Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
its bitter Sep 2020
I'm glassy, threatening to spill over
busy mourning the sunrises I've missed,
moments I never noticed.
So present below the skin that days skip around me.
Am I sick?
Or is this normal?

Disease of self-awareness
Flies just stick to ****, every flight a quest for a new pile
so filled with purpose, unbothered by their nature
What do dreams mean?
Why do I question them?

The sky threatens deluge, then clears without warning,
dictating my thoughts, my moods, without thought.
Thought is a gift, the gift to muddle the clarity,
to question change without control
There is no motif, no purpose, just wings drumming the cement,
to right oneself after tumbling, to what end?
its bitter Mar 2021
Most nights the train wails through the countryside,
a lidless cyclops banshee, sightless levin searchlight, and so sonorous the bridge's paint curdles
Grain streams out of cars and clatters among the tracks
Might your midnight snack have jolted free your soul and ferried you through the moonlight?

Morning announces a sunless sky, for you
eyes tenderly shrouded in a heather gauze
She whispers foul incantations across sludge and waterless brambles
- a lullaby to rustle and carry feathers from flightless wings,
to entangle them in the earth's course, tawny hair,
adorned and glittering with glass slivers and hollow bones
Et que la peur du vide n'a jamais effleuré
Et des années durant, sans barrière ni frontière
Je voguerai dans les cieux, sans jamais toucher terre
its bitter Mar 2020
Years that washed over me,

eroded my skin my smile my senses

time reclaims; what was given me - taken

but predestined dissolution feels fair compared

to carnage caused by

You - accomplice to whims of time

lulled me to security by our regularity

then vanished with those parts of me

coaxed from me unwittingly.


At least the years admit their crime.
its bitter Feb 2018
Perhaps it was that champagne five-o’clock light slanting through our glass walls,
golden-warm like honey we licked straight from hive

Yes, perhaps it was those low, sun-softened shadows,
that silky honey-light dribbling lazily through our window
glazing my corneas  
blurring my vision
and the lines I drew between us

Our honey-dipped conversation flowed smoothly,
the summer bleached hairs on the back of my neck swayed in tandem to our words
and your fingers
as they worked loose the knots in the sinew
cocooning my spine

Perhaps that is why those words –
so viscous in the twelve o’clock light
that they almost choke me
as I try to regurgitate them –
flowed up my windpipe
Smoothly
as warm honey drips
from the edge of a
butterknife

Or

Perhaps it was the rosé
painted across your cheeks
like sincerity
Or the way those crushed velvet fingertips
painted my cheeks to match yours
and pressed my eyelids
shut

Do not blame me
for the honey pooling at the corners of my lips
for the wine stains on my cheeks

Do not forget it was you
who fed me honey
who intoxicated me with colours of the eight o’clock sunset
who wrapped me in velvet
who bid the sun linger awhile longer
in my sky

Do not forget
the words I said
were words you gave me
Do not blame me
when they spill from the edges of my mouth
its bitter Jun 2018
Goldie,

perfect things come in small packages:

gold rings and goldfinches,

sun-soaked raindrops,

marigolds, goldenrods,

memories golden-hued,

and you, dear Goldie, too.



You shared with us such time-worn treasures:

the swimming hole,

orchids blooming ferociously in Hawaiian humidity,

children lost and children gained – your bittersweet legacy,

misplaced brassieres in laundromats,

atrocious climates and thermostats,

and speaking of weather – Stormy Daniels too.

Your sense of humor shone right through –

remarkable.



For life can be an ordeal, you know it well I’m sure

and golden youthful moments too soon become silver

With each winter’s passing cold,

frost-heaving each and every life,

cracks spread across our pavement for

against the inevitable, we can’t fight

and giggling rivers grow slow and stale

and evening skies sicken and pale



But despite the cold winds, you – dear Goldie –

Remain golden still.
In my creative writing class, we interviewed residents of old-folks home. This poem is dedicated to Goldie W - a lovely 94 year old who absolutely captivated my heart with her stories, sense of humour, and attitude on life.
its bitter Feb 2018
I'd like it if you
wrestled your fingertips under my ribcage and
pressed your palms
against my sides and felt,
conveyed across
the gauze of my skin,
my heartbeat racing in
my kidneys and
if you traced,
with two little toes,
four tendons
entwining my ankles and
if your eyelashes pretended to be
newborn jellyfish
toying with newfangled tentacles
across my bare shoulder blades and
if your tongue was a diving board
for lovely words plunging
into the ebbing oceanic air pockets
between us and
if your hands were seakelp,
leathery tendrils impossibly woven into my scalp,
a short tether
ensuring my submerged lips and nostrils
never shatter the glassy surface
its bitter Feb 2018
Check in impatiently
hauling light luggage -
downturned eyes,
bundled fifties,
skull packed with sickly
sugarplum notions

Stiff key-card door and
three hanger closet -
leave your mittens, jacket,
and conscience dangling

Towels
cotton-knit sandpaper
no softer than well-trafficked
threadbare tawny-port carpet and
your hands and feet pretend
not to feel it

nervously,
a bit numbly,
you notice her standing
with glacial stillness
moments away from
the foot of the bed

Two crooked lampshades and
dim headboard lights
close their eyes when
the mattress springs
first compress,
the air tingling
with dustbunny snowflakes

This room is too dark now,
something like snowblind,
but you don't really want to see
do you?

Frostbite when she touches you
and somehow this bed
is more welcoming
than your own

you'll remember her
february fingertips
and hailstone hair,
a sensation of northerly winds
strange how heavy the comforter feels
sprawled across your skin

you envision an ice slab,
see it suffocate
a slow-flowing river,
and your breath quickens
if only because your lungs
have been crushed

then, just before hypothermia,
she leaves,
lights off,
wallet lighter,
you stay whiteknuckled, lightheaded,
half-consumed by a snowdrift,
beneath the duvet -
dazed

your tongue sits confused,
having asked for peppermints
and been given ice cubes instead

and when you finally rise,
and thaw your limbs
and try not the slip
on the black ice
she always leaves
by the door,

Try to forget
you paid
hourly rates
and shed your clothes
that you might find warmpth
in a blizzard
its bitter Sep 2020
mind like a hive
oozing honeycomb thoughts
skull sticky with residue  
the world sleeps but
the darkness hums

sleep arrives slowly ‘neath the moon’s lidless eye
her ceaseless beam an interrogation bulb
questions swarming,
inhaling that honey,
drowning in sap

rearranged days,
circadian rhythm working around to the other side of the clock,
crunching and stretching like a cracking spine

bedsores of the brain
eventually exhaustion feels mundane
undereyes stained, bruised, sallow
limbs caught in the tar
relentlessly gulping, swallowing greedily

too sleep deprived to resist the undertow
its bitter Feb 2018
She needed help so
he helped himself -
vaguely symbiotic

she screamed hallelujah
as he unlaced her
straining rows of stitches

illustrious open sores
her prayers answered
Oh god, that she'd never heal!
its bitter Mar 2018
Walk The In-between where
it rains, lukewarm,
from overcast heavens –
omnipresent silver gaze desaturating,
nullifying,
mattifying,
smooth like velvet.

How those endless skies weep endlessly for you,
lost traveller,
fine mist descending upon you
sense of absolution, fog of forgetfulness
and you can’t feel the rain puddling
in the ditches of your collarbones
for how faintly it caresses your body
Finally – let it wash away those jagged clusters
of salt crystals from your lashes

Follow your feet
you know where they lead you:
away from glaring light and midnight sky, to somewhere softer:
The In-between.

Amble towards it and believe your own fiction:
You yourself chose this – willingly.
You weren’t drawn by the same ripcurrent,
having towed you here countless times,
each journey into the fog
more lingering than last.
You will be here just a minute-
not an instant more.

But truthfully, you are following your own footsteps,
tracing lines already worn thin.
You’ve dwelt here before
You fear you’ll not escape this time:
The In-between,
Purgatory is not novelty
to you, traveller.

You follow:
your conscience,
your habits,
this well-traveled path
to tender oblivion
Your return
– inevitable –
to The In-between.

And on your pilgrimage
you conveniently forget,
perhaps on purpose,
how the dim lights seep –
like seawater does
into fibrous hulls of sunken ships –
inevitably, steadily, invisibly –
into your own eyes, how they too grow dim
cataracts of algae
you feel ancient as the seafloor, silty
cold, untouched, untouchable, stagnant;
half-hope to stagnate here awhile

See, you frequent this hell because
when you finally break free,
you remember only the comfort
of nothingness,
dismissing how desperately you crave
the absolutes and colours and emotions
black white blue and red
The state of existence – how you miss it
when all is suddenly grey

Yet here you are, again
meandering, lost, again
you are exhausted, again
rest your weary eyes, dear
But – by God, child – do not fall asleep here
Sometimes, difficult realities felt deeply can become overwhelming, the most comforting solution being sinking into a fog of numbness. Existing, but not really. A greyed-out version of life, not sad but certainly not happy either. And this state of being can become addicting, a sort of self-comfort, but it is not reality; it is depriving oneself of real joy. Accepting the disastrous consequences of existing this way can be difficult, but escape is even more taxing – once liberated from this nothingness, colours and lights seem harsh. After too little, it is too much all at once: joy, sadness, sunbeams, love, hate, inspiration…  Here is where the cycle of feeling and numbness begins: feel too much and crave peace, feel too little and crave something real. To cope with the relatively magnified realities, each dangerous journey to the “In-between” lasts a little longer than the one before. Perspective becomes skewed when dancing between these extremes, a balanced middle-ground becoming nearly impossible to inhabit. And this is why the nothingness becomes so enticing; it is a reprieve from its only exhausting alternative. This is why I continue returning to it knowing well I may not be able to leave.
its bitter Feb 2018
muffled melody
symphony of crystalline angel screams
glorious crescendo
inhale
as the world is soundproofed
and sanitized
by powdered eiderdown
its bitter Aug 2020
First fall:
We walk, my left hand twists the frayed strings
with your left in my right, we waltz home
seek warmth resting on bended knees, to get closer
to kiss you
Weakened fabric acquiesces to strain, splitting further
across my knee and we laugh at the sound through each other's lips
and are lost again

Then winter and fingers slip through rips and behind slats
to find even lean protection from the cold
Trapped against my thighs, fingers
right against my thighs, fabric
doesn't stretch so it shreds a little further

Time unravels behind us, behind this moment
unravelled, freed threads to pull and pick at
littering car seats, bed sheets and under my fingernails
we leave behind and weave ahead

So spring though summer and I trim away ribbons of denim
and wear the remainder while sun desiccates our skin
and wears us away invisibly - water through rock
rips and tears us - rapidly we dissolve
so I carry past days with me still.
its bitter Mar 2018
You tell me that this is where it ends

But think of the lilies
bourne up, aloft
upon slim green limbs,
how they dip to the earth
touch their toes then
salute the sun
in rhythm with the wind -
the sky, her every breath
And how their delicate legs might snap
bearing an overzealous bumblebee
Yet they coat the valley floor
a scourge of beauty
Resilience

Breathe in their life exuded
from tremulous petals -
Take it for yourself.
Feel their leaves under your feet
Allow them to paint your toes
with their blood, vert - the colour of life

And I dare you to tell me that this is not where it begins
Even in winter there may be life; find it.
its bitter Jul 2019
For the first time, when I see that I’m changing
I know it’s not into a stranger
And it’s stranger to think the songs weren’t exaggerating
When they mused, “it’s like coming home”

The first time you kissed me was so soft...
Cautious.
Such a quiet knock on the window
This glass - so fragile

And the second time you kissed me
All the panes shattered
A thousand cutting prisms
Returning sun that could scorch me back to the heavens, to my eyes
We two are treading on glass

And I’ve been caught between places - my house and my heart
And been told I can’t have both

But I’ll take shards in my soles if
I might rest my palms on your cheeks
I’d trade a house for a home, for a heart, for yours.

I see it so clearly
These exquisite fragments reflect a collection of peices and I recognize each as my own by recalling where your fingers have been
Your touch is reassembling me
So expertly.

Perhaps I’m coalescing, not changing
Perhaps a shattered mirror may be unshattered
If only you find all the pieces.
Love Love Love
its bitter Mar 2020
When empty, I was ravenous
and with hunger came drive
frenzy of a starving creature
unquenched, thus alive

Now, hollow with phantom pain
deepest ache, darkest grey
I, a shifting spectre
quite liable to drift away

Sharp pang of need
Serve my deliverance
Slash through the fog
Shatter this reticence

Oh, famine, lust, longing -
to be famished for living!
to be removed from this apathy,
relieved of this malady

Replace hollow with empty
Restore pain, grant clarity
its bitter Mar 2020
red presides over pavement
suspending a stream of steel
glinting off fenders, glancing from glass
staining knuckles gripping wheels

some few - the crosswalk's front row
spectators to street walkers
summoned by chance
to an intersection of existences

toddler fingers streak tinted glass
in time to someone's stereo
eye contact in rearview mirrors
and a man steps to the crosswalk

a haggard soul, straining forward  
against a cart of belongings
straining slowly, against this weight
wading, as through water
august air; maybe molasses
while the dammed river hums  
absent eyes await impending green
unsighted onlookers - do you see?

a stranger shouldering three coats
slipping through your midst
stories swirl across his palms then
flutter up like exhaust
fleeting as the yellow

— The End —