Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 Mar 2017
ryn
These eyes search
but I only see the insides of my lids.

These words I muster
do not make it past the sanctity of my chapped lips.

These ears hear the cries and celebration of the world I once knew
but yet... I do not.

This skin fray at its edges but still envelop
this strange familiar plane... And I struggle to find my bearing.

So I indulge...
In this little serving of death.
 Mar 2017
Gidgette
I need a bleach bath in some boiling water
Scrub me down with brillo and lye
Degerm,
Sanitize

Im ***** from the inside out
Tainted
Painted
Alienated

Whiskey won't drown it out
If I'm supposed to whisper,
Hell, I'll shout

I've got problems, honey
I'm the goodbye girl
Not a taboo saved from my actions
I deal in nightmares
Whole, not fractions

Acid, can't touch my rust

I need a bleach bath in boiling water
Scrub me down with brillo and lye
Degerm,
Sanitize
 Mar 2017
Gidgette
I love her
Not in a ****** way, but
She's my friend, my friend
She helps me so much
For 7 years Ive known her
Laughed and cried with her
She hugs me and my daughter
Makes sure my house is in order
She has capabilities that I do not
I fear for her
She isn't supposed to be here
With her brown skin and Spanish tongue
She works hard
And I love her
And I'm so afraid for her
I don't understand fences
Or "papers of belonging", citizenship
I was born privileged
Free and white
In America
Because my ancestor came here 340 years ago
And begat generation after generation of my blood
I wonder if he had to have papers?
Her journey here nearly killed her
Sent by her mother, with a bottle of water and an aluminum foil wrapped sheep sandwich
Across the dessert
For just the idea of a better life
She was 16 Then
I love her
And by the GOD that loves every colour and nation,
I'll marry her before I let her be dragged into one of those big vans they put "illegals" in
She asked that I not Reveal her name here. I love her. I'll hide her away or marry her before I allow her to be deported. God as my witness.
 Mar 2017
Dan Shalev
Weakened by life and roughened by time she returns to her home,
now a cradle of baseless hope.

Blissfully ignorant she starts her days, hopeful,
only to routinely end them deceived by life, debased.

Nihilism greets her in the beginning of each morn, feeding on what is left of her dreams.
Burned cigarettes fill her ashtray and empty liquir bottles dress her excuse for a living room. A mucky, stained carpet ties the room she is forced to call a bedroom.

Destitute and devoid of reason she contemplates her purpose.
"Purpose?" she wonders.
Perhaps some people simply don't have a purpose.
Perhaps a lost soul, like her, has no purpose.
 Mar 2017
elizabeth
Chained by the feeling of resentment
As we fight in a war that none of us forged
Or so we thought
In a world where barriers are built;
A great Wall stacked with bricks of discrimination,
Strengthened by pebbles of false preceptions,
Gracefully repelling sound premonitions
For this wall was  cemented by biased thoughts.
 Mar 2017
Daniel Tucker
Here I am bleeding again
Taken aback by mortal fear.
                     Staring at faith
                   Staged by hope--
Pouring rain on visceral cage–
               The sound of deep
                       Calling to deep.

Repressed feelings buried by time.
Epitaph reads on the forgotten grave:

"Here lies the child now grown.
  His hopes and dreams
       Dashed to pieces.
  This is where the child died."

I often hear the Mystic Keeper
        Calling from night
And tradition calling from artificial light

As I run through scorched barren
                          Fields of doubt.

Walking barefoot over these coals
    Crouching low
                   To hide my eyes

As I run    
         And as I hide    
  From what has already been revealed--
The tombstone says it all.

When I am out on the water
Lost in the Channel fog
I often see fleeting glimpses of
                White cliffs of hope
Like the white cliffs of Dover
Shining on the edge of Melancholy Sea. 
But they often turn out to be
Withered white
     Seeds of religious platitudes.

      And then there is the ready reflection
Of the looking glass
        That often tricks the beholder.
For in it truth is not seen.
What is seen is graffiti of soul
       Hiding the crumbling
                         Cracks of age–

The threshold where
         Sanity meets its end.

Isolation has become
       A shining steel blade
Cutting deep
    Into the heart of hearts.

Nothing lives after amputation.
Depending on emotional prosthetics--
Phantom pain
                  When nothing is there.

But in the midst of these devastations
I am learning to take--

     Howbeit reluctantly--

The hand of trust and grace;
Allowing
            Hope to build
      A fortress for dreams…
Set boundaries better
       Than no control at all.
© 2017 Daniel Tucker

This piece was written at a time when I experienced a debilitating physical illness which still affects me today  (not physical amputation btw).
But pain, caused by self-inflicted or extraneous traumatic experiences such as myriad forms of assault and losing or cutting off people or things in our lives, can be severely felt as a type of phantom pain. This, of course is a universal aspect of the human condition.
 Mar 2017
Gidgette
So the other day I put on my big, black hat and hobbled down town
(Yep, hobbled as I fell stupidly playing in the yard pretending as though I was a kid and tore a ligament)
I donned my black chucks and I was hot **** again for a while
I threw on that big fur coat my grams left me And a few of her gaudy jewels
Anyhow, I went down to "L" street and sat on that bench again
The one in that make shift "park" where they lined up a bunch of big rocks and called it good
I sat and looked at that giant lady painted on the side of that falling down brick building for more than a bit
"L" street, The bad part of town where you can get anything
Not named L street because it's L shaped, but because of a pill that apparently makes you Tripp
I guess you can or could get them there, the L pills I mean
So I sat there thinking and being mad
Staring at that giant, painted, brown woman
She advertises tobacco from 80 years ago and she's almost gone
Flaking and peeling,
Pieces of her lost to the wind, and to time itself
She smiles
And she's beautiful
And I hate her
But since I was 15, She draws me to her
That Tobacco Lady, with her smile, and red dress and feathered hair
She always smiles
When it rains, she smiles
When it snows, she smiles
Hell, when half the ******* town burned
That ***** smiled
I cry, she smiles....

That Tobacco Lady
In my dreams
I stand upon the shore
Of an oil-spill ocean
And watch whales beach themselves endlessly
Upon the tar black sand,
The tide rolls in and drags their
Bloated carcasses back into the sea
Their graves no longer lingering
Between home and a foreign world.

In my dreams, I am singing
Like a siren queen I draw the world around me
Held in a suspended breath,
Even the waves slow to hear it,
And here, standing
With a darkening sky and the beach
Turning to quicksand beneath me
All of creation is throwing itself at my feet.
This is what God must feel like.
 Feb 2017
Daniel Tucker
Our tidal orphan has but
Reflected light to offer
As does a monolithic orphanage
With cold harsh policies
Being furtively undermined
By beautifully wise children.
© 2017 Daniel Tucker
Next page