oubliettethe dark is more of a hand grenade
than a lightning rod,
and my eyes are halfway shut,
but i'm almost certain that was a flicker
of l'appel du vide
and maybe that's not such a bad thing,
the antithesis of nubivagence
is just a step away,
and introspection makes the corners
that much darker,
but that's not the problem,
sciamachy in a puddle of ink;
my, how the circles widen.
caught betweeni.caught between3 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
i am falling apart and the discolored threads that once
held my limp and carefully lifeless body so
unwillingly in place are coming loose at the seams, fleeing the
crime scene before all the omnipotent details
have been rudely stripped of their post and tossed aside
like yesterday's personality. spare me no pity, but don't
look away. it's not the first time this has happened,
nor will it ever be the last.
underpaid tears take their bitter time falling down, but only
if i force them to, along with these reluctant words
dripping from my dirty hands and empty eyes and broken
mouth like so many drops of blood and i can't take
it anymore because the paltry effort is just
not worth the outcome these days.
these feelings are not what they used to be. they used
to be smooth and slippery and the undercurrents were
fast and sweet and filled me without the sickness i've
gotten used to handling even though i know it can't be
healthy. now the sensations are rough and jagged and dry
nothing works.the moment my foot touches the ground,nothing works.3 years ago in Emotional More Like This
i look up. the clouds are flourescent.
birds circle, magnetically drawn
to the abyss of white.
my watch says zero.
my vision is clear.
it has just begun.
my wet eyes calculate the fathoms
left to go until there is
no return. until my breath
stills. fingers lost
it is not a pretty motion,
but an ugly entity,
the pulse of a ghost;
ornately jeweled carapiece
folded like origami roses over
my wiry hands spin the webs,
sticky with your
trapped in a hideous laugh.
you say you like my body. maybe not
where my bones are starting to
illuminate and itch under
their blacklights, but
you would find little words
at me, to add into
while i lost four friends, and part
you created a new one for me.
constructed out of a stable fluid,
it was not my nature.
nor was it yours. but it held like glue.
I became more ornament than person, glittering in
Name That BabyI'm gonna lay it on the tableName That Baby2 years ago in Urban & Spoken Word More Like This
Do the tell
Get the spelling right
Got called "depressed"
Took it up to "manic"
Bipolar in the head
And they said --
"Make it longer,
On taking pills,
To flatten my hills
Knock out the frills,
I got double-damned.
'Cause a this shit --
Father dies in a pool
Mother dies too,
In love with a fool
Mother let days pass,
No food or water
How did she last?
I closed her eyes,
They felt alive,
Like little butterflies.
Hector also dies,
Left alone by
The very unwise,
Young white cats
Die like that.
Spat out with
All the cancer-dead
She too went back.
And nothing stopped.
I saw them all
Saw them all day,
Blood and flood
Not from me
Not my feed
Just these -- "things."
Small cold voices
In my ear
None could hear.
Little people sat
And they stood
And they spun,
In colorful fun
They had their run,
Music in the FireBut there is music,Music in the Fire6 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
Lost in the fires and flames.
It gurgles and dances
With every flickering light.
And the music is soft,
But grander than the sun.
The words to which are lost
In the dance that is never
Learned nor taught to anyone.
Even the ashes dance
With a wordless joy,
And the wood gives light
For its silent harmonies.
Remember all the days long done
And all the time we've never had.
Remember the air, as it burns
With a heat now harsh, now soft.
And all the words spoken above
The flames. That's the dance,
And the music of our time.
That is the hour spent "wasting"
Away. And yet still more meaning
is left there than anywhere else.
Her KissGolden butterfly -Her Kiss4 years ago in Haiku & Eastern More Like This
lips of tender radiance
that flutter on mine!
WordsThese are my unstable wordsWords7 years ago in Traditional Fixed Forms More Like This
They continue to be rerepeated
They sound familiar but
ding echo is new
Will they understand the sincere meaning?
That these unstable words are for healing
Each with an unmarked story
With unwavering purity
Coming from the core
Seeping through every pore
These words will continue
Though only understood by few
hushdon't even let mehush2 years ago in Haiku & Eastern More Like This
open my mouth, or the words
will consume us both.
staticfor now, my blood is flutteringstatic2 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
and it's raining like lazy sex
on a sunday afternoon
the thunder sticks like glass and waves
because, my dear,
you are inertia's bastard son
i look like a hangman's hell
strung from noose to noose
and you taste like meridian warfare;
i don't know how you still your hands
or how perpetual immobility
feels trapped inside your spine
but i'll be damned
if i don't want to find out
The Same Storywe rewrite our lost historyThe Same Story2 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
on the same paper,
expecting new endings.
we truly are insane.
these lessons mean nothing
if not fully dead
the mistakes were worth nothing
if not burned in my head
you can't change the veins
stitched into your skin, you can't change
you- with a day, a word,
a breath of used air.
you want to dive back into that place
between my folds of sanity
where you can unravel the strands
and manipulate them in your hands
so I can't stop to think about
you can't change the blood
which surges through the cold,
forgotten parts of your body.
but you can tell yourself
if you shut your eyes,
you can pretend the scenes played in those weary lids
are the life you finally received.
because darkness hides the truth
but you can't rewrite your story
because you think you're different, now
(and different people don't make the same
you're falling down the same hole
with honey trap words
we can't rewrite history
or deny the similarities.
cartography (uncharted skin)sometimes the backs of your hands are mapscartography (uncharted skin)2 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
to reality and back, and sometimes
they are the juxtaposition of sandpaper
and sometimes they are the doors to
double-spaced nothings and the smell of
quantum entanglement in the morning
your arms--less than spiderwebs, more than
time-encrusted overhangs--are the unnamed
pillars, the unobserved event horizons waiting
for their chance to make the galaxies
your ribs are white-hot chalk lines
on a lesser-traveled road; untouched,
the smears of ink light like feathered knives
on hallowed ground to sharpen fire into clay
and they stretch from heart to spine,
a bridge; they are the link between the
liar and the lied-to and they can hold no more
than the careful weight of being
your neck goes on forever and i can't help
but stare at the curve, the gentle silence,
the one-step-away-from-smothered sort of
mooreeffoc--just short of ivory, desert glass
your mouth: forgotten wordplay, the
Your Name's My Best ObscenityThe sweetest curses are sugar on lipsYour Name's My Best Obscenity2 years ago in Traditional Fixed Forms More Like This
If I died this evening, you'd find your name
aflame- the words I last shouted in vain
lingering on my tongue like a toxic kiss-
revenge is addicting, venomous pain,
even spent on cries I know are mundane
No fixing up this unholiest tryst,
forged by two fools who believed in their lies;
or maybe it was I, eager for light
even in spite of the flaws I had seen
Can light be fake? Were your twinkling eyes
a mere disguise to make me ignite?
Aflame, in vain, impure light fuels my screams
You and I,we're a stunted little paragraph blowing in the wind,You and I,5 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
full of maybes and we could have beens.
We're winter nights dancing through the sky,
dreaming of warmth and summer, burntskin sunscreen.
We're fruits hanging from a tree,
ripe with promise and fearing bitter seeds.
We're dripping photographs in darkrooms waiting to become something beautiful.
You and I, we're not fancy like fireworks. Sparks
are the little lights that dance between us when we smile.
Sparks are private things and they shine more prettily
when no one else can see them except you and me.
So when I write poetry about us,
it won't be about mountains and kisses
and rosebushes vomiting bouquets.
Because this is what I want to tell the world:
the both of us, we're stones and branches and imperfect things.
And that's exactly why we fit.
winter footnoteswinter footnoteswinter footnotes5 years ago in Surrealism More Like This
your elbows were anchors
in a softly-lit parking lot,
where you sang to glass and paper:
and your visions are quiet hills
your visions are shy sounds
your visions are sheep covered in frost.
like an old shoe-
that dry rasp
that leaves me covered in skin flakes,
brushed onto the wall .
I am the raised bumps in spackle-
ripped off with the sound of a poor phonograph:
in my chain link home,
a residual ghost.
the fountainthe first words were notthe fountain1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
sun and moon and stars, but oh god I will wear this
power like a bearskin - like a drum machine in a chicken-bone
instinct is the sum
of all the parts we're too afraid to eat:
black wires, white bulbs, wicks from tallow
candles. if they
would let us, we could make wax
we could hunt the essence
of smoking fluorescent galaxies, all our
strange living lives and neon paradises, all our
blue planets and disemboweled sacrifices, if only we could
breathe while below us the round sky winds down
and holds bone to our throats, so we
are spilled, forced up
if sugar were
sweet, then could
windstorms and labworkafflatus, inflatus, my morning globe,windstorms and labwork2 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
as lithe as your impermanence.
and home! dread homes! are rabbit dugs,
spoonholed piles of mexican brick
where nothing ever touches down,
nothing here alive receives
the plains’ poor offering of gypsy light,
the ugly wind that meets the mudline.
1. a mottled fence
2. and how these storms hold faceless teeth
that slat their eyes through butter-wood
then purge their guts on wintered florets
4. some freshly headless nativities,
their polyethylene skirts upturned
from violent sacks
5. and knowing i’m a souless
i lick at what is manifest
beneath your hair
each poison tab
and religious studies
i know, i know you never mean
but do not say “live for yourself”.
i’ve come online to see the god
that came before me.
we are so poorly married
like bookend spines of Plath and Hughes
up on the shelf
FisherwomanI've been dreaming ofFisherwoman1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
fishing from a crumbled tower
grey stone rough on my thighs
as the line sinks
the float dunks itself
for a taste of drowning
the fish breathes air
and it only occurs afterward
that I hate the taste
petrodollarthe hill has been butterfliedpetrodollar1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
and everything that causes noise speaks
in a foreign language
a radio chokes itself
saying the sound of empty country is snow
the distance between freeways is arrested
as reports about frost come second-hand
(things the soldiers fell like:
trees, leaves, airplanes)
an owl blasts through the mountain,
angels, expatriated from our father’s paradise
do taxes in a public park
Overpasses arc like the rings of a dying planet
Nobody can find work
now kids have taken to demanding
explanations from god
while last night the anarchists
doing their best to imitate the pacific
found only the silence of constant traffic