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It seemed the space between us became torn and
Profoundly distanced....................

Jamming bony knuckles and spread eagled fingers,
Lying their mapped out journey.....direction on point patrol....
Adorned by silver decoration, delighting in their skinned habitat
Shafted, deceit punching the recipient of the poison digits
Prodding and pushing their intent....dare you contradict
The intended carved out dose of punishment, Risk and
Safety......not yours and never would be; stooped
Down under the assailing bony palmed attachements
That delivered penetrating power, cupped around
Your arm til it became discoloured, pressure points
Backed you into a corner, up against the grain of the
Brick wall, cold and damp, the odour reaching
And scolding your nostrils with its stale internal vows
Refuse, stretching and protruding its foul remnents
An earlier life, when you were not under threat fades
Your very existance in jeopardy, your eyes pleaded for
Normality, willing someone to hear your silence, grip you
Tightly, not with malice, but with bravery and valour
Right now you need that shining knight, that white
Horse galloping down the blind alleyway, yet you
Know that won't happen for you're already sinking
To the floor, the blow comes sharp and stings, warmth
Exudes and trickles a path downwards, leaving your
Body, finding the cold concrete beneath you, travelling
Outwards................
Poetic T Nov 2014
Red balloons* litter the floor,
Out numbering the pure ones before,
What once was *white
now
Discoloured
Violated
Shrouded
Float from view
Each a moment of life
As the balloons once white
Now no more,
For all is stained red
Crimson,
Droplets,
Dried
Upon white like a tear,
It slides down marking
Before greeting the floor,
Expelled air, ruptured by the
Violence,
Anger,
Death
Still lingers, an after image
Of the life that was here before,
Red balloons float leaving their imprint
Splatter effect upon floor & wall
Cold eyes stare seeing both
White
&
Red
Balloons
Clinging around this fallen life,
Where white once was now all
That floats is the stench of death
Red balloons huddle around,
Each carrying a moment with them
When life became death &
White was scarred by crimson,
Life is static, still, for death  now floats above the floor
Akemi Jan 2019
The Ache is leaving. Three years languished by dead end jobs, drugs and friends. Last week above a bagel store, the sun morphs mute amidst travelling clouds, indifferent fluctuations of light on an otherwise featureless day.

You arrive a tight knot of anxieties over a moment in time that could only have arrived after its departure. The Ache welcomes you into their sparse interior. You trace last month’s 21st across the black mould complex; navigate piles of stacked boxes, unsure if anything is inside of them.

“I always make the best friends in departure,” the Ache says, flipping a plushy up and down by the waist.

“Maybe you can only love that which is already lost,” you reply, with an insight a friend will give you a week later.

The acid tastes bitter under your tongue. Small marks your body bursting, a glowing radiance of interconnections you’d always had but only now begun to feel. The Ache follows suit and you sit on the couch together to watch .hack//Legend of the Twilight. The come up entangles you in the spectacle; the screaming boy protagonist, the chipped tooth gag, the moe sister in need of saving from the liminal space of dead code. You take part in it; you revel in it. Bodies morph on the surface of the screen in hyperflat obscenity, their parts interchangeable to the affect of the drama. Faces invert, break and disfigure, before reformation into the self-same identity form.

A month earlier, you’d hosted a house show at your flat. Too anxious to perform you’d dropped a tab as you’ve done now. An overbearing sensation of too-much-ness — of sickening reality — washed through the nexus of your being. You writhed on the ground screaming into a microphone as a cacophony of sounds roiled through you. Everyone cheered.

The floor rose later that night. A damp, disgusting intensity that triggered contractions in your throat and chest. Pulled to the ground, you fought off your bandmate’s advances, too shocked to express your revulsion and horror, to react accordingly, to reconstitute a border of consensual sociality. You broke free and slurred “I’m no one’s! I’m no one’s!” before running out of the room. Hours later, you tried to comfort them. Weeks later, you realised how ******* ******* that had been. Months later, you learnt their friend had committed suicide days before the show.

Back in the lounge, a prince rides onto the screen on a pig. You turn to the Ache and say “This is ******* awful.”

The Ache responds “I know right?”

Outside the world burns blue with lustre. The Ache trails you and falls onto their stomach. “Oh my god,” the Ache blurts, “this is why I love acid. Everything just feels right.” They gaze wistfully at the grasses and flowers before them; catch a whiff of asphalt and nectar, intermingled. “Like, gender isn’t even a thing, you know? Just properties condensed into a legible sign to be disciplined by heteronormative governmentality.”

“Properties! Properties!” You chant, stomping around the Ache with your arms stretched out. You wave them in the air like windmills. You bare your teeth. “Properties! Properties!”

“You know what I mean, right?” The Ache asks, pointedly. “You know what I mean?”

You continue chanting “Properties!” for another minute or two, before spotting a slug on a blade of grass beneath your feet. You fall to your knees and gasp “It’s a slug!”

You and the Ache stare at the tiny referent for an indefinite period of time, absorbed in its glistening moistures. Eventually, the Ache says “I think it’s actually a snail.”

You used to read postmodern novels on acid. You loved their exploration of hyperreality; their dissection of culture as a system of meaning that arises out of our collective, desperate attempts to overcome the indifference of facticity. Read symptomatically, culture does not reveal unseen depths in the world, but rather, constitutes shallow networks of sprawling complexity — truth effects — illusions of mastery over an, otherwise, undifferentiated and senseless becoming.

Then one day, the world overwhelmed you. Down the hall, your flatmates sounded an eternal return. As they spoke in joyous abandon you traced the lines from their mouths — found their origin in idiot artefacts of Hollywood Babylon. The joy of abstraction you once relished in your books took on an all too direct horror. You recoiled. You bound your lips in hysteria, for fear of becoming another repeating machine of an all too present culture industry. Better dumb than banal — better to say nothing at all, than everything that already was and would ever be. You cried and cried until everyone left — until you were alone with your silence and your tears and your nonexistent originality.

Dusk falls in violet streaks. You reach your room on the second floor of the building, open the bedside window and stick your legs out into a cool breeze. The Ache joins you. Danny Burton, the local MP, arrives in his van, his smiling bald face plastered on its side like an uncanny double enclosing its original.

“Hey look, it’s Danny Burton, the local MP.” Danny Burton turns his head. He glares at your dangling feet for a few seconds before entering his house. “You know, this is the first time in three years he’s looked at me and it’s at the peak of my degeneracy.” You turn to the Ache. “One of my favourite past times is watching him wander around the house at night, ******* and unsure of himself. He always goes to check on his BBQ.” You bounce on the bed in mania.

“See this is what people do, right?” the Ache says, mirroring your excitement. “Like, look at that lady walking her dog.” The Ache motions, with a cruel glint in their eyes, to the passerby on the fast dimming street. “What do you think she gets out of that? Doing that every night?” Without waiting for you to respond, the Ache answers, in a low, sarcastic tone “I guess she gets enjoyment. Doing her thing. Like everyone else.” The lady and the dog disappear beyond the curve of the road. Another pair soon arrives, taking the same path as the one before.

A few months back, you’d met an old friend at an exhibition on intersectional feminism. After the perfunctory art, wine and grapes, she drove you home, back to your run down flat in an otherwise bourgeois neighbourhood. She sat silent as the sun set before the dashboard, then asked how anyone could live like this; how anyone could stand driving out of their perfect suburban home, at the same time every morning, to work the same shift every day, for the rest of their stupid life. The dull ache of routine; the slow, boring death. You said nothing. You said nothing because you agreed with her.

“Life began as self-replicating information molecules,” you reply, obliquely. “Catalysis on superheated clay pockets. Repetition out of an attempt to bind the excess of radiant light.”

It is dark now; a formless hollow, pitted with harsh yellow lamps of varying, distant sizes. The Ache flips onto their stomach and scoffs “What’s that? We’re all in this pointless repetition together?”

You respond, cautiously “I just don’t think that being smart is any better than being stupid; that our disavowed repetitions are any worthier than anyone else’s.”

The Ache returns your gaze with an intensity you’ve never seen before. “Did I say being smart was any better? Did I say that? Being smart is part of the issue. There is no trajectory that doesn’t become a habitual refrain. When you can do anything, everything becomes rote, effortless and pointless.

“But don’t act as if there’s no difference between us and these ******* idiots,” the Ache spits, motioning into the blackness beyond your frame. “I knew this one guy, this complete and utter ****. We went to a café, and he wouldn’t stop talking about the waitress, about how hot she was, how he wanted to **** her, while she was in earshot, because, I don’t know, he thought that would get him laid.

“Then we went for a drive and he failed a ******* u-turn. He just drove back and forth, over and again. A dead, automatic weight. A car came from the other lane, towards us, and waited for him to finish, but he stopped in the middle of the street and started yelling, saying **** like, ‘what does this ******* want?’ He got out of his car, out of his idiot u-turn, and tried to start a fight with the other driver — you know, the one who’d waited silently for him to finish.”

You don’t attempt a rebuttal; you don’t want to negate the Ache’s experience. Instead, you ask “Why were you hanging out with this guy in the first place?”

The Ache responds “Because I was alone, and I was lonely, and I had no one else.”

It is 2AM. Moths dance chaotic across the invisible precipice of your bedside window, between the inner and outer spaces of linguistic designation. There is a layering of history here — of affects and functions that have blurred beyond recognition — discoloured, muted, absented.

In the hollow of your bed, the Ache laughs. You don’t dare close the distance. Sometimes you find the edges of their impact and trace your own death. All your worries manifest without content. All form and waver and empty expanse where you drink deeply without a head. Because you have lost so much time already. And nothing keeps.

Months later, after the Ache has left, you will go to the beach. You will see the roiling waves beneath crash into the rocky shore of the esplanade, a violence that merges formlessly into a still, motionless horizon, for they are two and the same. You will be unable to put into words how it feels to know that such a line of calm exists out of the pull and push of endless change, that it has existed long before your birth and will exist long after your death.

The last lingering traces of acid flee your skin. Doused in tomorrow’s stupor, you close your eyes. You catch no sleep.
“Self-destruction is simply a more honest form of living. To know the totality of your artifice and frailty in the face of suffering. And then to have it broken.”
douglas chesa Feb 2012
I have been drinking wine
To douse the burning tip of my mind
Worries chewing at my nerves
Like the filter end of a rich Havana cigar
Woes of this world turn my whiskers
Into drab willows of misery
My nights into endless nightmares
And my thoughts rattling and jarring
Like the business end of a mechanical hammer.

Dreams clad in limp loincloth
Revisit me from the dark
Urns of history
The salad days of our beings
And their neauseating euphoria
When in drunken trance we siezed
Conscience by her arms
And threw her on her back
Splayed her legs
And smacked our lips
As blood spurt out...
I wipe my mind with the back of my hand
Trying
To brush away the dregs of the sordid rituals
We once enshrined.

A plump shiny green bottle
Buzzes around my mind irritating
Reminding me of Death
Hanging mockingly
Like a pendulum over my mind seducing
''O Sweet Carrion
You are food for the elders!''
And my sins in their hordes shimmer
A deathly pale round the nooze
Suspended from blushing heaven's bottom
My mind's eyes shed crystal tears
Giving away bucketfuls of Chiyadzwa diamonds to regain
Long gone and lost innocence.

I shared a bottle of wine
With my new-found friend, Today
Clinking glasses and minds
Then a greenbottle in full flight
Was caught between the grinding bellies
Of our glasses and minds
Bloodied fleshrot bespattered our intelligence
And our minds rushed to the wash basins retching
A brush with the fetid breath of the past
Left the gums of my mind barren and obscene
And together with newfound friend, Today
We covered our private parts with our hands
Ashamed
At the ****** of our thoughts.

She knocked at the door of my mind
Eyes shadowed in wet grey paint
Lips smudged in scarlet smiled at me
A Good Morning
My palm hiding the discoloured teeth
Of my inner-self
I muffled a Good Mourning to her, but
I felt a warmth spreading
At the base of my belly
Her milky-white mouthful was inviting
A milkyway blaze trailing into deep future
''I will flirt with her'' my mind whispered
But then the rasping sandpaper touch of her lips
Bruised and bloodied my thoughts
And I saw red at the future.

I must have swooned
From the First Lady's fistkisses of philanthropy
Doling out sweet nothings and promises
At a ceremony sheathed in royal pomp and dignity
Where the guests dressed like Harlequins
Mesmerised us with the crablike dance
And flummoxed O poor we
With democratic mumbo-jumbo and lingo
And the Povo touched with feeling
Donated oceanfuls of diamond tears
And their sincere prayers a mutter flutter
Into the heavens for beloved leaders.

I broke Biltong , my past, into the ***
To give life to ailing friend, Today
With my fingernail I peeled off
The tomatoe's tough ruddy jacket
To make sauce
And I heard a rumble of objection
From the August House
And the Mujibhas and Chimbwidos' angry yawn
Gave a chilli spice to the dish
And the food touching Today 's lips
He sneezed and broke wind
Startling ghosts of old nostalgic memories
That had took seats at the kitchen table
To wing away to the scrapyard
Their home beyond the rusting horizon.

Perched on the anthill of anticipation
I roll my thoughts
Into a big joint of mbanje
I **** and grey fading puffs
Of wishes spiral into the bored sky
Each a crippled dream
That was bulldozed at Churu Farm
An ambitious dream that was displaced
By the Operation Murambatsvina
A dream that lost an eye and limb in the food riots
A dream that lost its ***** at university
A dream that fell from the 11th floor at the Towers
Into the Taxman's hat
A dream that drowned in the opaque beer tank
At the Uhuru celebrations
A dream that lost its breath
On top of another man's wife in Mbare
A dream dumped and disowned
Only to find home at the bottom of the Blair toilet...
To find home in the sympathetic clicks
Of poets who have lost their voices.

The stub is burning my fingers
Minds run out of fuel and fire
The angry verbal lash
Of the emotionally wounded
Is a stub licking back at the wielder
To be snuffed out and discarded
On the ash tray of hopelessness
The grave yard that houses all
Once active minds.

-dougwa-
Too far away, oh love, I know,  
To save me from this haunted road,  
Whose lofty roses break and blow  
On a night-sky bent with a load  
  
Of lights: each solitary rose,          
Each arc-lamp golden does expose  
Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows  
Night blenched with a thousand snows.  
  
Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,  
White lilac; shows discoloured night        
Dripping with all the golden lees  
Laburnum gives back to light.  
  
And shows the red of hawthorn set  
On high to the purple heaven of night,  
Like flags in blenched blood newly wet,        
Blood shed in the noiseless fight.  
  
Of life for love and love for life,  
Of hunger for a little food,  
Of kissing, lost for want of a wife  
Long ago, long ago wooed.
   .   .   .   .   .   .        
Too far away you are, my love,  
To steady my brain in this phantom show  
That passes the nightly road above  
And returns again below.  
  
The enormous cliff of horse-chestnut trees        
  Has poised on each of its ledges  
An ***** small girl looking down at me;  
White-night-gowned little chits I see,  
  And they peep at me over the edges  
Of the leaves as though they would leap, should I call        
  Them down to my arms;  
"But, child, you're too small for me, too small  
  Your little charms."  
  
White little sheaves of night-gowned maids,  
  Some other will thresh you out!          
And I see leaning from the shades  
A lilac like a lady there, who braids  
  Her white mantilla about  
Her face, and forward leans to catch the sight  
    Of a man's face,          
Gracefully sighing through the white  
    Flowery mantilla of lace.  
  
And another lilac in purple veiled  
  Discreetly, all recklessly calls  
In a low, shocking perfume, to know who has hailed  
Her forth from the night: my strength has failed  
  In her voice, my weak heart falls:  
Oh, and see the laburnum shimmering  
    Her draperies down,  
As if she would slip the gold, and glimmering        
    White, stand naked of gown.
   .   .   .   .   .   .  
The pageant of flowery trees above  
  The street pale-passionate goes,  
And back again down the pavement, Love  
  In a lesser pageant flows.          
  
Two and two are the folk that walk,  
  They pass in a half embrace  
Of linked bodies, and they talk  
  With dark face leaning to face.  
  
Come then, my love, come as you will          
  Along this haunted road,  
Be whom you will, my darling, I shall  
  Keep with you the troth I trowed.
LN Jul 2014
Like a greedy vulture, I pecked at my skin
What is there to accept?
Is it the discoloured patches where plump red blush had settled before?
Rosy and full of life, I will mourn for my past self.
Is it the falling strings of hair giving up on embracing my tired neck?
A backbone that has defied its own purpose.

In a world of exchange and sharing
Nature has found a place in me
My soul reconciles with the desire to bloom
But my body is dwelling in its ashy winter days

Between the night and day
Find me halfway deciding where to go,
It will either be aspiring to be the sun
or waiting for the end to die with the moon.
I have finally written something after weeks of mental exhaustion
Leah Perry May 2016
I look down at my feet,
toes adorned with chipped nail varnish,
a pitiful plaster clinging to the sole,
and I grimace at the
purple marks, reddening blisters,
cicatrices of stories long forgotten.
The ***** of my feet are thin and worn,
my heels rubbed raw from
shoes I have loved and shoes I have detested,
faded scars from childhood accidents.
I have aged hating my feet,
the discoloured skin, dotted with odious callouses,
my throbbing, wrinkled soles.

They have grown with me,
from tiny clumps unrecognisable as a foetus,
to wide, long size 7s.
My toes are misshapen, twisting this way and that,
freckled with sun kisses from foreign countries.
They’ve been battered and bruised
repeatedly,
victims of my hurtling abuse and mortal neglect.
I have punished them
with verruca socks and freezing ointments,
pin ******, small shoes, razor blades, nail clippers and
not once
have I nurtured them, soaked them with praise.

These feet have walked me up mountains,
aided me in athletic championships,
withstood six inch heels on weekends,
ran me through marathons,
enduring my never-ending physical torment and though
they may buckle,
with weeping blisters and aching pains,
dry skin, broken bones and sprained ankles,
they will recover,
rebuilding the scabrous skin.
Regardless of how unstable my life may become in later years,
whether I am stranded on a deserted island,
or walking the ***** streets of the city, no room to call my own,
my feet will always,
undoubtedly, lead me to safety.
And when I am old
and withered, an exhausted heap of human life,
with my last dying breath,
I will thank my durable, reliable feet.
Laura Reinbach Jun 2012
Crouching in the rotted dust,
Covers covet the light;
Dull, discoloured dust jackets
And wrinkled leather hides
Of the books that moulder and muse,
Ruminate and render themselves
To dust, as everything must,
Upon long-forgotten shelves.
Becomes the perfect breeding ground
For shadows, for sickness, for sin;
The ladies are seen to turn away
With tarnished faces and tattered gowns,
While the hero remains anonymous,
A nobody about the town.
A plot studded with lacunas
And paralysed on page one,
Words grown together in intimate embraces
Never to be undone.
Thin volumes of poetry
Shiver with the poison of years,
As passions freeze and snow falls in May –
The daffodils die a beautiful death,
The clouds are mottled and grey.
A teardrop hits the page.
I wrote this about 6 months ago and kind of forgot it - much like the books I'm describing actually.
Ayad Gharbawi Feb 2010
HANDWRITTEN WORDS OF A MISGUIDED WOMAN

Ayad Gharbawi

February 1, 1989 – Cambridge, Mass., Boston, USA.





A silence dictates
Its hopes essential
That thirst in their intertwined
Hatreds for the
Struggle to breathe
The crowds staggered in their plodding
The howls turned nowhere
Even though they themselves
Really felt that their words
Had so many depths
But at least some flocks did hear these sounds
There was some heat generated
I say I heard roses
Crying gases inert
Their real feelings were soon discoloured
Did you ever understand
The ways and means
Of people?

I heard of clowns dying by suffocating themselves
Quietly
Didn’t they at least
Entertain themselves?
I saw humbled and determined gatherings
Of angry frustrated citizens
But they soon were to hear
The words
Of misunderstood monks
Who finally produced a smile
But their words
Did ramble on and endlessly on
And the winds of their spirits
Were far too directionless
To be of any meaning

Then I saw Hurt
I saw engines crying
They spoke meaningless melodies to me
And I did try to guess
But I screamed
“You engines!” I screamed
“You can never sing, you maniacs!”
My brain
I felt was losing
Its functions
I wasn’t too sure of what functions they were supposed
To do actually
Did you know what those functions
Were supposed to do?
I was not walking straight
And I knew it

Tell me of your cooking
I’ve been hungry for too long
You see
Or, you may see
It’s been too long
And your language destroyed me here
My appetite was killed as well

And your subtle hatreds
Yes, I remembered them all
And I will repay you real for real
What you gave me
I shall give back to you

While a hopeful clown
He
And she
Entertained and spoke in dialects misunderstood
I swear
I even saw smoke
Emanating from your breaths
That gunned me down
Down to my protecting ribs
I never have ever
Seen hatred like this
I confess to you
The units of my poetry have gone mad
And my sense of geometry
Have turned ridiculous
No, I agree
I never hated as much as you did
But I am catching up fast with you all
Jesus
I never guessed
What predicaments Man can debase himself into
And then again
I never realized
What a lowly depth, I too could be forced into
I was stunned
I cried
My name is ‘Ayad’
I thought that was enough
To convince criminals of my innocence

I was not misunderstood
That was incorrect
I was actually understood, quite well
Truth was
Nobody wanted to feel my truth
The speed of life
And human interactions and conversations
Easily bewildered me
And misguided me
I was tempted by the flowers of literature
I was tempted
When I saw independent women
Laughing joyously
I believed
There can exist a time
When loving can exist
In its sheltered solitude
Wherein there exist no indignities
Imagine
That your father
Is never berated
Imagine your mother
Is never to be shouted at

But then
The skies did change their colours
And meanings changed
And with the change of meanings
Intentions did change
Unto whom did the skies turn to?
And where did all the meanings of
Of every philosophy become?
Unto whom did they turn to?
RH 78 May 2015
The glint of a gold coin discarded and under a hedge.
The unmistakeable ***** and ****** of the shrapnel congregating at the bottom of my pocket.
I can find any combination of currency in a lovely jingle jangle of metallic discs.
The cashier slips me a note and some change on top which spills onto the counter.
A 10 pence piece tries an audacious spinning escape morphing into a ball.
The change rattles again as it all settles at the bottom of my pocket after dropping in the new recruits.
I slide the discoloured crinkled creased five pound note into my leather wallet nicely nestling next to a ten pound note.
I love the  smell of ***** money!
Harsh Nov 2015
Do you remember your first one night stand? The very first?
It's funny how in all the wrong ways it's very much like in the movies,
but in some it's not, which often leaves you properly ****** up,
many days after the actual *******.
It always starts with *****.
***** you absolute poisonous ambrosia, tell me how can you resemble
love so very well?
From the exaggerated self-confidence, delusional happiness to the shame and atrociously bitter after taste, not to mention the ****** of a hangover,
you my friend might well be love's virtuous twin.
What does 'a one night stand kind of girl' look like?
I used to think 'definitely not like me',
but tonight the discoloured mirror in my bathroom begs to differ.
She looks remarkably like me. She is me.
Perhaps there's an equation with variables of age, time and the amount of one night stands which calculates how well one fits into the model,
irrespective of the math somehow she looks strikingly similar to me.
Ability to dance topped with confident is my kryptonite.
So after dancing so **** fine, when he looked me dead straight in the eyes, and said "I want to take you home, kiss you and *******",
like hell I couldn't resist.
Everything was just like in the movies right down to the clothes
scattered all over the floor, leaving without getting his number, and
the infamous walk of shame.
But,
he was gentle.
He asked "is this really what you want" even at the very last moment,
when his naked body was lying on top of mine,
fractions of an inch away from entering me,
which made me think of my unborn son and how I will teach him about self control, respect and the vitality of consent.
How this is what a true gentleman behaves like, even when the beast within him was roaring to be unleashed.
He held me tight all night long.
He buried his face in my neck and wrapped his arms so tightly around me, I could feel his heart beat through my veins.
His cologne ran all night long and into the morning reminding me how much I used to get turned on by men's aftershave, one of my favourite scents in the world,
right amongst freshly baked cookies, rain on dry grass and wall paint.
This was not like in the movies.
As I bid him goodbye and locked his fancy apartment door behind me,
I felt rudely shaken awake from the day dream, I felt something in me drop.
It wasn't because I knew I would never see him again,
but rather 'cause I knew later tonight I'd remember last night and miss the sensation over and over again.
The phenomenon of feeling desired, the warmth that accompanies hours of drunken ***, the sweaty stickiness, the giddiness, the passion that accompany a one night stand.
Not being alone.  
A warm bed.
I knew I will miss all that. I miss all that.
I forgot my wristwatch on his bedside table.
Made me think of the time I lost.
The time I lost calculating the significant impact a one night stand would have on my dignity.
The time I am loosing thinking about the past, though so very raw and fresh, which remains unattainable.
I also forgot my earrings on the floor next to his bedside table, when I removed them in  hurry in the heat of the moment, in fear of accidentally scraping him.
Us girls, we do that a lot.
We remove pieces of ourselves to avoid hurting the fugitive men who walk in and out of our lives, and leave those pieces behind,
without realizing that with every encounter we were becoming less and less like our true-selves.
Both pieces were cheap gifts from someone in the family that I held to for many years.
They made up in sentiment what they lacked in price.
Very much like virginity.
You realize after sometime like religion, race and nationality its a socially constructed concept.
It is only as valuable and important as you want it to be.
Virginity should not define anyone.
"Virginity should not define you", I said to the girl in the mirror.
For a one night stand kind of girl, her eyes were so judgmental.
This poem is the sole property of me and cannot be copied or used without permission. [Copyright G.H. Rodrigo 15/11/2015]
Mitch Nihilist Oct 2015
Everything is happening so quickly
so many negatives surpassing the
insignificant glimpse of positives
that never seem to suffice,
there’s always this light at the
end of the tunnel that everyone
speaks of, yet i continue to see darkness;
a journey down this long tunnel brings
no illumination but only a continuance
of nihility, the damp walls
seem to bring the chill humidity
closer and closer with each step,
the droplets echo the narrowing,
flickering lights dissipate at passing,
the gag sparking stench of sewage
and ***** make the voyage to
light even more unbearable than the
previous hesitant inching towards
the so called spoken about bearability of life,
sudden scintillations of light bring sight
of russet, worn doors, consecutively placed,
discoloured of crimson roadkill,
I open the first door and see a woman
tied and bound, gag in throat,
beads of sweat turning the white gag
to watered milk,
the dirt beneath her nails entwines with skin
and blood dredged by her own fingertips,
to front is a tray of what seems like
torture tools
intrigued, I slam the door
                               and avoid a kiss
                                   from Judas


The next door, I open and see a man
sitting facing the corner,
wrapped in a flickering fan,
staring at a wall of carvings of ticks and dashes,
to see arms of cuts and gashes,
with a tray next to him
comprised of razors and knives
he sits picking at skin of bruises and hives,
tempted to grab the tool and corrode self,
with the reflection of whats within, I slam the door

                                               and avoid

Finally the third door
eagerly stares to
me with anticipation boiling veins,
I press my ear to foreshadow,
I hear a cries; a man of hatred
and a woman of pain
I open the door and find a bottle of whiskey
I take a swig and feel as if Judas kissed me,

Within the third door; walls
with peepholes to confirm the calls
on the left I see the sliding knife
over-panting roadmaps of russet to
the neck of the bound woman,  
the screams are deafening,
they present a vibration,
stuttering thoughts, and releasing the fixation,
prompting the admiration
to view the second door,
I see myself, in door 2
tremors and convulsions
seeing blood expel every vein
as the verticals
halt oxygen to the brain

Departure brings me
to the abysmal realm of society  
where the burden of negativity
proves to provide no proof towards what
differs between the endless, narrow
tunnel-visioned cesspool of bone marrow
and psychosis driven visions and the
narrow pathed voyage of life.
It has been a while since I have posted anything. You can call it sudden shyness, or a complete loss of confidence but I found a partially unrevised and unedited version of this poem. I have been dwindling the inability to finish the piece for a while now, and I finally built up the confidence to do so. This was written quite a while ago when I was at a low of whatever you would call my then current state of mind. Most would read with with some sort of immediate judgement, but look deeper and find the meaning the of subliminal annotations written. Inferring is a complex component when comprehending the internalized aspects of someones mind who is unable to convey said aspects with words.
Enjoy!
Ramonez Ramirez Feb 2011
It’s the hour before traffic,
around that time when the paperboys
sniff, all of them rubbing their noses on sleeves.

The smog is fowl,
a stray dog howls
orange explosions of bitter pain
through which the sun battles to make a comeback.

Amber lights
flash
right of way
for
whoever’s driving home from the pub,
whoever’s daft enough to face the day
that way.

The last ******* packs her bag,
stubs out her ***
and zips her **** shut,
‘A fat cow like me can only wait for so long.’

Soon the sky is Usual Blue,
discoloured by security swipes,
fake handshakes,
and Columbia’s finest

coffee-stained
coffee shop waiters
who sell the finest sugar cube coke
to those hardworking folk
who keep our nation ticking,

and tocking –
the digital clock,
my rooster with the fraudulent eyes,
tells me it’s time to let the snooze button go.
John Apr 2014
Repressed energies
Planting sickly seeds
Biting the hand that feeds
Doing disgusting deeds
Grabbing the fist that leads
Sweating discoloured beads
All to the rhythm of the marching team
Susan O'Reilly Apr 2013
The wind tickles my moustache
cigarette tips its ash
must remember to get that waxed
or relationship could be axed

My hair is looking grey
better buy that dye today
my nails look discoloured
but couldn’t be bothered

Still got the voucher for the gym
I’ll put that in a card for him
Son’s birthday coming up, 25
open lines of communication, strive

Today’s feeling is melancholy
haven’t got the energy to be jolly
ah, here’s the bus
paste on smile, face life thus
Jacqe Booth Dec 2010
Unrest sits inside of me. Scratch that. Unrest riots inside of me.
Tonight I knelt face down in a shower hotter than a Sydney inner city summer day. My skin burned. I hate water. I hate heat. In as much I particularly hate hot water. It intimidates me and steals my breath from fear and a terrifying blaze in my lungs. I often dream nightmarish of drowning in an ocean deep with blood red boiling water.

Still. I figured I could burn away this cold feeling that freezes me from my heart to my skin. If this were frostbite I would be a darker pitch of black. Head to toe. Inside out. Charred flesh and bone, sewn over a fevered mind.

I knelt on the pads of my shins, feet flat out behind me, knees scratching the tub, chest heaving with my hands clasped desperately behind my head pushing down. **** up, face down, no grace in this morbid search for self comfort. Trying so hard to become undone. My forehead rested in searing water raining down; that puddled hot and ***** beneath at my mouth. I prayed for tears. I ached to open up. One bleeding stitch at a time. To bleed tears of salt water amongst the fresh. Just to myself. For me if not for anybody else. Alone. Uninhibited. A quiet fury unleashed.

I searched for my voice and willed it to cry out. Urged it to break open and spill, a mess of confusion could at least be cleaned up. Without that mess I was still just a disaster waiting to happen.

I answered myself with silence. The only noise I could make was a low, guttural, throaty whine. The sound murmured in the water, muffled. Wasted. Washed away. Just air and water. Leaving. Draining. Just. Gone.
Salt burnt in my throat. More heat. Tears stung at the back off my eyes so I opened them and let the water in so as to coax the water out.
Nothing. Nothing but heat and emptiness.

Scratch that. This is not emptiness. I know emptiness well. I remember the echo of nothing. I remember non existence and its dumb witted mercy. I recall the dull anesthetised blanket of apathy.

This. Is. Feeling. This is being full and riotous. This is toxic and seething.
Appendicitis yet burst.

Even a toxic spill can be cleared, a burnt forest regrown. Degenerative. I feel like I am both sinking and replete at once. Both burning and washed out. Scarlet bright and discoloured. Alive and exhausted.
I am a vacuum through which no sound can travel. Waves of compression travelling through matter. From particle to particle I travel silenced, with no substance through which to reach a listener.

I am not listening.
I am unsound.
Unrest and riotous.

Even as I write this
My face burns.
My body aches and quivers and my stomach turns over and over and over until I stand and reach for my tobacco and roll to smoke to abate this ache that is eating me.

Alive.

I am a thousand words unsaid.
Five thousand tears yet spilled.
Words fall from my fingertips
But not from my lips.

I am the quiet in the storm.
Stilled, Stalled, Appalled by what can only come next.

This skin. Of mine. Is prickly and If I could just step out of it, for the sake of feeling settled, I would. I would stretch and unwind my mind then slowly furl back into myself, ironed out and calmed. Fresh stitches, less itches and the sense of having been free. From me.

Funnily enough, although I’m not really laughing, when the tears do come, when they bite at the corners of my eyes until I feel like my face is about to tear apart, a mess of salt and flesh, The darkness reaches out a cold and unforgiving hand and pushes down. Until the brackish brine reaches back into my throat, slides into my stomach, dragging with it that fleeting chance of reprieve. Then comes the sick. Then comes the smoke. Then comes the still and ever threatening silence.

I am a stranger to myself.
And this is not the first time.
Valsa George Aug 2017
I am a paling star to be washed out
In the dazzling brightness of the arriving dawn
A calendar that ran out of time
A broken guitar with strings loose

I will soon exit out of life
Like a man hardly anyone knew existed
And only very few would miss

As I look back to the prime days
I feel years have flown away in a flurry
Like scraps of paper whirling in the gale
A dense fog crawls up into my eyes
The verdant vistas and smiling faces
Have discoloured like weather worn paintings
The violet shadows of red rocks
Form a dark cave within me
Nothing subsists in the dells n’ hollows
Of my memory
I wilt under Age’s burning breath
And wither under its deadly blight
Now I drift... a rudderless vessel
Through unknown waters

Waiting at the Departure Lounge
I now have only one prayer;

Don’t let me scorn and disdain the young
Whose sky is wider and dreams endless
Who walk with nimble feet and sure steps
To conquer the world that has left me a scrap!
Miceal Kearney Aug 2010
In this room where I grew up
calves’ roars creep in the open window.
Day dream on the bed,
mirror reflects in Autumn:
the time my notebook fills,
floods like the land.

As I check my email from my phone,
two daddy long legs mate
on the discoloured floorboards–
no business of mine
enter my password–
no business of theirs.

The dog suddenly barks, the front door opens,
two old babes shuffle in to visit Gran
in the same spot she’s been parked
for the last two years,
watching the seasons change
through the kitchen’s lace scene.

All as deaf as the dead; simultaneous
yet different conversations–
I interpret and translate. In unison
they sing my praises:
He’s good boy, oh yes a good boy indeed–
like I was the dog.

Outside Dad chops timber,
I make tea for three.
Cut some cake Gran worries.
What will they think?

Barn brack with ring,
memories of Halloween
play in my head,
welcomed like the moon, always.

Evening: after I have the sheep counted,
I watch the stag in the next field–
they rut this time of year,
call for a mate.

Tomorrow is Friday,
the first of the month.
The priest will call to the sick and elderly–
I will hear the dog announce
his red Toyota Starlett
over the fields.
Thank God Gran doesn’t know. I
can do without that worry
anytime of year.
Mí na Samhna- Irish for October.
so many faces, so many faces
disfigured lives in hushed tones of living
find  they have no choice
and with eyes discoloured
yet not blind destroy the flowers that bloom
they recognise the work of the infernal serpent
in Miltonian affirmation of a stranger
and a more deadly disfigurement
than that which like sun baked clay
bears its cracks in the haunting of lives
with a medieval gargoylian curse
to becomes the orphans
of nothing, except everything
and ask how does this equate
with so many faces
faces that are struggling for
the paradise to be regained
for the infernal serpent to be slain  
so many faces, so many faces
Connor Reid Dec 2014
LANGTON CRESCENT

Shameless,
a ******.

Jeopardy has no place in the closest of motion,
signalling to eachother,
that you might be related,
or friends.
Childhoods, more than one - in a single life,
spent without knowledge of such,
such an event, in times of jovial adolescence
I was there.

But I don't remember,
brash epithets of discoloured repression,
I remove my ensconcing cap.
Opening up a can of cold worms,
static from the cold draught
which is brought in by an open door,
as everyone leaves the room.

There I am...
I was there!

Someone died here,
I'd never been in this house.
Clutching onto my mothers hand,
through forced habit & love
wandering through life
with a keen interest in 'Why?'
A stark contrast to the average
'How?' That fills up the long, tall order
of the cancerous accolade of dynamic erroneousness
that any self disrespecting lifeform would call -
'A day'.

Whom did I concern?
I was a spectator without a ticket,
being let in for free
gross mistruths passing from one ear and out the other,
intimidating externalisations taken shape in cathode ray tubes
happy to give away nothing for free
purging on selfishness as the 'adults' talk and I induce

A boyfriend.
Too much to drink.
A secret sapphic affair,
that made them happy, it made sense.
Too much to drink.
A ring at the door.
Too. Much. To. Drink.
Panic.
It's fine...Invite him in for a drink,
act like it's all ok.
I still love you both (I don't.)
He knows. (what is going on.)
People aren't stupid,
but they knew he knew - they'd planned for this.
Upset. Anger. A fight. Resolution.
Kitchen. Knife up sleeve. Make up.
She drew him close in her embrace

...

38 times the instrument was coerced to and from its target
like a nodding head.
acknowledging the destruction of the viscera
untangling the truth
the complications of the human condition
spilling onto the floor like hot milk,
tainted by the penance of basic sin
an overzealous lesson in the fleeting nature of causation.
the sand of divine comedy,
fluttering through the hands of the undeserving
emptying itself onto the floor,
every grain more anxious than the last.

Dead. Still as the motionless climb of winter across a silvered pond.

Staring at the almost ***** tangling of carpet hair,
lifted from the hardwood floor like a jigsaw on fire.
'fake' Oozings spattered sloppily across skirting boards,
not all unlike an ill **** on the cling of a public toilet bowl.
blues, reds, purples, blacks
clashing with the absence of concern
this two bedroom tenement was unwell,
discharging its secrets to the seed,
too much for the eyes of a child.
There is a reek, a stench of metal (copper?)
- enticing my nostrils towards curiosity
and a juxtaposition of absolute revulsion.

The story;

A boyfriend.
Two friends drinking.
A ring at the door.
Oh joy! (lies)
He enters.
An argument.
He hits her. (lies)
Upset. Anger. A fight.
He doesn't stop hitting her. (lies)
She runs to the Kitchen.
Knife. She defends herself. (lies)
He dies.

Septic.
"****, we need to fix this, I need your help!"

"We need to make this look right, ****...Self defense, for the police coming."

"Quickly, hit me! We need to make it look like he abuses me."

"When we're done, phone the police pronto and get our stories straight."

"I'm a victim ok?"

"Ok."

In and out.
Easy.

She's the first in Scotland, nevermind Glasgow to get away with her situation
- Lightly that is, 5 years in Cornton Vale, an all female prison somewhere in Stirling.
The other gets away with it - 'Art and part section 293 of the CPA act 1995'.
No charge. As far as they were concerned it was justified (reasonable force).
She gets what she wants. She gets her other half whenever she beckons.
Driven there. No thanks. Selfish.
But she's in love
and maybe she has a debt to pay. maybe she was more involved than she lets on.
doesn't want her life ruined. errands? favours? you name it.

Someone you grow up with, someone who you consider family.
Are they capable of mad passion? A glitch in character?
Can a good person do bad things and feel nothing?

I wince at the retelling of a story.
Buried deep in the waxy imbalances of memory
as if it never happened
jittered from clarity
like a snowglobe that never settles
laughing at the absurd
sourced from fermented sparkles
and igniting omission.
I was there.
Not long after and not long before.
Sitting on the couch and kicking my feet,
getting lost in the cushions
and brooming in the damp, familiar sniff of the 1990s.
Blinds drawn, cups of hot chocolate and endless laughter
- remembrance and reflection entwined
dividing action from thought.

I was there!
...But the memory escapes me.
Poetic T Aug 2014
All I had done, all I could have
But with a touch,
A single cut,
The blade was old, black as night
It was a paper cut, stung like hell
But that's how I let it in,
My world changed that day,
I awoke,
Where once there was blood
But a vein of black where but a scar revealed
My finger numb,
Cold to the touch,
And everyday I awoke the coldness spread
Like a vine it crept up veins black
Poison ivy creeping,
Awoken in the night my hand upon my throat
Squeezing,
Compressing,
Restriction,
Of breath, I awoke was it a dream
I looked upon myself,
The mirror showed me The horror of the night,
A hand print, bruised flesh was seen
The veins of black had spread,
Upon my body
Feet,
Legs,
Torso,
Pink flesh now discoloured,
Black veins protruded
I shivered, I was cold to the touch,
I was being consumed from within
The darkness crept upon my throat
A voice not mine spoke,
"Blade of darkness"
"Hell sealed within"
"Cut upon flesh"
"To release"
"The evil within"
"What was warm"
"Be cold to the touch"
"Death will follow"
"Once darkness spoke from within"  
Fear and terror gripped my mind
As this body know no longer mine,
I had moments before I was gone,
Blacking out I awoke,
What once was me know spoke
Your flesh is mine,
Released to sin, this is my suit
To wear, while you watch within
You are dead,
Spirit trapped,
I will live your life,
While you soul forever rots within.
EP Mason Jan 2016
Dearest wildflower grinning
With powdered crooked teeth
And hair incandescent and strange
I write you this as though it were my last.
Follow me into the Holocene
And the night ghosts will not wither your grinning soul
Your blue eyes dance away
Your iris discoloured and grey
Never has indigo seemed so violent
And Auburn hair seem so opaque
And strong tongues seemed so silent.
During Berlin nights
And blanched London days
I'm forever burning in your flames.
this was the very first poem I ever posted on this page. Rest in peace my one true idol.
Poetic T Apr 2017
When the sun slumbered beyond the falling
horizon, a deranged mentor of those it wondered
over below. False expressions were given in tribute
to that which watched with acidic smiles of their  
persecution beneath its gaze.

In its fading they were collected in truest outline.
Negatives of perceived imaginings, pigmentation
descended from form like coloured petals
turning to dust. They were the abattoirs of this
now discoloured imaginings.

Sweetened voices of lullabies were replaced by
disorientated shrills, that reverberated within
the halls, they lumbered in there contorted abodes.
Nesting into corners of despair that blossomed on
them with hues of isolation.

Feasting on warm carcasses, weeping with
trepidation at this momentary freedom they felt.
There home of tattered souls that were cleaved
from prey, no peace in death. They hang at
the windows clinging to lost hope.

Time was a nine tailed mistress that whipped them
into the binding once more. For the arising was upon
them, they were lacerated within colour once more.
All that was flaked away and became as it was.
Smiles on there faces paying tribute to that above.
Terry Collett May 2015
The loud shush of the steam train shush shush and grey steam turning white shushing out from beneath the train and out of here and there of the huge black dragon and O the power of it Benny says sitting beside Lydia on Kings Cross Railway Station on a seat aged and discoloured watching the steam rise up and upwards and breathing in the smell of the train and steam and she sits with her small hands together between her knees poking out of her white dress with blue flowers her small hands pushing out of her corn blue coloured cardigan her fingers pressing against each other fingertips on fingertips will this train go to Edinburgh? she asks will this train go to Edinburgh? I think so Benny says Ill ask he says and leaps up and goes along the platform and seeing a porter with a trolley stops him and asks the porter glad to rest for a few moments eyes Benny and says yes it does and takes over six hours or more and seeing the boy standing there eyes hazel and bright and the quiff of hair why are you thinking of going? the porter asks smiling revealing a number of teeth missing no not today Benny says noting the absent teeth of the porter or rather the teeth remaining and trying to count the teeth but the porter closes his mouth and smiling walks off with his trolley so Benny walks back to Lydia on the seat yes it does the porter says six hours or more to get there he says thats a long time Lydia says longer than I sleep or my big sister and she can sleep a long time especially if shes been out until the early hours- her mother calls it ******* but Lydia knows nothing of what it means and never bothered to ask-he asked if am I going to Edinburgh and I said not today but it seems exciting to think we could go just get on the train without anyone seeing us and sit in a carriage on our own and if the ticket collector man comes we can say our parents are in the dining car and he might go off and we could go to Edinburgh Benny says smiling at Lydia and she looking at him taking in his grey sleeveless jumper and the white shirt and blue jeans and do you think we could? she says were only nine you and me and Im sure the ticket man would think it odd we were alone while our parents were in the dining car and we were sitting in the carriage alone Benny looks at the train and the steam and the powerfulness of it and says lets get nearer lets get as close as we can and she says all right but not too near Daddy says not too near ok Benny says and they walk as near to the train as they can sensing the powerfulness of the train all the more and the smell of it filling their lungs and been says isnt that great? yes it is Lydia says and reaching out to try and catch some steam but it flows through her fingers and even as she claps her hands together the steam escapes and goes on its journey upwards what do you think? Benny asks Edinburgh today? just us he watches her standing there beside him thin and pale and her hair lank and straight and her eyes peering at him its along way she says her eyes getting larger her mouth opening to a wide oval six hours or more he says although we could sleep maybe sleep until were there where to sleep? she asks rubbing her fingers together nervously wont we get hungry? she asks we never brought food or drink and Ive no money left to buy any she says looking at him wanting him to say it didnt matter they would find food some place but he looks at her and says we can sleep in the carriage our heads against the seat backs or lying down on the seats and food? she says what about that? he looks at her maybe I can get some from the dining car someone might leave things he says rolls or butter you never know what people may leave do you think we could? she says moving closer to him wanting him to say yes of course we could its going to be all right but he looks at the train and the long carriages filling with passengers and the windows having faces looking out at them and says maybe another day when we have some food with us and bottles of drink  and a change of clothes he says got to have change of clothing I havent much to change into she says Mum never gets it done in time some days and I have to wear clothes day after day we can plan it he says make sure it goes to plan with food and clothes and drink and money I can get some Benny says be better then we can go to Edinburgh then like it is on the billboards she looks at him feeling he is right and she does feel it would be a bit of a risky going today without a change of clothing especially knickers she needs those she muses not sure of how much clothing she might need depending she supposes on how long they go for and where to stay once they get there where to stay that is the question she asks herself and she takes Benny hand in hers and says yes another time when as you say we have food and clothes and money and drinks he nods and rubs her hand and says its long way off but we will go yes we will she says excitedly wanting to go that day but yes we will wait to go some other time and they look at the train as it gives out a huge shush of steam like a ******* dragon and they stand back as it gets louder and more powerful and a guard with a green flag waves it wildly and the train huffs away shush shush it goes steam rising and outward like grey white snow.
A BOY AND GIRL DREAM OF GOING TO EDINBURGH BY TRAIN FROM LONDON IN 1950S
Poetic T Nov 2014
It oozed from my nails like blood
But darker, no pain, it fell upon the floor
It was warm around my toes
"It was like a puddle walked after a storm"
But then then
Lacerations,
Irritation,
Convulsions
As what once bleed from my nails
Now pierced my flesh,
My body trembled,
As I hit the floor,
"Shaking uncontrollably"
It crept under my skin
Burning upon every nerve, but then
Pierced,
Cracked,
Perforated  
From under the skin,
I touched the first,
"I screamed in plentiful agony"
As if a raw Nerve had been openly touched,
It was like poison ivy, my skin
Discoloured veins of
Red,
Blue,
Black
Slowly crept over the open wounds,
It had moved to my trunk,
"***** of black spewed forth"
As it entwined,
Like clawed fingers
Lacerating my internal organs,
I moved back,
"Crawled upon the floor"
The now solid nerves
Scrapped, scratching the wooden boards,
It was a  futile act, as if I could escape
That which was under my skin,
My arms were perforated
Upon my throat, veins crept
As it knew that if
Pierced,
Bleed,
Breath
No more would be had,
But each was as if embers of flame
Inhaled, exhaled with each painful breath,
It crawled underneath flesh, agony
Not letting me go,
I was conscious
"Even though I preyed to pass out"
It clawed
Slowly,
Intentionally,
At each eye, like a thousand paper cuts
My eyes cried tears of black,
As I was shown the darkness within
That which had taken form externally, I was
Corrupted,
Polluted,
Distorted
Darkness that had crept beneath my skin,
And with that I exhaled,
"Black feathers spewed forth"
Cutting at my throat
As I ejected the darkness
These black feathers not hitting the floor
Instead just floating around,
"As I expelled once more"
Till one feather of white exited
With each touch
Black became white,
Ever brighter the room became,
Like a blanket covering I slept
"I awoke"
"Under white sheets"
"Was this but a dream, a  nightmare"
"I coughed and exhaled"
"A tiny black feather exited"
Then I knew that darkness is always inside,
But it can grow upon the soul,
Cutting into the white,
Like a vine corrupting upon the flesh
Good,
Light,
&
Bad
Darkness,
Are things of life
But we must never let the
Darkness blot out the light and take control of our life.
Terry Collett Nov 2013
There is that failure of communication,
At least of that soft civilized kind, the
Type that doesn’t involve blackened eyes

And broken teeth and bruises like fallen
Apples. She tries to hide her face behind
Her scarf, pulls up the collar of her coat

To conceal the bruises to her throat, pulls
The sleeves down to cover up discoloured
Arms and long skirts to mask the beaten

Thighs from her neighbours prying eyes.
He is full of jackshit and self-pity and
Mopes and sulks and blames her for the

Messy house, the kids crying, the bills high,
His fists flying. Unconditional love is the
Only real love, her mother said, lecturing

To her on her wedding eve, pushing the
Rosary beads between fingers and thumb.
Nights he doesn’t come home are best, she

Can sleep and unwind and rest. Even the kids
Can feel the peaceful air when he isn’t there.
His apologises are fake notes, they bring her

Nothing, reveal nothing, cast false hopes like
Wasted seeds, open up the pretending dreams
That life is always better than it is or seems.
Composed in 2010. Few things make me angry such as abuse of children and women.
EP Mason Jun 2013
Dearest wildflower grinning
With powdered crooked teeth
And hair incandescent and strange
I write you this as though it were my last.
Follow me into the Holocene
And the night ghosts will not wither your grinning soul
Your blue eyes dance away
Your iris discoloured and grey
Never has indigo seemed so violent
And Auburn hair seem so opaque
And strong tongues seemed so silent.
During Berlin nights
And blanched London days
I'm forever burning in your flames.
© Erin Mason 2013
Terry Collett Jul 2012
People are too concerned
with self, said Father Higgs.
His aged face as if hewn from
Rock, sat before you on broad

shoulders, the lips labouring
with the words.  Too much
worried how self will feel,
how self will benefit. He

hunched forward, his large
eyes moving over you like
tired slugs. The symbol of
the cross, he said with a

movement of his head, is to
cut through the I, the sign
of the self. You noticed one
high brow, grey, larger than

the other, hair in nose like
insects in hiding. He breathed
out deeply. Self denial is
the essence of the message

of Christ, he said, a left
inclination of his head, his
teeth (not his own) large
and discoloured. You wanted

to ask questions, but he raised
a hand. The word I is stated
too often in conversations,
he said, or self too much

brought in as myself or herself
or himself or such as may be
used in talk. You understood
this was his way of lecturing.

His black monastic habit was
stained about the neck by food
or dribble or dried up phlegm.
We ought to be concerned with

others, he stated, wheezing, face
reddening, eyes enlarging. Where
is my inhaler? he wheezed, I really
must be off, this smoker’s cough,

my poor old lungs, must get myself
a stronger inhaler and he was off,
out of the common room he had
caught you in some hour back.

All you saw was his hand and inhaler
and departing monastic habit of black.
Hank Helman Aug 2016
When Hector and Virginia moved onto the acreage,
Beneath and hidden under
The broad smile of a couple who had finally made it,
They felt the shadow of disappointment,
That always comes with the realization of a dream.

Of course at first,
There was the excitement.
Small explosions of rat-ta-tat conversation,
As they walked the outline of a house with a big back porch,
The back and forth as they
Chose a spot and then another and another
For the dog’s kennel,
The smile and sigh
As they scooped up the black earth
And dirtied their city hands and manicured fingernails,
Imagining a real garden with six foot corn.

And now, Hector couldn’t keep his hands off her.
On the day the sale closed he seduced her in the van,
While parked at Safeway,
The security guard had to ask them to leave,
And Virginia couldn’t resist flashing him her ***** and a smile,
Which the guard nervously thanked her for.  

When on their first visit to their new land,
Virginia suggested a lover’s hammock with a view of the valley,
Hector embraced her standing up,
Her hands raw against the rough bark of the big oak,
The wild approval of coyote howls as their pheromones
Announced a new predator had arrived, a new competitor in play.

He was constantly feeling her up outdoors,
Begging her to go *******,
Mostly so he could lather the sunscreen,
Over her *******,
Arousing in her some Paleolithic urge,
That made her brazenly offer herself on all fours.

An unspoken ' wanna’ from either one of them,
Just a look really,
Sometimes right in the middle
Of some earnest discussion about money or bylaws
And they’d make for the mattress in the trailer.
Their performance loud and operatic,
Jesus, they could have used bull horns
And not disturbed a neighbour or a passerby.

So it was hard to understand the dark border
That discoloured the edge and frame of their beautiful dream.
It was everything they wanted,
But getting it,
Left a tiny bubble of disappointment
That neither of them,
Could understand or accurately describe.

The house got built; the dogs loved the smells of danger and freedom,
The vegetables grew with astonishing speed and ease.
The *** was daily if not twice
And Hector became a pro at going down on her,
Licking her to multiple *******
In the unlikeliest of places and at the most unusual of times.

What is it, Virginia asked him one day.
I’m not sure, Hector replied and began to pull gently on his ear lobe,
A sure sign he was holding back,
I’m restless he finally admitted and I don’t like it.
I get it, Virginia replied,
We found paradise and we‘re getting bored with it.

What the hell is wrong with us, Hector asked and let go of his earlobe.
We die no matter what we achieve, Virginia replied,
And I think it is this unforgettable realization,
This Garden of Eden knowledge,
That it all ends no matter what.
That everyone dies and disappears
Means death will always undermine happiness, she said.

So what do we do, Hector was mentally ******* her again.
**** as often as we can, she said
And accept sadness as our most natural state of mind.
To be sad is to be normal, Hector asked.
To be sad is inevitable, Virginia responded, it cannot be avoided,  
And she knelt down in front him.
****** is evolution's greatest gift. Have them often. Have them repeatedly, have them with everyone you possibly can. Free the ****** from religious guilt and modern bigotry. Have one right now. Have one while you eat toast and read the news. Have one Sunday morning before church, have one outdoors, have one while watching Donald Trump lie cheat and steal, have one with Jesus watching-- he would approve.
Poetic T Oct 2014
And so they played they were
Innocent,
But the words in wood
They spoke In black mud
"Wood was"
"Wood is"
"Wood will end"
"Wood will become"
"What had began"
Fear runs fast in young eyes,
As to a father they did run
"Calm down little ones"
And in to woods he took
An instrument of destruction,
So upon wood he did
Hack,
Carve,
Splinter
Pieces now  layed upon the ground,
A splinter did puncture
His finger that bleed upon
Black mudded ground,  
And he dug at hated mud
For words to be seen,
"A splinter"
!Will seal the fate"
"And too wood will consume"
He looked upon the words
And glancing blows,
Now all was splintered
Covered in black mud,
Days had past
Night was calling,
He awoke startled, a burning
Sensation,
Looking where the splinter
Had punctured,  his
Finger unable to move,
Then as the nights did pass
More fingers fell to the numbness
Unable to move,
He awoke
Three nights past,
His hand discoloured
And a elbow locked, so much pain
The fingers now spread out angles were
Distorted,
Altered,
Contaminated,
As the stiffness spread
Arm and hand now
locked in this figure, not natural,
His skin did wrinkle
Not a colour that Is meant to be,
He though he would breath in his last
Outside he ran,
Bare feet did sprint, then for
"No reason"
His feet did stop
Pain seared through his
Appendages
He looked down in horror
Toes rooted to the ground
He reached up
"God what have you done"
And so the skin consumed wrinkled
Like bark his skin did
Manifest
Once only wrinkled
But more like bark from a tree
Wood was destroyed,
It warned in the wood
"Disrespect nature"
"And wood you become"
There is a new tree in the garden
The Mother looks upon this new
Leaved tree
"It looks like your dads face"
"Only just"
The child says,
There father was never seen
But he had paid the heavy price
For the words foretold,  
That wood will consume,
Sap leaks from the tree
Slowly it fell for many months to come
Always seeing but unable to move,
His family sheltered under the tree in
Summers,
Winter,
Rain,
They always kept dry
Under the tree,
And every so often,
A branch would move, to brush up
To be close to his *family.
Poetic T Dec 2017
Glaciers withered within me, evaporating
into clouds of despair. I collect within a dispersal
of all that was cloudless, but now I'm slowly
reseeding within a squall of sorrows,
              withered emotions now on the cusp
of what is darkening the skies of my fortitude.

But they say every cloud has that glimmer of hope,
                        a silver lining of reflection within.
That discoloured allure faded before it began.
And now all that I'm consumed by,
              is shades of ashen contemplations.

Static discharges of emotions collide in
turbulent clashes, as words shatter
pine trees of fortitudes, splintering hearts.
Echoing from within,
                         glancing the air in discord.
Precipitation finally collapsing below.

After every storm there is a moment clarity,
where tears fell and emotions disfigured
                                another's calm ground.
Remember that when the clouds are gone
that the illumination of emotions will
shine though, and once again there is calm.
Amber Sep 2015
alone
in the  light
that  wounds
the growing darkness
Is  the newly born hatred
That consists of
You and Me
and the things
that hide inbetween us
So pale
discoloured and unpure
It takes nourishment
from your  jealousy
You ruin my  lovely laughter
I am speechless
As I wander into your soul
That is rich  in  selfdoubt
You fill me with the fire
moving through
my words
Jedd Ong Jan 2016
Let us rise once more as saplings sprouted from gravel,
by the highways where the mufflers of the buses threaten
to blow us all

away, and sprout none
the lesser and watch for
maya: who may take our seeds and spread them and we

by them survive, strangled as we are by breath, exhaust and
white smoke: teach them with our dying leaves their names,
and let them mouth

it on their tongues, discoloured as they might be by
their birth, and see
and hear once more

the cars’ horned blare
and the tired cackle of gravel,
and the whistles of the trains rushing to: up, forth and

away, farther farther farther farther from the cracks where
they must have heard it, and with that sound pick themselves up
and give chase

to that sound that too
is theirs, but fading
away from where they too were born, and begin to begin again.
Olivia Kent Jun 2014
She arises from sorrow's casket,
trussed up in a dusky wedding dress,
yellow tinted cushions below her,
supposedly,
supporting her deathly pallid head,
somewhat discoloured,
looking rather distressed.
carnations and confetti unfurled,
sprinkled maybe as pretty portents abound,
a warning,
that maybe true love ne'er lasts.

Her man,
he sits longingly,
enduring his pain,
perhaps as a tragic hero,
awaiting,
almost to take the blame,
the blame for her demise,
beside her he crouches,
as she's sat,
upon her marble slab,

And yet again,
she rises,
yawning,
stretching out her immortal warning,

Poplars dress the mausoleum,
behind the greying pillars,
to the right,
a gathering,
a crowd small in number,
most impressed,
by non-committal of death's distress,
and her lover,
he sits,
and sits some more,
looking longingly into death's dark eyes,
while patiently awaiting her final tragic goodbye.
(c) Livvi
I was sat in a pub this afternoon and saw a strange picture, that picture inspired me!
I don't actually know anything about this picture, but it inspired me to write this!
Terry Collett Jul 2013
You stood with Ingrid
on the grounds
at the back
of the bombed out

butcher’s shop
on Harper Road
she looked anxiously
about her

her eyes large
behind her
wire framed glasses
are we allowed to be here?

she said
I don’t suppose so
you replied
but who’s to know?

and you walked along
the broken up pathway
to the back
where there was a huge

refrigerator with the door open
she looked in
her hands holding
each other nervously

what if someone got locked in?
she said
the lock’s busted
you said

you can’t be locked in
she looked at the lock handle
which had been
broken off at the end

you peered
in the back door
of the shop
smelling the staleness

and damp and ****
where some old *****
had probably slept the night
or used it as a ******

what’s that smell?
she said
holding her nose
between finger

and thumb
some tramps
****** in here
I suspect

you said
he’s not still here is he?
she whispered
no he’s long gone

they don’t hang around
in daylight
you said
she didn’t look

convinced
and leaned close to you
taking your arm
don't worry

you said
I've got my six shooter
in my pocket
and you patted

your jacket pocket
she looked through the door
you moved inside
and took her with you

her hand clutching
your arm tighter
Holy Mary Mother God
you heard her whisper

you entered the shop
and looked around
at the empty shelves
and the discoloured slab

where they used
to cut up the meat
her hand gripped
you tightly

as you moved into
the passageway
she whispered more
holy words

her eyes large
her small fingers
almost white
on your arm

don’t worry
you said
I’ll not let anything
happen to you

she looked up the stairs
that led up
from the passageway
what’s up there?

she asked
bedrooms and living room
I expect
you said

you climbed the stairs slowly
she held your hand
following behind
you listened for any sounds

her breathing laboured
her hand tight in yours
at the top of the landing
there were three doors

and an open space
where there was a lavatory
and a broken sink
you took her in

through one of the doors
into a room
where the roof
had a huge hole

showing the sky
in the corner
was a discarded bed
with broken springs

and a wardrobe
with the doors hanging off
you took her
to the window

and looked out
onto Harper Road
you smelt her near you
that mixture

of peppermint
and dampness
like one not quite dried out
after rainfall

you both watched
the traffic go by
her hand rubbing
against yours

her 9year old skin
against your
9 year old skin
Innocent as daisies

no sense of trespass
or grasp of sin.

— The End —