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Watching the swirl of the wash
Watching the
colors
fade
Much like the
happiness
that once flourished

Hearing the
click clack
Of a button in the dryer
That will soon be lost and forgotten
Leaving
An empty hole in some
Old shirt
Much like a hole in my heart

Scrubbing away
A meal once
Enjoyed by me
The taste so
Vivid
Now bland with the
*****
Dish water that it's
Came to be
Prompt: write about housework
 Oct 2016 Nicholas A McNutt
Cali
Organic electronic sounds
reverberate throughout
this closed up room,
and I am swathed
in crisp white sheets
and indigo delirium.

The sun slips in and out
between the leaves
holding their breath
outside my window,
and I inhale
air that is heavy
with lost words
and melancholia.

The walls are grey here
and they call for sleep
and great cerulean silences,
things that might heal.
But old lovers keep on
sending messages
like Morse code
and new lovers
cut their teeth on
my collarbones,
smiling at the novelty
of a pretty face and
a sick mind.
Strangers at the edge
Of the churchyard
Cry their
Crocodile tears
And murmur
Dull regrets into
The dampened earth,
While the sad girl lies
In a Soulless Garden

Ravens watch
From the gloom of
The yew tree
And join in the
Mourner’s requiem,
While wringing hands
Throw lilies
Onto the upturned soil,
And the sad girl’s soul
Bleeds sorrow

Harrowed faces
Fade into the fog
And the bell
In the church tower rings
And the Ravens
Leave their tree
And the soul of the sad girl
Grieves alone
By the stone
In her Soulless Garden
Where did I lose myself?
Between lines of paper I stopped filling with my daily musings,
around corners of the walls that hold my family now,
or in my brain, where the illness has swallowed me whole and spit me back out more times than it has not?
I have become an even more fragile soul than before, now relied upon to keep an entire new person whole. It's a curious task when I'm falling apart at the seams.
Where did I go? Hidden amidst old thoughts and harrowed poems, new smells and insomnia,
I have to know the answer to this.
Did I allow my soul to escape between breaths, allow the words that twisted their way through each crevice of my soul to escape me when I decided I had to be more? Did I heal myself just enough that my sicknesses are actually all in my head?
You say you love poetry.
You say you love to write it.
You say you love how the ink drips from your pen.

You say you love how it caresses your paper.
You say you love the the way it falls off
your tongue and onto your lips.
You say you love how you read it,
enunciate
it like it's the essence of your soul.

But the truth is like poetry.
And most people hate poetry as much as you hate the truth.
I remember the day you asked if we had always been this way.
If the love, or at least what we thought love to be, has ever been.

I looked into your eyes and I really considered telling you the truth.
Wouldn't that be a first?
I looked into wanting eyes and I could feel your skin trembling.

I told you that we had always tried to make each other feel numb, a little bit dead inside, just enough to keep us going.

I told you we were both so terrified of feeling more, that we are still so desperate for touch, that we never would have been able to touch each other properly.

I told you that a part of me abhorred you and that a part of you had always felt the same for me.

But the truth is my sweet, I love you in every version of you and me. In every way we thought and still think love to be.
Dreams they drown
under the Stone
under the Star

At least we
Stole The Show

Our Houdini act
of failed dedication
defiant to the End

Fragments float
up scenting a
stream with rotting
love locked
in the truck
 Jul 2016 Nicholas A McNutt
N
i.* Build me a concrete house and I will not put a single clock on its walls because timing was never on our side anyway.

ii. This boy called Cupid is so irresponsible; he needs to stop drinking before he goes to work.

iii. One time we were so close to each other we almost touched hands
but we are sadly the perfect metaphors for continents that are constantly drifting further away from each other.

iv. I'm all ears. I don't understand why you never said anything to me before.

v. I only speak two languages but I'm cussing you in seven. Also, I miss your face but ******* and your stupid hair. You look like a  broccoli.
---
Putangina.
---
I sat down
To write a poem about
The way things used to be

But I can't remember
Much before dinner
So that thought's eluding me

Then I thought
A poem about
The life I'm living now

What came across
Was one big yawn
Perhaps a bit too loud

Then it occurred to me
Maybe the poem should be
Set in the near future

Before I even began
That light grew dim
So that path I didn't venture

Now here I am
With pen and paper in hand
In this conundrum of what to write

Until that time
The poem I find
I'll just kindly say goodnight
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