ryan-galloway
American
I am an awkward mixture of obsolete cultural references and nostalgia. Thats probably the best way to put it. I really like to recycle, so if you see similar phrases please don't fault me. My work builds on each other, and they sometimes seep together.
Unwind within me.
Oh pain,
I knotted you up,
Crudely looped and tore at you,
Yet your strands were too strong,
Those ropes that bit into my flesh
Bound my wrists, held my legs.
I knotted you up
Into a bundle I could hold
Look at and investigate
Gain comfort from keeping you in my sights.
Better than not knowing your devious work
Not knowing which parts of my life
You were immobilizing.
I know you now,
I can see where you begin,
That frayed end,
Yet in the midst of the knots
I can’t find your resolution.
As I try to unwind you
Work this pain through
It is like trying to feed thread
through the eye of a needle.
These knots have become a hindrance
Trying to feed you through my mouth
Onto a page,
and now holding you has gained it’s own kind of pain
like I may never be rid of you.
I pray, unwind within me
Flee from me for I have had my fill,
Yet I know you won’t
For it was I who knotted you up,
So I must sit here and ceremoniously,
Ritually, unbind you.
Jun 22, 2017
Jun 22, 2017 at 2:06 PM UTC
I haven’t written you a love song,
not from any lack of romance
for you color my skies with your eyes
and your lips flood my mind with irrational thoughts.
I often write of made up lullabies shared over nights we haven’t had,
or some imaginary girl falling for this made up guy,
that doesn’t sound anything like you or me.
I don’t know what stills my lips
when trying to write of the night skies we’ve shared,
for they are the most beautiful ones I’ve seen.
I think it may be because,
even if I wrote with the most complex and beautiful language
it would never do you, or the days we spent
watching movies in the back of my truck, any justice.
Our love is messy and incomprehensible
mainly because I still can’t translate what I feel
when your hands brush against mine, gently yet with excitement,
as if there were magnets in them that just had to connect with mine.
It’s not poetic, it’s cheesy, and messy,
but it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.
So please take this convoluted attempt to work out my feelings,
as your love song, my confusing, jumbled, and truthful ode to you,
the muse to all the fantasies I write.
Mar 23, 2017
Mar 23, 2017 at 6:29 PM UTC
I wish I had known that holding onto this anger so tightly would make it take root.
Others would talk of joy being a seed that sprouted in time of oppression and indecency,
Yet I have found this to apply to all.
What you plant will grow.
What you feed will take root,
And anger, like a **** will choke all else out.
A little seed, tossed by the wayside, without purpose, or design, has grown to swallow my mind.
Choking off sustenance from my joy, peace, and love.
It made me feel better for a time, it truly did.
It seemed dignified and eased the pain.
So I didn't get rid of it.
What you plant will grow.
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 12:35 PM UTC
There was something about the way she would close her eyes when listening to a song she liked.
It was as if she was creating a world behind her eyelids, moving along with the lilting lullabies she enjoyed so much.
When her eyes would eventually flutter open, she would try to hide it, but I would see a flash of sadness.
I was lost in her ethereal nature. Her fingers that danced through blades of grass that only she could see.
Weaving her way through shadowy trees planted in wide reaching glades.
Splashing through puddles like they were oceans and she, the storm, stirring tempests within them.
A queen, was she, crowned with clouds dictating orders to imaginary soldiers,
to save the inhabitants of the land.
Though her eyes were always seeing beautiful things, mine were only graced with her, and that was more than enough.
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 12:36 AM UTC
She was quiet
as if thinking of her favorite story, or song
yet I, knowing them all
knew that this couldn’t be the reason
for her sudden silence.
My heart beat quickens
her eyebrows arch,
and I remember the day we met
in the back table of the coffee shop she loved.
I said hello, and she said “why?
Where could this go?"
She said “we could talk.”
“you could buy me a cup of what you may suppose
would be my favorite coffee.
Probably some darker roast
with some mixture of cream
highlighting the coffee’s floral notes.
I would pretend to like it
though you would later find I only drink tea.
We would leave, and I would give you my number
because I’m awkward, and by the look of things,
we would talk about our wants, our desires, and dreams,
and stay here way too late, I would get more coffee
to complete my act,
and by the end of the night you would probably have swept me off my feet.
We could go on a hundred more date,
and find that we love each other.
We may last a couple more months, or years,
but we would end up here.
Me sitting with nothing to say,
and you too sad to move on.”
I said, putting down the coffee I had bought for her,
“well the first part sounded good.”
As her mouth draws into a line, I fear we may have reached the end.
My heartbeat races, knowing from the beginning how this would go.
She would say “this isn’t working anymore, this thing we’ve tricked
ourselves to believe was going somewhere.”
and I will try to capture everything, the look of her hair, the gleam in her eyes
to maybe save my memories from the coming crash.
She begins to talk with hesitance in her voice,
something that I haven’t heard there many times before.
“I know I made a promise, at the beginning of this thing,
I know you pressed on hoping for the best,
and I know I may have eventually led you to believe
that we had beat the odds, or at least my dim look at them.
You know I’m a mess, a cynic, and even a **** but you stayed
and kept hoping.
Maybe it’s contagious because I have found myself hoping too.
Hoping my predictions were wrong,
and I think, looking at you,
looking at us, I have never wanted to be wrong more in my entire life."
Feb 27, 2017
Feb 27, 2017 at 9:47 PM UTC
I am spaced out, distant, bored.
The teacher is running on and on,
while I am lost in some other world
tracing storylines of heroes, kings,
princesses, knights, jesters, and queens.
Writing romance beyond any I could ever wish for myself.
My pen is running across the paper,
writing down my thoughts and figures,
hoping it may somehow make it more real,
like if I poured enough of myself into these scratchings
they may leap from the page into the air
and bring my narrative to life.
I would not go as far as to call myself a writer, a poet, a dreamer,
but I do write and I do dream, and I put more of my emotion on a page
than I do into anybody or anything.
I lose myself to worlds, in which I only visit,
yet they are more home to me than any I know.
I come to with the ringing of a bell, and find that I had spent
the past hour staring at this beautiful girl,
ethereal and wrapped in light from the barred over windows,
long blonde hair, brown eyes, and earphones perched in her ears.
Thinking I may still be daydreaming, I blink a few times and time starts to still.
She smiles bashfully, knowing I had realized my mistake, and gathers her things.
Leaving me to think, maybe the story I’m living isn’t that bad,
and perhaps dreams are even better when they are real.
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 5:32 PM UTC
It was in the way she looked at me.
A tenderness I hadn’t seen,
That made me wish that we
were the only ones to see these stars
and dream these dreams.
I watched her walk down the aisle
with a bouquet of rain, dandelions, and beautiful things.
We were kids, yet we held our dreams in our hands
hoping to grasp tightly to them as long as we could,
yet loosely enough for them to take flight
carrying us by their kite-strings.
Dreams made of cotton and twine.
Trying to put together a masterpiece
one piece at a time.
It was in the way she looked at me
that made me see,
I would do anything to build a life
and tie together dreams
to make something beautiful
for her to see.
Feb 7, 2017
Feb 7, 2017 at 1:15 AM UTC
I have been a hero to some
A villain to others.
I am woven throughout many stories.
I am sometimes the voice of reason,
Other times the voice of regret.
I have played a part in victories
As well as quite a few defeats.
Sometimes I lose myself in the unintentional damage I have done,
And try to dig myself out with the damage done to me, but it always falters.
I think the problem is
I am quick to forgive those who harm me
But can't forgive myself for what I've done to them.
Oct 23, 2016
Oct 23, 2016 at 1:39 PM UTC
The air of brotherhood once flowed so freely between us.
Midnight hours coming with no notice and little care.
Silences that stretched through the night,
A conversation which spoke the most profound sentiments of fellowship.
Though you may quickly wish away those days,
Or rather read them with regret.
I am not so quick to vilify the part you’ve played in this story.
Though the blood between us has froze,
and though the pain you have caused is insurmountable,
I will not make you a villain, like you have made me.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 4:29 PM UTC
She was in the space between here and there.
You see, I try to jump from point a to point b, without a thought to the steps in between.
I found the search for meaning in the journey to be futile,
Yet that is where I found her.
She sat at a coffee shop, sipping on tea,
While reading the eyes of the shadows moving through these spaces,
Familiar haunts like me, unrealized silhouettes,
Without gravity in the moment, yet promising authenticity in a day that was as fantastical as they were.
Eyes were drawn to her,
the way that she filled up the room,
the only physical thing, in this group of ghosts, shadows
those betrayed by promise and hope
and hoping the world would pay them back
for the loan, and a poor one at that
a miserable job for a dilapidated home
doorways they won’t grace but for those sacred few hours
food for kids who don’t see enough of them as is
Now don’t get me wrong, I did see it
I saw it in her fingers,
that tired fiddling as if her hands couldn’t stop moving
in fear that they couldn’t get started again
In the way her mouth sat, trying to smile
but still heavy as if unspoken words were weighing them down.
Her eyes stared as though she was so alone in this alien world.
She lived in the in-between, and that is were I found her.
For a fleeting moment I wanted to stop.
To slow down and hear her story.
This mystic individual of substance in an immaterial world,
But my feet wouldn’t stop, my hands wouldn’t stop moving.
I had forgotten how to slow down and I found myself orbiting her
as a tiny comet would get caught in the gravity of some celestial sphere.
I was merely a ghost, a common haunt,
Passing through this physical space for merely a moment.
Sep 16, 2016
Sep 16, 2016 at 5:58 PM UTC