The Cream-Colored Cat

A new piece with not much explanation. The photo is of my cat Buu (who lives with my parents). She's not the cat in question.

The Cream-Colored Cat

The cream-colored cat resides with me

Like the asterisk at the end of the sentence that defines me

Appearing from the shadowed corner of an empty room

Staring at me with lily eyes

I ask her the questions I’m too scared to ask myself

When will my soul return?

Will I sleep tonight with this hole in my chest?

She abides my derangement

Silently nagging me with her piceous cry

Telling me I am weak

Worthy of nothing more than the subtle mockery

Only she can convey

She ties the cord around my neck while I sleep

So that the screams from my nightmares don’t disturb

Her midnight prowls

And if, when I awake, I’m still alone

I know I’ll see her there

Defying my existence

—Adrienne McKay 2010

Untitled

Just posting so this blog doesn't die. I haven't been able to write much lately. There's too much going on (in my head) to really focus my words. I'm in more of a visual art mood these days. Here's an untitled fragment I wrote while staying at my parents' house. It's another one of those wannabe-song poems, so it rhymes. I feel awkward writing in rhyme. I'm more likely to say something that rhymes than to write it. But it's all I've written in the last two weeks.


Swallowing pieces of pain to forget
Making confessions I always regret
Seeing the sunlight and wishing for rain
Trying to lose you then find you again
Asking for freedom from being alone
Hoping to lose myself on my way home
I see in the mirror I'm no longer sane
All as I swallow, swallow the pain


—Adrienne McKay 2010

Update

Sorry for the lack of poetic non-poetry the last few days. I'm in a bit of a verbal rut, with too much on my mind to focus any of it into a creative form. So anyway, I'll just post a bit of news.

Tomorrow I'm taking a road trip with my best friend Victor down to our home town to visit out respective families. I'll be down there at least until the 20th (figured it would be nice to actually see my dad on Father's Day). I'll be running around quite a bit for the whole week, visiting some of my seldom-seen friends, spending the 16th with one of my other best friends, Eman, for his birthday, going to the dentist for the first time in over a year (oh shit help me), and finally getting my hair cut (I look like a palm tree).

In short, it's unlikely I'll be posting anything for the next week or so. But then again, I might be so homesick and missing my roommate/other best friend Crestal (I have four best friends, btw), that lightening may strike. Who knows.

Anyway, after I get back, I've got about a month before I have to move out of my apartment. Victor and I and another of his friends are getting an apartment together in Oakland. I'll be sad to leave San Francisco, but it's a step in completing my dream to live with all four of my best friends at some point in my life. And besides, Oakland is a much cheaper place to live than the city, and it's a veritable housing goldmine at the moment. We haven't picked a place yet, but that will be the easy part. The hard part will be timing everything right, so I'm not homeless between places. The homelessness itself doesn't bother me (I have places I could stay), but I do need a place for my stuff... sooooo...

Anyway, I've bored you enough.

Substance

Wrote this last night while marveling at my not-quite-addictions. Not my best work, so I would appreciate some technical critiques.

Substance

Trying to balance the turmoil

Only substance can save me

One to soothe the raucous fears

Another to extract me from sorrow

The only medication

For my tattered self

The calm, the thrill

Each is bitter, mask it with sweetness

Forget that it’s a sickness

My body’s protests are muffled by my weary brain

Forgetting to warn me that pain is bad

Do not touch the hot stove

Do not slide my finger down the cold edge

Do not examine the precipice

Everything is dangerous

In the end, what will it be

That gets me?

—Adrienne McKay 2010

Birth

Here's a fresh poem, something I wrote just a few minutes ago. I drew inspiration from a Star+Gate reading (it's a little like Tarot) I did at a friend's house last weekend. I found it rather insightful. In this poem I used the images in my "where you came from" section: the egg, the harp, and the star of reaching.

Birth

An egg lies beneath a barren sky

A silvery presence in the night

A pearl, and at its center a grain of life withheld

Like a seed beneath the soil

Unknowing, and unbeknownst

Sheltered from the cruel and mirthless world of night

Silence envelopes it, waiting to be broken

Suddenly, a single star breathes light into the sky

The silence and the shell are splintered

And the egg overflows with life

As the star emerges, so does the creature

The star takes the shape of a hand

And in the hand of the creature, a harp

Music quivers in the frozen air

And there, beneath the star of reaching

With my gift already in hand

I am born

—Adrienne McKay 2010

Sick

If none of my other poems have made you sad, this one might do it. There's a bit of a story that goes with this poem. One night, I was talking with one of my best friends about my worsening depression. I hadn't really been able to talk about it before, and I was so caught up in what I was feeling, I wound up saying something that hurt her. If I hadn't been so focused on my own pain I would have known better, but as it was I didn't even realize what I'd said until it was too late. That night, I hardly got any sleep, because I was crying too hard over what I'd done. The next day, no longer feeling sorry for myself, instead feeling sick of myself, I wrote this.

Sick

A wall of clouds approaches
Animals flee before the blackness it brings, yet I stand in a stupor
Overwhelmed by these sun-blotting behemoths, I see what they are
They’re the collection of my grief, making me ignorant of the sky
I’m shooting blindly in the fog
Crying like a lost child when my shot finds an unseen target
And like a lost child, I still believe myself the victim
I am sickened
Guilt and disgust are two fangs in the mouth of the serpent
Whose coils envelop me as I am devoured
And its venom steals what little strength I had
Yet my tears lend strength to the clouds
My voice shakes the distant hills
Shakes the breath from my body
Unearths the creatures we forget exist
They writhe at my feet, blinded eyes staring
My own stare back, and though I cannot see them
I am sickened
Their stench drives upward, intensifying the black walls surrounding me
Alienated, lost, suffering
Always at my own hand
Crying forgotten words to the heedless creatures and the unforgiving clouds
Tilting into madness, still shooting, still creating victims
Still unable to see them
I am sickened

—Adrienne McKay 2010

This Train

A sad and lonely love poem (most of my love poems are like that) I wrote in February of this year (nothing to do with Valentine's Day, I swear). I wrote it with a rhythm and repeating phrases, almost like it was a song, but the melody, or lack thereof, is completely up to the reader.

This Train

I’ve been ringing the bell on this train
The light rail of my heavy heart
The subway running where no one can see
But how could you not feel the rumbling when it goes by?
The whistle shouts “Get off the track”
Or you could just get on board
This train, it stops at every station
And sometimes it waits for you
But if you’re slow, you’ll miss it
It can’t wait forever
I’ve got to keep moving on
Stations come and go
This train stops at every one
Hoping you’ll be there
The lights stare through the tunnel
Perilously searching
For what the conductor can’t see
This train, it breaks out of the dark
And it would shine in the sun
But it’s been long neglected
It’s better off in darkness
I’ve got to keep moving on
There’s a place where the track ends
Turning back on itself
At the last stop the train is abandoned
Passengers flee to the rest of their lives
The end of the line is the scariest place I’ve ever been
What happens if the train never comes back?
This train, it may break down
And it has from time to time
But do you ever notice?
It won’t inconvenience you
I can’t keep going on

—Adrienne McKay 2010

Atlas

A short poem I wrote earlier this year in the midst of introverted contemplation. It's less of a poem and more of a confession.

Atlas

Sometimes I use the world around me
to distract myself from the world within me
And sometimes I use the world within me
to distract myself from the world around me
My life is spent keeping these distractions balanced
determining which world is the lesser threat to my sanity
and outfitting it for my comfort
This, in itself, is no small task
I like to consider myself a master
in the art of balancing worlds

—Adrienne McKay 2010

River

In honor of the birthday of my favorite actor ever (ever ever ever), Rene Auberjonois, here is a prose piece I wrote last year, inspired by and based on my two favorite characters from DS9, Odo (played by Rene) and Kira (played by Nana Visitor). It's a paradoxically vague yet detailed single-scene short story. I mainly wrote it as a way to practice descriptive imagery. But you can think of it as fanfic if you want.

River

In the dim light of their shared quarters, she drew towards him. His eyes were warm blue beacons, inviting like a clear midday sky beyond a window, when all she'd seen out her window in nearly seven years had been the startling, star-littered blackness of space.

Staring at her with those distant sky-colored eyes, he seemed to absorb what he saw; her naked form, soft, yet infinitely strong, her wide brown eyes, whose depths, wreathed in long lashes, were hidden from everyone... everyone but him.

Her body was inches away from his, and they could feel the sparks shoot between them, like powerful magnets of opposite poles that could never be separated once they were together. Slowly, as if with great care, he brought his hands up to her shoulders in a familiar way, cupping his wide palms around the domes and letting his fingers rest on the long, taught muscles suspended between her neck and the bones of her shoulders.

Her face turned up towards his, and the shadows danced across the delicate ridges on her nose. She noted the impossible brightness of his deep set eyes, surrounded by shadows, and the perfect angles of his nose and jaw.

She was about to lift her arms to embrace him, to finally press her body against his, but a movement from him made her pause. With a slowness that was nearly painful, he moved his face toward her, but instead of a familiar kiss on the mouth, his attention was on the narrow tendons and smooth skin of her neck. Realizing this, she lifted her proud chin to give him access, and closed her eyes, focusing on her sense of touch in anticipation.

The lingering milliseconds seemed like hours to her as she waited in darkness. Shivering slightly, she could feel her nerve endings reaching through her skin, blindly seeking the warmth of his lips. When she thought she could wait no longer, she felt it, and sensation exploded in her skin. With a sharp inhalation, she drew her head back even farther. He could feel the muscles tense and pull backward, but his hands stayed with her, gentle but strong.

His lips slid with the ease of liquid to the front of her neck, moving across the solid arch of her throat. She had been holding her breath, her eyes squeezed shut, but now she released it in a long, shuddering sigh, and suddenly they were together.

Her lips found the sloping junction of his neck and shoulder, and she moved across it with desperate hunger, using lips, teeth, tongue, seeking him, and knowing him for what he was: like a wide river, smooth and calm on the surface, but boiling with unimaginable strength and turbulence beneath.

—Adrienne McKay 2009