jo350 - Hello Poetry

There is a fire: Five foot four, with tongues of flame, sipping beer, tasting glass, spitting shards. Four walls, no doors, one window, shrouded in darkness. The heat builds, smoke rising, obscuring the way out. “It’s nothing,” you say, “It’s not my fault,” you say, “I’ll stop this time,” you say, an incantation for the last sixteen years. It’s the same dance, accusations and defenses laced with excuses and empty promises, we’ve all been doing it since I can remember. My father leaves the room, cowering through the flames licking at his heels, showing me the way out, lifting the latch to the window. He does not take me with him; I stay, even though I know better. I face the chaos with the bravado of a child, grasping for clarity, gasping for air. Shaking, spineless, silenced. I cannot fix it, I’m helpless to change it; I clean up, business as usual, just let it pass. Eventually, you get well. The fire is quiet, a flickering flame in a candle, burning sweetly. The only evidence of the fire is ash swept and gathered in dusty corners. My father returns from his hideout, welcoming you back with open arms and loving memories. You get out of bed, you do the laundry, you go to work, you feed the dog. You remind me that there is no fire, there never was any fire, there won’t ever be any more fire. I used to believe you when you promised to stop, when you said I could trust you, when you battled the flames even though you were the fire -- and you won. But embers glowing brightly don’t die, they’re never fully extinguished. With the tiniest gust of wind, they can be rekindled, growing and morphing, moving, burning, suffocating, cyclical, unpredictable chaos.

0

Dec 30, 2018

Dec 30, 2018 at 6:50 PM UTC

Fire

There is a fire: Five foot four, with tongues of flame, sipping beer, tasting glass, spitting shards. Four walls, no doors, one window, shrouded in darkness. The heat builds, smoke rising, obscuring the way out. “It’s nothing,” you say, “It’s not my fault,” you say, “I’ll stop this time,” you say, an incantation for the last sixteen years. It’s the same dance, accusations and defenses laced with excuses and empty promises, we’ve all been doing it since I can remember. My father leaves the room, cowering through the flames licking at his heels, showing me the way out, lifting the latch to the window. He does not take me with him; I stay, even though I know better. I face the chaos with the bravado of a child, grasping for clarity, gasping for air. Shaking, spineless, silenced. I cannot fix it, I’m helpless to change it; I clean up, business as usual, just let it pass. Eventually, you get well. The fire is quiet, a flickering flame in a candle, burning sweetly. The only evidence of the fire is ash swept and gathered in dusty corners. My father returns from his hideout, welcoming you back with open arms and loving memories. You get out of bed, you do the laundry, you go to work, you feed the dog. You remind me that there is no fire, there never was any fire, there won’t ever be any more fire. I used to believe you when you promised to stop, when you said I could trust you, when you battled the flames even though you were the fire -- and you won. But embers glowing brightly don’t die, they’re never fully extinguished. With the tiniest gust of wind, they can be rekindled, growing and morphing, moving, burning, suffocating, cyclical, unpredictable chaos.

47

Questions about the untouched past, answers only found in reverie. The secrets of the universe, erratic, enigmatic, locked in a garden of fear and memories. To grow a flower is simple – Air, water, sunshine. And quell the storms, as seedlings sleep beneath the earth, growing, blooming, alive. But people aren’t flowers. And your words are a pretty soliloquy, until you’ve realized that the very world that once seemed a lovely garden, is now a lost menagerie. A mirror might not have answers, nor can any map lead you home. Because no matter where you go, you can’t forget the past, how you were grown alone.

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Sep 12, 2017

Sep 12, 2017 at 9:11 PM UTC

Grown Alone

Questions about the untouched past, answers only found in reverie. The secrets of the universe, erratic, enigmatic, locked in a garden of fear and memories. To grow a flower is simple – Air, water, sunshine. And quell the storms, as seedlings sleep beneath the earth, growing, blooming, alive. But people aren’t flowers. And your words are a pretty soliloquy, until you’ve realized that the very world that once seemed a lovely garden, is now a lost menagerie. A mirror might not have answers, nor can any map lead you home. Because no matter where you go, you can’t forget the past, how you were grown alone.

20

I've spent what feels like a lifetime trying to ease my way into an English world. The world of Chaucer and Eliot and vocabulary only Merriam-Webster knew. I declared a major. I don’t know if it really matters anymore, because when it’s dark and the campus is empty all I can feel are the forgotten words floating overhead like stars, whispering for me to go home, rectify the official white papers. Become something else; become anything but this. Become who? Someone who can’t feel anything but the weight of the leaves as they crunch under the lilt of their laugh? Or the one who cries outside their advisor’s office, because they read something so beautiful yet still so small, an unshared treasure? Why write? Why speak? I don’t know the answers to either. Because when you are writing, you are speaking, and one is almost as good as the other. But when the words get caught in the back of your throat and your feet are blocks of concrete, unable to move or think or feel — Is writing any better? Will writing save the invisible, or the insignificant or the unheard? The ones who disappear? I've spent what feels like a lifetime, trying to force my face into the light and take a major that isn’t really mine, dashing off poorly executed poems and flash fiction, grasping for something that might work. But in the end it’s nothing and I am still just as lost.

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May 4, 2017

May 4, 2017 at 10:31 AM UTC

Generating an English Major

I've spent what feels like a lifetime trying to ease my way into an English world. The world of Chaucer and Eliot and vocabulary only Merriam-Webster knew. I declared a major. I don’t know if it really matters anymore, because when it’s dark and the campus is empty all I can feel are the forgotten words floating overhead like stars, whispering for me to go home, rectify the official white papers. Become something else; become anything but this. Become who? Someone who can’t feel anything but the weight of the leaves as they crunch under the lilt of their laugh? Or the one who cries outside their advisor’s office, because they read something so beautiful yet still so small, an unshared treasure? Why write? Why speak? I don’t know the answers to either. Because when you are writing, you are speaking, and one is almost as good as the other. But when the words get caught in the back of your throat and your feet are blocks of concrete, unable to move or think or feel — Is writing any better? Will writing save the invisible, or the insignificant or the unheard? The ones who disappear? I've spent what feels like a lifetime, trying to force my face into the light and take a major that isn’t really mine, dashing off poorly executed poems and flash fiction, grasping for something that might work. But in the end it’s nothing and I am still just as lost.

43

Where do you go when bow your head and shuffle past, with your hands deep in your pockets, and you feet in the faults of the earth, and you head in the sky? When the sky is dark and the trees are a hazy silhouette against your wearied trust, a colorless horizon, can you still see the sun? Through an open window or under the door, a crack in the wood, splintering you in two - Light. To go away, find a place veiled under a map, hoping to find answers, but instead there are only veins and roads and vines twisted together until it's impossible to see which is which. You found a cave where you can bury yourself under a blanket of soil, and sleep until the light awakens you. Under your skin are moon beams, effervescent, refulgence. Unread Untouched Unseen. But behind your eyes - nothing and everything. Still searching for something, somebody, but finding nobody being anybody least of all yourself.

0

May 4, 2017

May 4, 2017 at 10:18 AM UTC

To Whom it May Concern

Where do you go when bow your head and shuffle past, with your hands deep in your pockets, and you feet in the faults of the earth, and you head in the sky? When the sky is dark and the trees are a hazy silhouette against your wearied trust, a colorless horizon, can you still see the sun? Through an open window or under the door, a crack in the wood, splintering you in two - Light. To go away, find a place veiled under a map, hoping to find answers, but instead there are only veins and roads and vines twisted together until it's impossible to see which is which. You found a cave where you can bury yourself under a blanket of soil, and sleep until the light awakens you. Under your skin are moon beams, effervescent, refulgence. Unread Untouched Unseen. But behind your eyes - nothing and everything. Still searching for something, somebody, but finding nobody being anybody least of all yourself.

39

When I was fifteen, there were only three more years until I could leave. I numbered the days like some people count calories or steps or breaths onetwothreefourfivesix counting until there was no air left. Out of breath, out of step, out of line, one more time; try a little harder, push a little faster, be a little better, a little stronger, smarter sweeter tougher. Braver. I'd spin in circles until I was dizzy, around and around andaroundaroundaround before starting all over. Out of control, too fast to ever really stop. And then back to the beginning again where I first began, reduced to less than nothing, just a slip of the person I'd hoped to become. When I was fifteen, life was a game where there were winners and losers and then people who didn't ever quite make it. Neither a winner, nor a loser, neither a hero nor an enemy, just nothing at all. I ran around, afraid of everything, hoping if I ran fast enough, whatever was lurking in the shadows might never catch me consume me. I ran until one day, I slipped and fell down the rabbit hole, past where anyone could see or hear or reach. I fell through the cracks I sidled around everyday walking home from school, books in one hand, memories in the other, clinging to both for dear life. I was just a sprig with dead leaves and a damaged stem, no petals or blooms, flowerless, my roots growing in the wrong direction, defying gravity. Empty hands reaching up into the air, grasping for something to pull me back to earth, push me forward into the world. Desperately searching for something to believe I was enough, believe I was worthy. Believe I wasn't a mistake, a surviving **** in a blossoming garden. Hoping. When I was fifteen, there were only days weeks months Every minute accounted for yet all forever lost in one sleepless dream, in one fell swoop. Time lost, standing still, forgotten, my watch the only thing keeping each day from running into the next. I am not fifteen, anymore. I have found my roots, my time, my place, It's safe, it's home. There's hope. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Time is not forever, but neither is this. It'll be okay. You'll be okay.

0

Mar 2, 2017

Mar 2, 2017 at 8:57 PM UTC

Counting

When I was fifteen, there were only three more years until I could leave. I numbered the days like some people count calories or steps or breaths onetwothreefourfivesix counting until there was no air left. Out of breath, out of step, out of line, one more time; try a little harder, push a little faster, be a little better, a little stronger, smarter sweeter tougher. Braver. I'd spin in circles until I was dizzy, around and around andaroundaroundaround before starting all over. Out of control, too fast to ever really stop. And then back to the beginning again where I first began, reduced to less than nothing, just a slip of the person I'd hoped to become. When I was fifteen, life was a game where there were winners and losers and then people who didn't ever quite make it. Neither a winner, nor a loser, neither a hero nor an enemy, just nothing at all. I ran around, afraid of everything, hoping if I ran fast enough, whatever was lurking in the shadows might never catch me consume me. I ran until one day, I slipped and fell down the rabbit hole, past where anyone could see or hear or reach. I fell through the cracks I sidled around everyday walking home from school, books in one hand, memories in the other, clinging to both for dear life. I was just a sprig with dead leaves and a damaged stem, no petals or blooms, flowerless, my roots growing in the wrong direction, defying gravity. Empty hands reaching up into the air, grasping for something to pull me back to earth, push me forward into the world. Desperately searching for something to believe I was enough, believe I was worthy. Believe I wasn't a mistake, a surviving **** in a blossoming garden. Hoping. When I was fifteen, there were only days weeks months Every minute accounted for yet all forever lost in one sleepless dream, in one fell swoop. Time lost, standing still, forgotten, my watch the only thing keeping each day from running into the next. I am not fifteen, anymore. I have found my roots, my time, my place, It's safe, it's home. There's hope. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Time is not forever, but neither is this. It'll be okay. You'll be okay.

77

i cannot fly for i am lost, in a world i do not know and have yet to understand. emotions are trapped deep in my throat, caught in my chest, intangible wisps of half-formed words, bent and misshapen, thrown together like mismatched furniture, never with the intention of being articulated. we are souls on the verge of being, but not quite enough to be. walls hover above my head closing in, as stones crumble beneath my feet, rocks tumbling, disappearing into a fissure of emptiness below. in isolation i fall, surrending, before the earth shatters into millions of pieces of other broken souls, and we carry each other as burdens on our backs even though we are all damaged, flightless. the earth is 7 billion humans long, the circumference composed of pain, suffering, healing; souls piled on top of souls, and we are caught, caged into a life we didn't agree to live. we did not sign a waiver in the last moments before our conception, or in the delivery room, or when our faces were first greeted by the sun as infants, we never had a chance to cease to exist altogether. my wings are clipped short, and i do not know how to fly-- i'm thrashing against the sides of my cage, my songs of joy becoming tears of sorrow, of desperation and faltering hopes. i'm bursting at the seams that were hastily sewn by others, people i hardly know. they patch each incision with torn bandages, that come undone with each breath i take, only to be mended again. we are fighting to save ourselves whilst wrestling with the darkest creatures that only ever existed in our childhoods, our youth being a fleeting memory, scattered by the wind. it has become a mindless struggle as they pull you downward, binding your wrists behind your back, as you stumble helpless to catch even yourself, let alone anyone else. for how can you escape from the darkness when you cannot fly? and how can you fly, when you do not even know where the sky is? -j.m.

0

Jan 29, 2015

Jan 29, 2015 at 9:28 PM UTC

Fly

i cannot fly for i am lost, in a world i do not know and have yet to understand. emotions are trapped deep in my throat, caught in my chest, intangible wisps of half-formed words, bent and misshapen, thrown together like mismatched furniture, never with the intention of being articulated. we are souls on the verge of being, but not quite enough to be. walls hover above my head closing in, as stones crumble beneath my feet, rocks tumbling, disappearing into a fissure of emptiness below. in isolation i fall, surrending, before the earth shatters into millions of pieces of other broken souls, and we carry each other as burdens on our backs even though we are all damaged, flightless. the earth is 7 billion humans long, the circumference composed of pain, suffering, healing; souls piled on top of souls, and we are caught, caged into a life we didn't agree to live. we did not sign a waiver in the last moments before our conception, or in the delivery room, or when our faces were first greeted by the sun as infants, we never had a chance to cease to exist altogether. my wings are clipped short, and i do not know how to fly-- i'm thrashing against the sides of my cage, my songs of joy becoming tears of sorrow, of desperation and faltering hopes. i'm bursting at the seams that were hastily sewn by others, people i hardly know. they patch each incision with torn bandages, that come undone with each breath i take, only to be mended again. we are fighting to save ourselves whilst wrestling with the darkest creatures that only ever existed in our childhoods, our youth being a fleeting memory, scattered by the wind. it has become a mindless struggle as they pull you downward, binding your wrists behind your back, as you stumble helpless to catch even yourself, let alone anyone else. for how can you escape from the darkness when you cannot fly? and how can you fly, when you do not even know where the sky is? -j.m.

65

there is life beneath the surface beyond what we can see. i sink, holding my breath. my eyes clamped shut, afraid of what might be found. i do not want to fall but i do not want to rise, either. i am small in comparison to it's vastness, it's significance. it is a never-ending chasm, and my feet blindly search for the bottom as the darkness swallows me whole. when i open my eyes, i can see a narrow tunnel of light gathered at the surface in the distance, sparkling. the sea is a torrent, and comfort is found in it's constance, it's strength, it's ability to **** off our fragile souls until nothing is left but a shell. i do not want to leave. but my lungs, they need air now. i want to breathe i do not want to sink any further. and i am fighting kicking not ready to give in. i am being pulled down by a monster who looks like me, coming out from the depths of the water. and there is no longer wonder and mystery in the darkness. i wrench my body away from it's claws still bound by the weight of it's grip, and i am tired worn but unwilling to stop moving toward the light until i rush to the surface, emerging out of the water, fear pumping through my veins. there is a moment of waiting, calm, before it becomes clear that the storm is over. i am alive. i am free. -j.m.

0

Dec 21, 2014

Dec 21, 2014 at 3:46 PM UTC

Water

there is life beneath the surface beyond what we can see. i sink, holding my breath. my eyes clamped shut, afraid of what might be found. i do not want to fall but i do not want to rise, either. i am small in comparison to it's vastness, it's significance. it is a never-ending chasm, and my feet blindly search for the bottom as the darkness swallows me whole. when i open my eyes, i can see a narrow tunnel of light gathered at the surface in the distance, sparkling. the sea is a torrent, and comfort is found in it's constance, it's strength, it's ability to **** off our fragile souls until nothing is left but a shell. i do not want to leave. but my lungs, they need air now. i want to breathe i do not want to sink any further. and i am fighting kicking not ready to give in. i am being pulled down by a monster who looks like me, coming out from the depths of the water. and there is no longer wonder and mystery in the darkness. i wrench my body away from it's claws still bound by the weight of it's grip, and i am tired worn but unwilling to stop moving toward the light until i rush to the surface, emerging out of the water, fear pumping through my veins. there is a moment of waiting, calm, before it becomes clear that the storm is over. i am alive. i am free. -j.m.

51

logic is crushed by your steel-toed boots your words wrap around my ribs, bony fingers curling around my neck, filling my lungs with sulfur. glitter flashes before my eyes the memories glistening like diamonds, before turning into thunder, pounding crashing loud enough to break even the strongest beam. the frequency of the memory is deafening, caught in a wave of idyllic despair bursting past our young consciousnesses. i am trying to grasp the fleeting moments, hold them close, before burying them far away where they can remain as untouched souls, pure and simple. i cannot ever bring myself to wonder if you have done the same. but on the darkest of nights, stars surround your shadow, lighting up your voice that has never left my ears. and i am weightless spinning swirling floating until my feet are no longer touching the ground. my vision is blurred, bursting into a thousand fiery flames composed of iridescent snowflakes before evaporating into the clouds. It's a slow pull of gravity as I fall back to earth, crashing and diving and hurdling toward the dusty surface, trying and failing to regain my balance. the world seems lost the world seems ruined. and i rise lifting my face toward the light. I can see a reflection in the mirror And I am dancing Alone -j.m.

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Dec 19, 2014

Dec 19, 2014 at 7:21 PM UTC

Dancing Alone

logic is crushed by your steel-toed boots your words wrap around my ribs, bony fingers curling around my neck, filling my lungs with sulfur. glitter flashes before my eyes the memories glistening like diamonds, before turning into thunder, pounding crashing loud enough to break even the strongest beam. the frequency of the memory is deafening, caught in a wave of idyllic despair bursting past our young consciousnesses. i am trying to grasp the fleeting moments, hold them close, before burying them far away where they can remain as untouched souls, pure and simple. i cannot ever bring myself to wonder if you have done the same. but on the darkest of nights, stars surround your shadow, lighting up your voice that has never left my ears. and i am weightless spinning swirling floating until my feet are no longer touching the ground. my vision is blurred, bursting into a thousand fiery flames composed of iridescent snowflakes before evaporating into the clouds. It's a slow pull of gravity as I fall back to earth, crashing and diving and hurdling toward the dusty surface, trying and failing to regain my balance. the world seems lost the world seems ruined. and i rise lifting my face toward the light. I can see a reflection in the mirror And I am dancing Alone -j.m.

46