mackenzie-johnson
Hi! I'm Mackenzie. Although my true passion rests in singing and song-writing, I'm also passionate about pouring my heart out into my poems. I found this to be a beautiful way to spread my words and thoughts and feelings. I hope you can find inspiration from what I have to say :-)
I want to be just like you
I want to talk
I want to walk
Like I'm in your shoes
Musty, rustic, dusty hutch
of this little girls wide eyes
Words seeping in like porous wood
Leaves on a forest floor
Dampened by her mother's words
If I should plunge from the trees
I'll land upon my mother's leaves
Sometimes they're first cold to the touch
and she just wants to stand and run
Away she dreams to fly,
to be held sacred in other's eyes
Yet something whispers,
Stay, stay, stay
No, no, no,
just go away
But the something re-emerges
to reach and hold
and tells of the promise
of warmth to cold
She lies on her gentle spine
and in sense enters like staining wine
it stays
it registers in her mind,
give her time, pay her in time
From where she lies,
How vast the blue to black, the sun to stars
Fantastic foyer,
screen the sky
Where are the wings
so I can fly back?
Back to the sky
How'd it fly so high?
She's down here
That's up there
Syncronize the hardware,
Hammer away
at building the wings
So by my hands
I'll find this way
up to the foyer,
the sky
the high sky
way up there.
Oct 16, 2011
Oct 16, 2011 at 12:23 PM UTC
The sun's rays permeate
the ever so tiny angular pores
of the cascading white
that shields the window pane
blows a cool blanketed, billowing wave
My glassy eyes adjust to light
so new yet so familiar
brings about such squared shapes
with jagged edges
Let me follow words
words to a warm, orange center
words to a core
words to my soul
shown like a film upon
a wrinkled screen
hazy, yet somehow clear to me
Wisps of wind travel through
the thin cracks exposed
swiftly shifting the white
so slight
It dances almost parallel
to the old glass
dusted with faint film
of a dried yesterday
Turn the body
adjust the mind
remember what has been
Turn over again,
perhaps again
until enough strength
is gained to begin
Tangled cerulean petals
toe by tiny toe
slightly frozen
kick them away to reach
what my feet know
Other days I question
if my knees will let me rise
sunny Sunday is quite different
because its sunrise
enables my limbs and
strengthens my bones
and deeper than that
awakens my soul
It moves me
to a movement to
create a page of script
and dwindling notes
fall upon my scalp
and like a leak in the ceiling
they drip
They seep through the bone
upon wispy strands and
knotted ends
fingers surf to straighten
What will be?
I question what will become of me
It's like we're born
into something cool and crisp
when an opportunity rests
potential lies next to me
lift the sheets to set it free
Turn the body
adjust the mind
think of what will be
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 1:52 PM UTC
Fingers stained green and blue
With oil paint
Almost as to taint and tempt
Still
As the white streams down
Over the caverns of her hands
Wait as the last of it
Ends up back in the ground
Continue with your lack of plans
A free streak across a canvas
A quick glance over the sky
Initiates inspiration
As she shields her eyes
From the sun and its beating rays
Take a breath and gaze
She’s amazed at all the beauty
And is taken into song
Transforms it into art
As she hums along
Infusion into limbs
Engrained into her mind
She feels tremendous solace
In simply forming shapes from lines
Counting down the days
From the beginning of a year
Documenting in remembrance
To recall both joy and tears
Bike handlebars and fish
And shifting snow and sun
She thinks what will become of her
When all of this is done
She’ll study the mind
And dance through the days
As the last are just beyond
And on the rise
She’ll find the fear in the unknown
In which beauty is disguised
Splash the feeling on a sheet
And see what will become
Snap a photo
Blinded flash
She’s immersed in love
And life and everything
And what all of it means
She’s confused and unenthused
Yet simultaneously intrigued
Among the gifted
Swimming in a fountain
Of insecurity and time
Wrapped up in a blue, knit sweater
As to isolate the mind
To see it all, all of what this is
Through her almond eyes
Is to inspire a kaleidoscope
Of colors that flash across
A blank sky
Although intermittent
It all ties end to end
She’s up and down and back again
So fly girl, fly
I know you well
And your wings will be lined
With stories to tell
She’ll grow and change
Because she’s beautiful
In a way that’s all her own
Rooted deeply in a haven
Herself her home
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 1:06 PM UTC
These days are like a clock
They tick and they tock and
The ticking never seems to cease
A day will darken
A night will end
There’s always some sort of limit
A song around a fire
Or a laugh that hurts
In all the right places
Time tears it down
Time takes away a friendship
That grew so fast
Gone
Gone across a county
And into the woods
Faster than it was created
It wastes years away
And it’s all realized
When the air is warm
For the final time
And that new clock is ticking
For him to create a new path
I’m always chasing it
I’m so close
My fingertips are just barely reaching
A desperate reach
But no one
Will ever have the strength to stop it
Just one of the innumerable things
Here that is unattainable
But really, what is happy?
It seems to sit in a room
Amongst four friends
Then it abrubtly decides to slip out
Like a polite visitor
Staying only for a bit
A sign
It’s told us to stop
This clock has malicious intentions
It seems
It even drives happy away
It yells at the actor
Saying his final line
It screams at the singer
Grasping the neck of her guitar
Taking a heartfelt bow
It rushes a moment
But maybe rushing a moment
Isn’t all that bad
Perhaps it’s in the moments
You want to last forever
Time cuts them off
To frame them
And hang them on the wall
To show you how sweet
It actually was
How sweet it is here now
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 12:43 PM UTC
Patience
I have a lot of it
Not the roller coaster line kind
The I can’t wait
For my my body to drop,
my stomach to fall
For my hands to grip tightly
The the worn-down bar
For that, I can’t wait
But for you, I can
In fact I have
October will mark it all
I traced your path with my eyes
Footsteps printed,
Soft soil aside
Ordinary perhaps
But my ordinary
All mine ordinary
All mine,
You’re extraordinary
A mind shaken with such silence
A heart awakened by love’s loose ties,
Its violence
Patience
Wait and it’ll come
My thoughts a low hymn, a lull
Simply hummed
The hummingbird
It hovers
Hovers over that flower that is you
Sprinkled and moistened
By a light dew
This love is old but
You’re ever-new
Like you see it every spring
Yet still just as beautiful to you
I wait for the spring
Patience, there it is once more
Year after year, I shut tightly the door
Close it on harsh cold and
Bitter wind
Push it away but forget it nevermore
Behind that door you reside
Do you wait for me on the other side?
Are you knocking?
If you are, make sure it’s heard
I have not the courage to open
If I’m unsure
Give me a sign
A state of mind
Kiss the air
Let me follow
Show me
Do you know me?
Do you want to?
I know I want you
All of you, every bit
Your bitter, your lovely,
Your severity, your lips
Why yearn for one,
Yearn for one for so long
I fumble at the answer,
The explanation too long
Or just too complex for a
Simple mind like mine to grasp
Crackle, spatter the paint
Across that darkened wall
Of light fate
Pouty lips, tell me so
For you I’ll let my heart grow
But how much more is it willing to expand?
It has beaten a million times,
A million more till you take my hand
Do with it what you please
Trail like that air left
From a fickle breeze
Of someone rushing to the end
When a swoosh is heard
And then it’s gone all at once
In one solitary instance
Maybe that’s why I wait
Cause like that air you might be gone
Too soon
Then what am I left to do?
The patient girl who waits for you
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 3:29 AM UTC
Finality
It’s commonplace way down here
We learn from the moment
We’re capable to comprehend
That not all is perennial
All has an inception and an end
The way a day shifts
From light to dark
The demise of an artist
And the last beat of a beating heart
A beautiful night that
You don’t want to forget
That moment you lose all ties
With a friend
The breath you breathe
Of the last of summer air
And the patterns of lace
Draped across a bride’s hair
We’re human so we’re afraid
Of something we don’t know
So we reach to an unnecessarily
Dark place just to find an answer
To what we’re looking for
Whatever’s beyond
Is beyond our capacity
So we must not search
For an answer
And that’s beauty enough
Isn’t it?
Stretch it out, stretch it wide
And slave away just to
Desperately find a miracle
To stay alive forever
But to live till two-hundred-and two
Is to suffer through something unnatural to you
There’s a reason this life
Has an expiration date
We mustn’t question
Because we’d waste away
A clock
That never ceases to tick
We have to take time to seize it
To clench that clock close to our hearts
And transform each and every experience
Into art
Once the paint on the canvas
Has all but dried
You, the painter will take a step back
To find
Astonishing beauty at the mere sight
And when you reach it
You’ll accept the fall of night
Pull out a book and read all night
And see how it changes you
Drive down a road that you’ve never been
And see where it leads you
Tell a story and change someone else
Give away the love you yearn for
And it’ll find its way back to you
Run across an open field
With no shoes and forget,
Just get caught up in the wind
Laugh until you find yourself
Curled up on the floor
Forget it all with the people
Who know you best,
Who pull you up
Everything will just finally make sense
It’s in the moments that are impossible
For one to repeat
That make the all of everything
So bittersweet
Don’t milk a miserable life
Just to say you’ve made it through
What’s it matter if they care?
You have to love and lose yourself in you
And hold the love you receive
Dear to everything you are
Authentic and inventive
Innovative is your art
One day everything that breathes now
Will cease to breathe again
So what can you do to change
The world to be remembered in the end?
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 1:47 AM UTC
I danced throughout a year
With grace and changing tides
With every passing minute
A new powerful surprise
With truth and revelations
And thoughts often subdued
I’ve learned to shift my values
And transform a mood
To question every month
Up until this hour
To take it day by day
And wonder how I had the power
To fake a smile and show my teeth
To people so untrue,
It infuses love into my bones
To know I now have you
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 1:46 AM UTC
Over three years time
Oh how you left me
In this state of sheer shock
Standing barefoot and empty
Feel a bruise
And let it be
Tear the skin
And watch it bleed
Read a book
And rip a page
Doused with word upon word
Of bitter rage
Oh well that was then
I was in such a state
That if you touched my skin
I’d turn to glass and break
Unearth my shattered surface
And reveal my war-torn mind
My soul has been tarnished
My core crushed in violent crime
To look through is to witness
A façade of a long, red braid
A rope of stone and hazel eyes
Housed behind a stained-glass window pane
I don’t show much, no
But I seldom showcase pain
My body’s a vessel in which
My broken soul’s contained
Shed a light that leaves my body
A translucent haze
My all, my everything
Will be left for you to gaze
And watch and learn and yearn
For my soul to be saved
But that light will never be cast
For I reside in a darkness
With a cloud so gray
And a wind so pained
And an aura of sheer silence
I had a hunch that you were leaving
But never had I thought that soon,
You left the air so thick and pained
All your tropies still sit in your room
The picture of you from when you were young
Spans prominent on the wall
And every thime I scale the stairs
The weight of you is so heavy
I could fall
October replays incessantly
Across a shifting wall
Flashes of happy
And whips of winter
And splashes of summer and fall
Chairs aligned
With people behind
Unknowingly awaiting a fate,
Unfairly tossed to them,
You get what you get,
Luck and happy have to wait
You come back to me from time to time
In a movement or a smile
But it’s transient though
And you quickly return
Goodbye love for a while
Sprinting on a runway
Gaining my momentum
I’m going to need it to fly
I can no longer do what I’ve done
For so long
I just can’t live a lie
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 1:45 AM UTC
Am I the girl with the shiny curls
All tangled and unaware?
Of the real world I reign
With no inhibitions
Only love and what feels right
Doesn’t she feel like she’s flying?
Like she’s floating, like there’s no wind
To resist the pain of feeling
What this world has to give
She thinks she knows this world
All is light, just light that sweeps her cheeks
Flushed pink with youth
All is wind, just gusts
That brush her hair for her
All is effortless, effortlessly
Beginning and ending
And beginning again
Does she wonder about the rest?
Aspiring to slip through to find what lies ahead
Yes
But ask if she’s knows of the real hurt
And she’d confidently utter
The truth she thought she knew
We are taught by the trusted,
Swept under their wings,
Atop their earth
It is bliss and nothing else is known,
All else is shielded
With armor of might and mail
So I go one day
After the wing is lifted
And this world, this world of mine
This world of mine I thought I knew
Is not that world at all
Dancing past swinging doors
With air that forces her,
She turns but there’s no turning back
The doors have been closed on the past
She accepts the truth of fleeting youth
And letting down her hair
Shoes of pink satin are now deeply rooted
But not in ground of fertile touch
But in piles of unstable sands
Sinking, falling no!
Please let her out
“I’m okay, I’m surviving,”
She utters the words through someone else’s tongue
They roll past her teeth falsely
Walk impassively, she thinks
Kiss the breath of the ******
But why?
Why walk being led by unfamiliar feet?
Why run past a group of truth?
Why wish for what’s not truly wished?
Why not listen?
Why not listen to your own cherubic voice,
Innocent pitch and sweet intentions
Why not trust?
Use the trust that’s kindly offered often
Why tangle in senseless strings?
It’s petty and lacks virtue
Why?
Because she’s alive
We’re alive and we live and we die
And travels prove arduous
And she’s little
In a little body, little is contained
Little wants to be contained
Growth
Growth in a body brings growth to the mind,
Seeps up the spine and I know
So it takes some time
To fill the mind
And time also carries pain
All in all, you can’t just call the name
It calls you, it reckons you
And it stabs you till you’re almost
At your end
But it’s funny
It never quite hurts you enough
To knock you down completely
It rests inside
So now she stands tall
Stoic like the Chief that’s
In my blood
Wrapped in that petticoat
With polka dots and
A pair of red shoes
It took some time, granted
Tumbling a bit every moment
Standing up
Regret?
Yeah
She peers through the window
That cannot be shattered
To stop; omit all
Try, she tries and tries but
She can’t
She amazes herself though
Every time those strings are strummed
Or every time her senses are numbed
From all the petty rest
She knows a lot,
But not at all
But what beauty lies
In the potential
To bring herself up
Just to fall again and again
Every fall holds strength
To begin all over
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 1:45 AM UTC
There’s silence outside the walls
And it’s something we don’t realize
Sound-proof they are
As unbreakable as they seem,
Inescapable they stand
In the way of all their dreams
I left the walls to meet my mother
At the doors one day
Only to find that she wasn’t there
I was left to sit alone,
Left with the openness of my mind
And drifting words carried by air
A metaphor of senseless drama
Isolated in pores of stone
And I just cross my legs
And laugh,
I know what they don’t
But pity is also sensed
For the innocent of the souls
I do recall being trapped in the place
Where all that surrounded were walls
There’s silence outside the walls
I know, but I’m still learning
When they finally fall
Down around me
It will feel like I’m earning
The ultimate release of
Everything I’ve ever come to learn
Among these walls
The silence falls
And time heals the burns
The thought is real and it’s alive
But physical’s just the illusion
So why is it that something
Materialized by man
Is the root of all delusion
It holds us back
Keeps us trapped
We don’t even gain consciousness
Of what’s beyond
It was in that day
I sat out there
All by myself in silence and solace
And true alignment and sun
That peace was reached
And the silence and I became one
I pity the souls enclosed in the halls
Among these walls
The silence falls
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 1:44 AM UTC