you bleed like a fountain
when the tides aim for saltwater sky
& all you want to do is drown-
i wonder how long it’ll take for you
to stop writing like that.
once upon a time, you were blue
train tracks rolling down cigarette
addiction and soft metaphors.
your mother had no way of recognizing you
from the sallow skin
and crevice-deep wrinkles.
you were a cliche
romanticizing the evenings,
wishing you were dead
on paper.
a beating heart floats for
30 years in stagnant waters,
fragmented like glass windows
& diluted bottle messages.
you were polluted rivers,
deadfish-the
flow of words
gone
as you sit there with your
computer static
el
My first mistake was falling in love with the sound of your voice;
Smooth, deep, and rich like top-shelf whisky.
Boy, I was hooked after just a taste.
Fire & Water,
You have me reaching boiling temperatures
With a single glance; a single word.
I'm an enigma, shrouded in mystery.
The sounds off my lips and the curves of my body draw you closer to me.
Babe, all I feel is pure electricity.
There's this pull-this magnetism;
A deeper understanding than I can voice,
A familiar presence that I already adore.
Unexpected, unpredictable.
Wild & beautiful-
I can't wait to see what the adventure of you and me holds.
Old habits die hard,
& My favorite one smells like cigarettes and sex.
He hurts me, & I can't get enough.
Fist in my hair, bruises on my body.
I ask him for more until I'm hoarse.
Old habits die hard,
& My worst one is the way I use my body.
Baby, I don't need you to love me.
I just want you to touch right there.
& Once it's done you can leave.
Old habits die hard,
& My favorite one smells like cigarettes and sex.
He hurts me & I can't get enough.
Scars all over, ink scribbled on paper.
He's the one I'm always complaining about.
Old habits die hard,
& My worst one is the way I use my body.
Baby, I don't need you to love me.
I know you thin
Cold sunlight fills
my room today.
I can still taste the coffee
from last night, and I
remember to fold the
laundry.
I am not missed
when I caress the
same stupid white
linen shirt for an hour.
But someone told me they could
have sworn they heard me
crying from their room
across the way.
It’s time for lunch and all I
really have to eat are
complaints and criticisms about
what else I've ruined today.
I feel like I should make them eat their words,
but I don't think they're hungry yet.
I think it's
evening now.
I lose track of
everything now and again.
So forgive me when I say
I don't remember
your name, and which
room of the ho
grow, growing, growth by brokengod--veins, literature
Literature
grow, growing, growth
it's beautiful to witness dispassion
when the dreams
drift
silently away from the body like a secret.
it's as if the moment meant to give my life surrender
guises as an average day with me
washing the dishes
sipping on coffee
ready for small reflections
how did it ended up like this?
'i'm not the kindred spirit
i once was. but no matter.
i'm late by 30 minutes
& life's moving without
me.'
ten years ago, i dreamed of writing short stories Time might consider having.
now i'm just running out of time and stories altogether.
worrying about how i'll make it
now considers small, grave details like
time management
and skills
and resumes
In the chaos of recreating myself
I had forgotten what it felt like to be missed.
And in rewriting myself it seems I left out
the simple things,
in an effort to make myself stronger.
I excluded four letter words that start with 'L'
to make room for all the baggage
I chose to keep locked in my closet.
My skeletons don't have room to dance,
so I was content with keeping distance
as more of a literal thing.
That is until I forgot what wishing wells were used for
so I started throwing pennies at the ocean
in hopes that my splash would last longer than
the words I'd speak when no one
was left there to listen.
What you must understand was that our love was a fire
that cast ashes onto my skin and into my eyes, and burned them.
What I fail to see, is how you could do this to me.
I put the world into your hand and like everything else,
you took it for granted.
I did not take your world; it took me
away from everything and covered my life in black ink.
You said I was the reason your heart would beat
with such purpose and intent. At the end of it all,
I don’t know what to believe.
I saw that you were drowning
and pulled you out of the water
with false words twisted truths,
and now your belief is all that can save you.
I went under the wave
Under His Sunless Toes by TotallyUncreativeMe, literature
Literature
Under His Sunless Toes
All I have are curses,
Though yesterday I stood at the feet of a poet,
Under the earth with all those words
I thought would seize the dawn
And bury it under his sunless toes.
And you were there;
You led me round and
Up by the river whose overflows
Have kept me creaking through the nights
Without you.
As I hung from your arm in the dead man's church,
On your skin I saw reflected
Stained-glass,
Wind-shattered.
I called the storm a friend,
Or at least
A reason why nobody called
Till yesterday.
But now the gale
Is just a breeze,
Easy
To think you were raindrops
On the window of my frantic mind,
Now yesterday has dried up and departed.
My father was spoon-fed
the American Dream,
chin dripping Old Glory,
from the day he was born.
He regurgitates lessons
from past generations
about how fortunate we are here,
in the land of opportunity, dreams,
freedom.
A bug immigrant grandparents caught
in the wake of wars and poverty
that soon infected their children.
That later blinded my father.
My mother - an immigrant
with anger in her veins and
the truth in her gut -
never got bit.
She saw through the lies,
the puppets on strings,
fighting them with words and expressions.
She pleads the first.
And for years we have tried
to remove the veil from his eyes
and awaken his senses.
Monument to a Ruined Man by takemetoverona, literature
Literature
Monument to a Ruined Man
I see you now.
The magnificent velvet and silk flags of your name
Now fester and rot in tatters.
The ornate gold and jewels, now dull and blackened with age,
Hang limply from the brittle, yellowing scaffolds
Of your admiring subjects, their mouths gaping open in one last,
Mocking cackle,
All loyalty long since disappeared.
And here you stand
Alone in the silence of your own undoing-
No longer a ruler, or even a man, but a shell-
The hands whose wizened palms I once worshipped
Have crumbled slowly into nothing.
Those lips, whose stately curve I once adored,
Now worn and cracked from centuries of smiling.
But your smiles were n