Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 Nov 2018 bailey goranson
alexa
it’s so easy
to talk about my future with you.
a small herd of animals,
a couple of brown-eyed babies
and an apartment in the city.
if i close my eyes
and let go of all logic,
for a split second i can let myself see it.
-a.c.b
From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one airy hill.
The sun and mood shed one white light.

From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting
Hand, the breaking of the hair,
From the first scent of the heart, the warning ghost,
And to the first dumb wonder at the flesh,
The sun was red, the moon was grey,
The earth and sky were as two mountains meeting.

The body prospered, teeth in the marrowed gums,
The growing bones, the rumour of the manseed
Within the hallowed gland, blood blessed the heart,
And the four winds, that had long blown as one,
Shone in my ears the light of sound,
Called in my eyes the sound of light.
And yellow was the multiplying sand,
Each golden grain spat life into its fellow,
Green was the singing house.

The plum my mother picked matured slowly,
The boy she dropped from darkness at her side
Into the sided lap of light grew strong,
Was muscled, matted, wise to the crying thigh,
And to the voice that, like a voice of hunger,
Itched in the noise of wind and sun.

And from the first declension of the flesh
I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
Into the stony idiom of the brain,
To shade and knit anew the patch of words
Left by the dead who, in their moonless acre,
Need no word's warmth.
The root of tongues ends in a spentout cancer,
That but a name, where maggots have their X.

I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
The code of night tapped on my tongue;
What had been one was many sounding minded.

One wound, one mind, spewed out the matter,
One breast gave **** the fever's issue;
From the divorcing sky I learnt the double,
The two-framed globe that spun into a score;
A million minds gave **** to such a bud
As forks my eye;
Youth did condense; the tears of spring
Dissolved in summer and the hundred seasons;
One sun, one manna, warmed and fed.
 Nov 2018 bailey goranson
Mims
.
 Nov 2018 bailey goranson
Mims
.
I miss being friends
Were we ever friends?
I miss being in love
Did I ever love?
I miss the fighting
I miss the passion
I miss the heat
The pain
The healing
The art
The late nights
The wondering

The writing


But,
Was any of it ever really there?

-Disecting
 Jul 2018 bailey goranson
alexa
you say you’re not a poet but
with a girl like that,
how could you speak
anything less than
the stars?
-a.c.b
she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
*******?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me. . .
I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said,
these triangles. . .
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over.she paced up and down,wild and crazy.she had
a small body.her arms were thin,very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes:hatred,
centuries deep and true.I was wrong and graceless and
sick.all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no creature living as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.
 Jul 2018 bailey goranson
alexa
do you ever realize
just how beautiful someone is,
when their face is illuminated by that 5pm glow,
those golden rays coloring their face,
accentuating perfection
on an already perfect canvas?
do you ever realize
just how beautiful someone is,
when they’re excited, talking about something they love,
and you’re encompassed by the bubble they share
because the words can’t tumble out of their mouth fast enough?
do you ever realize
just how beautiful someone is,
when you see them in their element,
writing or teaching or just speaking to a group,
and you know that can’t see you watching
but how could you help yourself cause
oh god
you’ve never seen something
quite so beautiful.
 Jul 2018 bailey goranson
alexa
how is it possible to miss someone
i’ve never met before?
 Jul 2018 bailey goranson
alexa
it's not that i'm depressed.
it's just that i've become incapable of being optimistic,
lost the ability to believe in empty cliches like
"it will get better."
it,
this mysterious pronoun has had a year and a half
to get its **** together,
to get better.
it hasn't been able to tell me
what the hell is going on in my brain.
it's not that i'm depressed.
it's just that my thoughts are smoke rings swirling around my head
clouding my vision,
tainting my decisions,
inhibiting my inhibitions.
it's hard to see the light when the spectrum is in
black & white,
the same monotone colors like
the dimness of my phone screen as
grey tears fall on it, dissipating
the smoke rings around my head.
it's not that i'm depressed.
it's just that sometimes i stand in the shower with
the water so hot i can
just
barely
take it but
isn't that the irony of it anyways?
the only time i can feel,
the only time i can breathe
is when i'm being drowned in a torrent of hell-water.
don't worry, satan approves of my
misgivings.
it's not that i'm depressed.
it's just that my words clot in my veins like stones
jabbing at my insides to be let out,
crawling up my throat,
begging,
no--
demanding
to be let out or else.
or else what? you may ask.
well the answer is or else
i may never see the sun again,
i may never smile that smile
so many say could light up a city.
it's not that i'm depressed.
just maybe a little sad
sometimes.
isn't it crazy how easy it is to share things with complete strangers? the only hesitation i feel when hitting that "save" button on public is for the few people i know in real life. crazy.
 Jul 2018 bailey goranson
alexa
i'm trying hard to
believe in love but
i held my sister while she
fell apart in my arms because
her lover of eight months suddenly told her that
he didn't love her anymore,
and i'm not sure how many times i can stitch her back up
before the cuts are too deep
to be sewn.
i'm trying hard to
believe in love but
my best friend has had her heart broken
too many times to count,
feeble-minded fuckboys or
temperamental tantrums because
she didn't love them back and they decided to
cut all ties.
never once did she get an apology.
i'm trying hard to
believe in love but
every single one of my past
flirtationships
have ended in loss
one way or another,
him or me-- it doesn't matter how
because
i'm still alone.
i'm trying hard to
believe in love but
in a world like this,
it's hard to hold onto something
so fleeting.
revisiting an old format...
Next page