Compulsions of an Adolescent Maybe-Semi-Poet
On the topic of
words that seem to
slip through my fingertips:
I have always been well-endowed as a
wordsmith of sorts, these frantic keyboard strokes
mimicking my ADHD-addled mind, the
off-time beating of a chest wound too tight,
my fingers that tap tap tap the rhythms of one-hundred-thousand
stupid ideas
as they search frantically, compulsively for
syllables that I know, consciously, are
simply no-good;
consonants stuttered
by a hopeless teenage romantic.
(Hey,
that’s me.)
I do not know much about
myself, except for in the ways that I fail to articulate my thoughts.
I am seventeen, and I am in
The Greatest Years of my Life
except without the soundtrack and with
far less crying.
I have always been too talkative, too talkative, too talkative
(have I said it enough times yet?)
and with the sneaking suspicion that maybe nobody
actually wants to listen, a cosmic fact of adolescence
that I am trying hard to avoid taking
personally.
But I think in consonants and
syllables, and the most neurotic part of
adolescence is the sneaking suspicion
that if I do not speak now, maybe
I will never actually be heard.
Poetry with crisp lines and
easy rhymes:
I have always possessed the rhythm of pattern and
the nuance of execution.
But as I have grown up, and my mind has become filled
with the whirring and buzzing and
incessant tap tap tap of adolescence, I have found
that a mind as ADHD as my own cannot handle predictability
and that my syllables are no good, no good.
On the topic of
why I cannot seem to
articulate myself, ever:
I have never known either concision or brevity
(who are they?)
and I care too much, too much, too much about
the lines on people’s hands and the
spinach stuck in between their teeth
and other
finer
details that are so often and so tragically overlooked.
What am I but an ADHD-addled
seventeen-year old girl?
Small hands, bright eyes, green fingernail polish
that flakes when my fingers tap tap tap the next word
next syllable, next consonant,
the usual
neuroticies
of a poet who is seeking two unknown figures named
concision and brevity, and who is trying only to make sense of an
unfair adolescent world
with consonant that she knows
consciously
are no good, no good at all.
(Hey,
that’s me.)