I’m falling apart

riding on the back of a giraffe.
its bones are hard
grating against mine,
chipping at my hips and knees.
There is the absolute black
of the wild,
obscuring the edges
of all the leaves and the trees.

I want to go back
to the river,
the current of the living,
but the limbs of this animal
are set on this course
carrying me off
into the contours of my mind.

His ears are up
with the sky and the leaves
and he can’t hear me asking
for him to bend or halt
and let me go.

The brown smudges
on his back are leaving cracks
in the white of his fur
and I know he too
is falling apart.

3/22/2010
Tatiana Robinson
from Advanced Poetry Workshop Spring 2010

Things with Cracks

spines of old library books where
careless children have bent the cover
all the way back too many times,

soles on old sneakers when you have
worn though the shiny outer coating
and dried out the rubber
while exploring the neighborhood,

fingernails when you are trying
to see how long you can grow them
but end up catching them in everything
and breaking them instead,

rust flaking away from the legs
of the patio table after it has been buffeted
by the damp salt breeze for years,

coffee mugs that have been elbowed from desks
and glued together to hold pens and paper clips,

old CD cases that have lived
beneath the passenger seat
as the disks that match them
filled the car with memories,

and the stained, weathered sidewalks,
the linear cracks purposely placed,
so that on the hot days,
the concrete can expand and not break.

4/7/2010
Tatiana Robinson
from Advanced Poetry Workshop Spring 2010

Rain

They say your tears are warm,
as they course down your cheeks,
but mine are cold,
stone cold.
My mind is blank to why they pour,
leaving circles of dampness on my jacket sleeves
and leaving salt trails down my face.
It feels good to cry,
after holding it in for so long.
I imagine that’s how a cloud feels
as it sprinkles the earth below
with rain held in for days.

Tatiana Robinson
from They Say Your Tears Are Warm

Watch

Its the quiet ones you have to watch,
The ones that observe you talking
instead of joining.
It’s the quiet ones
you have to ask,
because they will never tell you
exactly what they are feeling.

It’s the quiet ones you have to hold near,
because they tend to bury themselves in their fantasies,
because they tend to bottle up their pain.
Its their attention you have to grasp
or it may wander to their purpose of life.

Its their minds you have to love
because love is what they have needed all along.
And it’s you they understand,
though you think you are so deep.
They know they are like water,
they can slip right through your fingers,

Watch the quiet ones as they sleep
because sleep can be eternal.

written prior to 2007
Tatiana Robinson

The Portal to Visual Expression

I am throwing myself around the room.
The high, straight white walls
stained with my dirty handprints,
Blue and violet and fuchsia.

My hair sticks to my face and my naked shoulders
in wet trails
and the streams of the purple
oozing from my scalp
form tributaries over my bare bones
down the small contours
of my collar and chest.

The distinct misshapen oval stamp of a shoulder
in the corner,
a dark, thick rouge
that isn’t paint, as the
blue and violet and fuchsia
handprints.

A tear across the length of my shoulder blades,
a portal emerging from the flow of blood and paint.
All my inspirations escape through
and are now raggedly interwoven with the reality
in the violently mottled room.

3/3/09
Tatiana Robinson
from They Say Your Tears Are Warm

Watermark: Pantoum

Time leaves its trail
like water pulling its way through the sand.
As toxins of emotion make their way to her mind,
they draw her away from the things that love her.

Like water pulling its way through the sand,
she drags her feet all the way home.
They draw her away from the things that love her
but she felt that she had to leave.

She drags her feet all the way home.
The brightly lit hallways call her back,
but she felt she had to leave.
She can see the path she is supposed to take.

The brightly lit hallways call her back.
Her ears are closed to the allure of their cries.
She can see the path she is supposed to take.
The water creates the trail.

4/3/09
Tatiana Robinson
From They Say Your Tears Are Warm

Melody

You wonder how my fingers can move so
as though they were an extension of my mind
instead of attachments to my hand,
which is all they would seem to be
to someone who cannot hear the music.
You wonder what thoughts go through my head
as I caress the cold lifeless blocks of wood
all lined up in a row of black and white
and make them seem as if they are breathing with me.

You notice the older woman in the front row
not even trying to quiet her sobs
as though the strains of my music
were strings of haunting forgotten memories
pulling the tears from her weathered eyes.

But there are no thoughts in my head,
and I notice nothing but the dark reflection of myself
in the grand piano that is singing my melodies
its face and body polished and naked in front of the crowd of listeners.

1/20/09
Tatiana Robinson
from They Say your Tears Are Warm