Jess - Hello Poetry

Jess Jun 2016

Mountain

I watched as your formidable hands carved out the sides of crucifixes
creating the only hope you could crawl into.
35 matrimonious years of looking to a man you no longer know.
Clinging to the expired vision of an angel at your bedside telling you to work for your peace.
You created valleys in anxiety ridden vows.
As I grew I watched you harden
into an unmovable mountain to shape the ages of your children.
Teaching us to always wear a still face-
that to tremble is weak.
Until the cold night I watched my mountain crumble into ash.
Covering every bit of strength held in your hands,
decaying your thoughts into rubble.
You now lose yourself in every underwhelming moment
with a stony gaze, you don't know them.

Your Husband.
Your Mother.
Your Children.

Your own eyes tell you nothing,
a chasm between you and reality.
It comes in waves, eroding you.
My mountain is propped up with a holy book and a ******* cane.
Now I'm cold in my bed at night waiting for the day that you don't remember my name.
The one that you gave me.
But your eyes are still caving.
And I can’t keep you warm laying blankets to a hill side.

Jess Jun 2016

Fire Between the Steeples

I could hear the choirs songs as they rang from the steeples
and that morning the pneumatic frequencies of those opalescent voices
left deeper scars in our hill sides
than the gunpowder ever dreamed.
Carving up the sockets of our youth,
I could feel the restraint of their hands
as mine were freezing.
Offering me only your body as salvation
I was drowning in the thick stench of nicotine
I used to cover your unfortunate forgiveness.

A forgiveness that tapes tongues to cyanide walls
A forgiveness that leaves a thick coat of bitterness on the throat.
A forgiveness that I can no longer stomach-

You're coughing up cancer
and I can't choke it down fast enough.

Hail Mary.
Hail Mary.

Mother to a war between pews,
and a mis rendering of youth.

They said blame not the miss loved boy
but the gun in his best Sunday suit.

Jess Jun 2016

The Stoop 2015

Gaping mouths and glassed eyes absorb the pixelated revelations,
breathing hallelujahs to disillusioned senses,
sinking their skulls into the pavement/,
crying
HOLY HOLY HOLY.
To the stairs leading them to a make shift heaven,
laying daisy’s to their skin and ash to their feet.
They barter the revolution to their unmoved complacency.
Self named artist that barely cover the buildings,
filling in the gaps with smoke and half-hearted pleas.
They’re burning alive.
They’re burning everything they touch.
Screaming to spite the yuppy ****.
screaming to spite the war on youth.
screaming.
SCREAMING.
SCREAMING!
Into a concrete grave with a kiss so faithful it consumes them.
Chained to the unforgiven it consumes them.
Beating the blasphemy in their gums it consumes them.

It consumes them.

Jess Jun 2016

Untitled

They left skeletons in their closets
that are crawling out and into their ash rotten skin.
Inked in lies they never meant,
I can still smell their smoke in the mountains.
Crawling through the suburban streets.
Can you hear me?
Where are your screams?
Silenced in nicotine and poetic beats?
Your hymns are drowning the blackened skies that you use to light those eyes
and your sin is still soaking in those mirrors.
I’m not sure what we should be more afraid of,
the demons writhing in my head?
Or the ones rolling in your bed?

As abandoned psych wards ring with a generations penance-
as corpses pledge their grace to the living-
watching their breath fold into the highways, the hilltops, the sewers devour them. Contracting their waves through the disembodies minds.
Where is your savior?
Where is your king?
They spilt blood at your feet!
And you weren’t even listening.

Jess Jun 2016

Nicotine

She said she needed it.

She needed it the way a panic attack needs to be rocked in the corner with its knees to her chest.

She needed it.

She said black was her favorite color
because it went with everything.
It matched the way her thoughts catapulted through the polluted faces on the street,
it covered her.

She said it tasted *****.

It tasted like the lies that dripped off the tongues of every pair of lips who ever thought they were close to her.

It tasted familiar.

She needed it to forget.
Forget that she could watch the mountains devour the skies and still feel nothing.
Nothing but the pavement burning through her heels
as she choked on the noose that we call humidity.

She needed it.

It clung to her skin like needles
prodding at the ***** clouded eyes that washed over her and the stains on her skin.
She needed it.

She said it helped her to number the days.
The days that she had left before she was nothing but the ash she flicked off the ends of her fingers.

She needed it.

Jess Jun 2016

Gem City Lullaby

Artificial hums lit the wasted brilliance of hand picked history
and carved out the bells that burned through every blinded skull
and marketed the body to a stranger's choice
and drowned in the ecstasy of a makeshift American dream
and repented of their mandated sins
as the city gems burned electric
devouring the unwashed eyes of a lover believed dead
catatonic to the bloodied river water
graying to the hums of an innocence they sold

My father told me they were starving out there
It wasn’t until now I knew what for

Jess Jun 2016

Pennies

I’m pinching on dimes because the penny’s not worth much these days.
we’ve turned over all the copper and burned through paper just the same
they told me “money don’t grow on trees fool”.
And the powder littered streets are eating through the scalp
my dear sweet freedom I’m dropping quarters on your shell shocked eyes.
While slipping through asphalt on your thick, thorned, thighs.
My drowning city swells before **** battered boots,
as denim rusted suburbia smokes their own noose.
I cried for you that night as the acid burned my face-

So where’s your white picket fence now??
Because last I saw it was splayed across a homeless mans back
as he carried it to his cardboard hell,
Muttering “please, just your pennies will help".