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679 · Feb 2016
(dis)closure
cosmo naught Feb 2016
He (is sullen and shaking
and sunken-in so
that he somehow seems shrunken
despite that he's grown,
but he) carries me dutifully
home through a storm
and my shirt may be soaked,
but my feet are still warm.

He trudges (begrudgingly)
over the curbs.
(I cry out for help but
I mince my own words.
I'm hurting him, heavy;
but) his arms seem steady,
intent and so ready
to hold me(,
I hope true, to the words
that he's told me).

(Please,) "Don't put me down
(let me down) just yet."
"Turn your key in the door
and forget about this.
"
(So I lie through my teeth)
"Thanks for bringing me home,"
(sooner you'd left me then
than leave now and alone).
655 · Sep 2018
It comes in waves
cosmo naught Sep 2018
I know what you are like,
well.
and cannot breathe when you are with me.
for the scent I still spend
quiet time remembering
.
.
653 · Jan 2011
each morning
cosmo naught Jan 2011
You’re my sun.
You rise and I tingle,
Your rays spread and I sing.
653 · Aug 2015
weak end
cosmo naught Aug 2015
recklessly but partway honest
careful with the pointed things
shining brighter light upon this
devil with angelic wings

broken (once) a promise
once imperative to keep
to feel so free in honesty
will sing us both to sleep
632 · Nov 2015
still be
cosmo naught Nov 2015
be still, be still, be still;
palpable and touting
: you won't say
what's on your mind,
(your body will.)

so quiet, quiet, quiet
: you continue to deny it
while the valves supporting life,
the silence, fill.

beating, beating, beating
: so continually fleeting,
lends some meaning
to the furrow of your brow.

so tell me, tell me, tell me,
please—
your silence overwhelms me,
and your heart was never readier
than now.
616 · Dec 2014
Nothing to Lose
cosmo naught Dec 2014
If I'd ask you for a dime,
you'd just toss me a nickle.
If I'd ask for your advice,
all you'd say is, "Life is fickle."
You like to keep me wanting more,
thirsty while you hold the cup,
so when I head for the door,
I always leave without enough.

If patience is a virtue,
I could be its patron saint.
I canvassed my whole life with you
before you smeared the paint.
When I hear your off-key chorus,
it gets hard to keep composure.
I know where the door is,
but the window is much closer.

I don't want to be leaving,
but it's clear I shouldn't stay.
It's my fault for believing
all the things you had to say.
What's the use in grieving?
Nothing to lose, anyway.
«»
606 · Jun 2015
!yas uoy revetahw
cosmo naught Jun 2015
You  were  toying  with  my head, with
how   you   said   the  things   you  said
the  way   you   phrased  them   for  the
better,   then   much worse.    Walk  out
or    walk     away  ,  keep    on    saying 
what  you're  saying ,  but  all  I   hear's
c    o     m    p     l    a     i     n     i     n    g
and      your       echoes       in     reverse.
579 · Jan 2013
12:05 pm
cosmo naught Jan 2013
The overhang saves my parking place
on warm nights, too dark for walking.
Green and alive, it juts out above the brick,
a shapely mess of twig and vine.

By noon, I unlock my doors to find
that it has littered my car with seedpods.

Each with five projections:
finger-like, with digits,
like your hands, like your fingers;
sliding off my body as I pull away.

In moments,
I am half-way home
and my car is clean.
573 · May 2013
But What Do I Know?
cosmo naught May 2013
What exactly does it mean for me
to wisely my time allocate--
abstain, refrain, to lie in wait?
What more, in afterlife, will I see
in living this life pleasure-free?
Have I opted out of golden gate,
if I, myself, do desecrate,
a Plan which may or may not be?

What precisely does it mean for me
to think instead I choose free-will?
Is there such thing as novelty
or is all written, so it shall be?
As the great end nears, I will know nil;
as I know not now, I will know then, still.
572 · Apr 2012
deja dreamt
cosmo naught Apr 2012
dreams suspend me
and render me breathless,
in transcendent bliss with you.
without tethers or binds,
so clear in my mind
is the freedom i've missed with you.
my heart throbs wildly,
from the feelings inside me-
for the things that i wish that you knew.
it's here in this place,
where i know only your face,
that i tell you i love you, and do.
564 · Jul 2016
Dad's Birthday
cosmo naught Jul 2016
My parents have been together for just shy of twenty-five years—just shy of how long I've been alive. A favorite photo of mine is their wedding party.  My dad is stepping forward, smiling, and instructing a pause. I am cradled in the next photo.

They're still together in a relationship that's not at all like storybook love, but they downright could not function without the other. Where one goes, the other annoyedly follows. My mom puts out the fires and my dad takes out the trash.

Being the ******* child that tied them together is funny. As soon as I learned how it is that they love, I realized just how much they love me. But to watch them fight is so funny. Being half of each of them is so funny. To see and feel solutions and to internally diffuse their clamor before explaining how or why is so funny a feeling. I think they are surprised when I know things about them that they don't realize or share. After twenty-five years I am surprised that there are things that they don't know about each other or themselves. They bred it, and it's me. Then again, I am surprised each time I learn a thing about myself I did not know. But it's dad's birthday so stop being difficult and let's go to Red Lobster.
553 · Aug 2013
Addict's Change
cosmo naught Aug 2013
Fifteen cents in my pocket
feels like losing.
Each drag leaves me a dime
and five grams of coin,
a fiend.

An addict never gets his change
in ones.
Just fives and tens.
552 · Feb 2018
rant
cosmo naught Feb 2018
I will break my own heart
just fine
thank you

I am a heartbreaker
don't
you
know that?


thousands of hearts
and each of them mine
every time

every night
I will break my own heart
now


maybe I should
break my own heart
now


I am the heartbreaker
Watch as I go
551 · Dec 2019
notes on the fallout
cosmo naught Dec 2019
there’s a half-life to our interacting.
and I am a scientist, scrutinizing it.

a certain proximity, and I
am irradiated, by you, anew,
every time.

I am burned up.
frayed,
and right here, on display.
taking diligent notes on the fallout
today, in this wasteland.


I search the ground
with my hand and
an eyeglass.



I shouldn’t like what I find.
549 · Apr 2013
Macroeconomics
cosmo naught Apr 2013
I've never been the type
to let my heart burn a hole in my pocket.
I never needed to be told
not to spend it all in one place.

But you,
you are an investment.

It's all currency-
our time and attention,
affection and joy.

I'd like to spend it all with you.
cosmo naught Jun 2017
We convince ourselves
it isn't sadness
for a long, long time.

and it is an easy mistake.


It is also okay.
The first time you see it
just under your skin
To really see
and to feel it,
you are healing.

Kiss your own hand
Hold it against your own face
Back of hand to forehead
Palm to full of cheek
And breathe so deep
It cracks your spine
From the years of
progressively
shallower
breathing
Protecting our idea
your and my idea
of perfect form
(Full-chested,
waistless)
No
Place your hands on your tummy
beautiful ripe belly
and breathe into yourself
man woman
human
Connect to you,
(us it I we now)

You will find that substance
sustenance
solace
life,
that blossom
unfurling
nature
of your nature
in your touch

The glimpse of reason,
I have seen it.
It is the fundamental trust.
cosmo naught Jul 2017
you thought it all was real
like we were,
didn't you?
now the world's a bad trip—
like a page from your
sick hero's handbook,
without the lie—
and no connection.
you thought it all was real.
what's worse is i did too.
537 · Nov 2013
Gardening
cosmo naught Nov 2013
I've never had much of a green thumb.
No,
I've always been far better
at burying things
than planting them.
535 · Jan 2011
waiting for MTH 130
cosmo naught Jan 2011
sometimes, I think
you're a color,
that only I can see.
on ahead, there's a place,
in shades of you,
waiting for you and me.
521 · Mar 2015
Drafted
cosmo naught Mar 2015
Hope for you
is shattered.
Unflattered,
unimpressed.
Bit more than you
could chew
and so
you swallowed whole
the rest.
A year,
now in regression.
An obsession
would begin.
All my words
were yours to keep
when they escaped
the pen.
«»

as well as those unwritten.
520 · Dec 2014
Solstice
cosmo naught Dec 2014
One finds solace in the clearing among skittering of leaves.
With solstice quickly nearing, love bereaves.
The wind is honest when it cleaves the foliage from frozen trees;
the noblest will fall to her decree.
One walks with empty hands, but for worth and sense of self,
an unleashed dog in place of a forgotten someone else.
There, one stops to stand, planted feet to leafen land,
wholly nestled in a richness void of wealth.
«»
517 · Oct 2015
Equinox
cosmo naught Oct 2015
listing, lilting reveries
for ghosts of the chrysanthemums,
you listen, tucked between my knees,
for crying out as autumn comes,
then breathe the bottled air
while lying silent in the pasture
as the sun that rises slow,
renounced as Master,
dries the aster.
steady, subtle change renames
the song we'd often sung
which, ravaged, new and agèd,
saps the honey from my lungs.
to lie in leaves and rapture
turns my bones Parisian plaster:
crack my ribs and what is there
is yours to capture.
512 · Jun 2015
pride
cosmo naught Jun 2015
With your smile
to set likewise
the sun
after storming
means that I
did partake
the clouds'
drink.

Between pleas
for clear skyline
I sip
from the leaves
until
swallowfuls
paint the sky
pink.
508 · Jul 2015
sext
cosmo naught Jul 2015
You remembered the honey to go with the cream for the tea that I drink while I'm reading.
Later I'll bend like the bind of my book so to show you the depth of its meaning.
502 · Aug 2015
Mantra, Addended
cosmo naught Aug 2015
I think of it seldom
and briefly,
respecting my wellness
as, chiefly,
I am motivated
by my emotions
and the power
of preconceived notions
that
may
not
even
exist.

It is not
just as much as it is.

and so I think of it seldom
and briefly.
499 · Jul 2015
#3
cosmo naught Jul 2015
#3
"sooner sit in silence than in nonsense"
(a wasted breath to hush a quiet audience)

when writing-singing-screaming
to share ideas and dreams
doesn’t seem to change a thing
(none, some or all of it)

"there’s a peace of mind in private"
(it's not what I thought of it)
492 · Apr 2016
An Open Ending
cosmo naught Apr 2016
Am I myself deluded?
No—I am myself, diluted.
Filtered,
faded
to occlusion
and remade
of dissolution
here, the farthest
in the future
I'd imagined
myself
being—

and I still want to love you
but I want to love me better.
490 · Dec 2015
divinity
cosmo naught Dec 2015
nothing is sacred
but all things divine
chemical flesh
bound to mineral spine
volt-gated thoughts
shock a malleable mind
infinite loss
in so finite our time
489 · Nov 2014
Breaking Up
cosmo naught Nov 2014
You're fiddling with your buttons,
I try to speak but nothing's
gonna help.
You've gotta deal with this yourself.
You're fooling with your jacket zipper
and I can tell you miss her.
I can tell,
and I'll miss you as well.

The earth is moved beneath me,
I'm a world away from you.
The light posts are all crooked
and the road is buckled, too.
You tell me that you're sorry,
but there's nothing I can do.
It's time to move.

Your hands run through your hair,
they tend to do that when you care
about how you sound,
while your mind's running around.
You go to bite your lip
and I can tell that this is it.
You speak so loud
when you hardly move your mouth.

You don't turn to watch me go,
you always act like you don't know
what to expect.
Regardless, it comes next.
My foot taps on the gas,
escaping questions I can't ask.
They interject.
The light ahead only reflects.

The earth is moved beneath me,
I'm a world away from you.
The light posts are all crooked
and the road is buckled, too.
You tell me that you're sorry,
I know there's nothing I can do.
I'm sorry, too.
«»
486 · Sep 2017
Density
cosmo naught Sep 2017
The heart is more
like bone.
Weight-bearing.

With more impact,
fissures show
the tiny ways
a heart can break.

Scarring over.
Growing older
makes a heavy heart.
472 · Aug 2015
Prince
cosmo naught Aug 2015
pleas and hints
l'éveil doux du prince
I'm convinced
que je connais sa langue.
que devrais-je faire,
si, oh, au contraire
and too late
, I realize I'm wrong?
472 · Oct 2013
L'éveil Doux
cosmo naught Oct 2013
-
it's   like   the   sun   shines   through   the  earth             

on   us,    in   this   darkest   minute   of   night  before            

the    world      spins    back    around   to   face  the  day;        

      through   to    where    we    dream    together,   in   lofty                   

clouds   above   our   heads.   it's   in   this   moment          

                                   ­          I  wake

      and realize,

                          ­        with your                                                ­

sleepy arms

                                   around me                                                            

 ­      the   love   I'm   in.

                       enough    in    love   to   feel                  

           the  sun  in  only  its  sleepy  reflection,  cast                  

over  the­  moon;  to  feel  the  Moon  pulling   the  tide                

that   is   your    light    breath   —    in  to   fill  your  chest,                

out    over    the   arch   of    my   ear.    All   it  takes  to  fall                

                 in   love   all   over   is   your   hand  across   my                          

                                        heart & lungs;                    

                                                              t­o breathe                    

                                  ­                   you  into                    

                                              both.
L'éveil Doux (Gentle Awakening)
470 · Mar 2015
Wiles
cosmo naught Mar 2015
Faulty filter,
fully-functional.
He waits for her
(poised and punctual):
Ascent-dependent;
she drowns on air,
aloof, alert
she hides in hair.
Her lines, off-putting
hollow hymns
of mind onfoot with
phantom limbs.
She garners courage
on the stairs,
and peeks upon
his lone affairs.

His untapped rhythm
beats persistent,
caged by ribs, but
closing distance.
It gives a pacing
to her thoughts
in lilting measures:
all or naught.
His feet can feel her
on the stairs.
"Only enter,
he who dares."

Waiting for her
near her door,
the floor won't meet her heels.
His fate, yet to be sealed.
470 · Jan 2011
empty.
cosmo naught Jan 2011
I have looked into your eyes—
into your dreams and through your mind.
Watching you look over me,
I see naught but wasted time.
469 · Apr 2013
It's Relative
cosmo naught Apr 2013
My    mind    spent     too    much
time engaged in senseless doubt


though  I  knew  the  thoughts
were wasted  I was resigned
to hear them out. After
much   attention
I could see
I



earned  release ;  in ex-
change for  my destruction,
I   discovered    inner    peace.
In  purifying   my  own  soul  I
see the  goodness  of the  whole
466 · Jun 2015
Mask Up for Freedom
cosmo naught Jun 2015
Up in Appalachia they say,
Don't drink the water here.
The rashes on my body aren't enough
to stop my shower beer.
I've been drunk for days,
so ****** thirsty from the green I smoke.
If this all makes you nervous,
have a sip and take a ****.
They say,
they're sending help to all us
deep up in the mountains.
They can keep their water
if they bring me 40 ounces,
'cuz everyday's a party
gettin high on toxic fumes!
Hey Freedom Industries,
just keep doin what you're doin.
This was written after a bunch of my pals around town started a rap group called The Masqueraders and let me be part of it. Everyone brought a mask, or otherwise significant symbol, and everyone wrote in their respective personas. Mine was Knome: little lady-killer, perfectly designed to steal ya girl. Masqueraders was some of the most fun I've ever had. I learned so much about writing and drinking beers that don't taste good.  This was archived, after so, too, were The Masqueraders. Our area's water supply was affected by a pretty major chemical spill. The emergency response was underwhelming. The company responsible was negligent. Masqueraders masked up for the occasion.
465 · Aug 2014
Trinity
cosmo naught Aug 2014
I am The Sun,
and The Sun is Me:
Everlasting life,
in the blink
of a Larger Eye.
462 · May 2016
a waiting (ii)
cosmo naught May 2016
I am so impatient
but I practice
while awaiting
your 'I love you'.

I wait
and wait
and wait
but, here, today,
there's not one for me.

Your words are all but hollow,
almost like another name—
you tell me,
'I'll be here tomorrow'
and it almost feels the same.
462 · Aug 2015
Fixate
cosmo naught Aug 2015
In a cross between
distortion and redemption,
soft pleas reveal and ease
our hidden tension.
It's only right to fix
the buckled road that led to this:
to mix up what is left
and what there isn't.

I am mixed up in what's left
and what there isn't.


Is love unlimited?
Could I amend all that I did?
admit defeat and use my walls
to bridge the distance?
I'll add my fragment thoughts up
with my heart's holy persistence.
Oh, tell me there's a way
to bridge the distance.

The lengths that I would go
to bridge the distance.

*Perhaps I should
stand still instead
in this specific instance.
460 · Sep 2015
precognitions
cosmo naught Sep 2015
stoically emotional,
preconceiving notions of
a starving population
for an unfaithful devotion.
while you're bending over backwards
just to bear the burden's weight,
you speak unspoken tongues
like you've been bitten by some snakes.

heavens, lord have mercy,
you're the only one could hurt me.
righteous, turn to your concerns
and leave us laughing, crying, cursing.
and oh, my goodness gracious,
there's just not a thing could save us
from this semi-static state,
no suit nor armor.
so keep on speaking to those snakes
'til you're their charmer.
453 · Mar 2015
Phoria (uncut!)
cosmo naught Mar 2015
It's thrilling and it's terrible,
it's wondrous while unbearable:
the piquing mind which seeks to find
the riddle in the parable.
Just when you think you've caught a glimpse,
your eyes will make a trick of it.
Elusive and seducing up until you have to blink again.

Seeking out solutions
to all of the wrong problems.
Powerless to the hourless,
oh, how could you hope to solve them?
Traverse the universe
like it is yours
for the unwrapping--
the only thing
of anything
to ever free its trappings.

A specious speculation
to a quiet congregation,
got you searching your thought corridors--
all you see is already yours.
If you're thinking life post-mortem
could be anything but boredom:
Try to think again.
Create your own Eden.

When what is real is relative,
and yours is unlike mine,
could you say how well I live?
Your virtue is my crime.
Traverse the universe
like it is yours
for the unwrapping--
the only thing
of anything
to ever free its trappings.
«»

We only get one point of view,
so many too few.
446 · May 2014
Honest Proof
cosmo naught May 2014
You have that look in your eyes.
They're down and away,
headed back to the shoes they were torn from.
The turn of your lips
shows your somber dismay,
done smiling fast as
the speed of the shutter.

This sullen depiction
of your disposition
starkly contrasts
the first of the shots.
If not for the latter,
I'm not sure it'd matter;
if any would notice or not.

So which deserves framing?
the one where you're claiming
a life in which you are content?
Or the one that confides,
with that look in your eyes,
how all of our time was misspent?
Which picture? the first,
worth one thousand white lies,
or the one that caught eyes
as they beckoned?
Though you tried to hide it,
and could for the first,
you couldn't fake it
for even a second.

I'll develop a copy of each of the shots
to put on your desk or your dresser.
I'll tuck the bad behind the good,
though its value is no lesser.
If a day should come and leave us
with both our hearts abused,
perhaps you'll find this honest proof
and won't feel so confused.
446 · Jan 2022
I am Pavlov’s dog
cosmo naught Jan 2022
-


I am Pavlov’s dog
and I am famished.


I wonder if Maslow’s pooch got
free run of the food bowl.
I wonder if I will self-actualize.


I think of the paradox of quantum superposition.

I wonder about the rules for the evolution of a system.

Simultaneously, I do and do not understand quantum physics.



I bet Sigmund Freud had a rabbit.

ring ring
440 · Feb 2018
you just know
cosmo naught Feb 2018
•••

half-illuminated day,

are you raining, i wonder



the blank space stretches

between the windowsill and me





even through the curtains,

when there is sun, it feels so sure.

why is its absence obvious

any less so?
439 · Jul 2018
Love the ones you love
cosmo naught Jul 2018
Regret turns me
into a wilting paper flower
Good for nothing
but to write down what I love there
for another
435 · Jan 2017
Too Trusting Anonymous
cosmo naught Jan 2017
Hello and welcome
to Too Trusting Anonymous!
(My name is Elice)
434 · Sep 2021
Garden Journal Entry #4
cosmo naught Sep 2021
Sometimes
the best thing you can do
when you have lost control
is a deep, judicious pruning.


You will feel bare,
then grow back healthier.
425 · Aug 2017
out for coffee
cosmo naught Aug 2017
it looks like it is raining
where i'm walking.
i'll know before i get there
but i'm going
out for coffee
for a triple maple latte
at the bakery,

out for coffee
i no longer buy on credit,

a triple maple latte
because i'm learning
when i ask
for what i want
is when i get it.
next must surely be
learning what it is to ask for,

but i am getting better,
so today i'll have
a latte
and
could give or take
the rain.
418 · Oct 2018
while you were gone
cosmo naught Oct 2018



it is good that i was lying next to you
as you sounded your alarm.
quick and shallow hiccups
tiny gasping
shook the bed.
i swatted you
— 2:30 am


even more alarming when it stopped,
i crashed to life
half up-above you.

a nightmarish apparition of myself
a screeching, darkening
premonition of death.


your eyes rolled
your head
heavy ragdoll
I begged you
to wake up;
struck you,
screamed your name

and I focused intently
as, vivid surreal,
the reds and the blues,
streams and islets,
turned up violets
at some deltas
of the reds and the blues
of your face
and so i never even felt for your heartbeat.


much like in throes of passion,
the attempts to force
any inspiration
were my frantic lips
still breathing your name
against yours
cool, moist, and soft,
yet, this time,
unreceptive
to my pleading.
and i heard my disembodied voice
somewhere inside my hollow head
call help


This part hasn’t ended yet
418 · Nov 2016
trustworth
cosmo naught Nov 2016
i understand an evil urge,
you can talk to me

i understand a binge and purge
of all of kinds of things

i'll do my best to soften words
hard to believe

i promise if you want that
you can talk to me
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