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

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.