POEM - lights off

POEM - spilt milk

POEM - love walks out the door

       and i let it. 
i'm tired of chasing down porches in hope the light shines 
just right 
over the grass and i might
be where i belong. 
love lets you think it's 
all or nothing but 
i, 
small child, 
small girl, 
still fall into 
wrapped arms and find 
crystals in with my 
filters. 
that's how you learn 
to let go because 
love never boils 
if watched, it 
doesn't like 
expectation and 
i go out with no 
money in my pockets and 
i expect 
nothing 
so 
everything 
finds me
instead. 
i hope this 
is how it ends. 

- Charlotte E.E. Griffiths
@C.G.POETRY 

POEM - love poem of the twenty-one year old amateur

i write some pretty shitty but sometimes okay 
poems about love. 
i first knew i wanted to be a writer when i
read a love story at age ten and the popular 
girl asked how it 
ended. 
i guess you could say i'm good at talking about things 
i don't actually have an understanding 
of. 
bullshit is the easiest language for most people. 
i don't know much about love but i 
do know i have been broken repeatedly since 
twelve and those pieces have always 
healed 
just
enough for me to jump 
back 
into it all. 
people are crazy for it. 
once you've written all the 
poems and finally met the 
handsome writer 
(and left him)
there's still 
just 
this
silence
waiting to be 
broken. 
there's always silence somewhere 
or sound
somewhere else. 
you can't be in two places at once but 
maybe i can be in 
every room if i'm just made of 
enough compassion. i 
guess that's the real love 
we're all looking for and i 
guess i wrote love 
better than i ever received 
it. 
that's okay, it's probably another 
lie but we can't blame the 
demons that tell us about 
the perfect poem and
how it won't make us 
hurt anymore

because

doesn't all 
art hurt in the 
end?

i say goodbye to hope 
but hope still finds my 
shadow and 
paints it poison for 
just 
a moment
longer. 
we are all 
slaves 
to something. 

- Charlotte E.E. Griffiths 
@C.G.POETRY

POEM - punchline

and it's kind of funny 
the way i'm back at some television, blue light
screen of diversion from devotion in high 
definition and i'm 
switching through all 
of the channels 
he worked on. 
this love moves similar
to the snakes i've known; slow
and warm and deliberate 
over itself until it has made
no sense
of insignificance; delayed gratification
to perfect satisfaction of 
absolute nothing - the true 
dance of life. i 
guess what i'm trying to say 
is that irony is almost always 
a good laugh and happenstance is 
a close second to that. i fell in love 
with over twenty separate names and my 
story is known in every bar and 
concrete floor (stained bloody)
and i hoped i'd find the one in 
primary school. this 
new look of brutal advice given to bemused boy 
barely aware enough to see my 
eyes fall on his lips and cheeks and 
nose, in the same way i did for a 
boy who now makes ads and 
sells his soul in other ways, 
is the best 
look i have had and 
though i laugh for 
days 
until i am wet with 
tears and wild with 
hysteria
and i cry 
some days at the 
bitterness of it all 
i still 
come home and i 
kiss every inch 
of myself for 
getting 
the joke. 
is there any greater punchline
than our own?
- Charlotte Griffiths 
@C.G.POETRY

POEM - piece of the pie

Charlotte Griffiths - piece of the pie

everyone's still arguing their 
opinion and making 
plan to attack and 
i'm just smoking a cigarette
with the local 
drunk 
on a coffee break i've
overstayed and 
i'm speaking my 
honest truth. 
there's not a lot 
to people, really,
just a desire to be 
heard, 
respected and 
i get that; 
i respect and 
i hear and 
people listen 
if you do the same 
for them 
(most of the time)
and those some 
times are 
worth it. 
people have a lot 
more to show than they 
pretend. they don't really 
need as much as 
they want. 
i want people 
to stop freaking out about 
each other. 
i need people to love 
each other and 
we need people to love 
each other. 
we all agree on that, 
don't we?
down at the 
core
we need something 
real and 
we're all chasing 
it, aren't 
we? we all 
want a piece 
of that pie
for sure
(i'll take mine
with a cup of 
coffee and a fresh
rolled drag, 
thank 
you). 
-Charlotte Griffiths

POEM - don't ask me (please)

Charlotte Griffiths - don't ask me (please)

i forget about you most days in big 
age of adult. things get easier 
like that. 
you don't bother me and 
a part of you knows i'm 
in another world 
entirely 
now and 
i don't think 
about missing 
you anymore
(that's how it goes 
isn't it? that's how 
the cookie 
crumbles 
apparently)
and this world 
goes 
on
(we all go
on).
i stop drinking and you take 
up my drug of choice on weekends 
because weekends seemed 
appropriate to you 
and i am 
no longer the same 
girl you 
knew at
all 
(i made sure of 
it) and eventually 
i cut all my hair off 
in the bathroom 
mirror because 
curls were 
never fucking 
cheap and you 
think about proposing 
to your new life. 
sometimes 
people ask about you 
and i tell them 
that all the boys i 
loved sold 
out
somehow, 
i'm not too 
bothered with 
it. 
i still drink 
sometimes 
very rarely 
when 
there is no one else 
to run to and 
the cat isn't 
looking at me. 
sometimes it 
sits on my lap and i 
doze off but sometimes, 
when it's so late i 
can barely see the stairs 
or the letters i 
think about 
the boy i 
loved then, 
back before 
i knew what 
love was 
and i read the 
chapbook and 
i weep 
for what a fickle 
game love
is
(sometimes). 
- Charlotte Griffiths 

POEM - (i tried)

Charlotte Griffiths - (i tried)

i tried to forget. 
i tried everything
the coke, the coffee 
the cones 
the fifth or eighth 
drink, 
i still hear your name 
every time i walk into a 
new room; 
i still 
think of you 
every day. 
i watch life spin past 
i dispose of old goals 
old dreams for 
new one; 
girl, alone, runs about in 
your mystery cards
trying to 
snub it out 
and 
succeeds. 
i watch her suck and 
swallow and she holds me 
up, holds onto any 
chance of 
survival and 
i drive home, every single time, 
wondering where in this city 
you possibly are right now and 
why it is we playing this 
game so 
long. 
i never win at it, 
not once. 
- Charlotte Griffiths

POEM - consistently cruel

Charlotte Griffiths - consistently cruel 

there's not a lot to find when you 
stop looking. i think you 
wanted me to convince you i 
saw only reason to stay 
but i didn't
(still nothing but
you in my eyes)
and i have to drive past the 
reservoir most neon nights and 
i can't 
keep being that 
girl, the one wrapped into 
steel barriers, watching for
death. i still 
have to go on somehow. 
i wonder if you think of my 
cigarette warms in autumn, how they 
lit up red cheeks and wide
eyes, how they filled you 
with hope 
but 
i watch you get better 
without me and there's nothing
needed from 
small boxes, small 
package; 
you don't call, you 
don't check up after 
it all goes 
south, you 
don't need anything 
from me 
now. 
that's how it is. 
that's how it always 
ends
(i'm always a 
sucker for some 
consistency).
- Charlotte Griffiths

POEM - white noise

Charlotte Griffiths - white noise 

the gland in my own arm swells
until it is almost the size of a golf ball, the 
rain falls and autumn kicks slowly 
into cognition, only 
just, 
and all the while 
i watch the calls come through 
unanswered. 
sometimes the editors leave messages, 
sometimes it's just one of the boys checking 
up but most 
of the time it's just 
white noise 
called to complain about the 
missing buzz or 
pointless space now 
re-purposed, 
called 
out
until the answering machine
picks up and holds the 
distant drone of 
life never started nor 
ended 
on the line 
in the room, echoed, 
in my mind; 
insanity settles 
so well 
under dim stars
and dark 
shadow, 
fallen - 
how i will always 
fall for 
honesty, 
unabridged
(won't
you join me 
in this?)
-Charlotte Griffiths

POEM - we all try to stop it

Charlotte Griffiths - we all try to stop it 

we all try to stop it 
but it still leaks and 
drips and pools 
something rotten 
and festers in the evenings 
and sticks to your shoe and 
dies in your gut. 
this is where i leave you, i 
think, 
sometimes, 
when there is no world 
out there; this 
is where i 
leave you. 
- Charlotte Griffiths

POEM - useless intentions

Charlotte Griffiths - useless intentions

i don't see much for myself. 
the crows lurk, always, and i am almost 
complacent among them, now, 
i am almost one 
of them. 
there is no world outside of you. 
i know, i've looked everywhere. 
there is only disappointment, there is only 
the moment of looking into the eyes of 
someone i couldn't love, the second 
of wanting to take the wrong turn 
i can't 
take all because it 
could be you. 
i'm only alive because of the fucking 
inkling of hope i keep on dragging 
out of myself; i wonder
sometimes 
where else i could 
be. 
- Charlotte Griffiths

POEM - (they don't)

Charlotte Griffiths - (they don't)

the streets burn. 
everything burns 
but still the words won't come. i have 
lost every sense of significance to the fires
that took all the homes i 
loved, and now there is always ash; ash or ember. 
i am asked, daily, to put that damn lighter out, to 
extinguish that flame and
i keep listening, keep thinking
if i give just enough they'll keep
me, just a little longer
(they don't).
- Charlotte Griffiths

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POEM - the drab

Charlotte Griffiths - the drab

POEM - chewed head

Charlotte Griffiths - chewed head

ripped hole in black
jeans, button dangling 
from loose thread 
on jacket, pocket 
sewn shut; 
these are the pieces
of my soul, my 
soft spot for 
damaged goods 
on display, a 
decorated disaster
of dependability, 
devastated development 
of 
honest person
on concrete floor, 
naked, rain 
pelting down 
and reminding, 
reminiscing what 
it is to
feel 
and to feel 
so much. 
- Charlotte Griffiths

POEM - top of everything

Charlotte Griffiths - top of everything 

I claim the highest mountain in the state
and make bruises of my knees through the 
dark. I follow the stars above, the 
constellations of every moment I have 
ever existed in, and make it 
to the top by sunrise, where I stop to 
look around at everything 
that 
is 
and I smile 
because, like 
everything in this 
moment and 
everything
ever;
I 
am 
and I always 
will 
be. 
- Charlotte Griffiths 

POEM - window shopping

Charlotte Griffiths - window shopping

I have closed my 
  eyes to similar
  sights and I walk 
  among smoked streets
  I do not know in 
  what I hope is 
  the direction 
  of blue rivers running 
  wild with 
  will and 
  sunsets collided into 
  portraits on 
  canvas once
  clear. 
- Charlotte Griffiths

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