Mishaps

Freya Bedwell
 Table of Contents
1. Hercules
2. Sink Up
3. Hear No Evil
4. Lovely Pride
5. Bones
6. Morgue in the Closet
7. Pair of Ravens
8. Life as a Bird
9. Bite It
10. Genes
11. 12:21
12. Shoebox
13. Window Creek
14. Vase Face
15. Either Sider
16. Graph-might
17. Enclosed
18. Geometric
19. Lion Mask
20. Lonesome
21. Breakfast
22. 99%
23. Sulfur
24. Little Country
25. Spacious
 26. Beehive
27. Penicillin
28. Sunrise
29. Peerless
30. Ponder
Thank you, mama, for teaching me
Hercules

In Hercules,
There are hummingbirds that fly close to you
Before they retreat
Whittling songs from the air with their sharp beaks,

They speak.

When I was young

I memorized over 100 bird-calls
Because I wished to know
Just what were the things around me
And while I have largely forgotten them,
I remember the hummingbird.

The hummingbird is nimble;

Twists through the breeze,
Despite its weight of 0.060 oz
It sculpts the sky with ease.
Upon flower it pounces,
Slender beaks among gentle peaks
Of petals and leaves
The hummingbird can fly backward out of bushes carefully
Because it moves its wings like some sort of bee
And that is what theyre glad to be.

In Hercules,
I watched hummingbirds
They were fairies to me,
Light and bright within sight
Green, grey, red sometimes,

And even now I watch the beating of their wings.

Sink Up

Sinking down
Down
Down to guts and mind mixes with intestine
How feelings intertwine with void,
White noise
No point, no point,
No light, no dark
Muffled
Static
Doors in the ceiling,
Windows on the floor
Blanket with no warmth
Cover your head and dont cry
Dont cry
You dont know how
You cant remember how you did before
Before
Before this fire started and
This candle melted into your brain pores
Wax traces your hairline down onto your shoulders
Weighing like a boulder
Hunch over
Lose your integrity to the fear that you will fall over
Its over
Hang your head in shame, you dog
You may only see the fog
There is no light,
No light, no-

The light that glows from your mind

Burns that which clouds if you detach it from your spine
Stand up, stand up, stand up,
You can make it, stand up,
You are no longer candle, but the flame,
Ignite this plane of life on fire
Become all of that which burns you,
Make your enemies befriend you,
Become the Phoenix rising from the ashes,
You are not a disaster.
You are life in essence captured,
You are that which cannot be mastered.

You can resist this sinking,

The drowning is just a passing feeling
There is an end to this tunnel
The lights are not a train, but the sunrise
Remember those who upheld you,
Who noticed
Who cared
Remember your own strength of will,
And this darkness you can kill.
You cannot do it alone,
But there is help to be found
You can become profound
Rise to your greatest height
Dont let go of this fight
You are your own light.
Hear No Evil

Through the haze of winter came

A traveller through the snow.
Lost and alone with nothing in tow,
And her surroundings all the same.

Lost was she, split from the all,

As she wrapped her arms so close,
Similarly wrapped a feeling of morose
Round her stomach into a ball.

Voices were constantly near,

As she wandered this forest here,
But still while close, none could quite reach
And so, all, she would beseech;

Crying, Help! Im here!

Yet none would hear
In the dead of winter night,
Thus, neared the frost bite.

The traveler began to realize

That the more she yelled, the less shed hear
The voices volume decreased in size
Til near disappearing, silent as deer.
She went silent,
And in the ensuing tense,
She heard what they had meant,
Suddenly feeling very dense.

The sounds of others in the snow,

They had been calling for help as well-
If shed listened, perhaps shed have known
That the wolves knew this forest very well.
Lovely Pride

I will paint my words with my love for you

All tipped off in rose and curlique
I will spray my fingers with your favorite perfume
So that I may write them in its dew

I will braid your favorite colors into my skin,

So that you may see me when you remember them
I will coat myself in rainbow,
The color of our now and then.

I will build up my ribcage with your love

Stack your words like ladder rungs
Build a pathway to my heart,
So you can see the love thats part.

Though I am silent through and through

I know that you know me true
My love for you is kept internal
But I hope you realize its eternal.
Bones

Dust to dust,
We say,
Hoping that this will make it all fade
As we go through the day
The dust remains
Rubbed in and remade

We run ourselves over with water each day

To remove the stains pain has made
And yet at the end it gathers again
Dust to dust,
We say,
Dust to dust.

We kick up the old bones each daybreak we wake

And crush beneath our feet those old aches
Hoping to rid ourselves of those days
But only more parts are made
Dust to dust,
Dust to dust.

We remain as one with the earth,

Remaining what a human is worth,
Rebirthed and rebirthed
Think ourselves to be cursed
Morgue in the Closet

I can't fit my feelings into a poem for you,

Just how we wouldn't fit you into a coffin,
We burned you
After your own stubborn will killed you
I can't go back to the past
It went by ahead
And so I never got to know you before you passed

The imprint you left on my father

It's clear, you left a sear
And none of us were really near
Just like the country from which you appeared

I only found out what you liked just before your death,
Because you were depressed.

I found out about your pots and pans

Those cooking instruments, shaped like flowers or fish
To put on a dish
Something from a time gone missed

I found out about your embroidery,

Napkins sewn with floral scenes
Hundreds on hundreds left to be
Details that were carefully select
The type of thing that some collect

I found out about your travels,

Your adventures,
With my grandfather
The thick photo albums
Trips to France, Spain,
Mexico, Maine,
Something I can only dream of
What your memory retained

I found out about your garden,

Left in pots to rot after you were too old to crouch
Too old to care for even yourself

I found out about the business you ran,

Back in the 50s or 60s you had
Forgotten taxes, hidden letters,
Stacks of mail by your couch
That we were never allowed to touch

I found out about how you raised

My father, your only child made
I found out about how you never taught him your language
Swedish caught on the tongue and hidden away
Traditions that were taught but not in the proper way
I found out about how
You had, as I did, the depression that kept us in bed
But you were born too early for anyone to make a diagnosis
And so my father never knew
What you were like all the way through

I found out more about you after you were gone

Than what I knew when you were one
Memories formed from the loss of yours
Pair of Ravens

I love you like a knife.

I love you the way that cold keen steel holds onto
well-crafted wood,
The way rainbows reflect off of heated metal,
Many hues but thats nothing new.

I love you like thunder and lightning.

I love you the how they roll against each other,
One silent and the other frightening,
Always in pairs and mixed together
A clash that is constantly connected.

I love you like a leather-bound book.

I love you the way time-worn leather binds,
Protecting from stains and pains
Yet still allowing for freedom of our minds.

I love you like you love me,

And I hope this way it always will be.
Life as a Bird

My ideas are not a shape my tongue can roll,

A size bigger than my voice-box,
Cant fit down the drain from my brain to my mouth.
Bite It

I dont know how to deal with it

So I dont fucking deal with it
Its easy to conceal if you know that youre feeling it
And no one knows that youre feeling like trash
As you keep on going until you fucking crash
And in the end at last
Dont know why you tried to go fast
When your mechanism was already gone and passed
A car cant drive without a motor, you know
But you still cant fucking show
That youre feeling so low
So you put a can in it
Play the bit,
Put a sock in it,
You bite down on it

Until you taste the blood

Wait for the end of the flood
But the river keeps on flowing straight on down from the
ocean
And you cant make the appropriate motion
To swim from its grasp and youre left there to gasp
With some sort of clasp
Holding your lips all halfway shut
So you just
Bite down on it
Genes

I am the common descendant.

The mixing of two long-parted bloody rivers,
One well-told and the other shadowed,
Both matched in strength, story and skill,
Roaring, long and fury,
Who are you to tell me I should not be?

The mixed chid,

Black and white
Culture of both and more, the fight
To connect two peoples separated by none
But their own
I am both my father and mother
Not just some other,
Anonymous in all save face and name.
I carry both sides of this ocean,
Who are you to tell me to drown?
12:21

It was 11:55.
I took 26 minutes to cry,
Before I finally stopped and spent three hours
Letting an old dread
Creep in like fingers to my head
The fear of what just happened again.

The way he just

Maybe it was just
How could he just
Go like that
He deserved better than that

My sister saw him three days before he passed

He was working,
Working,
Working,
Up until the last
She had an ear infection.
He seemed fine. My dad thought it was a normal trip
And didnt notice when he let slip
That his heart wasnt
Very
Strong right now
And he probably knew it.
Doctor with so many patients, see
Couldnt just not realize that
Couldnt just reveal that
Knew he was far overdue
And worked on the same day he

This man saved my life,

Subscription to a medication
That kept me from falling flat
And would come where I was sat
Tell me I could make it through the strife of life

And I never told him

How he left an imprint in my mind
The kind which will come back throughout time

I do not know how to grieve

But I do not want to forget
Let this memory relieve
As the past is set
Shoebox

The shoes they gave me

From her, and not
I let them be
For all theyve been taught
They gather dust because of me
Because I let them rot
Because I cannot stand
Wearing her feet.
They curve from the floor to the heel like land
In the distance, from a plane seat
They have a buckle, a little band,
And they are all black, like dark peat
She would have wanted me to wear them
But I cannot bear them.
Window Creek

The creek, a stream of glass

That leaks
Dashed with the streaks of leaves so weak
Remains of a crack pipe
By a mother and her child
Taking it mild
And surrounded by cement slabs
Unnatural, but covered in the dirt and wild
Roots, with a shattered beer bottle
The grass nearby is green, but a mottle
Of green, well-watered, not quite right
A strange sight
In this wet drought
Vase Face

Internally, you dont fit

Within yourself
Put your soul up on a shelf
And so, there it will sit.

Stagnating
Vibrating
Until it falls
And

Breaks
Open
And at it you
Are grating
At it
unfit
Either Sider

If you lived or died young or old,

I wouldnt know,
Because I saw you once and once alone.

Were strangers until we get home

I dont know you and the flipside
We do different tasks but we all share the same bone
Well never meet, but in this passing tide
We see each other, alone
For a moment
Just a second
Of interlocking eyes, a message is sent
I am human, too.
And so our mortality beckons
And so our lives didnt change direction
And so
And so

Were strangers until we get to our homes

Were solitary in our tomes
And I wonder about who I dont know.
Graphmight

The transfer of
Brain to page
Of mind to line
Of strokes to shape
Of caution to brave
Of expression made
Beyond the borders
Of my mind my thoughts can be
Made
And beyond the bare page
My feelings are laid
Into thoughts which bade
The local emotions made
To focus in inked page
To show imaginations
amalgamations
Enclosed

When Im stressed, I chew ice.

Mama comes home from work, 9-5, sometimes 6

Pressed from hours on hours and
Sister doesnt care, lies,
Lies, disagrees, argue for hours
Mama yells now but will later cry
Glacier in my eyes, I

Dada works too, similar hours,

Picks me up from the transit center
Sinking look and still goes
Over to my grandfathers abode and
Takes care of this man before coming home and
Helping Mama but melting into bed as soon as he can
With his bad back
bad eyes
bad blood pressure
stress were all a mess

Brother tries to hide it but he

Has no motivation and even though he
Does not say it
He knows that he is
Ice cube in hot drink
Not sinking
but quickly disappearing

Sister comes home before me and

We all know shes got low self esteem
Hides it under piles of lies to fit her needs and
Focuses more on friends than homework or dreams
Frozen in action with no real
Purpose

And I chew ice when Im stressed.

Geometric

I hang around the edges of acquaintances,

Lingering
halfway into the light,
and halfway out of sight,
For fear the corners will go round and
Ill fall

down

I wander near the edge of the road

Stepping near the grass

and near the path,

But never quite on either track,

And I never really turn back.
Lion Mask

Strip me of this mortal flesh

And youll find the fresh,
Anticipation of the rest.
Just beyond my golden crest
There lies the fallen best
Parts of human nature, meshed.
There are a number of things we repressed
Soul and feature all unrefreshed
Left alone for lest
We try and believe our fate is jest
Lonesome

Do you feel
The lack of air between your lungs
That doesnt suffocate you, but you can sort of taste it on
your tongue
With each breath you take and it stretches down
Between your ribcage to your stomach
Sucking inward, twisting, bound
An ugly thing to ignore until it
Leaves for a moment
Leaves for the passing glance or peaceful trance
And when you
Snap back to it
Breakfast

I dont talk to people.

I dont talk to people because
I cant crack my heart open like an egg
Over a frying pan
I have to do it slowly,
Over the bowl,
Picking out the bits of eggshell that fall in.
I can't take scrambled arteries,
Lie carefully in Styrofoam container in the fridge
So as to preserve my yolk
There is no growing life within me,
Yet I have a shell to keep things under lock and key
99%

They define us as a set

The human race,
With a few subsets
Discounting our individual elements
They divide us, not letting us complement each other
No unions,
No intersection

They stand up on the stage,

Asymptotes of what they speak
They reach and reach
But never quite reach
And use us in their experiments,
Hoping we'll improve their outcome
And at the same time,
They believe us to be extraneous solutions
They wish to be the leading coefficient
Splitting us to the lower bound,
Them to the upper bound,
They earn continuous compound interest,
While we are a far phase shift down.

On the pie graph they're the 1%

Reference angle to all the rest
Keeping themselves far from our vertex
Replace where needed, substitution method
Imagining us to be flat on paper
When we all have dimensions

And still they build on us, factorials

They are polynomials
And somehow they still discount us,
Saying they're the whole function so they're in power
But all they produce is repeated zeros,
When we could be transcendental functions,
If we formed a combination

We are both the sine and cosecant,

We are both the cosine and secant
We are the function and its reciprocal,
But we don't realize everyone's an individual
Sulfur

Ive been talking

Too much, lately
Words keep spilling
Out
Like
Spoiled
Milk
And I dont quite shut up
Like I used to

And

I crack those eggs sloppily to get to the yolk

For fear of them going bad, like

That time the fridge broke

And the smell of rotten eggs stayed for a month

Spacious

When the dust settles

And time is done
And theres nowhere left to run
The memory,
The one of you and me,
Will still be there in the ancient history
Of all thats happened and all thats done
And Ill still love you
Even after our planet is gone.
Little Country

I vote to write.
Make little ballots in my head
About what word to use,
This? No, that, instead.
I make a government on a page,
Style changing as I age,
And I do it as if Im on a stage,
Making my own propaganda
To present to all the people on some platform, my own
performance,
To show how I am not ignorant,
And still I keep to myself
Instead of entering the ballot
I debate with myself and myself alone
And my skills I hone
But for what? Just my own
Because stages are scary and make me wary
Of life itself, that burden we all carry
Beehive

I am abuzz with these thoughts in my mind

And the truth is I am not sure which are mine
And which ones are caused by insecurity
But of course feeding guests is a courtesy

Anxiety will feed on your thoughts and your actions

Repeat them back to you in uncomfortable fashion
Bring back memories from six years ago
Or make you worry about what you think you know

It eats at you, beats at you,

Digs like fucking cleats in you
Repetition and tradition of the original rhythm
Taking risks is something you cant risk

Itll wash up old pains like sand grains

Come on, were going down the past lane
Think of an insult from three months ago
Or a conversation that is two years old

You gotta see it to believe it

Theres not much of a way to relieve it
They give you therapy and pills but they dont really know
Those things only make it follow from a distance
And you build up a resistance
Sometimes you try to give up
But that only fucks you up

It watches you curl up in the sand

With your stomach ache
It watches you squirm in pain
From the thoughts of what you said today

And it catches you at night and it catches you in the

morning
And it picks the worst of times to come back roaring
Performing on a stage becomes trapped in a cage
Presenting an essay turns real goddamn messy

Its a muzzle, its a tussle, its a bustle in your head

Its a wild song that goes like needle and thread
Its the clinging to the blanket halfway out of your bed
Its the buzzard over your head
Its the
Its the
Its the
Its the stutter and the mute feeling that follows,
Its the
Feeling like you cant get it through your mind
That theres no fucking time
To be wasting, you have to be on the dime
When the man at the register tells you your total
Or when you get called on your mobile

Maybe that time when you got in trouble

For bringing out your cell in class
And you tried to think
And you tried to tell her
But you couldnt say a single word or text back your father
Saying that he would be late because your grandfather had
an emergency
And you wanted to call him but you cant explain
And you cant get the words out
All you can do is internally shout

Maybe that time when you got a compliment

But all you did was freeze and lament
On what to say and then
They walk off
Abruptly

Maybe that time you found out

Your grandmother was in the hospital
And all you could do was stare like no one was there
And you couldnt quite speak again
And you couldnt quite breathe again
And you couldnt quite think like you do
When you dont want to

Maybe that time when you were saying something

In front of a group, or something
And all, like, um, you can, uh, say, is, uh, like halting, or
something
And your throat dries up and your knees twitch kicks in
And
You stop
Blinking
And you start
Thinking
And the rest of the time you dont say a damn thing

Theres no proper way to express not being able to express

The feeling of expression is found in what you lack
Because those who go in circles dont reach the end of the
track
But theres no going back
With monsters on your path
Penicillin

And I am left breathing in the fumes

From the old that you tried to hide
In the fold of your clothes
Not realizing that when you change to your funeral robe
We will all see the mold
Sunrise

Back then,
In the bed
Alone and quiet while the room was
Silent
The violet hue draped over you
The lack of any sort of true.

I am left where you once stood,

Doing much more than you ever could,
Yet I feel resentful still
That you are the shoes I fill.
Peerless

Youre so goddamn young.

I want to teach you the dew on the wild flowers

Bending over the side of the path like something made by
holy powers
The lilt of the stems and the songs of the petals
The new buds and how the color is brighter after recent
showers

I want to teach you the curvaceous hills that surround us

How they are wild and untamed and
How to climb them when it rains
How they light up like emerald mountains when the wet
season has been attained

I want to teach you the way roses work

The way they glow from the inside out
How they unfurl like a fairys petticoat
The million colors they all tout
Yet they hide behind their thorny moat

I want to teach you dandelions growing from sidewalks

Hardy weeds that quietly talk
Of things theyve seen on city blocks
How to listen to their stories, soft

I want to teach you people on the bus

Strange faces every day
Some youll learn to see not far away
How they talk without a word to your mein
What they always seem to say

I want to teach you pigeons on street sides

Grey plumes and messy manners all along the city lines
How they move like a tide
In and out like a bay nearby

I want to teach you how to breathe

To see
What the world will reveal if you just
Let it be

Youre so goddamn young.

Let yourself become something more.
Ponder

Can a moment caught in a flash

Be kept behind glass
To hold up a portrait of past,
Stolen line from time
Something for which others pine