E: Favorites

Jun 2015 E

AP

broken lips harbor a pale cigarette and untold secrets
some crafted tales, others unfortunately true
disheveled blonde curls scatter near hollow irises
empty vision, devoid of all color from smooth bourbon
as these drunken nights consolidate all of our old stories into one word,
goodbye

blowing smokey kisses into the polluted air
dangling feet, perched above a desolate rusted bridge and clouded waves
whose orange trusses have all but faded
to form a mixed color that matches the scene ahead
the deepening violet summer sky, nearly black and so sticky
tightening its humid grip on trembling fingers
which remove the cancer stick carefully out of sight
in hopes that desperate eyes can convince a lonely mind
that your sillouhette will reveal itself, dancing in swirling smoke
as your faint hand reaches out to invite me to join you
I grab hold with one thought gnawing at my heart
do I give in to your gentle touch,
and slip below the other side of the bridge?

#love #sad #depression #life #death

Jun 2015 E

Bedtime Stories

Jun 2015 E

Sag

Bedtime Stories

I can tell you hardly sleep at night,
by the blank stares at computer screens
and the way you twiddle your thumbs
and twist the holder-of-hair that once was on your wrist
and I remember spilling my guts out in your passenger seat
and the way you cleaned them up so neatly
and you never once gagged or got mad
that I could've gotten blood on the floorboard
and I remember the time we drove in circles to get the best views of the sunrise and forgetting our words and to breathe
and I remember the time you told me that you weren't an open book,

but you did say something that gave me the courage
to stroke your spine,
and your feather tattoo,
in hopes of being able to read you.

"If you ask me the right questions, I'll tell you anything."

"Why don't you sleep?"
"Just not tired."
"What made you fall asleep as a child?"
"Is it the night terrors that keep you awake?"

And with those words, I was able to skim the first few pages.

Maybe one day, my presence alone could comfort you immediately,
the way your mother's never could,
the way Marie did so effortlessly

of course, I'll never be your dream catcher like she
but I'll look up at the stars with you and tell you what constellations I see and hope that my voice is louder than the memory of her absence and that my smile is a little less haunting of a view
than your bedroom ceiling

Jun 2015 E

the lord of the artifact of life

Jun 2015 E

Coop Lee

the lord of the artifact of life

the sun,
the moon,
the both of us.*

portland to portland,
we are genocide: america.
we are teen murders & horror sitcoms.
globally tuneforked sacrifices,
with commercial breaks.
land of the plumed serpent.
built on the burial grounds of chieftains tall,
but dead men.
public access: watch the tallest towers fall.
in them, men of manifest.
a beast shook.
land of the war artifact.
our birth.
our thousand tongues.
our endless hovering demons/drones/droids of the bomb.
of the eye always watching.

destroyer.
a solar born son of aquarian blood.
prince of the death cult prestigious.
skull & ***** & throned with the boom-button ready.
aligned to die for great glory and bury the dragon one hundred thousand light-years into the dark rift.
heart of milky her.

history favors the bomb.
flavors the chip
dipped.

there was that death of the last cowboy.
his dreams returned to the stars.
his planet returned to chaos,
&/or love.
but both.

#love #war #life #death #america

Jun 2015 E

A Dead Horse Named Ten Word Poem

Jun 2015 E

Charlie Chirico

A Dead Horse Named Ten Word Poem

The popularity of ten word poems
is more frustrating than the excessive use of exclamation points. Vonnegut may have thought of semicolons to be transvestites, but a readily available exclamation is the patron at a restaurant asking which farm the free range eggs have come from. To which you respond politely, while pinching your thigh. And the ten word poem is far beyond the measure of either punctuation. Those ten words are the publicly shared suicide note, crying for help, and seeking validation in the form of a digital thumbs up.

Jun 2015 E

Sad Introverts and Good Company

Jun 2015 E

g

Sad Introverts and Good Company

When you are sitting with
beautiful people, and
you still feel sad,
does that say a thing about you?

Well, if you're asking me,
I don't want to be nervous anymore.

Maybe I can't tell my friends
that I'm happy because
last week I found myself covered in mud
and still didn't feel as *****
as the days I found myself
still trying to wash
your fingerprints off.

Jun 2015 E

Winter solitude

Jun 2015 E

Matsuo Bashō

Winter solitude

Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

Jun 2015 E

hello sky

Jun 2015 E

Sag

hello sky

if you're pretty, they'll give you just about anything

if you're more than pretty, they'll give you everything

she'll put on her best colors and show her brightest lights first
and she'll have you suddenly running barefoot through the gravel just to get behind the wheel quick enough to catch her

i'm sitting in a baseball field looking up at her
just watching her twirl her periwinkle curls in her fingers
watching her round bright eyes beneath batting lashes
watching the way she moves her hips and transforms every few seconds into another vision of unfathomable beauty

she'll never be mine but when you're that beautiful,
why would you belong solely to one individual?
i'm glad everyone can share the sight of her.

she won't stay for long,
(and she'll leave you itchy in the grass
and bug-bitten, damp-bottomed,
*****-footed, sweaty-necked,
hair-tied, and, worry-mothered...?
and creating new words and phrases
just to try to explain her euphoric aura)
but she'll be back again tomorrow,
only slightly different
and entirely different
after traveling the globe

and we'll still be mesmerized to the point of dew drop eyes
because that's what happens when writers*

fall for skies

*poets, writers, singers, swingers, sentimentalists, humans.

the sky has been intensely flirting with me lately
i think i'm destined to spend the rest of my life literally chasing sunsets