The Skeleton Selection, Part I

As I write this, I’m sitting on a train. It is 10:28 p.m. The dark is speckled with house lights and the occasional street lamp.

I wrote the above few sentences on my way from Sanford, FL to Lorton, VA, my desire to write immense but the Dramamine unforgiving. So it’s all I wrote. Nothing more. Nothing interesting. Just that I was on the train, that it was nighttime, and that I couldn’t see much because it was dark. Wow, lady, impressive.

The problem is that despite the Dramamine excuse I do this often: I leave a piece of writing unfinished. I desire (if you haven’t already noticed) constantly rewriting and revising; but there have existed many an occasion where I’ve left the bones of a work, well, bony. No fleshy adjectives. No verbs spilled like blood. Simply the white glare of exposed skulls, ribs, phalanges. A moment, like skin, eaten by worms. The eulogy read. The words buried, nonexistent.

So this my way of showing you some of my skeletons.* And maybe, a way of bringing them (pardon the extended cheesy metaphor) back to life. You know, so they can dance a la Betty Boop in Minnie the Moocher.   

*I’ll be posting a selection of of my skeleton pieces over this and next week (because there are so many of them)


What are words that you speak
RIP January 31, 2006

What are words that you speak
Open-mouthed in the night,
When you feel like you’re gasping for air (Sigh, Sigh)
and the breath that you take,
will be taken so gently that no one will realize
that you’re even there.

But the words that you’ve spoken
Are syllables twisted and turned
In a moment, a delicate moment
Contorted and played in your mind where they’ll sit and hide waiting
For delicate moments that wither with time.

Those moments that make every soul fill with laughter
Those moments that sit and they cry in the night
Those moments of waiting for before and after
Those moments that bring out the dark from the light

Reasons lead to superstition
RIP March 1, 2006
  

Reasons lead to superstition
Magic hats and precognition
But simply, I have noticed
That you’ve played a trick on me
Sorcery and hidden sleeves
All the things that one believes
When the seeing what’s not seen
Is part of practiced mystery
Sleight of hand is all it takes
To win the heart that makes mistakes
And such a captivated audience
Falls into charmed confusion
With a wave of both your hands
I’m entranced by magic sands
And when you ask me to pick up a card
I’m bound by your illusion 
I stare at your name
RIP March 19, 2006
  
I stare at your name, but I can’t let it go
From my head, from my ears, and my eyes
I’ve been out of my mind, and I know that it shows
But it’s hard to let pasts pass by
Say your goodbyes to all the laughter
My stomach couldn’t stomach the pain
But I would take back the before and after
Just to be with you again
Why did you have to say these things
RIP March 19, 2006
Why did you have to say these things?
The things that make us uncomfortable in bed
And I am tired of it,
The things that run in circles through my head
I didn’t want to sleep at night
Because I’m filled with thoughts impending tears
And I’m an insomniac for now
Because I’m chasing off the essence of my fears
And I am lost in proclamations and ultimatums
Searching wildly for declarations of mediation
For this concentration of exclamations of desperation
That causes this depreciation in the value of sweet dissertations
Of emotional despair
And I am conscious of sensation, losing part of fascination
For this fixation, your creation
Partly my enumeration of defamation
To the character so boldly in relation
To your oh so sweet citation
Of the fact that I’m not there
An on-the-spot poem about old poetry:
You sounded good in 2006.
Now,
not so much.
Because revision is a bitch,
I’ll leave your words
untouched.

2 thoughts on “The Skeleton Selection, Part I

  1. Alexa L. says:

    Thank you for your lovely comment! I will keep writing 🙂

    Reply
  2. Irene Cortez says:

    Hi! You are a gifted writer, Alexa. You are really given the talent to beautifully express your thoughts through words, no matter how random they may seem. Your writings don't seem like "skeleton" to me haha but well, i suppose, you should know better since you are in the journalism department.

    Keep writing, Alexa! Take care! 🙂

    Reply

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