tiger-striped - Hello Poetry

You strip me down to my trembling core, and hold me still fixed in your gaze pinned beneath your thumb your body begs me to forget my creeping fears, to forget that you see things I don't even see in myself I'm blinded by you and your brazen assuredness. You don't know Doubt like I do, you don't lay with her at night and let her ask you her incessant questions until you can't remember what you really look like to anyone but her. Sometimes she asks me why you're here - did I really think I had anything I could give you? Her questions hang over my head a dark cloud drooping, oversaturated with the weight of the unknown reminding me that it could burst at any moment, and shatter me it threatens to take the shape of my every mistake - why did I do that in the first place? what kind of person does that make me, then? And I almost crave the downpour just so I don't have to wonder anymore what you think or how you feel or who I am to you so you don't hold the power to crush me with just the ghost of a word on your lips. But that's not how the game is played you can never know how it ends, of course and I can only pray not even to win, only that I can make it to the finish before the game breaks me.

0

Feb 10, 2024

Feb 10, 2024 at 7:18 PM UTC

Doubt

You strip me down to my trembling core, and hold me still fixed in your gaze pinned beneath your thumb your body begs me to forget my creeping fears, to forget that you see things I don't even see in myself I'm blinded by you and your brazen assuredness. You don't know Doubt like I do, you don't lay with her at night and let her ask you her incessant questions until you can't remember what you really look like to anyone but her. Sometimes she asks me why you're here - did I really think I had anything I could give you? Her questions hang over my head a dark cloud drooping, oversaturated with the weight of the unknown reminding me that it could burst at any moment, and shatter me it threatens to take the shape of my every mistake - why did I do that in the first place? what kind of person does that make me, then? And I almost crave the downpour just so I don't have to wonder anymore what you think or how you feel or who I am to you so you don't hold the power to crush me with just the ghost of a word on your lips. But that's not how the game is played you can never know how it ends, of course and I can only pray not even to win, only that I can make it to the finish before the game breaks me.

38

Loosen your grip around my heart: my chest, now collapsing, burns at your all-too-familiar touch. Why do I unravel into your arms again? How do you fold me into you, so deftly? as if I had not perished here a thousand times before? as if I did not know, despite your absolute claim on me, that you would not could not ever be mine? I wanted you, not for true love, I wanted to conquer you. I was inspired by fantasies of my independence those dreams long awaited, now still unperturbed in a *** from which I cannot tear my eyes. Morbid curiosity, or fascination masquerading as devotion still tugs at my heart with the warmth and the force of your touch.

0

Dec 18, 2023

Dec 18, 2023 at 7:51 AM UTC

wrong again

Loosen your grip around my heart: my chest, now collapsing, burns at your all-too-familiar touch. Why do I unravel into your arms again? How do you fold me into you, so deftly? as if I had not perished here a thousand times before? as if I did not know, despite your absolute claim on me, that you would not could not ever be mine? I wanted you, not for true love, I wanted to conquer you. I was inspired by fantasies of my independence those dreams long awaited, now still unperturbed in a *** from which I cannot tear my eyes. Morbid curiosity, or fascination masquerading as devotion still tugs at my heart with the warmth and the force of your touch.

30

I. here we are again, this lake and me and the dazzling sky, which is nice to look at while I bloodlessly tread icy water. A clear spring night here leaves your cheeks sunkissed and blazes like the sun itself fractured into a hundred million blinding particles. So it’s to there I lift my eyes, away from my blue-tinged limbs, to pour illusions of warmth into the empty space that formed when the lake robbed the feeling from each nerve. II. now you press me to the edge of the lake you’ve flattened me, I’m a shadow at your feet kissing the ground you stand on. You dangle my breath in front of me, letting it crystalize under your preternatural gaze and the fragments cast rays that scatter me and send me skyward, to the stars.

0

Dec 18, 2023

Dec 18, 2023 at 7:45 AM UTC

the lake

I. here we are again, this lake and me and the dazzling sky, which is nice to look at while I bloodlessly tread icy water. A clear spring night here leaves your cheeks sunkissed and blazes like the sun itself fractured into a hundred million blinding particles. So it’s to there I lift my eyes, away from my blue-tinged limbs, to pour illusions of warmth into the empty space that formed when the lake robbed the feeling from each nerve. II. now you press me to the edge of the lake you’ve flattened me, I’m a shadow at your feet kissing the ground you stand on. You dangle my breath in front of me, letting it crystalize under your preternatural gaze and the fragments cast rays that scatter me and send me skyward, to the stars.

28

as you hold me here, shaking in your arms, I’m afraid to tell you, I’m afraid that if you relax your grip intentionally or accidentally, if you let me go, I’ll be ripped away by the wind, never again to find a place to rest - if I leave your orbit, I’m afraid I’ll go spiraling, directionless and destinationless with only my fading memories of you, the way you pin me down and smooth me out, absorbing my tremulous shockwaves calmly, evenly, always reminding my erratic lungs of the gentle rhythm called breath. Your decided pace makes cyclical my erratic nature; you breathe steadiness into the desperate urgency that seizes my unwilling chest. Without even knowing, you refine me just by being who you are, by occupying the space you have always held in my past and present and, with every ounce of hope I have, my future.

0

Aug 8, 2023

Aug 8, 2023 at 1:19 AM UTC

I’m afraid

as you hold me here, shaking in your arms, I’m afraid to tell you, I’m afraid that if you relax your grip intentionally or accidentally, if you let me go, I’ll be ripped away by the wind, never again to find a place to rest - if I leave your orbit, I’m afraid I’ll go spiraling, directionless and destinationless with only my fading memories of you, the way you pin me down and smooth me out, absorbing my tremulous shockwaves calmly, evenly, always reminding my erratic lungs of the gentle rhythm called breath. Your decided pace makes cyclical my erratic nature; you breathe steadiness into the desperate urgency that seizes my unwilling chest. Without even knowing, you refine me just by being who you are, by occupying the space you have always held in my past and present and, with every ounce of hope I have, my future.

34

Something found its way from your veins to mine, too difficult to name pulsing with serene desperation that flows freely in a perfect circle through space and time, from you to me to you to me to you to me to - you get it. And the thing about perfect circles is they have neither beginning nor end, and more importantly, they don’t exist. Not in nature - well, maybe that’s not important at all. I’ve been thinking in circles around you, how we don’t really exist in nature anyway unless there is some way to substantiate these thoughts pinging around in nonexistent shapes, unless there’s a way to make them tactile, to touch them, change them in your hands - but there isn’t. Therefore, I contend we are supernatural, at least in some capacity, like a heartbeat I can feel miles away, yet still the same distance as the arbitary space we assign between seconds. We do not simply exist in nature: we think, we believe, we long, we love on a different plane, one that supercedes nature, one we don’t and could never fully understand but I like it better that way and I belong here, I think so do you, circling me circling you perfectly, endlessly, impossibly.

0

Jul 30, 2023

Jul 30, 2023 at 12:04 AM UTC

circles

Something found its way from your veins to mine, too difficult to name pulsing with serene desperation that flows freely in a perfect circle through space and time, from you to me to you to me to you to me to - you get it. And the thing about perfect circles is they have neither beginning nor end, and more importantly, they don’t exist. Not in nature - well, maybe that’s not important at all. I’ve been thinking in circles around you, how we don’t really exist in nature anyway unless there is some way to substantiate these thoughts pinging around in nonexistent shapes, unless there’s a way to make them tactile, to touch them, change them in your hands - but there isn’t. Therefore, I contend we are supernatural, at least in some capacity, like a heartbeat I can feel miles away, yet still the same distance as the arbitary space we assign between seconds. We do not simply exist in nature: we think, we believe, we long, we love on a different plane, one that supercedes nature, one we don’t and could never fully understand but I like it better that way and I belong here, I think so do you, circling me circling you perfectly, endlessly, impossibly.

34

Memory is not acquainted with the beginning nor imagination with the end of the race. I remember how it used to feel sprinting, endorphins surging, nerves singing, scorning pain, the thrill of being ahead, never mind the unending stretch of runners in front of me, never mind that nobody knows where we finish our guide is precedence only. Once I felt good, thinking only of my pride, how good it felt to be fast how good it felt to be moving forward and sometimes, when I pause for an instant, and glance behind me I see a face or two far in the distance, we were once running together - but never mind. The more I run, the better I'm getting my feet are lightning, thumping quicker than my heartbeat outrunning my lungs almost ripping me apart. I remember how it used to feel, when my mind, my heart, my body moved in sync when it once listened to me, and did what I said but never mind. I will just do what I've only ever done because it's all I can do.

0

Apr 28, 2023

Apr 28, 2023 at 10:55 AM UTC

the race

Memory is not acquainted with the beginning nor imagination with the end of the race. I remember how it used to feel sprinting, endorphins surging, nerves singing, scorning pain, the thrill of being ahead, never mind the unending stretch of runners in front of me, never mind that nobody knows where we finish our guide is precedence only. Once I felt good, thinking only of my pride, how good it felt to be fast how good it felt to be moving forward and sometimes, when I pause for an instant, and glance behind me I see a face or two far in the distance, we were once running together - but never mind. The more I run, the better I'm getting my feet are lightning, thumping quicker than my heartbeat outrunning my lungs almost ripping me apart. I remember how it used to feel, when my mind, my heart, my body moved in sync when it once listened to me, and did what I said but never mind. I will just do what I've only ever done because it's all I can do.

35

drooping over the balcony, just me and a snide breeze mocking any pretense I once held that life was anything but a self-checkout line. So get on with it, keep stealing from the big men and higher ups now that I know I'll always only end up on top like a wet towel over the railing stiffening slowly, indifferently, uncontrollably. Here on the thirteenth floor my fate is an ironic harbinger of an ending we'll all share - of an eternal love - or an infinite numbness - or ubiquitous unimportance whatever it is we share that they tried to leave up here with me. No, the irony is - they left me, but they carry my fate. It doesn't matter where they are or I - we are all the same.

0

Sep 30, 2022

Sep 30, 2022 at 10:22 AM UTC

They left me

drooping over the balcony, just me and a snide breeze mocking any pretense I once held that life was anything but a self-checkout line. So get on with it, keep stealing from the big men and higher ups now that I know I'll always only end up on top like a wet towel over the railing stiffening slowly, indifferently, uncontrollably. Here on the thirteenth floor my fate is an ironic harbinger of an ending we'll all share - of an eternal love - or an infinite numbness - or ubiquitous unimportance whatever it is we share that they tried to leave up here with me. No, the irony is - they left me, but they carry my fate. It doesn't matter where they are or I - we are all the same.

35

butterflies in a net wings beating for resolution but good art would never be so kind. And that is the great secret of it all - we thread our magnificent tapestry using strung-out pain woven between our veins. That is why the artist's story is a tragedy why the crowds swarm the gladiator stadium and the boxing ring.

0

Sep 3, 2022

Sep 3, 2022 at 4:16 PM UTC

She captured dissonant notes like

butterflies in a net wings beating for resolution but good art would never be so kind. And that is the great secret of it all - we thread our magnificent tapestry using strung-out pain woven between our veins. That is why the artist's story is a tragedy why the crowds swarm the gladiator stadium and the boxing ring.

14

hold me again. Your skin is humming I’m sick in cold sweats ethereal healer, I love you. Say it again you miss me you could lie but you won’t. Let me trust you not again, it’s my first time: pull pain from my lungs until I’m spluttering, my faith splayed across your perfect chest my own deflated like old promises forgotten by their giver, remembered by me. But you exhale into my mouth, carbon dioxide like effortless anesthetic I dissolve until all of my atoms hit your floor splattering ***** and crude and somehow you see each one, you know them and name them and love them and hold them together again.

0

Sep 3, 2022

Sep 3, 2022 at 4:12 PM UTC

too much is never enough

hold me again. Your skin is humming I’m sick in cold sweats ethereal healer, I love you. Say it again you miss me you could lie but you won’t. Let me trust you not again, it’s my first time: pull pain from my lungs until I’m spluttering, my faith splayed across your perfect chest my own deflated like old promises forgotten by their giver, remembered by me. But you exhale into my mouth, carbon dioxide like effortless anesthetic I dissolve until all of my atoms hit your floor splattering ***** and crude and somehow you see each one, you know them and name them and love them and hold them together again.

38

- useless. My hair still covers my ears though I begged my hairdresser for shorter. It would make me look old she said. Maybe that's what I want something new maybe anything. I've got to see someone else in the mirror this time someone who doesn't leave the door unlocked who doesn't get left in the rain no umbrella. Not the long blonde girl. She was a liar, too - I think - (is it still a lie if you believe it's true?) but she found the solution reinvention right? She was... dissatisfied, we'll say she grasped in the dark to recreate herself. And she fit right in with all the people trying to stand out. New is better: modern is the definition of progress isn't it? And now I see myself standing just where she stood and wonder if you met her, would you know me? Beyond the mirror a generation of people uniformly unique like me I close my eyes I am only individual in isolation.

0

Sep 2, 2022

Sep 2, 2022 at 11:04 PM UTC

I pierced my ears last week

- useless. My hair still covers my ears though I begged my hairdresser for shorter. It would make me look old she said. Maybe that's what I want something new maybe anything. I've got to see someone else in the mirror this time someone who doesn't leave the door unlocked who doesn't get left in the rain no umbrella. Not the long blonde girl. She was a liar, too - I think - (is it still a lie if you believe it's true?) but she found the solution reinvention right? She was... dissatisfied, we'll say she grasped in the dark to recreate herself. And she fit right in with all the people trying to stand out. New is better: modern is the definition of progress isn't it? And now I see myself standing just where she stood and wonder if you met her, would you know me? Beyond the mirror a generation of people uniformly unique like me I close my eyes I am only individual in isolation.

44