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 Jul 2015
Nat Lipstadt
~~~

Mouth to Mouth, Chest to Chest



~~~
"Heard the song of a poet,
who died in the gutter"
from Bob Dylan's song,
"It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall"
~~~

heard the song of a poet
who died in the gutter,
last verse, last curse,
not a shout, more a mutter,
a question answered in the asking,
mix tape tune of mournful and joy,
a dying man's elixir.

who will me,
anyone recall?

I will.

not each poem, nor stanza,
but more
each hard rooted, weeded
and impossible to remove letter,
will come to be in,
carried and burnt upon my chest,
chiseled, precision hand tooled.

though my body to dusty ash
fated inevitable,
following yours,
those letters of yours,
will not to heaven ascend,
but come to miracle rest
on the skin of another, renewed

for this the way poetry gets
passed on,
a sustainable, renewal
natural resource,

never down,
always, always,
upward

ear to ear,
mouth to mouth,
from chest to chest


~~~

July 10, 2015
 Jul 2015
Jodie LindaMae
I took to you
With the agony of lost submissions
Hot on my tongue.
Years have passed
And time had taken its toll
But today I'm certain
That if you were an angel
I'd snort the dust from your wings.
 May 2015
Odi
Here it is
the poem on survival, the one you've all been waiting for
where I learned to untie the noose from my smile,
my smile from the trigger warning.
Here's your trigger warning:

I shivered when you kissed me.
I had a hard time believing my heartbeat was a good thing; had a hard time
believing the front door was still an option.
I wake up some days and remember when I used to sing bruises onto my skin,
fill up large towels with my blood,
watch it go black,
watch everything go black.
Still remained smiling;
still stood with the scars; with the ink between my teeth baring
a warning sign for whoever comes next,
for whoever wants my body without wanting my mind.
here it is
here is how i survived:

I hurt myself

I still do it just doesn't show
the scarring.
here it is baby boy come inside its about to get ugly,
you're about to see me cry,
you're about to see me shake,
you're about to find out what im really made of,
I'm about to find out if you break.

are you scared yet
this is a challenge you never step down from,
you brave boy!
you with your sword and white horse;
shining at the darkness inside of me; shining at the stench inside me ; come here,
make me feel whole.
Dont say I didnt warn you.
 Apr 2015
Seán Mac Falls
( song )*

There is a sun,
Brighter than your face shining.
There is a sky,
Deeper than your blue eyes.
There is a Moon,
Lights up the day that's dying,

Chorus:
What would you say—
If I should leave you crying?
What would you say—
If I should leave?
Should I leave you crying?

There is a cloud,
Why must you be so proud, my dream?
There is a sea,
Why must it be we're drowning?
There is a place,
Where we can be, both towering,

Chorus:
What would you say— If I should leave you?
There is a light— Why won't you see?

There is a dream,
If you believe as I do.
There is a way,
To keep the Sun behind you.
There is a love,
Truer than light that binds you,

What would you say?
There is a light that finds you,
There is a light that finds you.
 Apr 2015
Jodie LindaMae
I've managed to draw my anger
Back within myself
In favor of moving forward.
Anyone who has ever shot an arrow can tell you
That in order to move forward
You must pull back.
 Mar 2015
Jodie LindaMae
I'm only interesting
To men who want to discuss Kubrick
And **** after.
In a world where we expect our lovers
To pull themselves under the influence
And sodomized freely,
I expected mine to rise above
And he did.
 Mar 2015
Jodie LindaMae
What was it like
Bleeding out into your wedding dress
When the wounds cut too deep to bear?
Fighting back our urges to help,
We instead flocked to the funeral
Where the beer was free
And finger foods flooded our senses,
Immunizing us against your cries.
 Mar 2015
Jodie LindaMae
In a world where he accepts me as his prodigy
Instead of his lover,
I live in a chasm of ignorance.
I look up to him as anything;
My hero,
My love,
My place of enchantment,
Though he looks upon himself
As nothing but a loser
And a failure.
In a life of looking up,
I've seen quite large men and women
Shrink when challenged
But I have yet to see him falter.
 Mar 2015
Jodie LindaMae
When the police came to get me
There was no force, but tons of crying.
If you've ever felt what I felt in that moment,
I hope that you had the sense
To put a bullet in your head.
Six kilometers East and another seven South
A baby no one loved was being born
And a young woman's innocence was being stolen
Through a paraphysical form of ****.
I stood shrieking on the corner,
Mouth agape.
And I got in my car that night
And I took nothing but right turns
All the way to the nowhere I was inching towards,
Trying to see if that myth about the world being flat
Was true.
I wanted only to see for myself
That driving a long enough distance from home
Would eventually drive me over the edge.
 Mar 2015
The Noose
Deleted poem
 Mar 2015
daniela
if i stopped eating
people would compliment me
on how thin i am
and when they saw the bruises
they pressed their mouths
shut tight
and just joked about
how clumsy i could be
with their easily uneasy smiles.
i don’t know if they
just didn’t see
or if they just weren’t
looking.
introducing him
to my friends was like
living in a ****** part of town,
having someone over
and hearing the racket of gunfire
outside of your window
and then having them say to you,
“oh, listen,
you can hear the fireworks
from here!”
and being too embarrassed
to correct them.
so maybe i’m not sure
if i believe in fireworks;
bombs are too often
mistaken for them.
but i can distinguish the difference
now, i can, and i will not
teach my daughters that when
he pushes you down in the dirt
and pulls on your pigtails
it’s because he likes you.
because when i covered up
those bruises on my body
in too-light concealer
like i’d never learned how to cover up
love-bites and tired eyes,
there was a voice in the back of
my mind that was telling me
that he only pushed me
down because he loved me.
i do not want a voice
inside my daughter’s heads
that sounds like me,
telling them that they deserve
their split lips.
i will tell my daughters to wear
boxing gloves over their manicures,
i will tell my daughters that
“love” is not an excuse,
i will tell my daughters that no one
is allowed to give you
a black eye and expect you
not to punch back harder,
i will tell my daughters
that you are not weak for getting hurt
because the weak ones
are those who let their anger
and insecurities
manifest themselves
in fists and words.
i will tell my daughters
the difference between bombs and fireworks,
i will tell them that they may sound
the same sometimes,
but fireworks don't ****
innocence.
 Mar 2015
Jodie LindaMae
A man at my local zoo
Once showed me how snake venom
Effected human blood.
While dripping a drop of the acrid mess with one hand,
He held a small container of life in the other
And with a drop and a swirl of his wrist,
The blood was coagulated
And obviously unable to flow.
In that moment I knew
That love
Was the venom
And I
Was the blood,
Slowly congealing and
Falling at my only purpose:
Staying alive.
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