Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
temporary Oct 2018
My eyeliner is between a scribble and a scrawl. A child's template was used. And found ineffective. My slanted eyes are uncooperative; they are bulging, flat and exact. There is no glimmer that would stop a man in the street from staring at me. I rub at the mistakes with my fingers and uneven nails before the paint has fully dried into the crevices of my creases. It's splotchy and red and bruised. But, it's done the job.

After all, there's a fresh canvas.
temporary Oct 2018
I pull at the strands of his shirts, his sweaters and his jeans.  
I become a seamstress and know he will come to me.

He buys new clothes instead.
temporary Oct 2018
I’m paralysed.

It’s the slap in the face I can’t quite remember, but the blood clawing through to the surface of my skin begs me to never forget.
It’s the cool whip of air that feels like daggers tracing my body, mocking acupuncture treatment.
It’s the strands of hair, descendants of Medusa’s snakes, that threaten to reach into my throat and wrap my lungs.

But I'm waiting for the moment after.

When I can touch palm to cheek, and caress the wound with a simple upturn of lips
When I can take a step back, out of reach from the outstretched weapons of murderers and into the arms of my sisters
When I can shave to beautiful baldness and pull the wraps loose to look like oversized sweaters

I can wait
  Oct 2018 temporary
Nat Lipstadt
Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath


Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013
your effusive and lengthy comments are each a poem in their own right.  

Tinkered with June 22, 2013
With a push from Bala,
A serial peeper, thank God!
  Jun 2018 temporary
Blake
She threw to many sharp stones.
So as her glass house tumbled down,
She would pick one of the shards of choir glass off the ground and use it
as a instrument.
Always playing the same violent violin piece across her dynamical skin.

Her mother always knew she had
a gift for music.
So when she heard the same solemn chorus pitching from the living room ceiling,
She darted to steal the show.

And become her daughters duet...her piano,
To hug her so tightly,
Singing and squeezing
Until her violin chords stopped bleeding.
Parents make and break you
temporary Jun 2018
My bed has absorbed my tears and wiped my cheeks dry as I have fallen asleep.
And for this I cherish my bed.

My bed has told me that it's moulded to the shape of my body so that the mattress can keep me warm from the cold, harsh winter.
And for this I'm grateful to my bed.

My bed has been all I've ever really known.
And for this I worship my bed.

But it never told me that it wouldn't ever let me go.
It never told me that it would make it harder to pull myself out.
It never told me that I would only sink further into its hold.
  Jun 2018 temporary
Veronika Sivka
Do your legs ever hurt
After running away
From all those who care about you?

Do your arms ever hurt
From pushing away
All those who desperately want to love you?
Next page