Katelynn's blog: "MY POEMS!!! PLZ COMMENT!!! I CARE MUCH MORE ABOUT THE COMMENTS THAN THE RATINGS -- I GENUINELY CARE ABOUT YR OPINION!!!"

Wonderland Eyes dancing, prancing, catching sunlight like jewels – so very alive. Life is his candy store, tasting and touching everything, like Alice, when she went to Wonderland, meeting the freaks and the pixies, being everything, everywhere, until Wonderland is no longer the perpetual Christmas, and, like Alice, he’s falling through a seemingly endless black hole somewhere between heaven and hell, life and death, where darkness is the only thing known. Will he hit the bottom, touch the ground, go through the looking glass, or fall forever ‘till he’s so lost he cannot remember his world, his life. Sometimes the dancing eyes, like crystal balls, seem to say everything and mean nothing, seem to reveal the pain, while chronicling the apathy. His laugh floats across the air, soaring above my heart, sometimes deep and hearty, sometimes manic and cackling. And I watch him, his grubby nicotine-stained fingers clutching my heart, his sad twisted mind unreachable, untouchable, unlovable. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

Counting the Moments Until You Return Like a ghost, you float across my reality, so close, yet I cannot touch you. In and out of my conscious realm you dance, as if you wanted to torture me, being so near I can feel your warm smoky breath on the back of my neck, but when I turn to place my hand upon your cheek, you’ve disappeared, gone into the darkness, the night – I’m so afraid you’ll never be back. You leave me to count the moments until you return and just when I’ve decided that I’ve lost, you were a dream and only now I’m awake you grace me with your presence, your small frame filling up my heart, making me fantasize that the next time I see you you’ll decide it is better to be alive than live as you do – running and hiding, hating and hurting, acting as only a blur in the lives of those who love you, ceasing to resist. Each time you come to me, it’s like the first time all over again and I dream you’ll be mine. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

Rage A white-hot coil moves through my body, the spring tightens. Like a tiger, I’m ready to pounce, to destroy my prey, ripping it to shreds and flinging each piece as far as possible, with force overwhelming. A black ball of tar boils in my stomach. I see red and want to destroy everything in my path. I’m an untamed animal backed into a corner, feral and fierce. I fight and bite, claw and scratch, swing my fists wildly, without control or precision. A torrent of white-hot emotion feverishly blinds me. I throw my phone, empty beer bottles, anything within reach. I can’t breathe and I cry and I cry and I cry. I hurl insults and tell the people I love that I hate them. Irrational, I wreck moments, completely out of control. I am a time-bomb daring to explode, (tick-tock, tick-tock), a flame bursting, consuming. I touch everything in my path with destruction. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

Anger I pointedly ignore you, grinding my teeth and cracking my knuckles. My shallow breath comes ragged. Salty traitors stain my face with smeared mascara. Maybe I hang up on you. Maybe I scream. I beat up my punching bag, forcefully, controlled. I smoke and smoke and smoke. Maybe I use “I” statements. Maybe I’m able to tell you how I really feel, set boundaries, limits, get my point across. Maybe you even see my point of view. I workout, dance my cute little ass off, listening to loud angry punk. I release energy with every motion, every movement. I write and write and write. Sometimes I’m even able to write a couple poems. Some are decent, some even good. I call friends, vent, dissect, analyze. Eventually I feel a bit freer and my voice is heard. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

My Life, Today The warmth of a touch, a kiss, a look, the feeling of you inside me, the sun’s caress, the physical jolt of music. Overwhelming beauty: words, lyrics, sentences, irony. The day opening and closing. Everything I know new, intriguing, clean, even when it’s exactly the same as it always is. We listen to The Velvet Underground – Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico, others whose names I can’t remember. I’m always thrilled by sight sound touch, your searching hands on my smooth skin, but no longer is everything weighted by desperate panic, melancholy, nostalgia, moments long since past – things I can no longer have or change. But right here, right now, it is enough, almost way too much at times, and I am in love with it. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

No Fear Sitting inside my mind exploring the grotesque treasures I find I'm gonna take the creatures to the ball so we can get drunk and watch ourselves fall I wanna split this silly town pedal to the metal, wearing my tinfoil crown taking my rag-tag circus on the road showing off the rats and these toads everything seems so old I never see anything bold I'm waiting for the disgusting and insane I'm waiting for someone to complain please, show me something besides this mess where you never have to guess because you always know what happens next so I'm off to find more maggots and worms all the things that make you squirm I wanna see myself burn alive combust because I'm finally surprised me and my rats are outta here and there's no fear, no fear . . . copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

What I Am I will never be an ice queen. I encourage chaos. I live for right here, right now, and something more than. I want to bathe in fire and skinny dip in the ocean in the middle of the night under a full moon, skin pale and gleaming under the harsh white rays. I want to be everything, everywhere, tasting and touching all, always burning with desire, always burning with desire, always being stimulated. I like to jump up and down on hardwood floors in my big black clodhopper platforms, Beastie Boys screaming “No Sleep ‘Till …” until the cops come. I am in love with discovery and awakening. I live to be: raw, fierce, hare, fast, pounding, nasty, sick, twisted; breathing fire and swallowing swords, looking for pure visceral experience – pleasure, pain, art, history, drama, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, good beer, good bars, good food, party people in da house, laughing, loving, fucking, talking, shocking, trashing shit, going forever wild crazy free. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews 2006

Blue-Eyed Boy We all know the story – you know, the needle and the damage done. It’s not worth writing about. But you, you are so much more than an old rock song. When I see the single drop of your blood in the syringe, right before you plunge into something I will never understand; when I see your eyes half into the nod and I know you won’t be coming out tonight; that’s more than some cautionary tale. You, you were my first blue-eyed boy. You were always there, with your ever-present shoulder and hand – there for the cops and the car wrecks, the casts, the surgeries, my nineteen nervous breakdowns. You were my rock, and now I don’t know how to be yours. I still trust you with my life but not with twenty dollars. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

The Lioness in Winter I. I have been The Lioness, licking my paws and letting my roar escape into the still night air, breaking the silence out of rage or exasperation or sheer exultation, sometimes for the simple joy of letting the roar out, cutting through the night air, under the black sky and the fifty million stars. II. I have been Fire. My flame dancing around you, flickering, flaring up. My heat has burnt you. I have kept you all at bay. I know the threat of consumption or engulfment has kept you at arms’ lengths. I have, at times, touched everything in my path with destruction. III. I have held my misery in my arms, as I would hold my child. I have kept it at my breast, nurturing and feeding it, almost, at times, eager for it to grow. At times, I have passed the child to you, said, “Do you see now? Isn’t she heavy? How would you like to lug her around day in and out?” But this is only a game I like to play: a trick, a trap, a manipulation. IV. I stumble into each day, stumble through each day, always trying to make sense of this thing, this crazy mess; always aching for an answer, hands ever grasping for something more than. V. Even when I make my mistakes, the same mistakes again and again and again; even when I wreak havoc and create chaos, when I am the creator of my own catastrophes, when I am to be the instrument of my own destruction, when I rush towards ruin, I am still in love with “the sun, the dream, the excitable gift;” with the green grasses and the sunny days; with learning and progress and growth and change, and with moving forward, moving on. I am still in love with the sound of your laughter when I do something so me. And I am in love with the sensation of the rock salt melting on tongue on tequila night. I am in love with the sound of my own voice and the world of words and all the hands that hold me up, but most of all, I am in love with The Lioness, even in winter. copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews

Music, Circa 1991 this was when, even though we understood that it was no longer new, (but not understanding that youth’s dumb green fields require at least minimal establishment for recognition, we thought ourselves so hip and underground), it was new to us and we stood gazing at it, starry-eyed and oh-so-green, reverent, because we still believed in reverence, and in the healing power of the words, of the music. and we still believed in Bobby Dylan, had not yet seen him stumbling, drunk, muttering incoherently into the mike on a corporate-sponsored stage. and we still believed in Kurt, oh yes, how in love we were with our golden god, and we did not, could not, see, we did not yet know that he couldn’t cut it. and we didn’t understand Paul when he said “sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears,” copyright 2006 Katherine Andrews