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  Feb 2017 TaliaB
Joshua Haines
Your pretty face,
all scattered in black,
back to the steel --
that's how they
disappeared you.

My emptiness is
measured in rust;
drenched in the rain
that'll soak your dust.

I've wrapped you in
the red wind-breaker
I've never owned,
hoping it'll change some--
--thing, anything at all.

That'll soak your dust.
Please, Please, tell me
you won't leave me be.

There's your voice
an ear-worm in my --
I wish you'd come back,
my little guy.
I'm such a degenerate
with you off of that
tight-rope I've found my--
--self on. Why'd you gone,
Where'd you gone, my son.
Where'd you gone, my sun.
Where'd you gone, my son.
Where'd, Why'd you gone.

That'll soak your dust.
Please, Please, tell me
you won't leave me be.
  Feb 2017 TaliaB
Joshua Haines
If you wanna be the same,
be the same with me --
I swear we’ll always
blend right in.

And when you say
you don’t like Jaws,
I'll still be a Peeping Tom
behind your books.

When you lie, Maggie-Pie,
about the movies you’ve seen,
it makes the Tom Waits you like
seem contrived.

Degenerate drug kids,
too high to be a star,
in love with moments.

Give me my moments,
my lifeless promise
to always have a car
and insurance.

If you wanna be lazy,
be lazy with me --
I swear we won’t
ever do ****.

And when you bop
your head to Kendrick,
I’ll watch you melt
underneath the strobe.

Place your finger on a globe,
tell me where you think
you could be, then tell me
about your perceived
self-worth.

Degenerate punk kids,
with more ink than squids,
and a tip-jar future.

Give me my future,
my hurried ten years;
you know my twenties;
you know my reason.

Give me my reason,
give me my reason, give me my reason.
Part one of a poetry collection I'm writing.
  Feb 2017 TaliaB
Joshua Haines
I go back to Hampshire
to pretend I have old friends.
I drive around the mountains
to look for an end
to the violence
that's been breeding inside.
I've been a god ******,
god ******, god ******.

There's a dying wild
surrounding this town;
a girl limping with her mother,
holding ****** hounds.

You can consume it,
the blurred out dreams,
that these rubber-lovers
hung in Christmas trees.

There's a sense regret
amongst the ****** chic;
a romantic degeneracy
not lost on the teens.
Push in the fate,
to let something out.
I'm such a god ******,
god ******, god ******.

And I blot the ******
remnants of the past,
fire a cheap cigarette
and cut myself on the glass
of the car I drove into
the bank of your dreams.

To get out, to get out,
I've become such a ******* fool.
To get out, to get out,
I've hurt everyone that thought I was cool.
  Feb 2017 TaliaB
Joshua Haines
Dragging a baseball bat through the alley,
old-fashioned stain, auto-signed by some
body that used to inspire, you know how it goes

And, of course, it's raining a type of
slippery sludge that gets on and under
regenerating skin, born today, dead today
forever and ever a boulder pushing life

It all stings, oh god, it will accurately burn
the way that a forgotten face trips into smoke
before the mind's wandering, hazardous dare
Then, before it was ever known, you break
into the breeze, a tryst of truth, floating

Where he stands is so close to where the
bat meets the flesh, bursting under babble
Swinging with the explosion of repressed
rage, stolen memories summoned into a
frenzy of freedom and self-imprisonment

Violent before the new world,
breathing into a rumored hollow carcass
  Feb 2017 TaliaB
Joshua Haines
When our bones rub softly,
I can take my teeth out and
shine them like skin cutters.
A yellow-bird dress you wear;
the same matchbox socks
that you wouldn't bother.

Sometimes, all the time, I
shiver in the gelatin lake
and what a faux-shake
it would only take
to make you care.

Baby, maybe, you
could love your child
like the sultry sandman;
place them on pinkish pillows,
and pretend your stories are
as real as your lashes.

And what a lamb,
kneeling in the Irish grass,
drinking all that is in her glass,
before breaking it over a wet stone,
and holding it to her throat, singing,
"I've always been surrounded, but
have always felt alone."
  Jan 2017 TaliaB
Joshua Haines
My country is full of people
too violent and dumb to be anything else.
We value money, bodies, and your stuff
because it is not ours yet.

My flag is wrapped around some
white-trash hick's *******.
You look different than us and
that is ******* terrifying;
please leave while we stay
in your country,
'protecting you'.

My country is home to
religious freedom, as long
as the religion is Christianity.

My country is the world's
greatest melting ***, but
we'd prefer all ingredients
to be the same or die.

My country is a joke,
thinking it's the standard
the world desires to achieve.

My country is the world police,
creating tension, harassing you,
hating you, taking from you.
  Jan 2017 TaliaB
Joshua Haines
Poison ivy spreading all over my skin.
I brushed up against death and
never want to do it again.
They say with time it goes away,
but I can still feel it all over me.

The clock doesn't erode
the way I can feel inside.
I dance with the hands
but am, really, looking
for some place to hide.
I've used a neon bible
ever since she died.

And when she couldn't move,
the sirens blared,
she said it'd be okay,
but I felt so scared.
Maybe it's all in my head,
as the roof took rain.
She said 'I'm going far,'
I said, you gotta stay,
you're just in pain.

I'll never show her
what I am capable of.
I was in The New Yorker
and I'm not sure if
she even saw.

There's a paralysis
that comes with love,
related to every coffin drop
that sings from above,
and I wish you knew her, too,
as well as she knew me:
I am twenty-three and
covered in ivy.
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