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;
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
;
your smile                  breaks me.
   it shakes the dust    off my bones, only
    to shatter them into a million pieces. when i'm
    trembling, the thought of you warms me back to
    life, only to **** me when i no longer sense the ice
      snaking up to my throat. you twisted my heart  
   (without trying...without. even. knowing.)
   and the wrinkles of it peeled right off.
  i don't know what i was thinking
when i let this mess begin,
but i do know that
i never want
it to
en
d;
.
.
.
First attempt at at a concrete/shape poem. Yay...or nah?
10w
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
10w
Across this room,
                                     your vibrations are loose,


                  weaving into mine.
10 word memory.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
I want to see you wrap yourself

in all that you've become

And tightly now, for your end
          
has just begun.
To my sister, written on her 21st birthday. I love you.

21 words of my 21st poem for 21 year old you.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
1; Every time I think hard about a theoretical concept, the rest of my thought processes become out of focus, like on a camera, and I find it hard to speak in regular conversation as that fades.

2; I think dark blood is beautiful, but light red looks too much like small talk.

3; As you can probably tell, people make me feel like I'm drowning in a foreign sea.
For the series.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
I want to be their eyes,
to light the match and fall into a trance,
becoming one with destruction by flame;

I want to be the fire,
to eat away the world around me
and rise my wings from the ash;

I want to be the bird,
to fill the hollows of my bones with dirt
and sink into the earth;

I want to be the earth,
to search the surface for your feet
and decompose you into me;

I want to be your eyes,
to see a world of melting flesh
and all things obsolete.
Day 28 of NaPoWriMo.

The first two stanzas need work, so I'd love some rhyming inspiration :)
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
My hands weren’t sweating when I said it.
                    I will never write a love song.
It never seemed like anyone could see
past the pink
                swirly
                       fogging their eyes.

   How pathetic.

But cheerios get soggy
when I look away this long
and I wrote my first melody
because of your swirly eyes.

   They’re so much darker,
                 like rotted leaves.


And second,
                third,
(voice cracking, echoing)
      my fingertips
are splitting over these strings.

Fourth-
palpating vibrations killing the me
I’d thought furthest through.
I swear,
I wont crack as hard this time, but-

I can’t tie my shoelaces
without tearing flower petals,
so I walk around stumbling,

falling
into pretty girls.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
and I feel like I am tight rope walking
over my life;
I can see everything so well
that the only thing I neglect to pay attention to
is myself,
then suddenly it's all too late
and I am falling head first
into the midst of
all
this
bemusement.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
I'm with you in the bluegrass, swaying like the ocean's floor
singing like we used to dream of all the things we'd one day see;
     I'm with you under florescent bulbs, of late night cubicles
laughing in tune with the hum of his fax machine at our inside jokes;
     I'm with you at every gas station, a blanket-full truck bed
crunching every loss under my boot heal, taking us back to perfection;
     I'm with you tying shoelaces
     and each sigh of the new moon,
     of every heart or new blood wound;
You--you're with every piece of me, familiar like childhood scars,
tear salt soaked and burning like ritual fires in each corner of world,
in wanting of my body to be sewn, to rise back and reclaim ours, anew.
Day 20 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
What does it mean to feel
Like you're drowning in life,
Like you're stuck in a permanent daydream?
When your eyes never quite focus
On anything at all
Because you're so far away?

I’m so,
So far away.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
I didn't hold tendons between my fingers like
street boys on rain city rooftops,
crumpling their futures up to smash into shredded jeans,
shredded hearts,
some wrappers escaping, flying over this city
as our neglectful witnesses.

Their hands were broken bottles. The black top
made my guts look like escaping snakes,
my eyes hoping to be Medusa.
Fictionalizing gets me through most things.
Sometimes pain tastes like metal, sometimes like cherries.

I stare at the sideways sunset, a wrapper spit up
and drying out, a pipe dream promise;
reviewing my time strips as if they'd had a spelling change,
recounting every drop of blood word and smile.
Sometimes I forget that I'm real.
Sometimes I'm not.
Day 27 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
You told me to write about
what scares me.

At first I thought, well, everything scares me.
That sense of endless possibilities is what caused my writers block
in the first place.

Sorry.

Further down the road, my depressive nihilism kicked in.
Nothing can scare me,
and nothing really matters.
It's the illusion of life
pointing its big, daunting finger
and laughing.

When I finally hit both ends of this,
felt everything and nothing,
it hurt somewhat, yes, but-
I began to write.

Now my words reflect
everything I feel and don't feel,
everything that is and isn't.
Now, I take everything that passes through me
and make it into something else,
something completely new.

In this moment,
I have complete control over my little universe.
There is a world out here,
more vibrant than I ever imagined.

So thanks for that.



-e.r.n.
To Mckinley. :) Hi
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
Shock me soundly, brittle bird
crunch me under stained glass shards
  crash my plane of what's unheard
breaking me hard.

Acquaint me soundly, brittle bird
make the song of an empty sea
strip me bound of all I learned
falling me free.

Sleep me soundly, brittle bird
dream me of hallow and point crest
squeeze and shake out saintly words
filling my rest.
If anyone wonders the weights and ideation behind my name, here is a small poem. Originally inspired by the song 'Red' by Lost In The Trees; which I think is absolutely beautiful.
©2015, Brittle Bird
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
I'm so scared.

I'm so scared of what you will mean to me at 4:00 in the morning,
when I get to thinking most about my life
and that much thinking
can't possibly be alright.

I'm scared that maybe you are just a mirror of 2014,
an illusion made for laughing at all of us
who think maybe we can do better this time.
This time we'll change for sure.
This is it.

And 2015, dear friend,
I'm scared that maybe this time I won't make it
to the hopeful beginning of 2016
When I can say again with conviction
that this is the year we'll be great.

Yes, we will be legendary.

This is it.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
That smell
of burning skin
like the way I felt when lying
on the bathroom floor

is not the same
as the hollow places
when I take up only a fraction
of the vastness in these bedsheets

but the worst part
is that metallic taste
of bitter end
with every single breath I take

when I can't shake off
the sheets of blood
or knowledge
of what I've become.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
Did I ever tell you I love you?
Must have slipped my mind
once or twice,
or maybe every time I saw you.
But I'm in denial of the possibility
that I deliberately didn't mention it,
being too scared to do so.
Once or twice I thought it would slip out,
slide off my tongue,
or in an otherwise inappropriate manner.
Because that's how these feelings are,
like a frantic bird
trapped inside my ribs.
So I'd like to apologize silently
for reasons you will never know,
and hope that you won't notice
when I'm gone.



-e.r.n.
©2015, Brittle Bird
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
The way you can't look at me,
'cos I'm not the little girl I used to be;
your tired recollection
of each gene in recession;
your knife heart, sad heart,
raised by a bad heart--

but I decided it’s worth battling your
droopy-eyed disapproval;
but I want to run into this fog
with my arms open wide;
but I always thought I’d rather burn in the fire
than die in my sleep.
Day 15 of NoPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Feb 2015
It was the way you carried yourself,
as if universes scratched at your shoulders
and the care you kept neatly inside
was killing you slowly.

I remember the words you spoke
as if they were poking, pressing
at your already bruised ribs;
as if they climbed up your throat
holding ice hooks and torches.

I buried them deep as they'd go
in the sweat-drenched sheets,
hoping you wouldn’t remember
or want  to search for them.

But one night I awoke
to an unfamiliar breeze,
those sheets untangled and draping
halfway out the open window.


I'm sorry I couldn't keep you safe.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
Those nights it would rain
Mud and vines grew through my spine
And earth I became
Day 22 of NaPoWriMo. I felt like a nature poem was needed, in honor of Earth Day.

Of the immeasurable beauty of rain and wanting to become the earth itself. Maybe if we try harder to feel connected, one, than it won't be so hard to take care of our home.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
that night, I saw bodies in the motel bathtub
beckoning like a 50's Cadillac
back seat beats and Father's  
bottle of snatched brandy up
to bring back our youth

and stay
for one last whisper in a last-innocent ear
the diner lights buzzing like
a lifetime of loss to mistakes
that can be little more or
less than broken glass lies
Day 23 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
I think I've already drowned
in the ocean of my soul,
while deep water
always scared me most

that I am burning up
in the fire of my life,
and soon to be nothing
left to take away

I'm freezing in the coldest regions
of my unwarmed heart,
flakes of thought and bone
just peeling off

and I am crying in the dark
of this vast and lonely place,
from which my spirits all left
but in this corner

I subsist.
Not written recently, but just found it again.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
I need you to take
the fragments that broke
and stick them back
in swiftly stroke.

I kept trying, I did, but
couldn't do it myself you see;
oh please won't you rip off
this bandage for me?

I want to be able to feel
all that's past but isn't gone
but with my heart in pieces
I just can't know what's wrong.

There's no pressure really
just please make it clean
and don't puncture any of
my major arteries.

I'm strong enough?
No, you don't understand
I knew what I could take, but-
this isn't what I'd planned.

This broke me but it didn't hurt;
now I'm just practically dead.
I need someone else to fix me
so I can remember how I hit my head.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
when you told me how you broke
my mouth and my eyes were sewn
'cos
at first I just thought
you might be made of stone
so
when you told me that
you were stepping off your throne
oh
I thought we bound our ropes
until your safety cover was blown
well
I guess you just
didn’t want to be alone
still
I thought you might drop me
after your secret was shown
but
we kept on talking
late nights on the phone
and
**you made me repeat your name
until I forgot my own
I have no idea what this is about, but it came to me, so... here. Take it.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
No, I am not alone
I turn to the sky
and glisten with the same stars
that touch the whole world
and I am not tired
My face is hidden in shadows
covered in blood, sweet
and tears as well
but I am alive.
I feel the gravel beneath
and between my bare toes
That prickling fire air
only sparks me more
Everything is heightened
in my scope of mind
and screaming with life
I know it deep down
like a charge through my bones
and remember that I used to feel alone
but now I look up into
her eyes, the universe
and know it was never true
I run past the illuminated windows
of lives people have built
for themselves
and even feel connected
to what they represent
I make my decision and begin to fly
the distance from lonely
growing inside
My roots are unwinding
and finally
ripping free
from all the cages
I made throughout my years
I take the forest path
in the comfort of dark
so that I can be alone
but won't have to feel alone.
I sit among the towering old trees and
I breathe
a deep gulp of the universe
It is calm and eccentric
and everything at once
It breathes
I breathe
and I am not alone
not ever
wherever we are
we are not
alone.
Thought I'd share one of my earliest poems, found in a journal entry. This is a lot longer than I normally do, but I had to include it all.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
Capture this in sight,
Bend and break it 'til it's right,
Shape it into light.
This one isn't as good as it is in person;  I wrote it on an old photograph of a tropical beach.
Brittle Bird Mar 2015
Distances waiting,
breaking mystique in free fall,
shook pills from the clouds.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
Bristled blue feathers
Like nature's forgotten child
She chirps to no one
Day 10 of NaNoWriMo.

This was a last minute attempt to fix a very unproductive day...with a haiku. There was a lonely little blue bird outside my window today.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
You woke like windows,
shattered in Jewish hellfire,
shade by burning books.
Day 21 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
When will time form me
stronger than I used to be,
better than I am?
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
A sea of glass eyes
plagues my waking, breathing, fault
dries my brain with salt
Day 25 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
Life, scare me away
Sadness, carry me away
Death, show me the way
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
When you set me free
From all you'd shoved my face,
That's when I loved you
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
I crunch out poems...
Stick them to my fingertips...
Gasp them in my sleep.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
Hold on, little one

Your tender bones are shaking

Fragile things do break
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
Go ahead,
                  bite me.

I’m sure you will hate the taste

   of this mess you’ve made
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
Sometimes I scratch my skin so loose
about whether we would find where happy is hiding
if we thought much less
about these twisting logics,
quieted our overstimulated ambiance
by quieting our own processing
and essentially
not caring so much.

I know I would, would find it somewhere,
but it's funny how that doesn't make me wish
I thought less in time,
I wonder what is brewing in me
that so craves a stormy conscious
rather than what we all cry those late nights about,
because my theory of life
is that the purpose of life
is to find it,
yet part of me seems to care more about the theory
than the truth and action of itself.
Day 14 of NaPoWriMo.

A journal entry from a while ago, attempted to be made into a poem. Eh...I dunno.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
to her with tea bag eyes
and wrists like scarlet fever,
gently undue your bruising ties
and unthaw your years of winter

--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --
she breathed the where
and exhaled the won't be,
if only you'd been with her there,
to slow the feverish sea
--
up, to the nearest fall
down, in the mountain mist
she falls from nothing at all
just as she had wished
--
the moments leading to a place
took shape and color like music,
and with all the grace it takes
to purposefully lose it
--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --

to her with shaking hands
and a mind like a burning temple,
remember your wish is your command,
and to always hold yourself gentle
Day 16 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
Her skin looks just like a map to me,
but not to be conquered, no,
one that makes my eyes gleam with curiosity
to explore the furthest corners of her world,
the slums of her cities,
the forests of her soul.

A map that is meant to mean something,
to find a place that feels like home;
a place to shelter from the storm,
a place I no longer feel alone.

For now I know that home to me,
where I have always belonged,
is bound of merely skin and bones,
the deepest eyes,
and the cutest toes.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
Listerine fountains are falling,
breaking through the roof,
shingles like helicopter blades,
scratching up my face.

Your mouth is making violent motions
and I can see mirages between your teeth.
It took me a long time to master,
but I can't here the news on repeat;
I don't want to anymore.

I don't know what you thought
mismatched socks would accomplish,
but those mixed with an heated face
sorta make my scull feel like
marzipan.

5, 4, 3, frozen in the moment,
right before a scream.
2, my iPod crumbles in hand,
just like the game I always lose.
1...one, one, one...

I blocked that out too.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
the beautiful
simplicity
of swirling skies
and pretty tea
,
the unparalleled
complexity
of human minds
and what they dream
,
the dizzying
infinity
of both in time
and history
Day 5 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
Your fingers ripped across my skin
snagging
breaking in
I expected a thick blue blood
gushing
out mud
but here a blackness lies
crawling
up inside
you might have found a heart
beating
a start
but I felt your surprised gasp
echoing
and vast
when discovering the empty space:
"what a
waste"
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
I just need a hug

warm arms into I can fall

oh, and don't we all
HUGS TO EVERYONE.
I feel the need right now, and I think many of you do as well. I love you.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
Every time the butterflies come,
they crawl up my throat and start to choke me
but it's a good kind of choking,
like scratching an inch even though it makes the rash burn
or liking the pain of dotted blood lines on my skin
after a long day of holding in monsoons and earthquakes
beneath calm serenity.

Or like telling myself I can never get better
even if a part of me knows, knows I can.
It’s like deciding never to speak again,
or stop eating just because you can.

And why is it that pain tastes so much like love
when I willingly dress myself in it,
yet someone lays a finger on me
and I feel the same way
when my friends are mistreated
and animals are abused,
I feel a surge of fierce hatred
throughout my whole body
and don’t you ******* touch me
ever again.


I believe the world can be better than this.
And what does that say about me?
Does it make me a hypocrite in a sort of vague way?
Because I keep wondering
if I do things without thinking
that another me would hate me for.
Day 29 of NaPoWriMo.
Brittle Bird May 2015
I see shapes in your sunken eyes,
pressing like last night's lifeline,
telling you to keep your heart safe,
but I have to look away.

Please don't cry,
I can't possibly turn tears to gold.
I'm not the type to indicate
what should fill these empty spaces
and I don't know what to say
when you don't say it first.

When the shivering starts you'll see,
I can't be your blankets and late-night radio,
or anything you used to believe.
When those eyes mean oceans in mine,
you'll see how nothing I can be.
Day 30 of NaPoWriMo. Last day!
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
I’m working on saying what I feel
when I feel it
rather than when it’s too late
the harm’s already been caused
and the ones I love
are already gone.

I’m working on admitting to hurt
that others ground into me
rather taking it over and over again
while you can’t know what’s wrong
or ever notice your simple misuse
of word and clause.

I’m working on being proud
of galaxies I have to offer
rather than holding in ideas
and little pieces of myself
that weren’t meant to be pushed
so far from everything
just sitting on a shelf.

I’m working on it, I promise,

but for now I’ll give you this
so you will know to hold on
and please

don’t give up
on what I can be.

     For all that's wrong,
                   wait for me.
Please don't give up on me yet,
there are bite marks under my skin
and I just need time.

Feedback? It still feels like a rough draft.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
Trying to capture
an inescapable fate
and it seems with every breath I take,
the faster time proceeds.
Trying to explain
my perspective universe
and it seems the further back I go,
the further gone I am.
Trying to create
any possible escape
and it seems with each new goodbye note
the more I want to stay.
Day 6 of NaPoWriMo.
About recovery and learning to love the mind I'm stuck with, when sometimes all I want to do is set myself on fire or sleep forever.
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
I have all this scratching
and leaking
at the edges of my mind
that I know I can’t fight off
forever.

Sometimes people lose
their subconscious drive to try
all at once
in one day
and just go crazy,
but then I think
my most alluring thought
of all
is that I can't wait
for it to happen
to me.
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
It hurts to love you
because every breath I take
marks a moment you
are closer to your last one
and my lungs can't take
that truth. It hurts to love you
because my arms lie
aching at my sides every
moment they could be
holding you, and the weight of
that is somehow more
than I can take. It hurts to
love you because my
brain is leaning so fully
on something that is
not even mine that I both
long for and hate who
I might have been (Who was I?)
before.
Day 11 of NaPoWriMo.

Why isn't it built in us to stop being in love with someone when it brings us no gain, but only consuming pain?
Brittle Bird Dec 2014
If only for once
Maybe this time I'll make it

Just maybe I'll be
Be able to not fake it

Maybe let them see
Possibly the truth for once


-e.r.n.
©2014, Brittle Bird
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
i like my tea with a glow of sunlight
through canvas window curtains
with peaks of skin underneath
big feather blankets
and a sleepy morning smiles

i like my tea with warm, scratchy tones
from old vinyl records
deeply etched with memories
and all the ones i love
here to sing along

i like my tea swirling with thoughts
of everything i live for
everything i hope to be
and all the luminescent people
each day that i see

and most importantly i like my tea
hot from the hibiscus flower

brewed and set for two minute, no less

no milk or sugar added

just my
simple
bliss
CHALLENGE PROPOSAL! :) What is your cup of tea? No rules, of course. Everyone welcome, of course. I would love to see your lovely poems, so put #mycupoftea and I'll be looking at them!
Brittle Bird Apr 2015
See me, how I rain through the ceiling
believing what part of me you failed to reach.
Tell me, how you tried to tree speak
but forests reek of my death unwinding in your ears.
Follow me, into your dusty attic
to tell the bats and make our story last forever.
Now sleep, my fragile murderess
sewing my soul into the seams of your pillow.
Day 19 of NaPoWriMo.
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