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JR Potts Aug 2017
I want to fill my days with you
the way I fill my mug in the morning
with coffee

my passenger seat is full
of empty bottles in the shape of a conversation
we need to have

because that seat used to be yours
and this boat has gotten harder to captain
without a navigator

I can’t read the stars like you
even with the telescope you gave me,
I lack your patience

except for that night on Outer Beach
when we laid on the roof of my car to watch
the evening blue turn black

it started slow but soon the night sky
was consumed by the shine of a billion lights,
some over a million years away

but today I’m staring at an empty closet
draped in naked hangers where your clothes
once hung

somedays I still catch a whiff of you
the smell of your shampoo on my pillow case
I should have washed it by now

I know I am not a perfect man
and I need not remind you of every flaw
but I find it easier to be a better one

with you here...
JR Potts Jan 2015
I live with all the women I've broken
in a cottage in the country
and in the evening we drink tea.
We talk sometimes of love
but mostly we speak
of how much we hate me.
JR Potts Aug 2014
Coffee stained napkins
with naked truths
written all over in red ink.

Nothing worth publishing,
not even something
you’ll let friends see.

This is that real ****
that only you can read.

The mean things you say to yourself
when you’re not acting cool
in front of others.

The fantasies you dare not speak
in front of your mother
or even your closet lovers.

This is that real ****
that only you can read.

The stuff you deny in mixed company
even though you hate to lie.
That **** you want people to find.

But you won’t ever show them
because you think you’re ****** up;
so you lock it up inside that chest.

This is that real ****
that only you can read.

These are the kinds of words
that get torn up and thrown out
before you leave the café.

This is that real ****
that only you can read.
JR Potts Feb 2014
I awake to my tired hands holding your body tightly against mine. The smell of you is something I will never forget, pleasantly refreshing almost like a hot shower. It's funny now to think that this moment is the last, the last time I will ever touch you affectionately. The last time I will gaze upon you with an infinite stare so deep that it still shakes me like the first shiver of winter; catching me off guard because I thought summer would never end. I can feel your heart beating against mine and I want to cry, what a terrible feeling to know this was fading and the reasons were all mine to hold. You drift back from your dream and into the daze of the living, you realize where you are and you ask me to drive you home. I get dressed and you do the same. Though we wore little, there was no passionate *** the night before. Just two bodies side by side seeking shelter from the storm that brewed inside of us. This is the end, we can both feel it but neither of us has the tongue to speak it.
I turn the key in the ignition and we idle for a short time in silence, now strangers again living different lives. This driveway in my beat-up Mazda on an early Sunday morning, this place is my purgatory. I make a stop at the gas station,  the E-light is on again. I ask you if you need a water or a coffee. You disdainfully say no. You hate me again, you have remembered I am a cheater, worse a liar and no matter how many times I apologize those truths remain evident. On my walk from the car I imagined you hopping in the driver's seat and driving off; if only the tank wasn't empty. I buy you water anyway because though you have declined it, I know that you need it, I always knew what you needed and it wasn't me or at least that's how I felt. I hope those feelings give you a little clairvoyance into my behavior. I never thought I was better than you if anything I thought you made me more. I pay the gas station attendant for pumping the gas, I hand you the bottled water and I drive you home.
My car pulls into the dirt driveway; I keep it running even though I want to turn it off, just shut up that loud lousy engine for a couple of minutes and tell you how much I hate myself for being such a miserable *****. Instead there is an awkward goodbye, do we kiss, do we hug, do we shake hands; I don't ******* know. You open the car door as to leave; possibly forever and you stop. You turn to me and ask a simple question. "Why didn't you do this when we were dating?" you hold up that plastic bottle now half empty "This is all I ever wanted!" I knew what you meant and it had nothing to do with water. I stutter for a moment and all my ego allows me to whimper is "I did". Wrong answer. I watched you walk up to the front-door and then I drove home; where I wept, quietly so my roommates wouldn't hear me because I was ashamed, not of crying but of who I was. Looking back I am glad that night wasn't about *** because it was always your innocence that melted me to my core. It was your smile, a cheerfulness that often left me confused. The world was a terrible place and yet you smiled when you looked at me. You were so beautiful and I so ugly, and because of that feeling I did ugly things. Today; I can say I forgive you. I forgive you for never forgiving me; leaving me behind was probably the best thing you ever taught me.

With love, always,
Jonathan R. Potts
JR Potts Sep 2013
We were misfits
the neglected *******
of a backwards world
that rejected us
not because we were sick
demented or dangerous
but because we didn't prescribe
to a preconceived notion
of what a functioning citizen was.

Not rotten enough to spoil
behind the bars of a prison
just competent enough
to work menial jobs
and drown our sorrows
at the corner pub.

We swallowed this hard truth
the same way we drank our shots
with no chaser
and at times it burnt
maybe even made us tear up
but we never let it beat us
(too strong for that)

We were beautiful
resilient beasts
that could carry the weight
of the world upon our shoulders
and it was heavy
but we would tell ourselves
"doesn't every world need an atlas?"
so we went on holding up the sky
when no one asked it of us.
JR Potts May 2016
Dave was the kind of guy to always talk about leaving; we have all known a guy like Dave and we have always wished he would go, not because we didn’t want him around but because we knew he was one of the few who could go. Sometimes he would work up the courage and leave this suburban drive by; he even spent a few months out west, Portland or something. He never mentioned it much, the trip didn’t last long, more like an extended vacation before he was back working the same job, drinking at the same bar and kissing the same woman, well not the same exact woman but she was always close enough to the previous one, the difference seemed insignificant to us. I'd look at him at the end of that bar, sipping his beer as he wore the face of a man who was often late for work because he lost his keys. He found them once before between the cushions of the couch, so now every time he misplaced them, he would check their first and check again six more times. Always looking for what he needed in the same place he found it once.
JR Potts Aug 2015
I can hear gulls squawking
like catcallers in the streets
of New York City
but they're not talking to me,
they're speaking to the ocean breeze.
They'll be heading south soon.
Fall is coming
and you can taste it
even in the August heat.

I still have memories
of childhood summers
that lasted longer than some years
recently.
Can't help but think of the days
I wasted worried about
who I would be
and now I'm someone
sitting beneath a girthy oak tree
wearing a collared button up
that hangs on me a little too loosely.

I don't know what that means
but it may mean something
to somebody else
who writes love letters to life,
that might just double
as quiet cries for help
in a world so high on noise
it's forgotten poetry.
JR Potts Jan 2015
I went for a stroll in the wood
felt the earth bend beneath my feet
heard the chorus of cracking ice
out on the old stump pond.
watched as waves of fog
rolled off its melting sheets.

I found a small bit of peace
in the clatter of my footsteps
on my brownian walk
and felt seduced
by the eerie absence
of my thoughts.

no plotting and scheming
or unreasonable wanting
and dreaming of more.
finally an escape
from the neoteric noise
the technicolor screens,
and the scripted realities
we call life.
JR Potts Feb 2015
The wind swept across sheering dunes of white sand
the way certain kinds of dancers sway
like flames
The way young children often play
free of their father’s shame

It filled his lungs with the fire of his innocence
and the longer he inhaled the larger he grew
no sooner had he rivaled mountains
did he hear the cries of his former self
this being bound in chains spoke thus

Be wary Apricus,
many great men have had their heads over hills
and their fates delivered them to the stake.
Are you willing to burn, to crumble into ash
and return to the dirt of mother earth
for all that you believe?


Broken by doubt,
the mountain becomes a man again
but the heart of a giant still swelled inside of him
It raged against his fragile frame like a violent slave
until it grew weary of its own restless thunder
and there it sunk into the deep,
the deep frore of a wintry slumber

Sleep for now my lively child
for the hearts of giants reside inside of all men
but first they must learn to love themselves
before the giants can walk the earth again
I originally wrote this work in 2012. I envisioned it as a piece of a larger body of work surrounding my original protagonist, Apricus a Gypsy Poet who wanders and talks with people of life and philosophy. Think Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" or Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra". This poem was submitted to several poetry contests with no accolades being bestowed upon it but I still consider it one of my best works. Thank you for reading.
JR Potts Mar 2014
Blur the parts that make you feel
please forget that you and I
once had something real.

Blur the parts that make you cry
I say forget it all, burn it all,
I don't care and I don't mind.

For when the final ashes
have been carried like spirits
adrift amid the empty wind,

for when our hearts
cease to weep
and our busy minds
may finally sleep
then and only then
will I close my eyes
and admit to myself
that every single one
of these words
is a lie.
JR Potts Dec 2016
The mirrors are now flush with a fog,
the air grows hot from the bodies
that move about the mat like acrobats,
swimming through the guards and grips
of their opponents’ limbs
as I sit back and admire
another training session
at the monster gym.

Sometimes I think, not too often
(but occasionally) and I wonder
where would I be if I had not been here-
for the last two and half years of my life?
What kind of person would I be
had I not met all these different personalities
who have wandered in and out those doors
both day and night?

   For some this place is an escape
               but for me it’s become a way of life.
JR Potts Jul 2014
Folklorico serenades the street
from an open third floor window
a rhythmically refreshing sound
compared to the silence
the calming silence
of south 2nd street
in Brooklyn
hardly escaping the shadow
of the metropolitan center
this little pocket has escaped
the hustle and bustle
that traditionally defines New York
the chatter from the stoop
three gentlemen discussing
'stop and frisk' and 'being processed'
the corner store as old
as the neglected blue mailbox
that now serves as a canvas
for local taggers
new eateries and humming bars
full of new immigrants
out of staters, artists
from places not so welcoming
to their brand of queer
here on this quiet street
I watched the new grow
among the old
this place was a garden

of concrete, culture
and dreams
JR Potts Oct 2013
I stand at the convenience store counter
with a smile but conflicted inside
I know I don't need them
yet, there they are.

A rainbow of apathetic death
a mosaic of bad breath
and even worse excuses
waiting to be packed
put into my chest pocket
and held close to my heart.

It makes me sick, hard to breathe
and yet here I am all ready to leave
with twenty more sticks of disease,
the same ones that gave my father
C-O-P-D.

But still I buy.

I swipe that card with little regard
to the fact that I'm reliving history
a son just as dumb as his father before him
scoring the same dope
wearing the same rope
around his collar.

I've thrown whole packs out car windows
sworn them off cause the habit,
the money lost and especially the cough
was getting to be a problem.

I've renounced this addiction
with the conviction of a holy man
yet still I stand smokes in hand
puffing away; swearing this to be my last
every time I can't help but laugh a little
cause I know I'm full of ****.
(Don't we all)

But still I buy.
JR Potts May 2016
My limbs wrested, and extended, towards the heavens
like young children’s hands on the first sunlit days of spring.
The muted grays of winter fade, soon replaced by softer blues.
I still remember the first time I caught wind of you,
your back against my trunk and it lent me your lungs.
I learned to breathe like you too,
in shy and quiet silences while trying not to shake-
the world
but darling you came into mine, trembling fault lines
like an earthquake reading poetry and upended my roots.
I was seduced by you and there was nothing you did,
or could do that would untie this bind we shared
our bodies intertwined, ancient wood and woman
tethered together by the invisible pleasure
of one another’s company.
You spoke to me with feathers
and kissed me with subtle gestures
while I shade you from the sun.
I had never known such a word
but on that summer I called it love
and I believed it to be true
until the day you did not come.
The earth and soil from which I sow
has slowly grown into a prison atop this grassy knoll.
I have become a tree with the memories of a man.
JR Potts Dec 2014
A shoebox of letters
hand written on yellow looseleaf
pages upon pages of promises
written in red ink,
a coffin in need of a burial
a reminder of a life
and a love denied.

February 14th, 1989
penned within my first year
the name at the top is not mine
but she writes to him
the way you will write to me
only two decades later.

I shiver as I read each draft;
to realize our failed romance
was but an echo of the past.
I found letters addressed to the former tenant of my apartment, His name was Ricky and the only insights I have about him are the contents of a singular shoebox I found in the attic.
JR Potts Aug 2014
Hands hug a ceramic mug
warm like the touch of a lover.

Lips pressed firmly to the rim
met with a tender caffeine kiss
JR Potts Apr 2015
I never understood how both
a self-obsessed egomaniac
and a hopeless romantic
could inhabit one body;
perhaps it is the reason
I have spent so much time
in front of the mirror, hating myself.
JR Potts Apr 2014
hands clasped
maybe bound
began to gasp
its summer now

light rays
warm water
lazy days
with new lovers

scent of pollen
tepid skin
kisses blossom
swoon within

fall breeze
broken hearts
shifting weather
fall apart
JR Potts Feb 2014
They can tell you all about their dreams
they can sing'em from every street corner
online, offline, on any **** line they want
but I have always had a theory
one good one about us song birds
were busy slinging dreams like cheap dope
because were afraid to live
afraid to take that first step into the unknown
so ******* scared of our own dreams
we talk about'em night and day
mostly at night, avoiding sleep
like lunatics ranting
but instead of hospitals
they got us tied down in bars
forget lithium, they got *****
boooooze I say
and enough drunk ******* to listen
to every petty fear you got
they even let you parade it around
wear it on your lips like a cheap suit
some even start to believe you too
we find ourselves singing from bar stools
like they were mountain tops
every one of us, every last one us
a ******* dreamer
trapped in a real world
JR Potts Nov 2014
I drip the way condensation does
down ice cold beer in a TV commercial
when she looks at me.
I'm soaking up cardboard coasters,
sweating labels off bottles
until she wraps her hands around me again,
kissing me with those flower petal like lips,
drinking me all in.

I know I'm not what she needs
but right now I'm what she wants.
Not to stroke my own ego
but I am a good time,
I'll get you to undo that top button
even make you laugh
and maybe, just maybe
I'll even get you to dance
but no matter what I promise
or what I deliver,
I know at the end of the day
when the fun is done
and the headaches fade,
I am poison.
And when she's had too much of me
I'll make her sick.
***** spit in bathroom sinks
because she's too beautiful
to have her head in the toilet.

I'm the answer to feeling sad,
I'm the easy late night phone call
that never goes unanswered
but I am not the man
she marries, no not at all
because as sweet as I taste
or as gently as she may kiss my face
I am going to disappoint her.
The way I have disappointed
all the others before her.
JR Potts Dec 2015
Milky golden light sawn through
murky heavens and it bent my glacial heart.
The scent of soggy leaves out on the lawn,
fall has come and done its part.
Winter weighs heavy in the idle air,
hung as though it were a conversation
not yet had

Waning passions hushed by waxing sighs
and unpacked bags in need of packing
before the coming sunrise.
I talk of leaving often but you silence it
with pint-size gulps of red wine,
drunken *** and yet another argument
before you cry
JR Potts May 2016
Ignorance is a light
that many men follow
and I too for some time
was a fool to its flames
JR Potts Mar 2018
You are singing silence out in the yard,
the newly empty nest hanging overhead,
like cliché clouds of grey, foreboding so.
Twee words feather dust the ironclad guard
with your feelings locked in its bear trap jaws,
hold them long enough and they will starve.

Stoicism has its cost.

Oh Ghost bird, how can I fix what is wrong
if the tune is subdued? Sing it slow.
Let the words bend at the edges,
allow your voice to crack and crow.
There is beauty in its breaking,
a love in the nakedness of it all.

...

Muted light shown though like saltwater
spraying through holes in the canopy’s hull,
kissing your eyelids with a warm familiar glow.
Twisting paths of gnarly branches pass
towards either dark clouds or blue skies
and you are drowning under all its mass.

Confusion has its cost.

Oh Ghost bird, how can I fix what is wrong
if the tune is subdued? Sing it slow.
Let the words bend at the edges,
allow your voice to crack and crow.
There is beauty in its breaking,
a love in the nakedness of it all.

...

I meet you underneath the dogwood tree,
arms around arms, my forehead against yours
the rain now falling ever so softly under the sun.
I am pleading, let go the injured doe, yelping there
in the grasp of your iron bite and in the daylight
let go of what holds you in the dark of night.

Romance has its cost.

Oh Ghost bird, how can you fix what is wrong
if the tune is subdued? I’ll sing it slow.
Let the words bend at the edges,
allow my voice to crack and crow.
There is beauty in its breaking,
a love in the nakedness of it all.
JR Potts Jan 2018
It is in the midst of strife
when the burden weighs most heavy,
your innards writhe and twisted;
the discomfort tugging at you so intensely
you cannot help but feel the tightness in your throat.

It is in the thick of this black mist
when your hands pick and pull
upon the wisping thread inside your head,
unraveling the rabble of cowardice voices
which spill like venom on your thoughts.

It is the unsettling notion
you are alone in a vast and empty ocean
sinking, suffocating and claustrophobic,
your mind is brimming, overflowing,
afraid it might just crack right open

It is knowing
these thoughts which come pouring
from that fractious bore inside your skull
seethe with undisclosed emotions
and their exposure to the air could crush you whole.

Will you allow this shameful wave
to crash atop you with all its galling weight
and drag you under grain by grain?

Or-

Will you battle back the coming storm,
standing above the surging tide
a rampart refusing to forfeit a single inch
of your distinguished shore?

I say battle.
Battle with the erosive waters rising inside you.
Battle knowing fully at first you are destined to lose.
The hero must be humbled
before others see him as the hero too.
So battle **** it, battle you glorious fool!
JR Potts Sep 2014
I see her there
soaking in the bath
the water as warm as her flesh
she floats, suspended in emptiness
melting slowly as she gazes

I see her there
wine in hand, unfulfilled
by her intoxication
bored by reality, just jaded
by the whole affair of breathing

I see her there
thoughts of drowning
in a ceaseless sea
of forgettable people
with forgettable faces

I see her there
but she does not see me
I am the red stain on her teeth
the warm water inviting her to sleep
I am death, and oh so quietly
do I creep.
JR Potts Apr 2015
I wrestled with the black sea
that brood inside of her,
but nothing I possessed
could stop that dark tide
from taking her.
The poem is actually a line from a short story I wrote about a man trying to deal with his wife's depression
JR Potts Sep 2014
An absent father's failure with an inhaler in hand

Insecurity seething from his skin

Manifesting it's self as bulbous red abrasions on his forehead

A heavy breathing child who's eyes were often aimed low

His expectations for life even lower

A little over weight but not enough to concern his pediatrician

He cut gym class a lot because of the showers

Now fourteen he had seen a few ******

He knew he didn't match up

It was better that no one knew he thought

He went on living like this

A pale shadow hovering in the halls

A faceless nobody in the background of someone else's group photo

A ghost who was only noticed by those who tortured him

Bullies like sharks can smell blood in the water

And he was chum

I still vividly see the feeding frenzy

I still remember the day we were told he took his own life

NO shrieks, NO cries, NOT even a whimper was heard

Almost a concerted sigh of boredom

That night there was a party

Not to celebrate his death

But an apathetic gesture of his nonexistence

I attended as was socially expected of me

Even wore a smile

But my mind wrestled with his suicide

I thought of how much I hated him

I hated the smell of his weakness

I hated the 'poor me' attitude

I hated him for taking his own life

Leaving me to feel guilty

That I had done nothing to help him

As if I was responsible in some way

...
JR Potts Jul 2015
Sometimes we run
into the arms of a terrible person
just trying to escape a broken heart
because loneliness has been known
to taste like warm whiskey,
parliament lights and the kiss
of a lack luster lover who spent more time
trying to lie you between the covers
than they did learning to say your name
out loud, you know the type.
I'd be lying too if I didn't say
I've been that kind, that tall glass of water
promising to dampen a dry tongue
which ain't got the courage to say I'm sorry,
not to nobody else but to themselves.

So I want apologize for not seeing
or perhaps ignoring how crushed you were
when I rolled you up in my arms
the way hikers do sleeping bags
and I held you in my lap
because the car was packed
and I didn't know where else to put you.
You must have felt safe there
thinking you were the place
for me to lay my head on this road trip
we call life, but little did you know
had the trunk not been full
I would have been sitting alone
face aglow from my cellular phone
texting other women,
probably with a smile.

I am here to tell you, you deserve better
and I don't want you ever settle
for anything less than a lover's embrace
because comfort plus time
equals unease on your mind.
Worrying whether this companion of yours
has become a stone tied to your heart
with a heavy rope and its tugging you down
into the dark blue depths
filling your lungs with ice cold seawater
with every last breath.

I want you to be with someone
you can chase for the rest of your life
and when you get tired of swimming
they won't leave you treading,
chumming shark infested waters
with blood from a poorly stitched heart
but they will follow and follow
until you both find that deserted island,
that paradise you promised one another.
JR Potts Nov 2013
Forthcome that which has no meaning
beyond the petty dreamings of a fool.
Trickled thoughts walk off mid-conversation
with strangers into the vanishing
managing to forget that I forgot them first
way before they wandered off
to inhabit the earth
but that's just me being hipster,
rather be in Pittsburgh
because New York,
too contemporary.
Very hedonistic with a lack of trajectory
or am I projecting to protect me
from an existential vasectomy.
Maybe
I'm afraid I can't make it here
Maybe
I think I drink too much beer
and Baby
I should have been more clear

I am scared
I am scared
I am scared of being a failure
and I don't even know
what the **** failure is
or what one even looks like
because every time I think I've met one
they've taught me something about my life
half the the high school teachers
across this country couldn't.

My home
has taken their lives,
my passion and my poisons
have made it hard to get by
and my parents
have worked and will mostly likely die
holding on to concept I now perceive as a lie
That's why I so badly wanna believe in nothing
but I keep falling head over heels
cartoon like slips on banana peels
Women; smart enough
to know a poet is a bad deal
but I still do it 3, 4 times a day
I let someone inside
and we'll make love
with words and thoughts
we'll tell each other what we dream of
and talk about the kinds of things
that can't be bought
cause those are the things that matter
at least to me.

But I guess
that's just me
being hipster
again.
JR Potts May 2016
I don't want to be misunderstood,
losing a friend to suicide is incredibly hard
but what I find most unnerving is how infectious
the idea of escape can be.
Talk to someone
JR Potts Sep 2013
We had not spoke or wrote
for many long days
turning to even longer weeks
which grew into the longest months
until I could no longer weep
and again I found peace
in my once restless sleep.

But you came a calling
and a texting me
just when my hands
finally started feeling clean
spinning them words like
"I miss you"
"I just wanted to see"
wicked turn a phrases
pierce ears like crooked hooks
they could turn a man's thoughts
like the pages of an ancient book.

Your fingers gliding gently
over now so hazy memories
we meet again amidst a fog
but your eyes, your eyes
they do not remember me
they see a man foul in form
ugly, twisted flesh, weak and pathetic
ripping his own heart from his chest

This is not me you see (no not at all)
but a protrusion of your own ill-regard
you slithered on your belly like a serpent
begging to be tread upon
so I moved like certain kinds of dances
around tribal fires
determined not to slip but inevitably I did
how dare you hiss "Liar" at me.

I'm just a man
working on being a better one
I don't expect you to understand
cause I never said I could fly
so why the **** did you think
I was superman.
JR Potts Dec 2013
I am not the man you marry.
Not at all!

I've never had a good job
I've never owned a nice car
and I don’t buy dinner.

Your mother will hate the way I dress
your father won’t trust me
and your girlfriends won’t ever be impressed
that you got me because

I am not the man you marry.
Not at all!

I drink too much
I smoke too many cigarettes
and I like to get high sometimes.

You’re right to think I’m crazy
you’re wrong to think I’ll ever stop being so
and if you ever thought you could change me
than you’re two cans short of a six pack because

I am not the man you marry.
Not at all!

I’ll make you nervous
I’ll make you uncertain about your beliefs
and I won’t ever apologize for being me.

You'll cry
you'll hurt
and you’ll try
to make it work because

I am the man you love
but I am not the man you marry.
Originally written: 06/10/13
JR Potts Sep 2016
i cannot imagine myself,
i mean the voice with whom I speak
who both doubt and believe (in me)
i cannot imagine that self
without you.
your silence a symphony
your words a philosophy
carefully constructed behind
the blue iris and white wash
of your eyes.

i cannot imagine my life
without you in the passenger seat
(you let me drive) and you've yet
to fall asleep
i can still feel you staring at me
and that self doesn't want to believe
(at least not on this particular day)
it's worthy of whatever good you see.
yet here you are, in all your quiet thunder
humbling me with each individual
breath.

i cannot imagine myself
because as much as i have wrestled
and fought against this inevitable truth
it grew more clear with every struggle.
i cannot imagine myself
because since the day i met you
i knew inside this mind of mine
i had to make room for two.
JR Potts Mar 2015
I hate everything I write
I hate every word
every rhyme
I hate all of it
and secretly I want you
to hate me too
JR Potts Dec 2014
I feel like a black hole
when I sit at the bar.
Like there is no amount of liquor
that could fill this bottomless well
and people keep falling in.

I can hear them cry sometimes
finger nails clawing at stone
until the tips are rubbed raw.
Ghosts wailing in the dark
a throbbing in my chest,
Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.

I spoke to one once
at a queer hour in the morn
she said "It's beautiful down here"
even as her body was being torn
into billions of subatomic particles.

"It's beautiful" she cried
"I've seen the end of time
I've seen galaxies form
I've seen star's collapse
and again be reborn
I've seen life emerge
and I've seen it destroyed
I've seen it all with my eyes
and all the bad you've done,
all the guilt you carry
it isn't helping anyone
it's ok- it's ok-- it's ok---
to let yourself be happy"

I so badly desired
to have faith in her words
but I've never been one
to believe in ghosts.
JR Potts Dec 2013
I need more sleep
but I need more you
how can I choose
when both are as real
as they are true,
if I must sleep
then I shall dream,
dream of you
JR Potts Oct 2013
I see ghosts
not dead souls but ghosts
who shimmer and shine
they died long ago
still their light lives on
alone
night sky

★ ★ ★
JR Potts Nov 2014
I think about her naked sometimes
I probably think about it
because I doubt she would give me the satisfaction
of touching her in the heat of passion
so it’s just easier for me to imagine
walking in on her in the bath, drinking a glass of red
maybe cabernet sauvignon, who knows, who cares?
a light steam rising off the foamy suds
they cover only what I want to see
even in my fantasies I like to be teased
she is calm
as though she left the door unlocked intentionally
waiting like a painting in a gallery for me to clumsily stumble in
and find her beautifully sprawled in a Victorian tub with copper clawfeet
painted wet-on-wet like a portrait by John Singer Sargent
her milky blue and marble eyes soften my will like whiskey
and I find myself kneeling beside the bath
my hand gently trembles as it glide against satin velvet skin
JR Potts Feb 2015
I will wait outside
because you've locked the doors,
battened down the hatches,
and prepared for a storm
but the day will come
when you’re not afraid anymore
and I’ll be where you left me
because I've always been yours.
JR Potts Sep 2013
I see you framed within the pane
of a stained glass window,
the warmth of dawn
crashing through its technicolor glaze
with the fervor of an untamed wave
of burning rays that peer into my soul
with kaleidoscope eyes
JR Potts Oct 2016
I hate to be the bearer of bad news baby
but I was broken a long time ago.
I had hoped
when I showed you that video
on kintsugi, the Japanese art
of repairing broken pottery
with lacquer and powered gold
that you would've seen our history
was not meant to be hidden,
that our imperfections,
the cracks in our ceramics
were meant to be illuminated
with gold
JR Potts Apr 2015
The skies were that pretty kind of gray,
cloudy saturated with the smell of rain.
It was one of those days where you felt
six feet deep in bills you couldn't pay
and promises you couldn't keep.
Thoughts of Robert Frost because
I still have miles to go before I sleep.
JR Potts Apr 2015
I know darling, I gave you an ocean of words
when all you needed were a few drops of rain.
JR Potts Dec 2014
you were the reason I didn't **** myself

this doesn't mean you have to love me

what it means is, I will always love you
JR Potts Dec 2014
I gave you serpentine kisses in the morrow,

wore two faces when I confessed my love

but we lay together in the dotage of the day

and you are the only person I can think of.
JR Potts Oct 2013
Lincoln Highway moved
more like a dance than a road
It drifted like the wind
corroded the earth
to guide me home.
The colors of the coming autumn
careened down, painting
the asphalt canvas below.

I had left Latrobe less than an hour ago
but crossed into a distant world
where the overgrown homes of old
remained among the ancient trees
breathing and watching me.

Weathered red paint running down
dilapidated barns like wax
melting from a candle's wick.
So star spangled Americana
it would not do it justice
to refer to it as just the sticks.

There was something profound happening;
the "American Dream" was dying here
and I was to bear witness
as the shinning city on the hill
fell into the metaphorical sea.

Spellbound in this catastrophe,
my ego still finds a way
to make it all about me.
I could not help but wonder
if Andy would remember
our talk about technology;
if Eamon and Bridgette would forget us three
walking hand in hand through the wood
and down the tracks,
battling back the inebriation
in the cold, hard black of a September night.
If these moments meant anything
to anyone but me.

My eyes locked on the horizon line
that rested atop a mountain peak.
I thought about how I left you,
left you three words short
of having me complete.
And I'd be lying if I didn't say
I contemplated running back to you
to speak what went unsaid
because home is not a place
but a thought in one's head.

You were home but I kept on driving
past the bones of a dying dream
letting my dreams die a little too
quietly inside of me.
JR Potts Aug 2015
The Atlantic Ocean and I sigh
in unison against the shoreline
of Amagansett Beach
and as she inhales;
she drags the land above below,
one grain of sand at a time.

In a few generations
she will have devoured this entire beach,
eventually the whole Island
and with it the multi-million dollar estates
which decorate its topology
like an effigy to human vanity.

I would say never before in history
has there been so few with so much
who have done so little
but that would denote
some kind of significance
and they are hardly worth noting.
JR Potts Dec 2014
I’m so afraid to tell her I love her
so I only do it when I’m drunk,
or we’re drunk together
and still the words nervously tremble
they shake like orange leaves in autumn
and the wind doesn’t carry them
they just fall, quietly and unnoticed
becoming just a nuisance
to later be packed
into black plastic bags
and thrown to the curb.
JR Potts Jul 2015
Late at night sadness covers up my skin, ivy
on the old bricks of an abandoned mental hospital,
broken windows, we stopped needing help years ago,
and this place is just as scary empty as it was full
expect when the doors were open the crazies
would come and go, I swear it made the stay
a little more tolerable
JR Potts Jul 2016
The individual drops of sweat
each represent a small piece
of your former self.

How much longer
before you are the person
you promised to be?

Your muscles tremble,
under the weight of change,
have you forgotten?
I know it has been so long
since you were a child
but growth has always
demanded pain

and it is time you pay.
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