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Jan 2012 · 689
Something more
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
I am no longer
A ****** being.
I get more from a right touch
Then the aforementioned ******,
I have died to the idea-
that you can take me somewhere I haven’t already been
without wanting me in a fresher way
then to lay on and then next to me

The drop of your eyes
As they dart away from my own
I want that
I want the tight grip of your hand
Around my ankle
The insistence of your words on mine
Panting, eager, delicate
conversations
that converge into familiarity

I am no longer
A ****** being
But I am drawn to sheets
As an entity-
As a home for intimacy
But it is most intimate
When they are still cold
Under my goose bumps

I resolve myself
To the longing
For something more then just a body
And a body
Tangling
I want to eat your temperament
For breakfast, lunch, and diner
And then rest on the bare chest of someone
Who will still want me there when I wake up.
Jan 2012 · 739
Dear Mr. Neruda
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
Time separates us in the most tragic of ways
My 21st century mouth is wet for you
My tongue would rain on your rose petals
And nourish your palms, eyes closed, panting, words.

I grow from your golden ashes a woman
The roses have wilted and left only death cherries
I eat them one by one- I snack on the forbidden fruits
And stain my lips with the darker juices

My words are weakening with my world
I come to you- palms flat on the dirt
Pining for your pinning language
And I will eat them too, swallow them and wait

Until further instruction.
Please read this and give me as much feedback as possible. I really want to capture his vibe
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
I’ve gotten used to being set

Set aside

Set straight

Setting like the sun on the idea of happiness

Dying to so many dreams

I don’t have enough phalanges to count them on

People hurt me because they

Think they know me



(You don’t know me, not even a little)



I had forgotten how it feels when you hold me

I had lost the lust to know you

Blade sharp visions

Cutting away at my ability

To hold up my life card

I want to punch out and leave.

Pleasure and pain concurrent

*** and little deaths roll together

I have never spelled it out before

Your ***, your ***- your species, your intimacy

It murders my self-confidence

It leaves me barer than birth

And hungry for something

That isn’t real



(And you still don’t know me)



tears are my life’s work

blood is my excuse for living

I leave it in the veins

Because anything else would be

Too messy.

In my fantasies

We watch football on the couch

Drink beers with fancy labels

And I fall asleep on your shoulder.

I could make a whole life

In the small of your back

In the space behind your ear

I would color in your lines

And connect your dots.

We would be childhood happy.



(You don’t want to know me)
Jan 2012 · 1.2k
Metaphor-Metaphor: Simile
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
I am the very empty shell of human ingenuity

Lost my luster and imagination

I can only put together what already exists

And call it new.

Now introducing the I-microwave

Featuring wifi

And a camera for those moments wasted

Waiting for hyper-sugared molecules to heat.

Blessed with uselessness

I bunker down in your nearest department store

And gain much needed dust.

I am zeros and ones in the system

1 kn0w N07h1n9

***** to the wall

I shrivel and die alone.



I am the ingenuity of the human shell

Lost in my own insecurities, my imagination runs wild with flaws

I can invent everything and anything

When I’m not focusing on myself.

Now introducing my spleen,

Featuring My right ventricles,

And my wiggling fugus-blackened toe nails,

All acting in accordance with my most important *****.

Blessed with uselessness

I bunker down in my loveless cubicle

And crave much needed attention.

I am nobody and everybody in the system

I know nothing

***** to the wall

I shrivel and die alone.



We are not so different you and I.

I invented you to keep me going

You depend on me to do the same.
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
The trees all bow to you there

The sun knows that it is welcome

And it graciously gives me smiles

I wear them like overalls



My feet meet clay

I can tell I was born here

That this is the clay

This is the clay that bore me

And I want to scream, “WAIT”

Because you all are missing this

This is the meaning

Or at least the place where meaning is found



In this moment

The ground feels cool and ripe with ideas

With art

With love

(With youth and pain)

With feelings

I’d know this place anywhere

Like a caged bird knows it has a nest

Out there

somewhere



And I want to whisper (wait)

Because to yell at this place

Would crumble it and me to the ground

This is were my soul lives

Because the trees all bow to you there

And the sun knows it is always welcome
Jan 2012 · 850
To Gallop in Ruin
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
there are moments when

I am, from myself, briefly removed-



enough to realize how great I really am,

- now is one of those times

(so hold on to your skull)



all the energy in my sneeze

as it pushes its way through my body

at binding speeds

all the energy

that falls forward

pausing my personal time and space

(a feat for me, at least)

and forcing my eyes to close

THAT is a TINY THING MY BODY DOES

and I don’t even want it to happen

so just wait for it

because when I can muster

all the energy of a tiny sneeze

to feel something for you

to take idea for a tiny vacation of the mind

some place quiet,

warm and dry

but not at all reaching

the evil extremes of any such foolishness

and write them into a poem

O man, are you in trouble then.
Jan 2012 · 646
Affaires Maternelles
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
Gaia, you roam with me

And all I can give back is a carbon cocktail

2 parts oxygen, 1 part carbon

you fence me in safety when no one can

here I become your apprentice



______________

   Signature Here



Bring me up in the ways of the every deity before me



I want to blueberry your life

Add sweet perfection a ton peau parfait

Blemish your face with kisses,

Rogue you to puddles

Drink you in, have you for all meals always



I want to bless you

And deputize the dirt under your fingernails

Commit you to my earth tones

Paint you in abstraction

Be with you- alone in me



Here it is, my blanket of self,

Given unto the lunar entities

Wash out my stains

Hang me to dry in the sun

Let me get new life from the air



Out of all this

Drag from my sole

The one with the toes

Drag out my light

Use it to find yourself

And be constant to you
Jan 2012 · 777
Homme enfant
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
i am not an inbetweener

not a spaceholder

not a coma in your sentence

I will not hold the back of your bike

Chasing you down the street

Afraid you will wipe out

Scraping your knees on life

I deserve to be an abstract metaphor

Floating under a tree

Sun setting on my glistening shoulders

You should have to think before you speak

To me

Of me

For me

I will not be a flashlight

Or a traffic light

will not be your morse code

I am cursive- calligraphy-poetry on the leaves

Not messages on the inside of the bathroom stall

(of Chauncey’s, Stubbies or The Top)

Written for everyone

Never taken to heart

I will not harden my soul to put up with you

I will remain squishy forever

Powerfully squishy, silky liquidly wonderful

Riddles will drip from my tongue like ink

If you don’t understand it

I am not meant for you

Drowned and dripping

White wine princess

My dresses will flow out of your life

With a quickness

And you will be stuck

Dreaming about the taste and texture of my skin
Jan 2012 · 687
When I am Strong
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
I swallow the silence

coming out of a nightmare

rising from the depths

reaching your fingers from the darkwater

pulled to safety

introduction to air.

I am a dark crystal in sunlight

i don't shine when i should

only for the grotesque figures

on their gentle moonlit float.

No beauty

no solace

leaving only space to gasp in the badness

bleed it out new

crisp, farm fresh, warm daisies, jello from the mold, dresses that twirl in the wind - goodness

without the victims knowing

passing all from grip to grin

I eat the darkness

i drink the cold

i birth the light

and let it wander

into the mason jars of small smilers

giant eyes on little faces

pinkies up to the sky

teacups full of imagination

leave you sitting on the porch

years later

trying to relive it all-

And then for you

I swallow the silence.
Jan 2012 · 500
When i am weak
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
i want to scribble all my secrets

on the inside of your giant palms

let you squeeze them out of exsistence

lay my sweating worried forehead near you heart

hyponitize myself to the beat

fasten myself around you like strings to a guitar

and be rhythm

and be harmony

and be noise upon noise upon noise

layered to your liking

and all at once quiet

with my nose to your nose

so close i can't remember what color your eyes are

so close i don't feel anything but the deep blue hole

only a soul on a soul

i dream of just being the light

the speckles that escape between the shades

and dance on the floor

as the wind rustles the blinds

i want to be wrestled into harmony

pushed into fantasy

kidnapped by bliss

and if it can't come for me

i want to scribble all my secrets

on the inside of your giant palms

-there they might be safe from me
Dani Cunningham Jan 2012
There is no connection here

Severed-

You love you like the four year old buries a goldfish

Tail in the air- falling towards the water

And then forgotten

In the blink of a flush



Me in a funeral box

Me wailing and beating for life

On the velvet solidity

Me falling further from breath



There is no connection here

Cut-

You like a bad paper snowflake

Snipped one time too many

Left crumbled

At the bottom of a trash can



Me dangling out of the oven

Me- Porcelain stillness

Me dried by the carbon flow

On linoleum



There is no connection here

And there might never be one

But for this quiet instant

We should just exist

No strings no arrows no bows

Shot out into the night like air

from air

to air

magnetic connecting ions

butter on toast

risen on something

to fall mouth open on something else



I want to water your dry petals
Jul 2011 · 632
Chirophobia
Dani Cunningham Jul 2011
I’m beginning to think my hands
don’t belong to me
They grip for things I don’t want
Hold hands with people I don’t need
Put things in my system that i
Am highly allergic to
Like almonds, sesame seeds, and despondency
They are always holding onto garbage
That I think I’ve thrown away
There is always a folded gum wrapper or a straw cover
Betwixt my lonely digits

Sometimes they choke me
until I lose myself completely
and wake up somewhere
far-off  and dark
with sweat everywhere but my palms

I’m beginning to think my hands
Don’t like me
That I am just an appendage to them
That all my other parts
Know who is really in charge here
There is a phantom feeling
Of other hands holding them tight
And when I look down
it’s just them
single-handed
And sinister

The nails on them grow too fast
I can’t keep up
Knives clumsily dangling
At my sides
At all time
I want to wear mittens in summer time

I’m beginning to think my hands
Would betray me at any chance
Are just waiting for the opportunity
For me to look away in the shower
Or put them down on a table of weapons
And forget them there.
What do they need me for?
They flirt better,
Hold on tighter,
And fight harder to live then I ever could.

I don’t feel safe with them
Call an authority
Handcuff me to a solid surface
(hold them tight until help arrives)
feedback please :)
Jul 2011 · 1.1k
Fact
Dani Cunningham Jul 2011
I just have to admit that my body is astonishing.
My skin is other worldly-
I glisten like an alien goddess.
My heartbeats of its own fruition-
air grows in my lungs and blooms
on the surrounding surfaces. I
have a power that lives between my thighs-
and when I focus it on an object-
that object crumbles in my lusting wake.
My fingernails grow to fierce and frightening lengths
and rap upon the earth with bubbling impatience.
My legs flow like water into my jeans
and ***** out of them.
(I make you question your understanding of words like lady,
*****, ******, sensuality, knowledge and maybe even manhood)
Shoulders that drip delicately with all my emotions-
you can feel my depth in the warmth of  my soul
as your hand grazes the small of my back.
I am every song ever written,
every note ever played,
every thought you have ever had
at an ungodly hour
in ripped jeans
and an off the shoulder sweater.
(I am understated provocative librarian ***
on top of a cool metal desk
next to the life changing novel you read,
my back arching over the paperwork you
can’t begin to think about because
of the way I look laying over them
with one stiletto still on and the other caught on my big toe
calling to you)
My tongue is wet with enthusiasm
My fingers are laced around humanity
Every piece of me is alive with the knowledge
That my body
Is
Astonishing.
Please give me feedback on this. thank you!
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
In me, you are- wet and thick;
I wish to rub you between my *******.

I can feel you, in me, taking your course,
Driving my muscles to pump.
Oh how steady; sturdy; rhythmic you are.
You understand what it means to be muscular.

Right side
******* in anti-air.
Force a change in me
Until I can breathe what you have to offer.

Left side
Marrying life to the rest of my person.
Each Ventricle is built as follows:
Low to the ground is strong
But the heavens of what you stake,
Quake weak and deathly .

A process larger than the width of my sorrows
And holding me together as I fall apart. Vividly-
I picture: you are, sweet and damp, in me.
Driving my muscles to pump
Coursing too fast to fathom
like a mighty stream of ***** from a toddlers mouth.

Oh how balanced; holy; constant you are.
Jun 2011 · 556
I can still smell you on me
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
We linger on each other

Every time we touch

Molecules switch

They do what we won’t

Leap into each other

Combine, multiply, be.



We linger on each other

Your mark is forever on the soles of my feet

You go where I go

I whisper to you when I hurt

And I know you hear me.

I time my breathing

By your prayers

So that I can help push them to heaven.



We linger on each other

I tie you around my fingers and toes

Like so much lace

So many pearls

Of wisdom

I feel you like still on the dead

Like growth on the trees



We linger on each other

In each other

With each other

For each other

Our smells burn together in the wind

Two perfumes become one

And as far away as I wish to get from

What you turn me into-

You linger.
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
I want to ****** love

I can barely feel anymore
In the traditional sense of the word
My feelings have become flashes of color
Sparked by the mention of your name
(Even if that person wasn’t actually talking about you)
I see warm worn pink- the exact color of the ballet shoes of youth that would never stay tied
(nothing stays together in the long run)
I see the way you held me once
And tipped my face up towards yours
The color of your metallic tongue- kissing me first.
I hear bright red, the exact color of grandma’s lipstick on her glass,
The sound of a constant dial tone
And my many tearful messages
I feel purple with pain
It runs through me very numb, like bad music through an empty hallway,
My blood, icy in my veins
And scratching from the inside to get out
(Burst out all over something peaceful like a white picket fence I will never know)
This is not what anyone should know about himself or herself
I am ruined for other feelings
And when I smell the sunlight
It only reminds me of a warm hand
I can no longer hold
I imagine that this is what hard drugs do to the sane
A catalyst
I am incapable of remembering
And when I close my eyes
I can feel your back on my face
i would push into you until I sweated my heart out
on your dog hair covered sheets.

I can barely feel anymore
In the traditional sense of the word
Jun 2011 · 560
Repetition in D minor
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
I overheard a relationship
Between our toes
pushing back and forth
on each others calves
toenails scraping lightly down the legs
wiggling, writhing and twitching
until it was safe again to be still-
****** of the pinky toe

I overheard a relationship
Between you and me
I was crying and you were yelling
Then I was yelling and you were silent
Then everything stopped.

I overheard a relationship
Between you and that ticking gadget in your chest
So cold
So abnormal
So you.
The cruelty- I wanted to fish it out of you with my tongue
Make it mine, overtake what ales you,
But it’s just not long enough.

I overheard a relationship
Between i and i
We kissed and made up
We said sorry and we forgave
Love was had.
(It was so good I couldn’t believe myself)

I overheard a relationship
Between the universe and my soul
It reminded me I could do better
I cried at its soil
And I forgave it for giving me what I have for you

I overheard a relationship
Between me and God
And
It
Was
Good.
Jun 2011 · 1.0k
Traitement de Texte Simple
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
There is nothing left of me
But flesh and mechanical thought

Sinful spinster split senses
Surrogate sensations
Sounding sources sewing slowly
So soft
So sincere
So absssssent

There is nothing left in me
But guts and mechanical thought

Wickedly liberated divided sanity
Replacement vibrations
Echoing foundations stitching gradually
So elastic
So honest
So lexicon

This is what is left here, on the bruised ***** I call my compassion,
Veins and mechanical thought

brutally modern alienated wisdom
alternate feelings
hollow basics strip away regularly
So expandable
So straightforward
So agonizing

All of this written minus my soul
Eye miss my sole
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
Once I possessed vibrancy
I embodied light
I lit the world anew with color
bending the spectrum
With wit, a queen of metaphor,
With all the warmth a world could stand

Once I held captive
the eyes of everyone I passed
My hips transformed faces
to Christmas lights strung together
aglow in my presence, blinking contentment
I did all the rising a person could do
I penetrated people in new ways daily

Once I was vague with beauty
It just swelled up inside of me
In ways I couldn’t define
And my fingers typed it out
And my mouth spat it into the earth
And trees would grow birthing fruit
Blessed with youth

Once I was a woman of meaning
With aspiration
with depth of a soul (I thought it was my birthright)
that could split atoms into betterness
zapped to life minus the bitterness

Once I meant more to me
And thought ovens were for baking
Lived separate from isolation
Once I didn’t walk, I floated
And you could read it off the page
And if you read it, you got me instantly and we were one

Once I could separate pleasure and pain
I thought college was a place of learning
Love was a possibility
And when I read Vonnegut I thought he was beautifully dark
And not beautifully honest.

Once I could figure out a way to end this poem
With grace, with punctuation
And elegance
Without rambling on
About who I used to be.

Once I was powerful
Now I just am.
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
The iron in your blood is palpable

And as my nose discovered it

It was like a new religion to me-

A break into your apartment

In the middle of the night,

Wearing knee socks and a football jersey,

Hallowing religious experience.



And as much as you like them

I can NOT appreciate Corn flakes.



My feline has found a base in my guitar case

Much like I have made a mansion,

A toasty nest in your dominance wafting veins.

Watching her lay there

I understand

What it is like to be.

What it is like to be

the supplier of ultimates

And not ultimatums.

Like how God feels when he see someone

Bathe in the diminutive properties.



And as much as you like them

I cannot appreciate Corn flakes.

They taste like toenails.



I want to fasten my seatbelt to this.

I want to send you text messages

That are blank and know you know exactly

What I meant to say.

I want to make love to you

Without ever touching you

Because grip might be too rough

For what subsists here.



I will eat your Cornflakes, Mr. Prufrock-

I will eat them up.
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
I bathe in the cashmere moonlight

The daylight fears what it does to me

My skin bouncing off in all direction to match its glory-

No! I will stay here under the worship of so many stars.

I start my day at dusk

So as not to startle the humans.



My body, to me, has all the mouth-watering intensity

Of a bran muffin

I no longer lust after myself

I no longer lust in general

There are only dark fleeting moments of contentment

As I shovel pasta into my temple-

My body is a Burger King deluxe.

There are no arches that I’m proud of.



And how did it get like this

I used to love what I am

And now

My body lies over a sea of ketchup.

I don’t even eat the tomato-y stuff

But I feel like I’m drowning in condiments



I bathe in cashmere moonlight

I take showers with my candles

I filter my image with steamed mirrors

And again I am the goddess I remember.

My curves are smooth, my skin glows

and my eyes have a hollow hallo of light to them.

This is what light skinned Barbies look like

What uncle sam expects of me-



In a steamed mirror

I

Am a patriot for beauty.



In the sunlight

I

Am a martyr for tuna sandwiches with 3 kinds of mustard.
Jun 2011 · 774
Wild Blue-headed Rebellion
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
I cannot wait until I’m young enough
To go to 9 different stores
To buy 12 different items
Don’t get me wrong-
I revel in my old age
But what if time weren’t so precious to me
And I savored every moment
Every bite
Every penny, had the time to cut coupons,
Dress comfortably,
Sit on benches in the park and let the sun happen on my skin
Feed things that don’t belong to me like they do

To wish for the sweetness of humdrum activities
Have a pair of perfect slippers by my bed
that have already formed to my toes
Be apart of someone else’s routine
Wake up at 7 in the morning to get ready
For nothing and everything all at once
(growing old enough to be young)
I want to tell stories to others
With the conviction that what I’m saying is of worth
And will positively impact the way they see the world.

I want to spread beauty like the plague
Cough it out onto all my friends
Spew it
Bake it into every second, chew it-
Spew it out again
(Understand the word legacy out of the context of movie titles)
I want to walk away from conversations that bore me
And not feel any remorse

I want to form vowels and consonants
A
N
D
Let them become something so much bigger
Dani Cunningham Jun 2011
Once we lived in a steam-punk wedding cake

the walls tasted like crème cheese icing

everywhere dripped chocolate rust

wheels and gears- pumping out bliss

the house would tick us to sleep

a quiet tock that snuck into our hearts

we beat together-our 3 tiered home and us

and we hung pictures of mixed historical value

the first time someone held our hands

the names of flowers we invented

and the towers twinned together- breathing in city air



Once we lived in a steam-punk wedding cake

The universe kissed our toes

In our rose petal beds

As we nibbled our marshmallow pillows

And greeted the cooler side with the grip of tiny fingers

We wore silly hats

And talked in accents no one could identify

We made our own curse words

That sounded more magical then rude

And we hung pictures of mixed historical meaning

Cartoons from before nickelodeon was bullocks

Our middle names in Braille

And the Kennedys on their wedding day



Once we lived in a steam-punk wedding cake

The home of chocolate fortitude

Where some days we wouldn’t turn on a light switch

And let the candles guide our imaginations

Down dark tunnels and secret gardens

There was never any hunger

Tears only came from happiness

We made capes out of our bed sheets

Chased each other under beds and hid in closets

Peeking out because being caught was our goal

And we hung pictures of mixed understanding

The 8 dirtiest jokes found in ancient art

That day when the sun felt like it would never stop playing with the moon

The day we stood still long enough to know the color of our eyes and the outline of our toes on wet grass

— The End —