So buried I
Wish to drown
Just get it over with
I think about
Ripping my face apart
With the bathroom scissors
Because I hate
Looking like you

Geisha is forever,
a gift for all to see--
not for all to have.
__
Geisha:
http://beautyineverything.com/4396763860
_
This is my first attempt at composing a senryu.

You sit now
                        stranded,
moored to nothing,
          going nowhere,
your bilges dry,
your engines shut
down
and
         up
inside the salt-rusted
skin, pocked with rot,
where once you
sliced across
the water's top,
a vessel full
of
life,
bow and stern,
prop and anchor,
never
           ever
in your mindless
dreams believing
you would stop,
and
        no one
would even care-
no sailors,
no cargo,
no sunrises,
sunsets,
waves and beasts of the
                                               deep
to sound their fare-thee-wells,
no more those chimed
                 8 bells,
you,
now stopped,
docked
and
        alas,
forgot.
_
Derelict:
http://beautyineverything.com/5096209757

Mine is a generation of taboo.
We are tribal tattoos and cheap motel room honeymoons.
We are slander,
and slang,
and brittle teeth.
We are born-agains and suicides.
We are podium preachers and cracked-pavement prayers.
We are melted plastic and oxidized metal-
sometimes we gleam with the Liberty Green of corroded copper,
sometimes we crumble with rust and stain calloused hands.
We are the last stand of Art.
We are the manifestations of forbidden bloodlines
and insanity.
We are just as much our mothers
as we are our fathers,
and we are everything that they are not.

We are stigmata.
We are red paint on white canvas.
We are fast food coffee.

We were born to the sweet smell of formaldehyde
in rooms dressed in florescent white
that share plumbing with the morgues
beneath the linoleum floors.
We are the mix of ***** and innocence that lingers
in the kiss of a dimly lit basement.
We show and we tell but always only for the right price,
the wrong reasons,
or the promise of an exchange equaling to the feeling that
this is a mistake.
We are rosary beads counted between gnarled knuckles
and dragged across smooth palms that long
to sweep tear salt from flushed cheeks.

We are Heaven's lonely singles.

We are skin stretched out too thin over skeletons.
We are the complexities that machines can't calculate
much less imitate.
We are the futile cries that once tried to keep towers from falling
when the sky came crashing down.
We are the pardoned and the withered.
We are the hardened faces of those that have
worked too long
and been loved too little.
We have been told that the safest place for your soul
is in the hole of your chest,
but only if it's reinforced by
four inches of concrete and steel,
and strapped tight with a Kevlar vest,
because they said people,
at best,
are manslaughter.

But we have never been great listeners either;
when we were growing up
we pressed our hands to hot stoves
even though our mothers said not to,
because we couldn't just be told what it was to burn
we had to feel it for ourselves.
So every now and then we will crack open
our rib cages in the hopes that someone will come,
light a fire,
and decide to stay.

We hopelessly spray paint things like wings
On deserted brick buildings
So that, at the very lest, we can feed the
Hollow-eyed passerby the belief
That these streets still have guardians,
Even when we, ourselves,
Abandoned such ideologies in
backroad dumpsters
along with our deities’ infidelities.
  
We are the period at the end of the sentence.
(Or maybe we are the ellipses...)
We have redefined the American family
and proven that even Christianity knows how to hate.
We were raised by sixty-percent divorce rates,
yet we still believe that we are soul mates.
We are the jokers of the deck:
either smiling fools or wild cards.
We are cocked heads with smoke billowing from throats
coated with blisters and cough syrup.
We are back alley scavengers crawling on all fours.
We are the era of the Auto-Tuned voice,
proof that with a pretty enough face anyone can sing.
We are foggy mirrors with smiles drawn on them
by print-less fingertips.
We slip up the thighs of our lovers
and swirl down the drains of sinks with chipped paint.

We are the hearts in your hands-
Crush us into powder and brush us across your face like Indian war paint,
Give us up to the sky so that we can be revived by lightning,
Dance to the rhythm that we beat,
Squeeze us and watch as we seep through the cracks of your fist,
Conceal us in your pocket and only ever speak to us in a whisper,
Or,
with all your natural voice,
sing to us
songs about thunderstorms
to wet the dusty desert dirt around our rooted toes
in the hopes that we will blossom in the most vivid colors.

Just do something with us.

Don't sacrifice us to the tops of lost bookshelves
to collect dust
or rust in the rain with everything you once loved
but grew too old for.

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me,
than a full frontal lobotomy,"
or so the saying goes,
as for me, myself and I, my friend,
I'd take both to soothe my woes!
__
Jack, the liquid lobotomist:
http://beautyineverything.com/5060607209

all i have left are brief, fleeting fantasies.

i see things i wish i could touch, and touch nothing that i see.

it makes no sense, none at all i know, as it's now all in vain.

i must learn to give myself up, i must give into the pain.

tears are trying to fall, yet the lions of rage stifle the flow.

i know i am going nowhere with nowhere going to go.

here's me taking a stroll now into that land of makingitallup.

this is my last less than a mile to go, falling down, falling up.

this is the invisible me who can no longer be seen or give talk.

this is me you don't see on the bymyself walk.

___
brief fantasy:
http://beautyineverything.com/5089079591

this is where i sit like stone,
knowing soon it shall be over,
all balled up and all alone,
wreathed in sickly crimson clover;
in a corner cold and stark,
where the pressure chokes my chest,
my mind's eye fizzles into dark,
i cannot eat nor find sweet rest.

i no longer see the pathways,
where i have strolled past fields of pain,
cloaked in shadowed sunless days,
walking weary in the chilling rains;
of torrid teardrops that always fail to fall,
stuck inside behind my bloodshot eyes,
between sight and dreams i scarce recall,
haunted by the sounds of ghostly cries.

i no longer feel the passions,
i had once did cling,
for there no longer comes a need to rise,
or open my mouth to sing.
__

I sit:
http://beautyineverything.com/175543419

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

What makes a poem a poem?
Why do rhyming words in a certain fashion have such a great effect?
Is it my expression?
Your fascination?
Or is there no explanation
Why do the few descriptive words set the scene of tranquility and beauty?
Serenity
Amenity
is my identity
How is it that the rhythm gets you going just the right way
Setting the beat
Beating the heat
because no matter what i just can't be beat
But sometimes isn't poetry more of your feelings?
I'm not striving for the perfect line
Frankly i don't care i just want you to be mine
Oh (insert lover's name here) you are just divine
So here I am with my pen and paper trying to impress the world
But poetry should have more of a meaning
it should come out of your heart
but my heart doesn't have much in it, it has quite a bit of room
so brb ttyl bada bing bada boom

ummm, that's the poem.
what it says.

birds on barbed wire,
watching over me,
lodged in a private
penitentiary.

birds on barbed wire,
not a chirp or peep they make,
they just perch between the barbs,
watch, waiting, wait, watching me
shiver in silence, violence shake.

birds on barbed wire,
will neither spread wings,
or take flight,
these wire-bound birds
will not
leave me out of their sight;

-nor will any such
birds on barbed wire
call out or make cry,
these birds on the wire
are here to wait and watch me
just die.
___

birds, barbed wire:
http://beautyineverything.com/5082513864

i want you if
even for the
shortest moment
of time
even if knowing
our hellos
will also be
goodbye.

i want
you

to hold me.