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 Oct 2014 Claire G
Ellie Stelter
Years later what you will remember most is the sunshine
And the way it pooled in the streets in the summertime
Pulling colors off of buildings like taking washing off the line
Painted bodies everywhere, laughing as they waltz through the city
There is no difference between red yellow black white or grey
It’s all just more color, people splattered with diversity
Climbing the trees to decorate with rainbow streamers
In their doorways stand hesitant half-believers
Pass me the pipe and count me with the dreamers

And the rest of the world, they call us freaks
We might as well be hipsters hippies jocks nerds geeks
Here definition is something no one seeks
Children at play is all we have ever been
Hoping our mothers won’t catch us fighting again
Let your hate go, let your mind heart and eyes open

Love is what ties us together, what makes us strong
You don’t have to prove that you’re right or I’m wrong
Just raise your voice and join in the throng
We’ll climb through your windows and through your walls
Claiming plaster back to nature, painting flowers down your halls
Planting trees in the classrooms and the public toilet stalls
We won’t rest, no we won’t wait until every stretch
Of old stone house and weathered park bench
Of city block and building’s been covered in some colorful sketch

Say what you will, we are who we are
It's our hopes for the future that have led us this far
We're not afraid, not alone, though the lines may blur
We stand for a future with no hate at all
We stand for human rights and we will not fall
We're the people of Fremont and we stand tall
a short look back on my life in the neighborhood of Fremont, Seattle
 Oct 2014 Claire G
spysgrandson
if I manage to step barefoot
in a large enough pile of dog dung,
I might be able to find a metaphor, either in the tracks
I left or in the cracks between my toes

if I sniff with enough finesse,
a simile may sift its way upward
from the ambitious heap, like grandiose molecules
ascending to heaven,
or at least to my nose

if my ears are keenly tuned,
the squishing sound may be sibilantly sublime,
or be alive with rhyme, or paint pious pictures  
if synesthesia suddenly ensues

what was the question again?
creativity? I yet need a different  pile of dung,
from perhaps another beast, for the canine
is likely tired of my verbose purloining  
from the gift he left eagerly
on the greedy ground
I think someone named Joe Cole asked for some words about creativity--I don’t know what creativity is but I have no shortage of words
 Oct 2014 Claire G
AJ
1.) Out of the one thousand and ninety-nine days that you were mine, I only regret three of them. The day Brian ***** me on that pool table, the day your dad moved back to Italy and I didn't come over, and the day you put yourself into this hellish suicide coma.
2.) If truth or dare turned two little girls into temporary lesbians, than so be it. Honestly, nothing ever tasted sweeter than you on that night on the bathroom counter at Tim's.
3.) I will grow up to be incredibly cultured all because of you. I learned to look outside the social norm after our late night dates on the roof. Getting high in your lap as you read me poetry, and played me Damien Rice's The Professor & La Fille Danse on repeat was more than enough.
4.) I always thought you were tradition and I was your French Revolution. But now I'm seeing that I was the revolution, and you were the revelation.
5.) You could not sing a single god ****** note. But the only thing I want to hear is your squeaky voice serenading me with our song right now. I promise I won't be annoyed, just finish chorus with me one more  ******* time.
6.) I would have helped you get to your father. I would have helped you. I would have set your mother on fire to avoid this.
7.) I threw up when I got sams phone call about what you had done. And then I screamed at him for an hour.
8.) I won't ask how could you do this to me, because right now I want to do it to you.
9.) Thank you for punching Brian, and I'm sorry you got fired, and I'm sorry your dad left, and I'm sorry your mom hit you, and I'm sorry that I could not kidnap you and bring you to our own private island in the middle of no wear.
10.) You showed me what star you'd become when you died, and told me that if I wished on it you would do your best. I know absolutely nothing about astrology and constellations. But your star is the one thing I find faster than the moon in every night sky.
11.) The last sip of every bottle of ***** I will ever have, will always taste like the last kiss we shared.
I don't know.
I just found out that you died on Sunday.
You took the right combination
Of pills this time.
And that feels wrong,
Because your favorite day was Tuesday.
And your mother didn't even allow
An Obituary in the paper.
And sam and I will never forgive ourselves,
For destroying all you photos.
I have none left to remember you by.

But I found your star in the sky tonight.
 Sep 2014 Claire G
Ellie Stelter
One of the eeriest things in my life right now
is that she died almost three years ago
but her Facebook account is still running.
I get little notifications on her birthday
and those weird "you haven't talked to this person in a while!
Reconnect!" blurbs every so often, still.
I could send her endless messages
but no one would get them. She's just gone
and somewhere there's a tiny part of a server
with all her messages, photos, likes and dislikes
on it, and no one will ever check it again.
She left a tiny cybernetic scar on the skin of the internet,
and what happens to all that stored data is as uncertain
and as unknowable as where she is now, if either
still exist at all. And she's not the only one - there
are so many little things left unattended
in the absence of the dead, minuscule holes
torn in the fabrics of our lives because no one
will ever fill them completely again.
No one will ever laugh like they did
or run their hands through their hair
in the exact same way. And if they do,
there is more missing - the same smile,
but different eyes. The same name,
but a different feeling. Nothing will ever
be the same again. Each moment the whole universe
is made and unmade again, infinite combinations
of personality and circumstance, and you never think
about what you're really going to miss until it's gone,
and then it's all you can think about.
Somewhere in the vastness of this empty planet,
a light on a server is blinking, the graveyard
of abandoned Facebook pages: some intern's hand is reaching
to pull the plug.
 Sep 2014 Claire G
Ellie Stelter
empty on the insides
like a dish scrubbed clean
full up of nothing
even memories
feel too much like dreams
like all those things
that we did
and we said we would do
are just echoes
you're not anyone,
you're just a reminder
of someone i once knew
i don't know where i'm going
i don't know where i'll land
i get a feeling it's different
from everything i got planned
i'm not afraid of the future
but i'm still shaking somehow
weighing nothing means
i could just float out the window
i'm just a shell of a person
just a shell of a girl
not anyone or anywhere
or anything right now
i exist in this space
and this space exists in me
and the words that i want to say
won't make it past my teeth
i am empty and i'm no one
and i used to be so full
at least there is no darkness
at least now there is no cold
i'm not ready for the future
but i'm no longer afraid
i'm not thinking about anything
but i think that that's okay
for now
 Sep 2014 Claire G
spysgrandson
I need to write a letter, in curling cursive blue,
and mail it to me, it doesn't matter what the words say
I just want to see them scrawled on the page, to remind me
I am seventy minus eight, and my symmetry in script
is increasingly askew

I know this
when I press ******* the pen,
when I fold the paper, lick the envelope,
and drop it in the blue metal world where its flat life
commingles with strangers until it comes back to my red and white box,
into my black and white life, where the average of the two is gray,
the growing, groping color of my beard,
and the hair on my heaving chest.

I need not even open it to know I have forgotten
what secrets I writ...the name and address suffice,
showing me not who I be or where I be, but how slanted and sloping
my world has become, no matter how vainly I endeavor to keep things straight,
of late, and more tomorrow, my dysgraphic lines
tell the truer tale, in the simple scribbled letter
I wrote to me
 Sep 2014 Claire G
robin
god,
ive never seen a girl that empty.
pathetic,
hollow skin in unwashed jeans.a blown egg,
empty casket
cracking sidewalk.im lonely but i can play the part,
bravado biting the sky like lightning but
you can hear your own breath echoing in me when
you sit too close.
im a mine shaft, im stale air and stone. i dug myself empty when i tried to believe
i need no one but myself.i don't need anyone else.blisters on my heels,
thoughts on self-defeat, self-pity,
self-immolation compared to arson.
when you pulled out all my teeth you told me it was so i could kiss you fuller,
deeper; you said *now you dont have to be afraid.
now you cant hurt me.

it rained last night but i thought this was a drought year, should i feel something?
i slept through the thunder.GOD, i hate thinking about this,
i hate these harness ribs hate air pockets in my chest i cant take this pressure.
when youre leaning down to kiss his lighter i'm sending you 50 texts that all say the same thing,
accoutrements of disorientation,
swollen fingers. i dont think i'm doing this right.i think i'm a different person
every time i get dressed in the morning,
every time i sleep.all the words ive misheard  stack up like unfinished manuscripts,
like letters from neglected friends.
this was wrong when it started and now it's just confused.
hoarding matches, hoarding lighters like that'll save me from the rain.
think about the bones beneath your flesh.think about the sturdy rock within your soft thighs.
think about your liver.think about your bloodyourskinyourmeat.
think about the last time you spoke with feeling.
think about the last time you dreamt. remember when you said you wanted all of me? said you felt afraid,
you said sometimes you feel like
i could eat you alive,
reaching over my event horizon,
leaning towards antimatter lips.
why did you call yourself a storm you're only hurting yourself?
why did you call me an earthquake when i'm the only one
im ripping apart.
you keep sticking your tongue down the throats of people who just want to bite it off.
you kept changing
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