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Best Poems Written by Christy Totten

Below are the all-time best Christy Totten poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Christy Totten Poem

Romanticized View of Everything, Written To No One

Strap on your guitar,
tell me when you heard the words
my face came to mind,
you don't like country music
but you like this song;
you think Tim McGraw wrote it
just for you to play for me--

"Just to see you smile I'd do anything"
your voice is monotone,
you're missing all the notes,
but when you look me in the eye
to say the things you're singing...

"When my world goes crazy
you're right there to save me"
we all want to be love's savior,
to give and to get equally with hands
that never fold and play the martyr,
that can always hold and take away pain--

I'm listening to Tim McGraw's words,
only hearing all the ones he left out--
stories of friendship, of care,
how it came before this love,
how he loved the girl too much 
to tell her, at least for awhile. 

Is that too romanticized, 
or is it hope that will get us there?
Am I playing the fool 
sitting here, writing love poems
to no one?

I ask these questions every night
though they always answer the same--
we've got to care before we can love
we've got to love before we can be loved

Details | Christy Totten Poem

Thinking About Tattoos

Lately, Everything makes me think of them,

kick-started by that episode LOST with Jack's Thai mistress
who has a knack for reading a person and branding them--
"he walks among us, but he is not one of us--"
on Jack's shoulder forever, a secret in another language.
and I wonder, does he lie about its meaning?
The only thing worse than lying about a tattoo,
is lying about a tattoo painted by someone
who sees right into you. 

Then I wonder, if John or Simon Peter lived now
in this feel good age of defilement
would they have JOHN 3:16 across their bicep?
Is it okay to mess with a temple if it's words of love,
or words that mean love?

I saw a woman with "Jordan" inking the small of her back,
four summers ago now, and I still think of it
and how my first thought was-
"that'll suck if they break up and she has to explain
to her next boyfriend why she has some other guys 
name across her back..."
followed by wonderment of the kind of faith she must have,
only to be dismissed: "probably a drunken decision,"
And I still think that. 

Why is it so hard for me to believe that woman 
loved Jordan, had enough faith and trust 
to brand his name on her body?

Scars are the tattoos we don't choose,
and I have enough of them, thank you. 
The skin stretching over my shins, knees, and elbows
could read a chronological account of all the sports I've played, 
and all the stupid decisions I've made, 
like that dare to careen down a 50 yard, steep dirt mound
and skid out at the bottom, where, 
45 minutes and 2 bottles of peroxide later, 
I was "victorious."

Different shapes, sizes, and colors- purple, pink, flesh, even white,
like a freakin human Easter egg. 

Tattoos thrill and inspire me--
I live to love something enough to ink it on my body forever, 
but for now, I'll settle with knowing i've lived enough
to garner at least a dozen scars.

Details | Christy Totten Poem

What Happens Now?

It was
the most loaded question 
I ever heard from
a skeleton with skin 
and bones, 
mascara, 
blush, 
eye shadow,
and lipstick.
The question spills out
dribbles through Nana's lips, 
down her chin,

slowly 

hanging 

there

waiting 

for Mom's answer

My mind wanders back
to summer beach days
in Cape Cod, MA
when I found money 
in the sand
and bought Nana ice cream
from the treat truck.
She loved me
but later when I cut my foot 
on glass in the ocean,
Nana told Mom I should 
have worn sand socks.

Now she says
“dont remember me
like this”

Three generations gather 
round the hospital bed, 
Nana heaving 
dry sobs from the brittle bones 
osteoporosis fashioned-
skin stretches over,
blood vessels surface
her shins like crop circles 

Heaving dry sobs 
her daughter holds her,
words 
would just 
fall 
flat
like the spit on her chin.


Sand caked to the blood of my foot. 
Nana carried me then 
like I want to carry her now
away
from the vascular monster, 
the cellulitis,
the commode by her bed.
I want to fill my bike pump
with my own blood,
pump it through her veins
till my body sweats 
its weight in emotion I refuse.

I'd pump her blood
every
where

but then my phone beeps:
one new text
My life goes on 
through phone wires
her life drips
throw bag and tube.

Details | Christy Totten Poem

Hindsight

Dad and Scott carry the refrigerator into his dorm room
where mom makes the bed, smoothing the sheets 
and folding hospital corners with motherly precision.
Corey and I sit on the bean bag chair contemplating 
potential line width and dimensions 
of releasing boredom and staying out of the way. 

Dad has tears in his eyes and Corey whispers-
"that refrigerator must be heavy." 

I watch as Scott hugs mom, then dad;
I listen as he tells Corey to practice his soccer skills,
"maybe then you'll beat me next time we play."
Corey heard "maybe then you'll beat me"
while the words that stick with me are 
"next time we play." 

Scott held me long and tight 
like he wanted to tuck this moment away,
or maybe he wanted me to tuck it away.
To a fourteen year old with a high school career 
of invincibility to be felt, four years is infinity.

A boy whoops and pumps his fist from down the hall
as we look and see him waving out a window 
to his parents driving away.
Scott lets me go and gives a sheepish shrug of apology
for his hall mate because we both know,
he feels the same way.

I hold Corey's hand as we walk to the car
because that is what I need to be these next four years.
In the passenger seat my mom holds a box of tissues,
and in the rear-view mirror I can see dad's red eyes.
I put my arm around the back of Corey's seat
and whisper in his ear. 

And now it's me.
I'm gone but I'm not whooping
like the boy on Scott's hall when his parents rolled out,
what noise did he make after a day on his own,
after a week, a month, a year?
I'm on my third year and I'd still take a ride
in my parent's Volkswagon anytime I could,
just to walk through my house barefoot

When Corey looks at me I hope he knows I still think
about that day we became Scott's pen pal
and each others siblings. 
It wasn't about Scott leaving home,
but holding onto the four years that me and Corey 
still had...
so what is it now?

Details | Christy Totten Poem

The Human Condition

Last night I wrote a poem- made it angry at the world and called him male. 
I gave his body clothes three sizes too big, his soul a personality 
that begged me to stay awake and contemplate its meaning.

I spelled the word “death” and he put up the hood of his sweatshirt
to cover his head,  he looked at the ground so I couldn't see his face. 

I scratched and tried all night to pull it off,
but the draw string held tight. 

I pulled harder. 

I didn't give up until I saw his face. 
Turns out death has the face of a lonely man with empty sockets 
for eyes, big as two raw hearts that pump the blood from inside 
long after they are ripped from the chest where
they used to live. 

Sometimes we want something we never should,
but we don't know until we get it. 

I'm afraid of things that should not frighten,
yet fearless in the face of all that should petrify. 
Nothing is as it should be- that's the human condition.

I'm not so self-righteous to think I'm the only one 
with these fears that make shadow puppets on my walls 
at night from the light of the moon.
Sometimes they play on my face and the shadows wake me up, 
but I whisper soothing things to myself
and fall back to sleep, 
lest the shadows find out why I'm so scared. 

Nothing is as it should be- that's the human condition.

Details | Christy Totten Poem

Everything I Thought Was Made of Gold...

At 21 I should be filled up with more than just questions
that go unasked and unanswered, I always hated thinking 
of the things I'll never know because I never tried. 
I'm rising up in some things, filling up the wine glass in my sleeve
with something expensive that overflowed the rim gallons back. 
I'm just watching it go to waste, pooling around my toes
underneath the nails and riding up my ankles.
I'd drop to my hands and knees and lap it with my tongue
but my feet are dirty and I don't like alcohol. 

"Here it is, just where you said it would be."
The road is where we find ourselves every morning,
every night, and all the time between. We spend
our time turning pages of books with barcodes
we'll leave behind in Bertrand, maybe keeping a few
of its meanings in mind. But that is hard because
our minds are ever elsewhere, the same elsewhere
though we tell ourselves it's different. 

We're down the road under some lights that never burnout,
always shining bright atop the grass that never freezes when it snows,
a soft place to hold our dreams so that when they fall hard,
if they fall hard, at least they won't break.

Details | Christy Totten Poem

Dear Poetry

Poetry,
you hold my fears
you hold my hopes

on your shins
in your groin
around your neck--
all the places I've been told to hit
a stranger, if it ever came to that. 

I write on this paper
tracing over letters and words
until there is so much ink
it could never dry.
I could hang this paper on a clothesline,
press my hand against it
tomorrow or in two months--
the ink will always leave its mark
like a henna tattoo on the back of my hand.
I'm spelling out my hopes,
shielding them with my fears,
containing them on the page
but they are getting everywhere.

How could I ever have thought
poetry could hold the excess fear
and hope, hope and fear,
spilling out of me?

No space can contain all of this,
not even these letters and words
inking this page.

Details | Christy Totten Poem

When Two Elephants Fight

Human nature- where are you? Hiding in the lines of
the loggers faces as they cut the trees to make this paper?
In the bloated tummies of starving children in Sudan?
In the cracks of the sidewalk where the homeless take cover?
In the bottom of every bottle of liquor?
The eyes of every neglected, beaten animal?
Between the lines on this here page, with these words I write
for rich children with stuffy parents?
Human nature- remember when compassion led you around
and nobody could shut you out because
hearts were bigger then, before pills and drugs and
sex and money and pride made our muscles bigger,
but our hearts smaller. 

I carry my little glowstick and sign saying "Be Aware"
because I can't change my blessings,
and empowerment is my agent. 
I say anything that brings about change is good
unless it is camou and 12-year olds with AK-47's,
avenging the loss of their parents. 

African proverb: when 2 elephants fight, it's the grass
that gets hurt... children are stepped on everyday
as their adults make decisions for them with consequences
that put guns in those tiny hands that used to spend their days 
picking flowers and berries and playing catch.
Wide-eyed, hands to their sides, backs to the ground,
these kids lay motionless praying not to be crushed
by the massive elephant legs walking all around,
so tall they can't even see their eyes. 

It's always the grass the gets hurt.

Details | Christy Totten Poem

Stay

I was 6 or 7 when I sang in church
about the joy, joy, joy, joy, in my heart, yeah,
down in my heart to stay. 
Fourteen years later everything is trans
and I'm wondering if anything is in my heart to stay,
most of all joy...
And yet today, I hummed the tune of that song
I haven't sung since Bible School.
I used to take 'stay' for granted,
even now, I pass that word around
when really, it means everything.

           I once told him about the independence I need,
           his mouth said no, his head shook back and forth
           his brown eyes said stay-
           I was telling not asking.
           His eyes always pulled me in
           but even they couldn't make me stay...

I thought i knew everything about words
until I realized I'm running away from everything,
thinking someday, I'll arrive at the doorstep
of someone who will stay forever.
But what if this is me?
What if I never look at anyone with sad eyes
that beg, beg them to stay.
What if my heart never breaks again
because the joy is so far down 
even a magician couldn't pull it from his hat. 

          Physical touch stays
          which is why I often shy away
          like the animals I once saw at a petting zoo
          with a fence and a sign that said "Don't Touch"-
         (But it's a petting zoo????????)
         God put us here to touch one another
          but I've always been into metaphors,
          it's safer that way- 
          standing outside the fire, Garth Brooks calls it. 
          Fire burns if you get too close,
          and touches can brand if you let them.
          I don't want a tattoo unless it's a winged foot
          above my ankle,
          I'll use it to fly away.

Details | Christy Totten Poem

Here Is Now

I want to grab onto every moment as it passes
I don't want to replace the old with the new
I don't want anything to change
                                                        but I'm satisfied with nothing
I don't want to live far from my family
                                                       but I'm moving out west after
graduation
I don't want to grow up
                                                       but I can't wait for my own family
to love
I don't want to replace the old with the new
                                                       but the only thing that lasts is change
I'm grabbing onto every moment as it passes
storing it in my bones and in my notebooks
                                                       they are the same thing.
My spine is the spiral from a 3-subject college bound,
my vertebrates the lines between everything
that I'm filling up, 5-pages a day. 

I want to grab onto every moment as it passes
write it down and use it to keep myself standing
when I'm old and falling as I answer the phone,
like my Nana. 

I don't know where I'm going
                                                     but I know exactly what I want.