lisa.marie.bonofiglio
photo taker
word writer
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Noted Passages
photo taker
word writer
story teller
Noted Passages
He sat there in my backseat slumped over like a worn puppet on a dusty shelf. The blood was already drying on his forehead, however the cut on his lip was very much alive. He managed to lift an arm long enough to wipe the bright redness from his chin. He claimed it was for honor, fighting like a dog in the street. That if you wanted to survive in his neck of the woods, you had to stand for something, you had to protect yourself by showing that you weren’t scared of nobody. I called bullshit.
Continue reading at: http://usewordsmakethoughts.blogspot.com/2012/12/heavy-things.html
I walked by our old apartment today,
Well…the apartment that you paid for
and I just lived in, cleaned and made my home.
My room is no longer an expensive storage space,
but the place where I store my moments
of fallen grace- and of course, mountains of
clothes and shoes, and a pallet of blues
With a few purples thrown in for good measure.
I don’t stop in front of that disgusting green door,
The one with the lock that almost never opened on the first try.
I want to sit there and wait for a sense of self-
But I fear I won’t find that I left anything behind,
And that I always knew it wasn’t my place to grow.
I try to imagine holding you again,
And the feeling of unfamiliarity floods my mouth,
Like I just breathed in someone’s cigarette smoke
And I spit the thought out, just like that.
And leave in it on the sidewalk.
I try to let the thought sit at the bottom of my brain,
But thoughts don’t have the same gravity that emotions do.
Thoughts want to be had and they sit inside until you are ready
To think them through.
So I’m writing about thinking thoughts that I don’t want to have,
Because I can’t seem to get this taste out of my mouth.
[2011]
He shook it out of me, those knots I’ve had since I was before I knew what age was. He sat beside me, holding my weight in his hands, his physical support acting as a metaphor for the way he let me bear my soul on his conscience. It’s not an easy thing to help emotional beings make sense of their existence and why they feel as low as they do. There are not many more incredible ways to truly depend on another human being.
It is funny that we have named ourselves exactly the way we name other things. Human Beings. We are, so we be. And Human, our species of animal. We are the conscience being, so we think.
Perhaps insects sense us in a way we will never be aware of. Surely, it is conceivable that another species has higher knowledge than other beings, that we do not understand, notice or conceive of. The best we have come up with is that dogs, bees, and other intelligent species can smell or rather, sense, human fear or anxiety.
He felt my anxiety. Many do. No one ever tells me so.
I felt myself reaching areas of my consciousness that I have not felt close to in ages. I remembered dreams, laughs and afternoons with Gram that I haven’t recalled so clearly before.
He told me that I carry the burden of my family’s sadness. What kind of child accepts and guides their families through these things? I suppose taking on the deaths of both grandfathers and my aunt caused me quite an exceptional amount of melancholy. There are days when I sense them, when I feel as if we have had a conversation about something without ever having to say any words.
Speaking of words, he used quite a variety of spiritual vocabulary. It felt welcoming and not at all jolting. I welcomed all references without notions of agenda or education. If anything, Peter was trying to teach me that I and I alone am the keeper of my peace. There is a way to deal with every event possible in human life and we chose or are prone to the reactions and emotions that we have, because after experiences start to influence our perceptions, we no longer possess that innocence often referred to as a childish or endearing disposition.
He said that I have been stunted in my growth. I grew up too soon. I skipped a few chapters in my development somewhere and it has caused me to have a separation of motivation, responsibility, and abandon. That feels the way my Capricorn, Aquarius Cusp identity leads me to believe I am destined to be: somewhere between wild and imaginative and up-tight, goody-goody. What a curse. What a blessing.
Your warm dark eyes convinced me,
As you took my shaky hand,
That there was somewhere better to be.
“Come, come!” you pulled me forward,
Checking back to make sure
I hadn’t stopped believing.
The bell rang for the sixteenth floor.
We sprang out of the bronzed doors
Like the last one was a rotten egg.
But I didn’t know where we were going
So I let you lead the way
To a heavy crimson curtain
Begging to be lifted.
The laughter down the hall was getting louder.
You raised the weight and I slipped under
To find that between a dark veil and a cold wall
Is a world to call your own.
You squeezed my hand,
“Are you here?” it asked.
Your lips found mine without flounder.
We were here the whole time.
Footsteps came and went, I’m sure.
All it takes is a phone call early on a Monday morning
From someone you didn’t expect to hear from
To get your heart beating again.
She says her heart has been broken
And this morning she decided it was time
To cup her hands around the pieces.
There was a love that couldn’t find it’s way
As so many young feelings do
In a world of flesh and blood.
We make time for ourselves just as we
Make time for each other
Perhaps, it is one of those times to choose the self.
For the self is more than the pumping vessels
And the quickened breath.
We are invisible.
It is when we see ourselves in nothing
That we are honest
About where we have been and will be.
In a world of flesh and blood
It is easy to forget our hearts
Are best filled by a bucket with no holes.
You never saw me,
Your eyes closed so tight, so tight, no light, no light
Always behind the lens but never looking through
You could have done me righter
Even if your feelings weren’t so true
Why wouldn’t you tell me?
Brown eyes, your stare was so blue.
I always knew.
