horri-bella - Hello Poetry

So dear the art I never had to finish So spellbinding the love That never got the chance to turn grim. Frozen hour Hazy season.

0

Mar 26, 2022

Mar 26, 2022 at 5:51 PM UTC

Clocks

So dear the art I never had to finish So spellbinding the love That never got the chance to turn grim. Frozen hour Hazy season.

6

I sent it to him one day, as I always did. I always had to remind him once a day that I was thinking of him. We lived in houses with no space for me. I was an intruder in our love. In my life, I love you more. It was true. I had forgotten how to laugh by this point. I had forgotten that I used to see my friends much more than this. I forgot that I existed in a world of my own. I forgot that now was a time and place, as well. I only knew that one day, we would be married, we would have children, he would work and I would stay at home until he wanted me to go back to work. We would buy houses and cars, because he wanted to. We would attend the events he wanted to. I would be quiet when he wanted me to, have *** when he wanted to. He would have *** when he wanted to. I would forgive him when he needed me to, I would excuse his affair because he was a byproduct of something much greater than us. There was only enough space for one of us to be wrong. I would forget that my mother raised me on her own. I would forget that having a family wasn't always better than no family at all, when he needed me to. I would stay in a loveless marriage because I needed to remember that there was no one better than him. I wouldn’t ask questions about where he had been, because he needed to be here and there. I would raise our kids the way I didn’t want to. I would not get tattoos I’d always wanted to get. I already know this song. He already knew this song, maybe one day before me he had heard it and thought of someone else. Maybe after me he had heard it and thought of someone else. Listen, it made me think of you. I had to love you more. I loved you so porous, boneless, skinless, brainless. You already knew this song. You always knew so much, I know you wanted to think that. You, too, knew that one day, I would stop loathing myself for long enough to leave you. Oh. I just wanted you to let me sing the song, too.

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Mar 26, 2022

Mar 26, 2022 at 5:45 PM UTC

In My Life (After The Beatles)

I sent it to him one day, as I always did. I always had to remind him once a day that I was thinking of him. We lived in houses with no space for me. I was an intruder in our love. In my life, I love you more. It was true. I had forgotten how to laugh by this point. I had forgotten that I used to see my friends much more than this. I forgot that I existed in a world of my own. I forgot that now was a time and place, as well. I only knew that one day, we would be married, we would have children, he would work and I would stay at home until he wanted me to go back to work. We would buy houses and cars, because he wanted to. We would attend the events he wanted to. I would be quiet when he wanted me to, have *** when he wanted to. He would have *** when he wanted to. I would forgive him when he needed me to, I would excuse his affair because he was a byproduct of something much greater than us. There was only enough space for one of us to be wrong. I would forget that my mother raised me on her own. I would forget that having a family wasn't always better than no family at all, when he needed me to. I would stay in a loveless marriage because I needed to remember that there was no one better than him. I wouldn’t ask questions about where he had been, because he needed to be here and there. I would raise our kids the way I didn’t want to. I would not get tattoos I’d always wanted to get. I already know this song. He already knew this song, maybe one day before me he had heard it and thought of someone else. Maybe after me he had heard it and thought of someone else. Listen, it made me think of you. I had to love you more. I loved you so porous, boneless, skinless, brainless. You already knew this song. You always knew so much, I know you wanted to think that. You, too, knew that one day, I would stop loathing myself for long enough to leave you. Oh. I just wanted you to let me sing the song, too.

9

I finish your sentences by Pulling the words out of your mouth Lending language to indecision Lending tongue to unperfected precision When the others talked about the bad guy in the book I never used my ears. Horse blinders on my head on the fissured sidewalk I finally saw the unfantastical you I was falling into. I wanted to comb out the phone wires myself To tell them it was all true But with my fingers on your sleeping head I could not bring myself to split time in half And offer a moment where my digits didn't graze your face. I could feel you confining me to the margins of a book You were ready to return But you bent me over too many times. The first time we talked about reading We laughed about how we couldn’t make sense of paperback Unless we had a pencil. We were more similar than you thought, no? I still think about the highlights, I still remember your lines.

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Mar 26, 2022

Mar 26, 2022 at 5:32 PM UTC

The Librarian

I finish your sentences by Pulling the words out of your mouth Lending language to indecision Lending tongue to unperfected precision When the others talked about the bad guy in the book I never used my ears. Horse blinders on my head on the fissured sidewalk I finally saw the unfantastical you I was falling into. I wanted to comb out the phone wires myself To tell them it was all true But with my fingers on your sleeping head I could not bring myself to split time in half And offer a moment where my digits didn't graze your face. I could feel you confining me to the margins of a book You were ready to return But you bent me over too many times. The first time we talked about reading We laughed about how we couldn’t make sense of paperback Unless we had a pencil. We were more similar than you thought, no? I still think about the highlights, I still remember your lines.

22

and in that deafening silence, i’ve never wished more to be heard, wracked with endless demurs of regret and remorse – impure, impure, impure. ii. but it’s my choice, isn’t it? to bear the knot of pearls come undone, to feel it shift from skin to soul, to speak of loving, and then let go. (i see this now as a luxury i could not afford.) iii. if i don’t rise come blooming spring, ring the church bells for those left unheard, wash the red from the bed sheets, please unhinge my strife from the earth; and know this: a man is no longer a man, after his unbidden pillage, has left an innocent soul shaken; unholy. holy, holy, holy.

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Feb 1, 2021

Feb 1, 2021 at 6:46 AM UTC

Where a Poem about My Body Becomes One about being Touched

and in that deafening silence, i’ve never wished more to be heard, wracked with endless demurs of regret and remorse – impure, impure, impure. ii. but it’s my choice, isn’t it? to bear the knot of pearls come undone, to feel it shift from skin to soul, to speak of loving, and then let go. (i see this now as a luxury i could not afford.) iii. if i don’t rise come blooming spring, ring the church bells for those left unheard, wash the red from the bed sheets, please unhinge my strife from the earth; and know this: a man is no longer a man, after his unbidden pillage, has left an innocent soul shaken; unholy. holy, holy, holy.

20

you called us the perfect match that one birthday, i felt my bag of seeds fall onto the open sidewalk, the twines ravel into discoid around my feet and make me think your words are water to be sipped from your open mouth, your hand snaked my waist as the roots pulled me farther away from the night you told me you don’t want to bend over backwards for my knees anymore, my Puma’s always gave you cold feet but my inner thighs were still Ghadames enough for you to set up a tent, or perhaps, steal one I thought I had saved for someone special. you called us the perfect match that one day. i saw you leave that sentence in the fridge and sip them five days later, face wedged somewhere in between the biting humour of my psyche like a power station without a generator and the never ending exploitation of the little blonde girl named weakness who found a place in my fingertips so close to your face, in my wallet, in the place I once used to be able to rest, but these shoulders, opened orifices for black holes, like Falstaffian stars that caved in, that were anything but the empty space we occupied on the benches of basketball courts. Three days after I started writing this and the urge to your clouds hover over me once again glistens like a poison apple I don’t want to confess to biting, because this pain is biting, and there is only space for one. I don’t want to eat the cake at three am and hope no one notices it again, because they will, they will see it from the icing on my lips and the grime on my fingertips. I miss your smell already thought it sells for 10 dollars at the corner shop. But its you, its you, its just you. Your kisses on my cheek after we fight. It is wrong that I consider this a sweet moment. It stems at you pouring my blood into a kettle and leaving it to cook. But this liquid will not evaporate. But I know these tears will.

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Jun 15, 2018

Jun 15, 2018 at 12:53 PM UTC

The Perfect Match

you called us the perfect match that one birthday, i felt my bag of seeds fall onto the open sidewalk, the twines ravel into discoid around my feet and make me think your words are water to be sipped from your open mouth, your hand snaked my waist as the roots pulled me farther away from the night you told me you don’t want to bend over backwards for my knees anymore, my Puma’s always gave you cold feet but my inner thighs were still Ghadames enough for you to set up a tent, or perhaps, steal one I thought I had saved for someone special. you called us the perfect match that one day. i saw you leave that sentence in the fridge and sip them five days later, face wedged somewhere in between the biting humour of my psyche like a power station without a generator and the never ending exploitation of the little blonde girl named weakness who found a place in my fingertips so close to your face, in my wallet, in the place I once used to be able to rest, but these shoulders, opened orifices for black holes, like Falstaffian stars that caved in, that were anything but the empty space we occupied on the benches of basketball courts. Three days after I started writing this and the urge to your clouds hover over me once again glistens like a poison apple I don’t want to confess to biting, because this pain is biting, and there is only space for one. I don’t want to eat the cake at three am and hope no one notices it again, because they will, they will see it from the icing on my lips and the grime on my fingertips. I miss your smell already thought it sells for 10 dollars at the corner shop. But its you, its you, its just you. Your kisses on my cheek after we fight. It is wrong that I consider this a sweet moment. It stems at you pouring my blood into a kettle and leaving it to cook. But this liquid will not evaporate. But I know these tears will.

4

When we were 10, we laughed loudly at the back of the room. Teeth buck, and eyes shut, shoelaces untied and knees untouched. I looked at my own reflection only to see how red the sun had turned me, I chuckled at the peeling, though it hurts, I knew there was more for me to see. There was no need for rouge- just rough. My best friend looked at her own reflection only to see how badly she had scraped the bend of her knee. Ugly was not in our dictionary, but neither was pretty. In unkempt braids, hair bouncing as we chased the pink butterflies we did not intend to mimic. We knew these kinds of wounds would fade. We didn’t realise ugly was supposed to bring more hurt to feel, when it came from girls who thought pretty was supposed to heal. And still, I touch the burns from the steam iron and the far-too-many cicatrices from the concrete. I remember the desire and the bittersweet, my body made a map for the universe to mark out where I’ve been. In my sleep I run through the wild wheat a thousand times over, but I flinch at the idea of female bathrooms and looking past the landmarks and monuments to see dirt roads. And still, we remained burnt, we remained scraped, we remained unkempt.

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Jun 6, 2018

Jun 6, 2018 at 3:21 PM UTC

We Remained

When we were 10, we laughed loudly at the back of the room. Teeth buck, and eyes shut, shoelaces untied and knees untouched. I looked at my own reflection only to see how red the sun had turned me, I chuckled at the peeling, though it hurts, I knew there was more for me to see. There was no need for rouge- just rough. My best friend looked at her own reflection only to see how badly she had scraped the bend of her knee. Ugly was not in our dictionary, but neither was pretty. In unkempt braids, hair bouncing as we chased the pink butterflies we did not intend to mimic. We knew these kinds of wounds would fade. We didn’t realise ugly was supposed to bring more hurt to feel, when it came from girls who thought pretty was supposed to heal. And still, I touch the burns from the steam iron and the far-too-many cicatrices from the concrete. I remember the desire and the bittersweet, my body made a map for the universe to mark out where I’ve been. In my sleep I run through the wild wheat a thousand times over, but I flinch at the idea of female bathrooms and looking past the landmarks and monuments to see dirt roads. And still, we remained burnt, we remained scraped, we remained unkempt.

1

The eyes are a pair of globular organs of sight in the head of humans and vertebrate animals Or are the eyes the window to the conscious soul? They call me the Devil’s Advocate Traditionally on the left side of your shoulder, purring that dead angels lie too The lost pulse has been cause to abacinate The light is blinding but you descry right through its laments, where the fleeting hope sings a tune that quavers as classical The light is blinding but so is the crepuscular, encapsulated in a vessel of defeatism, powerless to shift my sole. Your shut asymmetrical globes are created boundless by all existing matter that make them a home. A Molotov cocktail in the shape of a hollow ***** reminiscent of wartimes and tearing without the gas I choke on the smoke rings of the lit wick and I’m reminded that I hate going in circles and around But they are also vessels of protection, a place for kumbaya’s around the fire where time is used to back-track The deepest longings and recollection in my Purple Heart cannot be explained by how it beats 115,000 times each day To hell with the sorry excuses and fleeting ideas of the Beaujolais The soul is the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. Let your spirit descend into you again, fill your body like the dripping of Adam’s Ale from broken pipes Yes, they are cracked, but your chest is not a bird’s nest in December They are reminiscent of, but are not the promises your teenage self-made to your mother, saying, “I’ll be home by eight”. Press your hands to the aviary your beating heart has been trying to escape, touch it softly, and this will be the first time in years you've been kind to the keeper of the grey Glaze into the looking glass and hold your fists back, let go of the sharpness of your words and risk forgetting yourself End the match that pinpricked the flame of hatred, and bleed out the blue and black of yesterday. They call me the Devil’s Advocate, You hang from the trees, but I don’t believe in gravity.

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Jun 3, 2018

Jun 3, 2018 at 2:19 PM UTC

Devil's Advocate

The eyes are a pair of globular organs of sight in the head of humans and vertebrate animals Or are the eyes the window to the conscious soul? They call me the Devil’s Advocate Traditionally on the left side of your shoulder, purring that dead angels lie too The lost pulse has been cause to abacinate The light is blinding but you descry right through its laments, where the fleeting hope sings a tune that quavers as classical The light is blinding but so is the crepuscular, encapsulated in a vessel of defeatism, powerless to shift my sole. Your shut asymmetrical globes are created boundless by all existing matter that make them a home. A Molotov cocktail in the shape of a hollow ***** reminiscent of wartimes and tearing without the gas I choke on the smoke rings of the lit wick and I’m reminded that I hate going in circles and around But they are also vessels of protection, a place for kumbaya’s around the fire where time is used to back-track The deepest longings and recollection in my Purple Heart cannot be explained by how it beats 115,000 times each day To hell with the sorry excuses and fleeting ideas of the Beaujolais The soul is the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. Let your spirit descend into you again, fill your body like the dripping of Adam’s Ale from broken pipes Yes, they are cracked, but your chest is not a bird’s nest in December They are reminiscent of, but are not the promises your teenage self-made to your mother, saying, “I’ll be home by eight”. Press your hands to the aviary your beating heart has been trying to escape, touch it softly, and this will be the first time in years you've been kind to the keeper of the grey Glaze into the looking glass and hold your fists back, let go of the sharpness of your words and risk forgetting yourself End the match that pinpricked the flame of hatred, and bleed out the blue and black of yesterday. They call me the Devil’s Advocate, You hang from the trees, but I don’t believe in gravity.

22

Deepest struggle in the morning Everyday, I feel the weights tighten around my ankles Plum coloured bruising on my knees, from all the times I shout for help Productivity declines Rest assured, I am trying my best Even though it looks like I’m giving in Someday, I’ll hold my head up again Someday, you will see how hard it was for me In reality, I would never wish this upon anyone else Only hoping for another reason for living Never seeing one appear

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May 23, 2018

May 23, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC

morning woes

Deepest struggle in the morning Everyday, I feel the weights tighten around my ankles Plum coloured bruising on my knees, from all the times I shout for help Productivity declines Rest assured, I am trying my best Even though it looks like I’m giving in Someday, I’ll hold my head up again Someday, you will see how hard it was for me In reality, I would never wish this upon anyone else Only hoping for another reason for living Never seeing one appear

11

you aren’t here anymore thought they say you haven’t been for a while not since poppa went home he stays where flowers zenith and the sun never comes down anyway i loved you before the lights went out perhaps i only did because i had to there were always no flights to catch, for you and i both 5300 miles away couldn’t keep us apart anyway i still keep the sweater you knitted me when i was 5 tucked in with all my hopes of you watching me grow up you were all the warmth i needed here coursing through, becoming the angel in my bloodstream think i love you even more, it’s easier for you to see me now anyway but still so hard for me didn’t see your open casket but you never saw me in my mothers blanket i wanted to be the last face you saw perhaps you wanted to be my first i still **** my father for this but it’ll be the exact same cycle when he leaves i still carry you in my name June was never summer in New Zealand but it didn’t need to be you were always more beautiful a sight for sore eyes one i didn’t see too often visit me tonight, one last time i want you to tell me what it’s like up there if it’s really what they say if it’s really the better place they say it is as if they knew anything about what you were truly like but then again neither did i

0

Mar 13, 2018

Mar 13, 2018 at 1:37 AM UTC

RIP NANA

you aren’t here anymore thought they say you haven’t been for a while not since poppa went home he stays where flowers zenith and the sun never comes down anyway i loved you before the lights went out perhaps i only did because i had to there were always no flights to catch, for you and i both 5300 miles away couldn’t keep us apart anyway i still keep the sweater you knitted me when i was 5 tucked in with all my hopes of you watching me grow up you were all the warmth i needed here coursing through, becoming the angel in my bloodstream think i love you even more, it’s easier for you to see me now anyway but still so hard for me didn’t see your open casket but you never saw me in my mothers blanket i wanted to be the last face you saw perhaps you wanted to be my first i still **** my father for this but it’ll be the exact same cycle when he leaves i still carry you in my name June was never summer in New Zealand but it didn’t need to be you were always more beautiful a sight for sore eyes one i didn’t see too often visit me tonight, one last time i want you to tell me what it’s like up there if it’s really what they say if it’s really the better place they say it is as if they knew anything about what you were truly like but then again neither did i

33

I told strangers about the way you left me They got off the train and did exactly the same I dozed off in class and imagined you to be there, holding my hand under the table or passing me a note I knew it was my only choice To resort to sleep just to see your face again I feel myself forgetting you Your laugh Your shoe size Your coveted heart I wanted to own it But I never let you give it away You were too busy trying to return my own back to me I shrugged in refusal, I told you it didn’t make a difference I don’t breathe anyway I don’t feel anyway I think now I change my mind Please call me I want to see the face I want to forget Bring my heart in a paperbag Don’t sign your name Wear new shoes, not your old white ones I don’t want to stare at them again and remember all the times I did exactly the same To shy away from that ******* smile I don’t want to go back to trying to love you Please don’t let me go back Take my passport and bus ticket I want to stay here Wherever here is Away from feelings I once tried to know I tried too ******* hard, didn’t I?

0

Mar 4, 2018

Mar 4, 2018 at 9:38 PM UTC

white shoes

I told strangers about the way you left me They got off the train and did exactly the same I dozed off in class and imagined you to be there, holding my hand under the table or passing me a note I knew it was my only choice To resort to sleep just to see your face again I feel myself forgetting you Your laugh Your shoe size Your coveted heart I wanted to own it But I never let you give it away You were too busy trying to return my own back to me I shrugged in refusal, I told you it didn’t make a difference I don’t breathe anyway I don’t feel anyway I think now I change my mind Please call me I want to see the face I want to forget Bring my heart in a paperbag Don’t sign your name Wear new shoes, not your old white ones I don’t want to stare at them again and remember all the times I did exactly the same To shy away from that ******* smile I don’t want to go back to trying to love you Please don’t let me go back Take my passport and bus ticket I want to stay here Wherever here is Away from feelings I once tried to know I tried too ******* hard, didn’t I?

30