use your words & eat your food

DON'T eat your words and use your food. k?


I wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. Your words helped me more than you know. 
I've hopped back on the recovery bandwagon and am feeling much better because of it.
I'll post more later, after i go out to dinner & hopefully write my religion essay but i wanted to share this poem that i wrote with all of you. 
I had to write a poem based on Allen Ginsberg's Howl for Carl Solomon for my english class.
If you haven't read it, Howl is a great poem. Ginsberg writes about the suffering he experienced and it speaks to the "outcasts" of American society (those who are more focused on love and meaning in life, rather than material "success") and he does it beautifully. We had to write a poem "to someone who understands" (you). I wrote to to a dear friend of mine who i met in treatment. I changed the name for the sake of her privacy, but i thought you all might appreciate it.

Whisper

For Sarah Halper

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by hunger,

Fakeness, lonesome, searching for something beautiful.

Abandoned and unloved, they paint their mouths shut with silence.

Whispery silhouettes run down the sidewalks of insanity,

And stop to glare at grotesque fun-house mirror projections

Of fat and tired limbs,

Glistening with the sweat of hate.

Shells of women who sit on concrete

Smoking endless cigarettes, burning up their lungs

As payback for continuing to swallow air

Organs stubbornly gripping to life

Even when a fragile heart patters like early rain

It beats at the wrong

Moments.

They damn their stupid hearts

For beating at all.

They drink whole pots of coffee

Black liquor, free of sins.

Poured into sad paper cups

During early hours of black mornings

When the rest of the population

Finds solace in quiet minds, minds that

Have not forgotten how to rest, to dream.

Sleepless with self-loathing and malnutrition

They grip fire-hot mugs

Blue-boned fingers, numb and cold

Sipping freedom liquid.

Girls who spend all the seconds

Of melancholy

Photographing mental x-rays

Of beauty beyond their grasp.

Who look at dirt and see holiness,

God and redemption incarnate, sad skeletons.

Twenty thirty and forty-somethings

Trapped in the pain of adolescence

Who never found their way out

Of uncertainty and un-belonging.

Stuck in a sea of mental agony

Riding waves of want

Trampled by harsh, un-caring waters

Hitting the ocean floor over and over again

Choking on salt, gasping for breath

They flail their arms in vain

And No-one sees them drowning.

They hunger for love and affection

Skip lunch, dine on crackers and wine.

Or gorge themselves on cakes of saints,

Stuff themselves to the gills with counterfeit care.

The rumble of their bellies, the pangs in bed at night

Fails to make loneliness seem less Encompassing.

Sarah, I’m with you at midnight

When the crack of light dawns on your kitchen floor

And all before you, you see breads and soups and chocolate

The beginnings and end of your love.

I’m with you in Colorado,

When you play houseguest as your Norwegian father

A connoisseur of disaster

Offers you the finest cheeses,

Not knowing that all you wanted was a second glance.

I’m with you when you read my words

And your mind insists they don’t apply to you

That nobody knows you, that you are not one of us.

I’m with you in Los Angeles

Where hippies disguise themselves as buddahs

And bow down to vegan, soul-less gods,

Chanting the words that will save you.

I’m with you in Santa Monica

Where you hide from yourself

And look to better women of the past

Who might teach you how not to need, not to be so much.

I’m with you inside heavy- closed doors,

When you cry salty tears,

Asking anyone to make you less.

I’m with you in Agoura Hills

Where hypocrisy and beauty made us sick to our stomachs

And we were terrified, tranquilized, frozen in time.

What is beauty? You will ask.

Beauty is the warmth of your cheek

As you embrace my shaking body.

Beauty is the flash of your teeth when you laugh.

It’s the crackle of the fire near my chilled feet.

Beauty eludes us, dear Sarah,

In our search for something unconditional.

It’s a receding horizon, a firefly we’ll never catch.

A glow we can only see in front of us

Never to be held, contained within a see-through jar.

If beauty is love

And love is food

Well then, we are screwed, you say.

I bite my tongue before I suggest

That perhaps, you should come for supper.