Don't Act Like I'm Your Angel.

It started-the familiar pain just inside the rib cage of my soul.
Right in the center of my being, where I hold most everything-anything, dear.
Time after time I've felt this, you'd think the crushing depths would be second nature..
But they're still as foreign to me as the moon I now look upon and ponder.
I ponder many things- life, love, purpose
But the one thing I deny my heart tonight, is the one thing that history shows me I'm magnetic to.

Fuck it. I allow the memories to come crushing inside, to feel the pain at it's maximized point, like a stake piercing me slowly.
My jaw slacks just enough to draw in a slow, deep breath, as if to breath through the pain. Or so my yoga instructor preaches.
This always happens, and I know I sound pathetic. Even a bit whiny- self centered, shallow, blind. But it's my plague.
I love and I lose. It's this vicious cycle of disgusting repetitiveness.
"Is it too much to ask?" But apparently it is, because the walls that I talk to, can't seem to let anyone in..

-Jessica Carpenter-

The Fates Have A Fickle Way About Them.

The trees stood like melted candles-
Like an old mans fragile hands, bubbled & warped.
The warm sun blazed up above
A gentle breeze giving me a blissful, bittersweet relief- reminding me I'm only human.
I felt as though there were three pairs of hands, guiding my feet, heart and mind.

I've debated this decision for awhile,
As it was- a crossroad, however cliché.
I could follow the freeway that would give me a set, splendid life,
Or follow the game trail, not quite a path meant for silk slippers.
Obviously, I'm more adventurous, maybe more so than for my own good.. ..

My eye gazed heaven bound, as I looked at the brick, marble, and glass that would harness the power of my comply.
"I'm a selfish creature" I say with a half-wit smile.
I stride forward, gracefully entering my coronation, my creation.

Though I must confess-
After many sleepless nights, and even more wrinkled brows-
I'm embarking on this survey, although I'm sure the wilderness- wildness of that path has taken me, and now taunts me.

So I sit here thinking of an internal war that was waged and won
And with the sweat of anticipation I finally realize,
this is my road, just for me.. ..

The One Shared eye twinkles with grace
my decision inside has been made,
Its the world that I want, and will forever chase.

-Jessica Carpenter-

Hitlers First Photograph

And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe?
That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers little boy!
Will he grow up to be an LL.D.?
Or a tenor in Vienna's Opera House?
Whose teensy hand is this, whose little ear and eye and nose?
Whose tummy full of milk, we just don't know: 

printer's, doctor's, merchant's, priest's?
Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander?
To garden, to school, to an office, to a bride,
maybe to the Burgermeister's daughter?

Precious little angel, mommy's sunshine, honeybun,
while he was being born a year ago,
there was no dearth of signs on the earth and in the sky:
spring sun, geraniums in windows,
the organ-grinder's music in the yard,
a lucky fortune wrapped in rosy paper,
then just before the labor his mother's fateful dream:
a dove seen in dream means joyful news,
if it is caught, a long-awaited guest will come.
Knock knock, who's there, it's Adolf's heartchen knocking.

A little pacifier, diaper, rattle, bib,
our bouncing boy, thank God and knock on wood, is well,
looks just like his folks, like a kitten in a basket,
like the tots in every other family album.
Shush, let's not start crying, sugar,
the camera will click from under that black hood.

The Klinger Atelier, Grabenstrasse, Braunau,
and Braunau is small but worthy town,
honest businesses, obliging neighbors,
smell of yeast dough, of gray soap.
No one hears howling dogs, or fate's footsteps.
A history teacher loosens his collar
and yawns over homework.

--- Stanislaw Baranczak and
Clare Cavenagh, translators
from The People on the Bridge

This poem by Wislawa Szymborska is one of my favorite poems by her. She won the noble prize in 1996 for Literature. In this chilling poem, we are not only able to see her life experiences (she lived through WWII) but also her poetic genius. My favorite line of this poem is "No one hears howling dogs, or fates footsteps, A history teacher loosens his collar and yawns over his homework." This is such a chilling reminder that we never know what the future holds. She represents this in her example that Adolf Hitler was once a child, just like we were, and yet he turned out to be one of the most menacing human beings in all of humanities history.

I first came across this poem, and Szymborska as a poet, in my Introduction to Literature 170 class. I have been enthralled in Szymborska's poems ever since. Sadly, this wonderful poet died in February of this year. Still she left a legacy of poems that will forever show who she was, and what she had been through. This is one of my all time favorite poems by her, and just in general.

ACT Testing

We stood there, the lot of us like zombies
A horde, we waited for the moment.
My hair putrid with the smell of a spent night too selfish
The words were spoken "come"
And with that we showered our brains across the 1970s decor.

-Jessica Carpenter-

Hope you never catch me.

If I put the gun to my head
And asked you to pull the trigger,
Could you?
If I chased all my dreams
and asked you to be the one to reap them,
Would you?
If I tell you that I love you
But that you were never to love me too
Should you?
If I cried that the highest always fall the hardest
and screamed towards the earth,
Hope you pulled the trigger,
Hope you reaped my dreams,
and hope you never loved me
because in the end I'm the skyline and you'll never catch me when I fall.

-Jessica Carpenter-

What we had

I'd give my heart to the wolves, march down straight to the mouth of hell,
Do anything and everything, to make what we have well..

-Jessica Carpenter-

That Spiritual Snapping, ya know??

I've been beaten-
I've been bruised,
Been betrayed
and over used.
Been smashed in the ground
But that's not breaking news.

I've been shaken
I've been slapped
I've been yelled at
Felt like crap
But it hurts more than ever
When you feel your spirit snap.

Forgive me,
Forget me,
Free me
Please heal me.
And in that soul shattering moment
You whisper, "Just kill me."

-Jessica Carpenter-

Cello Song

Dead glancing eyes will become of the ones who have raped out our hearts for carnal knowledge of our minds
Slithering snakes they feed on our humanity, to the brink of death, we are damned for a vengeance ever denied.
Criers of blood, momentous lovers of affairs with temptation- betrayal.
Hear my words ring of a sudden deadly truth to have a lasting impact on the worlds virgin ears!
I will lance out the heart of the beast undefined by time or words,
I will become the whore, your heart, ever moaning for peace.
I will become the one who consumes your soul for the mere and humble fact that I am taken by the way you play play evil- as if it were a dinner cello song with cords made of shattered hearts..

-Jessica Carpenter-

Just Jess.

Inside I hold a power
Curses be my skies
Or let Love soothe-
Fate never gave me a reason why.
My crystal tears do fall
For such painful memories,
A bloody corpse was burned
With no apologizes.
Rigid do I grow
Standing to face the wind,
Ever so beating
I'll never let him in.
Pain waters my soul
The oozing poison comes
I pray to the gods "relief!"
Of never which it comes.
Tired I keep walking
Amongst the desert sand
My ruby heart falls to ash-
Sweetness never made so bland.
Sour to the tongue,
Scorching to the eye
This poem you now read
Be my heart minimized.

-Jessica Carpenter-