Gabriel Gadfly :: Poetry

Scribbleheads

Gabriel — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:16:12 +0000

In the silence
after we finished fighting
you grabbed your notebook

and in an hour,
drew a picture
of a girl
with a big black
ball of scribbles
for a head.

You stabbed her
with your finger
and you said

“Look, look,
this is me.

I am all tangled up.
I am messy,
I am a mess.

I cannot sort myself out.
I don’t know the way out
of this labyrinth head,”

and then you
threw your notebook down
and went to bed,
you left me to flip
through your sketches,

trying to think of a way
to tell you my poems
are self-portraits
with scribbles for heads, too.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Mar 15, 2013

Rotten and Fresh

Gabriel — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:22:46 +0000

Two weeks ago,
you kissed my cheek
and told me I ought to
put more fresh things
into my life,
that this would
make me happier
and healthier
and chase my sad away,

so I took the morning off
and drove out
to the farmer’s market
on the edge of town.

I bought a bag
of bright peaches
from a smiling girl
with hair like autumn,

I swallowed lungfuls
of clean sunshine and air,
I drank cold clear water,
and then I took
my peaches home.

I didn’t bite into a single one.

I threw them
in a dusty bowl
on the kitchen table
and I let them sit

until they molded over
and caved themselves in.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Mar 14, 2013

Soap and Glass and Earthworms

Gabriel — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 00:52:35 +0000

When you were at work,
I picked up your journal,
a slim book bound
in soft brown leather.

I snuck it out
from the bedside table,
I held it in my hands,
I felt it over and over,
and finally peered inside.

I want you to know
it was not to look for
anything written about me.

I just wanted to learn you
in a way I hadn’t yet,
in ways I couldn’t
suss out on my own,
and this is what I learned:

You wrote about
your mother’s hands,
about her white hands
wrinkled, her nails chipped
and unpainted, pitted
with soap and work.

They smelled like laundry,
the kind that is only clean
because you’ve knotted
and kneaded and soaked
and swished and wrung
until your elbows ache,
until your fingers ache.

You wrote about
the green glass earrings
your Aunt Callie wore
until the day
her last hard husband
was put beneath the earth,

handmade teardrops
hung on wire --
even cracked,
they caught the light,
they caught the light

and you wrote about
the river full of stones
she threw those earrings into,
to grind them down to dust,
to grind them down,
she told you.

You wrote about
your sister’s girl,
this straw-haired kid
who digs for earthworms
with her fingers
in the silty muck
beside Moldhauer Creek,

about their fat
wriggling bodies
in her little white hands,
the way she pinches them
and laughs.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Mar 9, 2013

Bigger

Gabriel — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 22:10:25 +0000

There is a boy whose name
you’ll make yourself forget
but you’ll remember what he looks like:

taller than you, yellow blond hair,
a smile white as plastic silverware,
he’s the reason you don’t date
girls with blue eyes for years.

After gym class,
he saunters over to the corner
of the lunch room table
you are sitting at alone.
He cups his hands in front of his chest,
shakes them up and down,
and shouts at you: Hey! fat fuck!
did you forget your bra today?
His friends bray like donkeys,
and your face is as red
as the slimy spaghetti on your plate.
You don’t say anything.

You hunker down,
bend your shoulders in --
you’ll regret this later--
you hunker down,
and stare into your pasta
until he gets bored and goes away,
and then you stuff your face
and go to class, hoping no one
hears your belly gnaw at
the mouthfuls of shame
you just shoveled into it.

Your English teacher
reads the poems you write
and pulls you into his office. He says,
Look, you’re gonna grow out of this.
You’re not gonna be this way forever,

and you clench your eyes
because you don’t want to think
about how this bulk of a boy
can grow bigger,
how you can broaden,

he’s got to know that
growth is only beautiful
when it happens to flowers,
and you spend more time thinking
of how to mow yourself down.

Anyway, your teacher’s a liar:
this never stops;
you will always carry more
than your fair share.

You’ll sway with it.
You’ll wake up a man
with creaky knees
and red streaks on your hips
from years of tight waistbands.
You’ll stand naked in front of mirrors,
thinking about gravity
and the colors of stretched skin.
You straighten your back
until it aches.

The years give you something, though:
white static where the blond boy’s name goes,
the warm skin of lovers who teach you
you are not too wide to be cared for,
and over years of yourself,
you chewed the moisture out
of that belly full of shame:
it’s dry tinder now.

You swallowed a cinder called poetry
to try to burn yourself out,
but this big kiln contains it and roars.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Feb 26, 2013

Supercell

Gabriel — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 06:33:29 +0000

Years ago, in school,
I swallowed a secret,

but it hasn’t settled well
on my stomach.
I am older now and
I’ve learned what indigestion is,
and now this secret
comes back up:

My heart has always
beat thunderstorms
instead of blood.

I am all whirled up now.
My cheeks are puffed up
and I cough up
craggy tree branches
and uprooted stop signs.

I walk into coffee shops
and all these startled people
look up from their lattes
to hear the shutters
smash in my gusts.

They scramble.
They are trying to stay dry,
trying to keep the rain out
of their cups

but I can’t stop myself --
I jerk umbrellas out
of the wrinkled hands
of old ladies,
I flood parking lots,
I topple garbage cans,
I blow down birdhouses
and scrape them down
the middle of Main Street.

My thunder was quiet once,
just a rumble,
just easy to swallow,
but I am booming now
and I make the windows rattle now.

I make the earth shake now.

I am severe now.

I am a red band on radar,
tornado siren out my open mouth.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Feb 21, 2013

Return to Sender

Gabriel — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 05:21:59 +0000

Today, you sent me a box
full of chocolate and poetry
and beautiful things.

You must have known
your gift was unwanted.
You must have.

You must have known
that I would read your name
and address with dread,
a hint of panic, with confusion
and consternation.

You must have known
that I would tuck the box
beneath the table
and try to ignore it for hours,
until its presence
needled me like a thorn
needing to be plucked out.

You thought you sent love
and affection in a box,
but you sent a reminder,
one of wounds and worry,
a reminder that
gifts and well-wishes
do not heal bruises
and never will.

I would send it back
full of wolves if I could.

This poem © Gabriel Gadfly. Published Feb 12, 2013

Tools

Gabriel — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 23:22:39 +0000

After I asked about your scars,
you sat me down and
showed me the razor blade
you kept for years
in your bedside table.

You showed me
the sewing needle,
the lighter, the alcohol,
the hook -- a whole box full
of knives and fire.

You said, “These are the tools
some children use
to pull pain out of themselves

when no one teaches them
a safer way how.”

Your scars are healed over now.
Your scars are healed over and
you have healed beneath them.

When I asked why
you would ever want to keep
this collection of hurtful things,
you closed the box
and put it away.

You said, “I keep them
to remind myself
I know safer ways now.”

The Happy Project

Gabriel — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 19:06:23 +0000

I want to talk to you about The Happy Project and about the man behind it. Michael Milligan — better known as MCM — is the head honcho behind 1889 Labs, the small indie publisher that brings my books to you.

About nine months ago, MCM’s wife was in a very bad car accident. She was struck by a car that was backing down a one-way street, and suffered critical injuries — collapsed lung, brain damage, broken bones, and more.

The good news is that she is recovering, but it’s a very slow process. It’s been 295 days since her accident, and the head wound from the skull fracture is only just now healing.

Long-term care is the sort of thing that drains your reserves — it does it physically, it does it emotionally, it does it financially. The Happy Project is a way to push back against that drain. It’s a chronicle of little victories against massive trauma. I hope you’ll click through and read some of MCM’s posts.

It’s also an opportunity for me to give back to the man who gave my poetry a chance when no one else would. My works wouldn’t be out there for you to read if it weren’t for MCM.

There’s a Paypal donation link on The Happy Project. Every dollar collected there helps MCM and his wife and his children win a little victory against this monster.

You’re helping me and my publisher if you give to The Happy Project, so I want to give something to you, too. If you donate $10 USD, I will send you a handwritten copy of any poem from my collection.

Just click here to donate, then send me a message to let me know which poem you want and where I should send it. You can use the site's contact page, or find me on Twitter or Facebook to let me know about your donation. Thank you.

Where You Will Find Me

Gabriel — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 06:39:41 +0000

Last night, you said
you wanted to find the real me,

but you look with your hands
and your mouth
and don’t find anything there.

You look for me
in all the wrong places.

This body is just a tangle.
It is just a snare. I am caught
and must write myself out
of this snarl of limbs
and into something
that can contain me.

Look, I am a pothole full of rain,
the kind that holds up a mirror
for the sky and says Look,
you are beautiful,
even if you are just blue,
from one end to the other.

I am the holes a woodpecker
has hammered into a telephone pole,
and the poems teenagers
have scrambled up and put into them,
like the prayers pious old men
pack into the cracks of temple walls.

I am a little green moss
in a grey parking lot

and that must be enough for you.

Glacier

Gabriel — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 05:19:11 +0000

My belly has a glacier
crawling through it

and the only fire
that can melt it down
is miles away --

so far,
I can’t even see
the smoke of her
any more.