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In the Death of Winterelusive daylightIn the Death of Winter5 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
pale fluorescents
humming low instead
split-cracked breathing patterns
rasping through a respirator
(her blood whispers in a hospital bed)
I.
8. somersaults in snow,we
wintered in imagination,building
igloos from the residue of storms
II.
18. i slipped on ice, and you cradled
bruises in your arms you cradled bruises
you cradled bruises on my arms
III.
28. rattled loose locks and fear of bleeding
i love(d) you and it hurts,broken bones
broken heart
we are not made of stone,she
said, and with every ounce of all his being
he said time and time again --
"i love you" reset, reset,restart
Lurking CobraI have to tell you the truth:Lurking Cobra9 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
there's a cobra lurking just beneath the skin
and coiling through your veins.
"I love you" and "I'm sorry" and "Please, come home with me"
drip like poison from your fangs.
I know the weight of a lie, darling;
I search for the scent of others of my sex in every shadowed corner;
We cohabitate.
I regularly check your sock drawer for love letters and ring boxes,
for any sign that this isn't just another hunt for you,
but I know it's the hunger talking
when you whisper those things late at night.
The stitching on my heart is slowly unraveling,
All my clumped-up stuffing flows out of me dying to escape;
astronomerswhen we're togetherastronomers8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
dusk is containable; the moon in my palms
and the stars on your ceiling.
we lull the city to sleep
with our theories of life; my tongue curling
into speech.
do you remember,
when Jupiter was a silver wick, lighting its countless moons?
that night,
you balanced a cigarette off your lips,
and I watched the vermillion flame burn life
as a newborn sun;
stars forming,
planets moulding and constellations snaked
above our eyes.
i imagined
what it would be like to be curled
inside the embers – creator and destroyer
of worlds,
so close to your lips.
Primevaland I don't smoke, but all my poems talkPrimeval8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
of cigarettes and ashes because my father smoked
for forty years and now he can't breathe
and I can't breathe.
the chill from the rain seeps through the glass panes
and feels swollen in the loneliness of a crowded train;
the air is pregnant with an umbilical thread
connecting us to something intangible,
something necessary to our being
yet we don't exist at all.
smoke and vapor crawling out our mouths;
we talk because the silence is sometimes frightening,
and because we're searching the dust visible only
in the places where light bends for words that won't disappear
Pisces"…so drown me. I mean, if you can."Pisces6 months ago in Flash Fiction & Vignettes More Like This
A threat in her eyes. Triple dog dare.
And I'm on edge but I don't wanna show her just yet.
"Now you can't honestly expect me to be foolish enough?
Drowning fish is a fruitless endeavor."
She smiles, all fury and triumph. Her ocher eyes ignite; flickering then flaming.
"O' but sister, are you not a fish, same as I?
Are we not of the same blood, the same scales?"
And I hesitate, ever-cautious.
What's she hinting at? Huh, sis'?
What's that card sewn up your sleeve?
I hesitate for just a moment too long.
"And you would believe it impossible, no?
A difficult enterprise to say t
Hold Onto My Heartthere's a boy, aged to be a man but still a boy,Hold Onto My Heart4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
out in the country smoking a cigarette who has a
blue paper heart tucked in some notebook somewhere
with a note saying 'hold onto my heart for me'
what if this heart is mine
but what if this heart is not mine
what if i outgrew that heart and gave it away and
made my own from my own hopes and dreams and
sewed it in carefully with the right sinews so that
it pumps the right blood if not better than that
blue paper heart
(i am not her
i am not that blue paper girl
any longer)
A Liston the back of a graded test (88 and a few red marks) scalded with tea stains and flecks of fennel:A List4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
THINGS I WISH I KNEW
- whether i'm less or more
- what he's thinking when he's
- when i'll find the answers i'm searching for
- if he'll find a better girl in this lifetime
- when i'll figure out that i'm the best i can be
- if he'll ever re-discover me
- when i can finally start living in love and not in fear
page onethe waves are calling.page one3 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
watch--stormbound, the breakers
arch up to clutch at the unyielding stones
with a roar and a hiss and a sigh;
gather themselves back and
reach--and wait
and wait.
the sea is patient, and your limestone fear
will erode.
you will be
hollow.
a vessel.
you will be beautiful.
the waves are calling.
listen.
dragonfly pulseI can float, exempt from gravitydragonfly pulse2 years ago in Free Verse More Like This
Out of the bed. The sheets follow,
Trailing beneath me as my back touches the ceiling,
Shoulder-blades to frescoes,
The window lighting my ascent.
I point out my finger,
Like God to Adam,
Ceiling kissed—
Michelangelo's twists
Aligning with my tumbling hair
Teardrops,
Like so many music notes,
Fall with a sound less than a tiptoe
On hardwood
Small white mints
Tumble from my pocket
And scatter to the floor
Becoming dust
Like the heart I once owned
The asylum of bruises, a
Kind of mirror
In which the menagerie keeps
Its claws reflected.
My soft counting
Is drowned out by re
glowing skeletonsthe nostalgia comes over me in a current and i let it thieve my mind...i allow it to caress my senses and pull me into another realm where the past is infinite and everlasting, where kisses are sweeter and the drives last long into the endless nights. wind whips into our sighs and the trees breathe into us. winter is blue and summer is golden, and my memories with you are a blush inbetween. i have never truly had you, but i miss you anyhow. the floorboards creak under my toes; the vents hide our breathing from the world. trees, earth, life: we've escaped it, yet we are a part of it.glowing skeletons2 years ago in Letters More Like This
this nostalgia, it is so beautiful sometimes i don't think
curfewthe front door openscurfew2 years ago in Haiku & Eastern More Like This
quiet footsteps wandering
through the hall, guilty
Lies I Tell Us After Hours #1I can't live without youLies I Tell Us After Hours #15 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
is a lie. I can. You will
die and leave me
here, persisting
all truth of the sentence.
LEGALLY literally INSANE I could tell you a story of beauty and butterflies and fuzzy feelings, but it wouldn't be accurate or useful. It wouldn't be entertaining, or helpful, or even truthful. It would be lying, and I would be the liar.LEGALLY literally INSANE3 years ago in Short Stories More Like This
So I'll start by saying, I have a freckle between one of my toes. His name is Fred, and I try to talk to him, but he refuses to respond. I speak of the garbage disposal, tell him of the tiny teeth people trying t
Catharsis (Slam Poem WIP)In the psychiatric waiting roomCatharsis (Slam Poem WIP)2 weeks ago in Urban & Spoken Word More Like This
you asked me if I believed you could get better.
Now,
I don't hail Mary or believe in ghosts,
but I've prayed until I heard thirteen footsteps on the roof—
and heard it enough times to not question if it was you.
But the hierarchy of monarch butterflies
in my stomach are hesitant to take precedence
over the moths quick to blame
you when your twitter hashtags are hashmarks;
like high scores in psych wards.
....
Dry Swallow--C.You have a nasty habitDry Swallow--C.5 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
of touching me where it bleeds,
ragged fingertips catching
rubbed-raw skin.
There's no scab there;
that wound has never healed,
festering yellow and oozing pus--
and each morning breaks
another plastic seal,
white bottles and tiny blue pills
leaving the bitter taste of almost-tragic
on my tongue.
Swallow dry;
that stuck feeling passes,
replaced by lethargy
and the diluted memories
of a time you made me happy,
when each morning broke
under a red sunset, the sheets
strewn around us.
It's fantasy now,
but I still feel the weight of you
during quiet moments.
long livedon't touch what you can'tlong live3 months ago in Haiku & Eastern More Like This
understand what you can't feel
what you can't handle
To Be Continued.Not even a thought.To Be Continued.8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
Bristled, poised
( i don't wanna think about it anymore. and the evidence isn't 100% anyway.
deeper ditches, hotel rooms, debt. it was hospitality, the right thing to do.
broken bed frames, forty dollar deposits, polluted air
Modesto, California. )
Austin? Am I really just imagining this?
I was wrong.
Is it so difficult to think out loud? And yes I want it. I want it very much so.
Blazing heat. The smoothened sexy of a Californian accent.
Intoxicated; pulsating pheromones.
His smoldering orbs. Those molten globes caught in shadow.
I remain fixated. A deer drawn to headlights.
And I didn't care.
Cattle GraveyardThere are bones scattered in the grasses,Cattle Graveyard5 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
gray and faded, hidden between scrubs
and pricker bushes.
The summer air is thick in my throat
as I dig for bone treasures, a jaw,
a femur; if I'm lucky, I'll find an intact spine,
vertebrae still hanging together like a silver bracelet.
The coyotes live in a cluster of trees across the field,
restless as they wait for the next death
from infection in the lungs, fever, old age.
The last one to die was Railey, and she's
over by the oasis, her hide stretched thin over opalescent bones
picked clean by the buzzards circling
like puppets on wires above my head.
Their shadows on the ground bef
things you don't learn in schooli found a cricket on the roadside,things you don't learn in school1 month ago in Free Verse More Like This
put it in a mason jar to show the world
and called it by a first name. he died
of loneliness shortly thereafter and i
learned that you can't save everyone.
when i was twelve, i watched a boy
slit his wrists with a plastic spork
at lunch, and though i laughed at
the irony, all i kept thinking was
i really hope he washed his hands.
he bled tears of scarlet red that
looked like tomato sauce, but
i just stood there because it was
the coolest thing i'd ever seen.
the boy, he smelled of dirty laundry
& cigarettes & sorrow and used to
sit by the window until the bell,
where he'd wait until everyone had gone
a universe full of maybei want to be real,a universe full of maybe1 year ago in Haiku & Eastern More Like This
tangible, somehow human
enough to be loved
EndingEndingEnding9 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
I dream, the earth splitting like a cracked egg,
Light thinning like dye in water.
Air hardens until we burrow.
I wake wanting to know if we will fall.
An apocalypse is an ending
This is a becoming.
syracuseListen to the audio version for the full effect, pretty please.syracuse6 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
cloudshot sky like an oil painting and i am watching the
seagulls. i--
darling, i will swim for you
and swallow every whitecap.
i will pluck myself a coat of pelican wings,
sew them up with salt and spray--
become icarus for you.
you are calling me across the waves, love--
but you pull against the ache
in my bones, the hollow--
the clawing out for unseen sunsets and unturned tides.
i hear you, love
give me time.
i will always listen.
Sta.sh
