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AffannatoIf my ribs were weighted keys,Affannato4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
I'd play you an ocean song that tips you
right off the edge of the earth,
and clinging to my last phrase, you'd say
'what a tragedy, what a helpless dreamer,
such a beautiful pair of lungs gone to the dust'.
And night would hold us in that distant desperation,
playing our heartstrings so we couldn't keep up,
no, not with that soulful, off-tempo portrait
of who we could have let each other become.
I'll crawl back to bed on my bare boned knees
and when I wake to the black holes you've burned
into the sheets you and I were 'us' on,
I'll write you a desert song
about how I jumped off the edge of the earth
and yo
they can't be takentheir bleach skin caught my eyethey can't be taken1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
albino white against the wild
hair like bright sky electric in the briars
haloed sister gods shot down like fawn
blue and gold are not just colorsshe had been blue-sightedblue and gold are not just colors9 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
since
dawn cracked her forehead.
it was the dress she wore on his funeral
the color of her school flag
the shine in her father's eyes;
she waited in blue and gold.
no, she refused to set a bar
because
life didn't just come to her.
she earned her place
in her mother's womb
when each blood vessel questioned her
each nerve ending, if she could live
and each antibody, if she was worth it.
see, she doesn't need new dresses.
she has a memory
for each of hers in her locked closet.
she may not wear all of them
(and most she cringes at the sight of)
but her heart
jumps enough
every time bits of her old
Let the Sparrows InI.Let the Sparrows In1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
Blackbirds are resting on the power lines,
Their silhouettes form the notation to
A dawn song set on the sheet music of
Telephone poles contrasted by the sun.
Curled leaves are land mines littered
On the lawn where imprints of twigs
And a nurturing robin's tracks collect.
Branchlets and leaflets stem from
Porch step railings and mailboxes;
The numbers read even on the
East side of the asphalt:
Seven-seven-thirty-six.
The engraved letters on
The siding reads, "Davis."
This house is home to family
So let the sparrows in.
The house,
With its branching hallways
And
Overhanging décor
And
Furniture rooted to the floor
bad days.on my bad days,bad days.4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
i open notebooks like bibles and hold pens like lifelines.
i keep opening the book of my memories
just to see if it still leaves a bruise.
tonight,
i am covered in the bruises of your hand
tonight,
your ghost is in my bed. i can't sleep there,
so again-
again i find myself miles from home
wishing on stars i can't see
and spitting memories into the ocean like watermelon seeds.
i sit on my longboard like driftwood and send my shivers into texts
like letters i never should have mailed.
on my bad days,
i wear cuts like ropeburn,
like i just don't know when to let go.
i get lost inside the sadness and hold tea thats long since gone cold
as hours escape like small birds set free.
i forget to open the blinds
and paint my fingernails black
and stare at the too-big numbers aligned on the scale i can't stop stepping on.
my th
pigeonhello, pigeon,pigeon10 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
he says with a smile
like somehow, he already knows
she's been sad for a while.
and she just looks at him,
with her brokenhearted bambi eyes
and she hopes that he understands
because nobody understands,
not really.
pigeon, he says,
I know.
and he does.
he knows that deep in her heart,
she just isn't happy.
not today, not yesterday,
and maybe not even tomorrow.
he knows that she wants to be happy,
wants to know what it's like
to be filled with sunshine
(and he thinks maybe that's why
she loves sunflowers so very much.
because she thinks they exude sunlight,
and maybe, just maybe,
if she were bright yellow
Isaiahdid you hope with me, Isaiah?Isaiah1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
or did I merely dream the days of our stand;
of red strings, of stardust,
of too-small hands & too-long hair,
& of the words, the words, the words
(the ones you had me
believe you were worth)
for it was you who said,
"go big or go home.
I will give you the world,
or nothing at all.
this, I promise to you."
so dear to me, the vowels & the verbs,
the air hissing through
your teeth: gateways
to a barren land
words
like wind through the trees,
like ghosts through the tombstones.
have you left me, Isaiah?
I travel north & farther north, still,
for humans do, subconsciously,
gravitate homeward.
b
Cookerymy blender does not understandCookery8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
smoothies
"Accept My Gift of Pineapple
Thou Foul Beast!"
this is a blood sacrifice
and she is sadly unreceptive
I begin the main course
I have cupboards full of words
See-Jane-Runs
quick brown foxes
I have half a mind (no, three-fourths of a mind)
to sauté them
into
the golden eggs
more difficult to crack
than I had thought they would be
(forge? My stove doesn't get
hot enough,
I think)
I will spice the adjectives with
madness
I will verb these nouns
throw in a voodoo doll or
tulips! Two! Lips!
Crack open a maraca
and sell you some rhythm
Oh you will love this
you will devour th
InfernoSeptember is a sultry tangleInferno8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
of curly hair and corduroy jackets stretched
over broad shoulders that I've been leaning on,
metaphorically.
He won't press for answers
and I won't trouble him with my problems.
So he complains about the weather –
he's never gotten used to these sticky, southern delta summers –
while I hold the door
and press the call button.
The half-lit elevator drops us off above Dante's first layer.
I feel sorry for anyone beneath,
but I've indulgences to buy
and my own hell to return to.
But there's a light in my pocket –
abandon not all hope,
and
smile.
time-spared drawers of dreamsi. someday the sight-starvedtime-spared drawers of dreams1 month ago in Free Verse More Like This
will find more than just the moon -
that i promise you.
we've seen all of what happiness
will never be and
like liquid stars in the milky way,
smiles will seep down
into the oceans of your laughter.
never mind what they said
about shady equilibrium;
it's only man's insecurity.
truth is, there is no
karma -
no rule, no eyes
watching over you;
just the forgotten remains of the
god that falls on us
every time it rains.
ii. someday, my dear,
those cranes won't just be
an exhibition of folded paper -
and those tears you cry now?
[which you hate so much?]
will leak into my arterial walls
and tell me they only tell stories of ecstasy;
we just have yet to realize.
love, it won't be long
till autumn will not be as forgotten
and between these
multiple shades of grey, will rest
the emptiness within yo[us]
and the broken smiles
of a shattered yesterday.
iii. grieve not, sweet traveler -
our draining journey has just begun.
and though you have been without comfort for s
aphroditeclambering lips tumble over each other likeaphrodite11 months ago in Urban & Spoken Word More Like This
little deer stumbling into the headlights, where
blushing cupid's bows snap shut at the slightest
whisper of a touch; as summer's broken blossom
whistles into moss, suicidal and free-falling at a
twist of the wind, dripping through honeyed-hands and
trickling down wrists. words nuzzle breath, the air
staved of acoustics that choreograph faces closer; watching as
quivering eyes thrust new-born hope, where
restless hearts knock beneath a web of ribs,
screaming silently as bodies are poured into the
stitches of aphrodite's venomo(us) fly-trap.
AnniversaryI commemorated you last night,Anniversary7 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
Although
Completely by accident.
You darted out from the powder pavements
Skirting my memory
- like a wild wretch
Paltry in register and reason.
The season has been unkind,
Sealed in static and skeletal
Treason: trees illuminated grey and disconnected stars,
Disconnected veins.
I traced the place where we once parted.
Pencil gallows, plainly fallow fields of
Shameful chagrin pinned the hawk cry
Like an arrow. We were frozen there,
Marred by a detonated letter,
A blinding bouquet of devastation.
I dreamed I could wind back this cruel clock-
And undo the shock absorptions that have
Never
Cea
when it happensi am told that my sister soundswhen it happens10 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
young. when she speaks
you can see her body shedding away years
like winter coats
until she is left as small as the day
i first held her in my arms,
soft and pink and
screaming.
perhaps it's because
she has not yet realized
that she probably won't be the one
to pick the spot for her grave.
the cardboard-sealed flowers they order
from an online catalogue at
90 dollars a basket
will not be the same ones
she plucked from the backyard bushes
to hang inside her bedroom
when she was thirteen.
no one will kiss her face
one last time
before she is lowered
into the dirt.
i am not afraid that she
My Mouth, a GraveyardI buried my wordsMy Mouth, a Graveyard2 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
under my tongue
& turned my teeth
into tombstones.
Here lies hello,
too shy to be uttered,
just left to wither
while my fingers tapped out
its letters,
& here lies goodbye,
so scared of being alone,
it left the roads between
me and we empty.
Love died the day my
heart started beating,
when it pumped out
too much sense &
not enough courage.
Sorry was found murdered,
its meaning stolen,
the day it would have been
relevant.
I smothered help with my claims
that I didn’t need it,
then I forgot how to breathe
& no one could see it.
My mouth became a cemetery,
& I chewed on petals
to keep the smell away,
but no matter
Divination as a Means of Finding a Way Back 1. I say nothing I am thinking.Divination as a Means of Finding a Way Back11 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
For twelve years I have wanted
to do exactly this, but suddenly
pronouncing my own name calls up
the question of who it belongs to
in the same breath Like
Solomon I was born a singer
but in the wrong key and my
chords will not carry me, will not
summon the wolves to me only
packs of hungry dogs
stupid with domestication
but nearly feral And like
a hungry ghost I have learned
not to speak against those
who will give me food
2. A sketch of myself.
He says I must have been born
in the wrong culture, he says. I got a taste of
the crack
Haiku IIIwhite cherry blossomsHaiku III2 months ago in Haiku & Eastern More Like This
melt on frosted window panes -
harbinger of Spring
04.10chapter one:04.108 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
leave the boy and
don't look back
"but you do, sweetheart."
(there's no room for
second guesses here.)
chapter three:
spanish music and rough russian accents
those fruity pink drinks were the death
of chapter two, the green ones will do for the night
chapter four:
"why?"
"he didn't trust me-"
(among other things)
"-so i took away his need to."
starspunobserving the romanticismstarspun8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
of hooded cemetery kids,
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.
you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things.
we built the heat
of the evening from the solidity
of starlight,
pretended
that two teens at the park
at midnight
is the stuff of teen novels
(cliches dim on
our leaf-gold horizon)
your eyes darted
from the gray expanse
of the churchyard & wandered
in thoughtful
paths.
i wanted to ask you
if i could follow. shove
the words aside &
remember that i came here alone.
i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars
eucalyptusthey tell me i am writing confessionaleucalyptus1 year ago in Free Verse More Like This
poetry and i tell them, no, i am not,
i am writing my world.
i did not burrow in guilt's throat
and choose to spell out the softness,
no, i screamed out my soul and it was then
that i remembered how i used to pray.
i wanted to tell stories
but instead i sat and wrote:
about rain, and sorrow,
and the greek gods,
and pain, and the greek gods,
over and over, and dionysus, dionysus:
i plunged and dived dolphin-beaked.
*
i want you know
that death is a responsibility
and saltwater immersion
a fierce talent we cannot escape
so this is a confession for you:
i am not selfish
i am self only
lipidsstay focused:lipids8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
i swear that the flame
never wavers
if one stares hard enough
create some space
for the stirring
of your herd instinct
part the curtains
and peek out
at your rolled-paper self
in the street litter
no? drag yourself upright
for a glance
at perspectivity
for a real epiphany:
it's only when the hot wax
of anger cools that we
find ourselves encased
in secreted shame
i am only the wick
and like any pacifist,
i resist burning
to the point of
saturation.
a lover's observations.when you asked me to define love,a lover's observations.1 month ago in Free Verse More Like This
i answered with this.
love is
i. a collection of sighs
strung together
by remembered dreams
and rapid heartbeats
ii. fingertips on knuckles
and the hugging of thumbs
iii. making silverware
on the mattress
in the company of the stars
iv. exchanging dialogue
with our mouths shut
and our eyes open
v. cheekbones and crow's feet
vi. turning every what if
into a reality
when i asked you to describe love,
you took the answer from my mouth
with your lips.
For the love of birdsThree little birds pitch on my doorstep.For the love of birds3 months ago in Visual & Found Poetry More Like This
I keep them in a jar
because
nothing I have is truly mine.
I am only the lonely,
waiting for it to come back to me.
sea featherin the breaking of the morning we tore apart our ivory shellssea feather3 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
our blood-red hearts are saturated in spume & sea spells
with the ache from the brine gathering around you
your ankles slippery, your mouth
moving liquid through
mine
i had never seen a more beautiful shoreline
gunmetal breaths
on shivering, silver shores
you were ebbing to my flowing
you were coming; i was going
i wrote in the sand that i was yours
on the coast i could feel
salt on my tongue - dew from the
ocean in my lungs
& i was your pearl
latched from the inside to keep everyone out
speaking in rhymes, & cotton tides
this is when you pull my body fro
Sta.sh
