Don't school me on angst.

I know about angst.
I know about waiting,
wanting,
biding my time.

I know about aching,
thirsting, yearning.
I know about
saving my dimes.

I know about the hours,
and days, and weeks
that, past, chime.
I know about my space,
the hollow,
the vacant beating,
repeating rhyme.

I know about seasons,
revolutions,
moon phases,
the internal tide.

I know about planning,
and finding,
and sliding,
and paths that bind.

I know how to climb.
I know this design.
I know the thrill,
so bright,
of buffing
this
treasure of a gem
to a shine.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

oh, despair.
we are friends.
how bright and lovely
you are to me.
a brilliance
ripples on your surface
and resonates deep
into that dark, liquid belly.

i eat my food
like
a hungry animal.
what else is there,
but that which 
lies before me now :

cooling breakfast,
gnawing river,
the promise
of day and night.

the warm
shawl of forlorn
becomes an embrace.
the bete noire,
in the mirror,
is the movement,
the eternal, infernal equations,  
behind this face.

unsunk, just
the return
of my black crow friend, 
dismay.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

most painful
to paint
is the reality
that i rained.

brooks
streamed down
incline of neck,
splashed across
horizontal
swell of breast.

a quiet
evening shower.

the earth:
none the wiser,
feeling not the
absence of sun
though draped
in shade.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

there can exist a moment,
or even a mass of moments
that contain months of days,
and hours, and seconds --  

each felt
precisely and beat out by the heart
like x's on a calendar --  

cadence and counting and containment
in a mass of moments 
holding the now known
length of days.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

such is the case with a star, so bright and far away, twinkling, clear, and there every night, moving in gentle, oh-so subtle shifts, as if i tip back in my chair, over days, by arranging an arm, changing weight, which is how i prepare to doze where i write, on my side and curve, curl, dreaming under the glare of screen and light, so stellar, you ever are, like sparks and flames and strikes, though seen as individual atoms, lit brightly, bursting, like fireworks, grasping dark and squeezing it from the night, then pulse a blazing star, to me, burning, ever so, and such, is what you ever are.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I find myself

ever reminded that other people
are living. 
The thought of truly being

alive, 
to move, to breathe, to know:
it is a punch

in the gut
for those of us who are ghosts, 

flat figments,
never believing that there is

a niche
that can support this fight. 

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

how these godless stars align
over the distant atlantic-blue,  
how they fall into a sparkling chime
under this serendipitous doom ...

© JODI ANDERSON. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.