this month I was featured in st. ignatius college prep's school magazine. see the full article here: https://www.ignatius.org/pdf-content/publication/Ignatius%20Magazine/Ignatius%20Magazine%20-%202014%20Winter.pdf (page 16)
2.23.2014
restless
below is the first spoken word piece i've ever written which i performed at louder than a bomb on saturday february 22, 2014.
restless
by colleen allen
restless
by colleen allen
I am
restless energy,
one who feels she doesn't inhabit her own body, her own ethnicity.
a catalyst for all things creativity.
I may be a minimalist but I’ll never be simplicity.
I floated along until you came to vibe with me.
you are
a kaleidoscope,a zoetrope,
a vessel of intensities.
a one way ticket into a world
of accidents invitations and curiosity.
consuming us both,
cause as consumers the view is the only thing left that's free.
trading sustainability for so called liberty,
we swallow it whole with wide eyes and shallow breath.
let it sit in our stomachs
rotting away from all of the caffeine.
but soon for you, like most it was all too much
and your mind faded from rhyme scheme to prose like,
our two minds together we’re too complex.
we set out to find the perfect shade of indigo
because you said it didn’t exist in nature.
and when we did,
that scared you.
or how I was going to make eggs for breakfast
but i smashed their fragile shells with bare hands
and sat on the kitchen table sketching them for hours
with yokes so beautiful i wanted to mount them on the east kitchen wall
to glow with the morning sunrise
but I couldn’t do that because like everything they’ll rot.
and for weeks
the smell will linger.
lingering like the deconstruction you couldn’t take
because with your kaleidoscope mind my infatuation with decay
multiplied and festered in your own insecurity.
you began to pull us apart in order to save me.
you occupy a state of present
with crisp sleeves rolled
past the scar on you left wrist.
i need you.
physically lost in translation,
transition.
the blood sloshes around my skull.
tucking thin strands of hair
behind my ear
with numb fingers.
spewing words with singed tongues
into the thick evening air.
protesting our cataclysmic extinction.
but your feet push through
my heavy streets.
because this ticket is one way
the one i thought led to we.
the train, it broke down,
i forgot where i belong
but suddenly i realized,
you were driving all along.
you shove me,
plead me,
out of my chemistry.
nurturing out of nature,
you bring myself back to me.
louder than a bomb 2014
yesterday i competed in a poetry slam for the first time. it was such an honor to participate in louder than a bomb; the biggest youth poetry competition in the world. i performed both an individual piece entitled "restless" (see 10:30) and in my school team piece entitled "is this the world we live in?" (see 19:33).
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