Posts tagged shame

Poem: Lost Laughing

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12 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

Dominique Larntz * November 21, 2012

 

Lost Laughing

As I peer through the cattails
of the competition
to see another situation
where I was left holding
a saddle I crafted
heavy enough to fit the buffalo
that I watched turn into a monarch butterfly,
here is how I cared for myself.

I reminded myself of the seeds inside me
that grow wild when watered,
that take over plots of my soul
like spilled ink takes over
a poem on a page.

Perhaps one day I will be able
to compete skillfully but for now
I can retreat from society’s
mechanisms of disappointment

and appointment—oh keep me away
from winning, too—those of us who
lose attachingly win with the same animal.

I will put these seeds back
into the rock tumbler of my journey.
I’ll wait for the smooth reflection to form.

When I am ready, those seeds will not be
quivers I can use in some Olympic feat
but worry stones in my pockets.

Poem: Be Quiet

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12 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

November 8, 2012 * Dominique Larntz

 

Be Quiet

Be with me without thinking
through what I should do.

Be quiet about your
superior view.

From your judgments,
icy stalactites and stalagmites arise
where moments ago
breath and water flowed.

I am surrounded by a society of judges
that turn conversations into caves
instead of skies.

People judge because they are
only one step removed
from the subject of their sentences.

Would it be too close
to say you are afraid to look
as vulnerable as I appear?

Be still, create space—

for as ugly as you think I am,
you with your unkind eyebrows
and the knots in your fists,
my heart is filled with love for you

as weak as you perceive that to be
it connects with you like nature
eventually overturns destruction
when you judge her irrelevant.

Poem: Breakfast

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12 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

Dominique Larntz * August 13, 2012

 

Awake now, I crawl out
and open the top drawer
to pull out my underclothes
of helplessness and guilt
and I consider pulling them
over my tender skin.

I can smell what is cooking
out there—something
delicious and certainly I
should cover up first.

Get dressed, then take
my plate to a quiet place
where no one can see
the depth of this
naked hunger.

Poem: Pre-Posthumous

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13 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

Dominique Larntz * May 27, 2012

 

When I am gone and there
are trash bags full of silly things
I kept in drawers like band buttons
from when I was a fan at sixteen, things
I thought about tossing twenty times
and glues I wanted to try to bind
books with, I hope you can find
time to read my secret stash
of poems too.

I hope in addition to clucking
about my many abnormally
large faults, looking into them
like you would gaze at yourself
distorted in a carnival mirror,
and shaking your head about
how if I had just done this or that
I might have had a different fate,
you might recall that within
my many mistakes,
I loved you.

Poem: Past Shame

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13 years
by in Dominique, Poem, Poems

Dominique Larntz * January 8 * “Love Letters To My Body”

Past Shame

My little shame
goblin friend,
with your black-lit
punch card eyes
and your cascading
motherboard pigtails,
not only is it
appropriate
for my past
to say no
to me, but
it is time for me
to say no
to my past.

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