E Townsend: Favorites

Oct 2015 E Townsend

bri mylyn

you make me melancholy

you are here and you are whole
my initials are printed on your cellophane skin
you paid to have someone else mark you to say
"this is the last time"
"this is my home"

you have made me into a saddened poet
and nearly a mother
our names used to run together justlikethis
now they are separate creatures
ensnared to each other by &
and that is better
we appear at parties, an institution
wedding guests in patchy blazer
and swollen dress
people take photographs of us
i hope someday to see them captioned
by someone who never dwelt in that moment with us

you are thinner this time around
more delicate, i worry someday i will cling so tightly in need of you that you rust beneath my fingers
like i sent you around a carousel and you came back astride a horse and in an ill-fitting suit
longer hair, thinner face, fuller beard
sunken eyes
i made you into a watery corpse
and i'm sorry

i lie on my side and bite sea green glass bottles
think about the child i'll bear you
suffocate and cannot dream
i cry tears of frankincense and battle the dead inside me
calling for me to join them for a day
boy, pray for my life

i can be cold and altruistic
and all i want to do is pen songs
that is fine with you
you have become a mortician now
in dress, in manner, in aspiration

i missed you terribly
i know i am incessant
you stumbled through a curtain and onto my doorstep
i welcomed you with flat palms and clenched teeth
i love you
and i'm sorry i smoked you out the first time around

i told you in a rainy place we've been before
we took it as a sign but i'd already made my mind up
when we lay sunken in my floor, and i breathed with you without hesitation
**** it, why'd i ever let them take you away from me
i'm sorry, friend

we blew kisses to our stars and now i'm making you a father after all your friends
in your veiny hands you'll hold our only child
i'm so sorry for what i did, and what i'm bound to do
you'll be back soon, i miss your sunken cheeks and the way you say goodbye
i need to rest my bones, you make bitterness taste like home

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Pitter-Patter Splitter-Splatter

Oct 2015 E Townsend

moss

Pitter-Patter Splitter-Splatter

what's this liquid falling from the sky
with its pitter-patter, pitter-patter?
to the drought of summer, it says "goodbye"
with its splitter-splatter, splitter-splatter!
look and watch as the world grows vibrant
as it pitter-patters, pitter-patters!
oh, thank you, dear clouds, for being our hydrant
as it splitter-splatters, splitter-splatters!
watch as the parched lives are finally quenched
by its pitter-patter, pitter-patter!
the once dry earth at last is drenched
by its splitter-splatter, splitter-splatter!

It just rained here today for the first time in almost three months, at least the first time it's rained beyond a slight mist, and I'm so happy.

#life #rain #water #clouds #sky #color

Oct 2015 E Townsend

misperceived (10w)

Oct 2015 E Townsend

moss

misperceived (10w)

he perceived their silence as rejection
yet always craved affection

#misunderstood #rejection #silence #affection

Oct 2015 E Townsend

To give up or to let go

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Kristie Aragon

To give up or to let go

I did not give up. I let go. They are two different things. Letting go is the opposite of giving up. Letting go is moving forward. Letting go is going against every single heartbeat, swallowing every tear, cutting every string. Few people realize this, but letting go takes more courage, more strength, than holding on.

#broken #depression #sadness #depressed #loss #lost #thoughts #heartbroken #lettinggo #givingup

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Ghosts

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Michael Humbert

Ghosts

A haunted house. Great.
I've plenty ghosts already
Right here in my head

#haiku

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Old bones

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Haydn Swan

Old bones

Rickety old bones,
carrying my frame,
dragging my corpse,
around in the rain,
flickering candles
dance in the dark,
where ghostly whispers
alive you do hark,
through the shadows,
where people do sleep,
pray to your god,
your soul shall he keep.

something a little dark as Halloween approaches

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Open letter to my parents

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Victoria Anne Noel Shinkle

Open letter to my parents

Memories make you uncomfortable
but they wrap themselves around me
So when I tell you stories
about Sunday mornings or Christmas trees
Please listen
to the tears I hold back

And I know it isn’t healthy to look back
Like a sweater you outgrew making you uncomfortable
But please listen
To the words tumbling from me
Like leaves falling from dying trees
Because all I have left are stories

And I scream them from skyline stories
 I cannot hold them back
They take root in my brain like great trees
The branches spring from my throat uncomfortable
I must remove them from me
Please just listen

Because I’ve been distanced so just listen
These aren’t the stories
I wanted to weigh on me 
But I’m back  to being uncomfortable 
in my own skin. Scratching like bark from trees

Do you remember the front yard? Decorated by trees
They sing in the wind if you listen
The sound would make me uncomfortable
Because of all the old stories
Of skeletons hung back
But you lit candles and wrapped rainbows around me 
So forgive me If I cry for skinned knees from falling down trees
that healed awhile back
And you don’t have to listen 
If these stories 
make you uncomfortable.  

I’m uncomfortable 
with the stories
 being rewritten. So you don’t have to listen

#love #sad #memories #family #divorce #childhood #parents #sestina

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Sestina, of Space and Time

Oct 2015 E Townsend

Jgoodz International

Sestina, of Space and Time

Maybe I’d be drifting, slowly at first;
Approaching specks of light in the distance;
Once there, now here, free of space and not time;
Perhaps an error in the equations
Would have me lost in the empty darkness
Or free to run along amongst the light.

And you would stand alone in the Sun’s light,
Telling everyone that you were there first
And that you would stay until the darkness
To watch as I traveled in the distance.
Your hand guided mine through the equations
And reminded me to account for time.

You were wrong, of course, to tell me that time
Would stand idle until the morning light
Of my return, and those sad equations
Would stare back into my eyes, quiet first
But then screaming, filling the dead distance
And echoing through the void of darkness.

I hope when your eyes are filled with darkness
And you listen to the passing of time,
Or your hands reach through the empty distance
That you get up and walk outside; the light
You see from the stars passed by my eyes first.
Find peace in that, not from the equations.

I will obsess over these equations
Until my mind is filled by the darkness;
Insanity, if not from silence first
Then by the harrowed tick and tock of time…
Or maybe I’d stand in the fading light
And pay no mind to the growing distance.

So thus we wait and hope for the distance
To honor the truth of the equations.
Seconds pass slowly at the speed of light;
Leaving it behind leaves only darkness;
Perfect silence in the absence of time.
I question whether my heart will stop first.

Maybe I’ll forget the equations first.
Time grows slower, the distance grows larger.
But the darkness fades. Only light remains.

#first #time #darkness #light #distance #sestina #equations