Blood&Bruises

These are some of the poems I'm submitting in my poetry workshop application. I'm posting them here because they're already public.

Blood & Bruises

I yearn for a skinned knee

Something to tell the world that I fell

That I am here now, after that fall

And not in some sort of pathetic “look, I got back on the horse”

Sorta thing

More to show that I lived

That I let myself fall

That I let my blood fall

And stain the cement

That I did not let myself get comfortable inside the shell of my body

of my room or my books or my friends or anything

That I intentionally broke myself to let some of myself go

Because it was holding me back anyway.

Blood & Bruises 2

Sex bruises are good bruises

Blood blossoming under the skin and under a violent kiss

Is a good thing

How else can we remember that something is inside us

Some sort of animal beast ripping to get out

If there is no darkening of the skin, aching at the touch,

Stabbing pain?

Bodies are soft soft things

And lust is hard and cruel and disciplining.

Sex bruises are best.

Blood & Bruises 3

My mother always told me not to scratch

At my scabs

Because scars, she said, are ugly things

And I will not tell you they are gorgeous

Not in any skewed definition or light

Are scars pretty, harmless things of beauty

But I love mine, and I stroke them soft and faded into my skin

Wounds burned and etched and weathered in

Between the particles of my body

So I scratch till they bleed again

And I stretch till they fall off and regain feeling

I want them forever, to adorn my body

With the pithy history of my falls and pains and moments of oblivion

For all the nights I never remembered, but which my clothes and head did

Do I keep these scars

So when I scratch and stretch can I feel

Them again.