Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Daniel Anderson May 2021
behind a sheet of glass
wrapped in four right angles
lies a square meant for us
to be framed
and hung
on a wall that collected our days and nights
like seashells.
but you had reservations,
a party of three,
in someone else’s living room.
Daniel Anderson May 2021
I saw myself in you.
at least I used to.
thin and fragile and smudged
with fingerprints blotting your imperfections
while blurring my reflection;
fingerprints from being handled with care.
in my own clumsy hands
we had never looked so good.

but I dropped you.
you shattered at my feet.
shards of you made hundreds of me
shooting hundreds of glances,
smaller,
still smudged,
embarrassed.
I deserve 7 years of a luck not to speak of.
you deserve to be whole.

and when the smudges are new
from new hands piecing you together
and your broken bits reflect
two hundred new eyes looking back blurred
well,
I hope he cuts himself
Daniel Anderson May 2021
woe
you fill my bones
while they carry me along
mindlessly propping muscle
from one dawn to the next.
thought and thew a comedy
as their presence was excused
with you.
and you pierced my lungs
while they struggled to draw breath.
destitute and sanguine,
I was voiceless, you were deaf.
our choices were made
before we made them.
to my grave I bring you,
in marrow
in arrow
in blood.
fill the earth beneath me,
she has earned what I have failed to.
Daniel Anderson Jan 2021
I am warm wood,
like the stove-lengths
I stole from the family of the forest;
chopped to stack and ponder using
on evenings that get too cool for
body heat, blankets and breath.
and you are cold steel,
unbothered and unbending.
stiff, lengthy and sharpened to a point
used to turn me over when my flame
goes dull.
I burn with intention.
you stoke with precision.
but stay a while
so I can see your red hot glow
Daniel Anderson Dec 2020
I’ve been to hell before
not for long, just few months
maybe more
coaxed by death’s angels
hellbent on keeping score
Darling, I’ve been to hell before.

and I’ve felt it’s pain.
inhaling the smoke,
blistered by flames  
lit with brushfires of passion
unkept in our brains
fanned by your wings
when you’d flutter away.

but it’s not a place for you
or for me,
and honesty haunts me because  
I miss the heat
the phantom flames of my visit
still tickle my feet
so, baby, go to hell



and that’s where we’ll meet
Daniel Anderson Dec 2020
ghosts aren’t real, you know?
goblins and ghouls and trolls and the boogeyman?
all lies.
a preposterous faith.
though deep down I hoped to be haunted.
ignoring reality, clutching mustard seeds
praying to see a spirit
waiting in shadows; watching in forums,
reading stories; hearing tunes,
and fearlessly fantasizing until
reality became my nightmare
and sleep became my enemy.  
I prowled by moonlight searching for the root of fear
prepared, of course, to fend for myself
a quest for a haunting; a trivial pursuit
was truthfully a journey leading me to
a mirror reflecting pure evil
I am the monster; you are the ghost
that my talons could not hold
I watched you disappear into the walls
of this haunted house
crumbling down around me
Daniel Anderson Nov 2020
behind a closed door
and then behind another
buried under things no one wears anymore
there I am
all 206 pieces of me
collecting dust and
hiding from the light.
and if I had a brain,
or even a bladder,
they would tell me “leave.”
if I had lungs
they would beg for new air.
but I have a heart
and it’s right outside that door
and she tells me not to move a muscle
joke’s on her
Next page