
Why curl up in it?
Told to,
expected to,
taught to;
old lesson, new teacher,
a new trick.
(And I didn’t think you had talent).
This joke’s not funny,
these words don’t fly,
it’s cold, hard.
Hate.

12/28/06