Oral Poetry

So, I finally got a voice-recording software. Yay! So I can just speak what I want to write and then type it up later. This is my favorite way to write, but it takes for-evuh. Oy. Nonetheless, here is the first poem I wrote using it, which is randomly depressing O.o

The important thing is not to let him know that you spent
two hours cooking that afternoon

You’d used a cooked book, looked up the recipe to something you hadn’t even heard of
that somehow made it more intriguing

The important thing is not to let him know that you spent
thirty minutes in the grocery store
and were harassed by every other man

Every other man who wasn’t him

The important thing is not to let him know that you had spent
almost the entire morning doing your hair, your makeup,
putting on a dress that fit so tightly you couldn’t breathe

You held your breath for the entire day

Perhaps it was this that made you beautiful to so many strangers
Yet made you ugly to him, and probably him alone

The important thing is not to let him know
how happy you were when you spoke to your mother
telling her that tonight, tonight would be the night

Tonight you would begin what would be forever
It would be tonight, and you knew it

You cannot tell him how happy you were
And then how sad
It isn’t his to know,
The effect he has on you
The reason he has on you

To make you live
Everyday
Make you get out of bed
to spend hours and hours and hours
at the gym, at the tanning salon, in your bathroom

How many bottles of perfume you wasted
trying to make him feel as attached to you
as you always were to him

One smell, that’s all it takes, they say
An animal instinct

So, perhaps, all along, he was really attracted to Coco Channel

The important thing is not to let him know
that you ate earlier, just before he came
so that you would look like a bird
as he took bite after bite, without realizing
that you had taken none

The important thing is not to let him know
that when he walked out that door and said “good-bye”
and you said “good-bye”
and he explained, “forever”

The important thing is not to let him know
That there was no more forever
After today

Copyright 2009 Amanda Martin (I don't think I actually have to put this, but just in case you are a poem-thief. Grrr)