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Hope White Mar 2019
Why don't you ever read my poetry?
You said you wanted to,
"grasp the concepts of my dimensions"
but you don't read my poetry.
Where I lay out a map of my dimensions,
and a key to my concepts,
for you alone to grasp,
but instead you stare at my surfaces
from your screen
and decide you know better.
Like your favorite cliche,
I lead you like a horse to water,
but you don't even bother.
You listen to songs that
only one of us likes
and say you heard me there.
You look at your own reflection
in the mirror and say you saw me there,
in the pools of your own eyes,
when I stand just behind your shoulder.
Hope White Mar 2019
I can't pay my rent today.
I can't write poetry, either,
because I took a pill,
that I spent my rent money on,
and I can't write on this pill.
But this pill promised me
it would make me beautiful.

Imagine making a cocktail
with crushed glass
instead of ice.
It would **** you,
but it'd be so beautiful.
Blood would drip from your lips
like lipstick, deadly and red,
but it'd be so beautiful.

Imagine paying your rent with poetry.
You'd be back on the streets,
and strangers probably would think
that maybe, pretty white girl,
you're a self-inflicted martyr,
a heroine against the culture
or maybe just that
you just do ******,

but it'd be so beautiful.
Hope White Sep 2018
How to Write a Poem:

***** your finger and bleed directly onto the page.
Buy a typewriter from a thrift store and poetically sit in a coffee
shop until your muse walks in.
Sleep with your professor and let her write your poems for you.
Hold private seances at the cemetery.
Read your high school yearbook
until your poems seethe with forgotten teenage angst.
Specifically berate your current lover
but then assure him the words aren’t about him.
Drink yourself into oblivion
but blame your inner artist for your demons.
List all the sins of your mother
and conveniently forget those of your father.
Clutch your pen until a stigmata appears in your hands.
Speak your truth,
but tell your friends
your poems aren’t from your own point-of-view.
Hope White Sep 2018
I’m currently sitting in the coldest clinic,
Across from, probably,
the cheapest Mexican restaurant in Western Arizona.

The floors are sterile white,
And I giggle at the thought
of you
recognizing the irony
Of my emptiness.

The walls are also white and look slick with Lysol.
They radiate that dampness
that I swear that they smell
like loneliness,

We didn’t make love,
So much as **** in the dirt,
But the truth is
I’d rather wake up hot in the afternoon
on the dirt and the ground
(After you’ve already left)
Than wake up next to
The wrong person
in the wrong bed.

From earthy and raw
so quickly
to empty and white.
Hope White Sep 2018
My youth was short and blurred.
I imagine it felt like the last few moments of Kurt Cobain’s life;
All light and no color.
Though I was born a winter baby,
Summers irrevocably held my heart.
They tasted like the sunscreen that dripped
onto my chlorine-damp lips
And smelled sweet like the honeysuckles
That strangled the Forget-Me-Nots,
Whose roots twisted between the cemeteries
Of our once-pets beneath.
Hope White Sep 2018
They chased dragons
instead of their dreams
and made love
at rock bottom.
Hope White Jun 2018
“What is it You REALLY Want, CAPRICORN?”
my back-up Gmail account beckons me.

To not plan my own 25th birthday party
but still have it happen.
And for everyone one who’s ever met me to attend
And stay with me and promise to never leave
And then never leave, just like they promised.

Apparently I’m wrong.
The horoscope tells me to be cautious during the retrograde.

I need this email to fill me
For five minutes,
To tide me to sleep.

I need this five minutes of
Emptiness
To fill me completely.
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