Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Oct 2013 · 764
Change
is not knowing.

Change is going.

Change is wanting invisible things and looking for them.

and looking for them!

When you don't find the things, that is change.

Change is going

before knowing.
You told me it was wrong.

The magnetic pull of my body towards the need.
The way I feel it, the longing, in my chest,
how I place my hands absently on my neck,
sultrily telling you what I'm feeling.

Perhaps it's a ripple of something that has been brewing
for many years. Something always there, underneath.

Heightened by loneliness and summer heat.

Maybe it comes from a lack of normal things,
things which usually accompany
young boys.
Those things I didn't get.

Maybe it's someone's fault.

Maybe I should ask Freud, maybe he
could place his hand on my delicate cheek bone,
how it comes it a gentle hill.

He could stroke the freckled valley underneath my eyeball with his smoking pipe
and tell me pragmatically
the reasons for my feelings,

why I wanted a man to touch me without asking,
to make my face his baby in wrapped cloths.

You told me it was wrong,

like the smoking
done after the house had gone to bed at hushed hours
in the ***** garage.

like the tequila shot I did at the kitchen counter that summer
how it tasted like heat and pine needles,

how it tasted like the wooden chest in our home,
like the inside of it, the dark unvarnished interior
that could hold my tiny body if I had needed to hide

where my father kept his winter sweaters.

And how I ****** it down with the lime that I didn't bite hard enough,
my eyes were red and flooded.

It was wrong.
Jul 2013 · 575
Getting Away
You would have seen me
and I would have been driving.

Driving down the road of the house,
the house where we all lived.
I was going there,
but as I approached with my champagne steel trap,
in a moment
I decided to keep driving.

I saw your car and with a flutter
my foot didn't graze the brake.

You would have seen me,
if you were looking out the window.
If you would have recognized my car.

Amidst the gathering of things,
the putting of books in boxes,
or clothes into bags,

between the hidden sips of beer in your bedroom,
and quick, terror-filled glances behind you,

did you see me? In those quick seconds when my car brushed past.
Did it matter?

You would have seen me keep driving,
past all the other small houses
and you would see me at the stop sign,
waiting
before a road clean of cars.
Jul 2013 · 1.2k
Sylvia
Reading the words of a woman of flames
gone up into the sky at her will
with greater forces inside her than in a planet

I feel quietly disturbed

sad that I cannot help her
make her happy somehow
but she was smarter than me to be sure

smarter than most.
She knew what she wanted,
I only wish that it had been happiness.

I read her words sitting on a rock by the lake,
the rusty green water licking the large white stones.
I take a long flat leaf and tie it inside itself,
once straight, now making it form an L.

I toss it with some vigor into the water
but it only goes inches in front of me,
oscillating in the shallow,
wanting to come back to it's creator.

I knew that she saw beauty in the world around her,
I wish ardently that I could know why it was not
enough.

What great awful power must have pushed against her.
That I am in the same world that once carried her unsettles me;
that a world may be ****** and cruel by one's perception,
and not by another's.

I see a dragonfly with it's impossible wings
trying with all of its self
to go against the wind of an indifferent lake.

Into it she plunged
I sit but on the edge, looking.
Jun 2013 · 1.8k
A Summer Night at the House
"Do you like wasabi peas?"

She hands me a small sage-green orb.

"It's hot, spicy," she says, nodding encouragingly. "Have you ever had wasabi?"

It tastes like horseradish and is not at all spicy in comparison to the chile-spiced mango I've been snacking on. I nod and smile to her approvingly.

Before I know it, she's handing me a chocolate sandwich cookie and without saying a word, going back to the duty of putting away the groceries. It's delicious.

Jivy, upbeat soul music blasts from an iPhone speaker dock. The kitchen faucet is running. Cabinets, the dish washer, opening and closing like a delicate rhythm.

He was building a fire pit outside, thick white smoke billowing up into the sky. But it started to pour a soft summer rain, as it had two or three times already that day. The world beyond the kitchen is grey, wet, happy. The shabby porch is used to being drenched in rain, the mason jars filled with dead cigarettes and the disarrayed furniture.

With more than one person in the narrow stretch of kitchen, it's a crowed party. I watch on from my chair in the breakfast nook. She chops vegetables on the counter for cold gazpacho soup.

She, in a delicate red rose skirt. The men except for me in cargo shorts.

I'm drinking flat Dr. Pepper from a painted mug, instead of something hard like I might want. The sip of black beer he gave me tasted like soy sauce. It fizzled on the porch a bit.

"Oh, ****!" he said, putting his hand with the overflowing beer out the door while standing partly inside.

/

Asking the cook for permission, he sits down across from me and begins to sing a song on a guitar. A sad song, one that he's played before. Maybe the only one he knows.

I sit in my chair and watch it all go by. I take out a book from my bag to look like I want to read it. I'm really just sitting here, like a fly stuck tragically on the fly paper he hung in the kitchen two nights ago. Lying there all sprawled awkwardly, eyes open to what's around me.

He finishes the song. "Beautiful," she says, gathering papery remains of an onion and tossing them into a plastic bin. He strums another tune. His voice is untrained and not hard to listen to if not a tad syrupy and self-aware. A bit like the way he carries his wide personality.

He answers questions from across the room, interrupting the melody for a few seconds now and then. The two men are on separate wavelengths. But the singer didn't seem to mind being interrupted. They must have grown up with this dynamic, the men. It's a story they tell easily.

/

"Buongiorno!" she says, slicing a lemon.

"Hey, you have a nice accent. Arrivederci!" says the guitar-player.

"Arrivederci!" she responds, playing up the dialect with sweetness.

"Good deal." He says, striking up another tune. He puts on a different voice. Deeper, with more swing, like a caricature country-western singer. His voice fills the space.

Our mugs are gathered all together, mixed up in a menagerie of colors and shapes at the end of the kitchen counter. I brought several of mine from home and they mingle with the others unnoticeably. Multi-colored ones from Poland. Mine, purchased at various thrift stores. All of them stacked awkwardly and happy.

He asks me if I want to share a smoke on the wet porch. I say "Not right now. Maybe later, though."
Jun 2013 · 942
Miluji tě
A cigarette
sitting in a cliche orange prescription bottle
the tobacco-stuffed tip
peaking out half an inch from the top

on it
scrawled in black ink:
miluji tě

it's author,
gone for a week and a half in a rehab center

left that morning with wet hair from the shower
long black tights around her legs
and a huge hiking bag which consumed the back of her figure
as she was walking out the door.

i imagine she wrote these words in her mother tongue
after she rolled the cigarette herself
to her boyfriend
a Texan
depressed, anxious, lost
then plunked it into the small bottle
which bore her name on its label

into the flourescently orange plastic,
symbolic of her dependency, of
the missing pieces

a flower in a vase:
miluji tě

and then she was ready to go
Jan 2013 · 421
1/29/13
rain, rain
please
don't go away.
Jan 2013 · 460
alphabetical feelings
attracted because believe close
don't everything feel feels felt
gimme god
good her
his just kind know
last life like
love man me men
more my myself
need not now poems poetry read
scared see ****** something
stories thing think thought true
up very wanted
world
writing.
Dec 2012 · 373
12/22/12
things happen
people get forgotten.
the worst part is
people sometimes forget themselves.

sometimes we need others
to stop us in our tracks
and look at us in the eyes and tell us

you exist.
Dec 2012 · 534
guest
a man is standing on my sweater
the rubber sole of his boat shoes
just brushing the hem of knitted stripes

only moments before,
I lay in my bed
on the white sheets
posed for sleep
and the room was empty
save for the scattered bits of clothing
and shards of private moments

crumbs of food eaten in solitude

but now there is a figure in my doorway
he has been dipped in the midst of all this
and he lightly places his foot
through the threshold
onto me
Dec 2012 · 624
swirl
sometimes
i just want to dip myself into a piece of music
lukewarm
and swirl around
without hunger or fear
Dec 2012 · 423
Tiny Cups
the roundness of your being
the curl of hair
and of eyes, lips, inside a circling face
the small fingers which poke me
or which become hands that hold mine
on the floor of a small room
laid out across the carpet

our bodies
drawn out into a single line
your hands, your eyes
holding words and secrets
like the tiny cups they seem to be
held out in front of me
dry
asking to be filled

and I
ever in need of a vessel
Dec 2012 · 407
not a haiku
i am trying to

get my **** together it's

just so far apart
Aug 2012 · 545
cold bed
I want you in my arms,
but instead you are a pillow.
The emptiness makes up for my fingers in your hair,
the cold bed is your breath.
I want you bad,
but not when you want me.
That would be too easy.
Jun 2012 · 828
Poet
I say to myself: "I'm going to write a poem."
So I situate myself in the proper place to do so.
But then, what to write about?
I look about my room, as if this is supposed to inspire me.
A teacup, a candlestick,
Box of unopened fig Newtons,
Mess of clothes on the floor.
Phone.
Sweatpants.
Boredom.
It turns out, I'm not a poet after all. Either that,
or I'm in the wrong room.
Jun 2012 · 777
Liquid Breakfast
I snuck a cigarette in the back yard
at 10:45 in the morning.
The sun shone bright and shaded the smoke gawdily, so
I smoked it in the shade, behind the fence,
keeping an eye on the sidewalk to make sure the coast was always clear.
The dog was on his leash and he stared at me guiltily.
"Why do you give me that look?" I said,
I petted him affectionately,
that seemed to suffice.
I made coffee in my bedroom, filling the electric kettle
with water from a mason jar.
I wrote two postcards to friends in China while it brewed,
I drank my liquid breakfast,
and stepped in cat *****.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
I screamed at her as she lay docile on my duvet.
She gave me the blankest, the most Idontgiveashit cat look ever.
11:15.
It happens most nights when I'm feeling sort of sad,
but mostly really tired and confused.
I've been thinking too much, about too many things.
And my brain has finally quit.
And all I want to do is cry my eyes out and feel better.
All I want is to be held and to be loved without reason.
I want to lie down in my bed, and feel a body wrapped neatly
around me. I want someone to cry onto,
someone to understand. I want something so cliche, it would be perfect.
I don't want to care about life,
about art, about my future, about myself,
I just want to cry and cry and cry and
lie there with someone and be held and be understood.
this isn't a poem. it doesn't matter. never mind.
Jun 2012 · 479
Untitled 6/9/12
I need a vacation.

I need a break from my life.

I need perspective.

I need someone to hold me without asking me what's wrong.

I need to cry until the sun rises.

I need to not think.

I need a break.

I need time.
Jun 2012 · 625
Dawn Over the Atlantic
A dawn is breaking
Over the line of Atlantic expanse
A piano is playing
But only through modern implements
A soft mechanical din is
Heard over it
And children are at once quiet and asleep
As men and women scruffle to find comfort
A small light finds its way across the open Atlantic dawn
And blue takes over black slowly
And delicately
I am restless and racing
The destination must be near
something I wrote last summer on a trip to London.
Apr 2012 · 659
a poem for betty draper
That moment, when you kiss Don
good night and then turn away
to switch off the light on your bedside table,
and the smile is suddenly wiped off your face,
those three seconds when you rest your hand on the switch
and then quickly engulf the room in darkness,

that is your entire life.
Water still hung on the grass,
so I laid myself down in the dirt for a while.
My back against a tree,
upright,
trying to fall asleep.

Sitting in the dirt, up
against a tree,
underneath a sky.
You:
far away from
me.
Mar 2012 · 2.1k
leap year
Chicago's winds were violent
that February day.
The air was unusually warm,
and the city once again bounced
up from its winter grave.
But all at once her winds blew fiercely,
Reminding us of
her wrath
and power.
Her thumb,
gargantuan and steam-punk,
art-deco,
futuristic,
craftsman and industrial,
pressing down on us as we happily
walked down her sidewalks,
and crossed her streets.
She smiled from way up there
and all around,
blowing her winds with extra tenacity,
forcing us
from our comfortable jaunt.
Feb 2012 · 603
just stop it
i'm excessive and irrational,
I don't think clearly, i might have no morals,
and i don't make wise choices.
i'm a bad person, really,
and I feel inferior to you.

but it's nothing that you do.

you're smart and decisive,
you have an artistic eye,
and so do i,
but you use it better.

i'm silly and sad,
your a firecracker of many colors.
i fizzle and you shine.
i write poems of self-deprication,
and you don't.
Jan 2012 · 1.9k
brunch.
When she sat down,
I was afraid she was going to ask to pray for me.
“I saw you across the room,
and God just told me to come over here to pray for you,”
She would say,
with a smile,
Wearing Toms,
her big toe peeking through a worn-in hole,
all shiny and full of Jesus Christ.
You know how they are.
Let me tell you, when someone asks to pray for you,
it's literally the worst feeling in the world.
You feel like a useless piece of trash,
and of course you HAVE to oblige.

But instead she just introduced herself,
said that she had seen me around
the coffee shop she worked at,
and wanted to say hi.
Her name was Julia and she had strawberry blonde hair,
she was a senior bio major,
and when I told her I was a freshman,
I detected a subtle lift of surprise in her eyes.
She was from San Diego, which she said was her favorite city.
Talking about it, her face lit up and she was excited.
We have a mutual friend, as she pointed out as well.
But,
she said,
I'll let you get back to your work.
I asked for her name again, the first time she said it,
I was too worried about her offers of prayer,
Julia,
she said again,
but if you forget, you can always ask.
Hehwkehwjdude
ueue
eiwiwueje
ejeueiwhheheue
euehhe ueh eueuehhje
ehje ejeh ejekiiqyte
e hsjkisyuterds
juwkckvhdgy
hywjswiiudyhf u
Jan 2012 · 609
this man
A man,
reduced,
to a plaque
with gold lettering and
a smiling picture in the corner.
so nice and official.
so beautiful and honorable.
a man.
reduced.
to a room,
four walls,
in his name,
with carpet and
chairs,
and tables arranged
for meetings.
a flat screen tv,
framed pictures on
one of the four walls.
so nice,
so bright, so common,
so good.
a man,
fought in a war,
got blown up,
gets a room in his name
and his face on a plaque.
so beautiful,
so good, and right and true.
and so forever too.
Jan 2012 · 552
exposure
at times,
when after showers, as I sit at
       my desk,
I feel so naked and vulnerable.
And the door to the hall is open,
and I am terrified.
Jan 2012 · 1.8k
a juxtaposition
privilege vs. struggle

open vs. close

culture vs. degradation

comfort vs. hyper-awareness

dark vs. light

simple vs. complex

knowledge vs. awkwardness

money vs. wonder

society vs. truth
Jan 2012 · 361
Untitled
Wind,
Pass through me.
I'm a window
it's just a line
which drifted into my mind.
Dec 2011 · 498
a secret
if only you knew
the things that i do.
9-word poetry
Dec 2011 · 913
Our Heart
Your heart is a black crystal,
glowing soft and slow,
like the *** of a cigarette.
Ember-like, but depleted of all color;
an oxymoron of idea,
opposing ends of a magnet.
Impossible yet somehow one being.
That is your heart, and it is also mine.
Dec 2011 · 792
LCD Whispers
And suddenly it was ten-til-two.
And where had the day gone?
It had been whispered into the liquid
crystals of my computer screen,
and drowned in a bowl of leftover pad thai.
I suddenly was supposed to feel tired,
but instead I was depressed because tomorrow
was calling, and I didn't want to run.
My eyes were watering, all of a sudden.
And the screen kept on whispering.
Dec 2011 · 666
Black
She said, over and over,
That she went back to black,
but never was she anywhere else.
A poetic tribute to Amy Winehouse.
Dec 2011 · 895
Came by Ships
America
Born of fire and ice.
****** from the womb of discontent
And a fiery gestation which curdled in the throats
Of young men.

America.
Thrown out into the cold.
Birthed by force,
Cut from the natural cord by
Ben Franklin,
Thomas Jefferson
& the boys.

America
John Adams spoke it into existence.
And soon the unrest would begin.
Born from the killing,
Born to experience every thing.

Born,
And crawling about, like an infant,
Oblivious to all but the self,
Knocking down furniture and sticking
Fingers into sockets.
Electricity.

Born
Born with a destiny,
Born out of the indignation and the self-proclamation,
A ****** birth,
Created of nothing, out of mere air.
Immaculate and supernatural.

America.
Jesus.
Created by God,
Those Men of the original 13.
Coming on ships and cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
Men with their hats and their guns.
Nov 2011 · 571
Nightflower
with such profound beauty there must
also be a profound darkness
which cannot be shaken
"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness." Leo Tolstoy
Nov 2011 · 2.8k
Box of Firecrackers
Our souls
are one thousand firecrackers
each stick waiting to burn.

Sometimes our souls are quiet,
and the firecrackers are stagnant
and wet.

And sometimes we burn slow,
the firecrackers smoldering sweet and terrible,
the ashes falling in poetic teardrops to the ground.
We are tied down and the firecrackers
are screaming to burst out with a jubilant
expression of WOWWW!

But they are denied.

Until that one moment when all the pieces are set
and finally the firework of our soul is
let loose and explodes with loud, sulfuric glory,
spreading its light and smoke and wonder
across the quiet plains.
Nov 2011 · 448
Winters of My Life
With the warmth of the air,
so does the spark of my soul leave.
For a momentary dance in
other places, places other
than my life.
Nov 2011 · 1.2k
Binary Day
The news of your engagement came
in conjunction with the news of the death
of a long-time family friend.

Sitting in that cafe, reading the Facebook status,
trying not to make a scene in front of my friends
who were studying their textbooks.

Memories of our childhood in that dinky
farming town, making plans for our future nuptials,
giggling under flashlight-lit bedsheets and pretending
to be asleep when our footsteps were heard on the staircase.

I see now that your plan has been fulfilled,
while I sit here, reading about it, wondering whether
to leave a comment or like it. Modern technology
has made social interaction strange and dissonant.

I see now that the line between you and I
has been tightened. That now you've been figured out
and I'm still here,
sitting under the bedsheets and trying so hard
to be look sound asleep
when I hear footsteps on the staircase.
Nov 2011 · 621
Tiller
Separate
but forcefully
one.

Only together
do we

move.

Haphazard, misshapen, colliding,
yes.
But one.

We are moving. Where are we going?

Collectively the captain of a ship which holds us all.

Where are we going captain?
Response to Roger Feldman's "Pivots: Tiller" sculpture installed at Wheaton College, 2011.
Nov 2011 · 763
You Don't Scare Me
The thought of you

quickens my stomach, turns my skin
cold. turns my head in a hundred
different directions.

Your power

is endless.

You sit there,
a black spot,
a contrary notion in a world of blank paper.

But you don't scare me.

I can twist you and shape you and wield you with the best.

Because you're mine.
Nov 2011 · 831
au contraire
how rare is the feeling
of knowing
what one wants.
10 words.
Oct 2011 · 2.6k
window
I don't want to get up from my seat,
because every time I walk around,
and sit back down,
I'm a different person.
Oct 2011 · 653
pitch black haiku
I have been blinded,
guided by my desires.
Hopeless and tired.
Oct 2011 · 1.7k
Words
capricious
arabesque
undulate
clientele
juxtaposition
visceral
il­luminati
illustrious
canticle
piecewise
chantry
tealeaves
evenson­g
quixotic
Oct 2011 · 769
Half-Baked Romance
That moment, in the graveyard,
under the stars, when the light filtered
through the winding branches of the silvery
weeping willow we stood under.
That moment when we came to the base,
marked by a twisted joining of the barks,
when we were close, your head
fitting nicely under my chin, my hand
wrapped tightly around your back, both of
us holding onto a speeding target. We fit so
perfectly and terribly in that moment,
your wild hair brushing up against my face and
my body easily leaning into yours,
under the stars, in the graveyard
that one night when we looked into
each other's eyes, talked without words,
a delicate communion in the damp grass
under your favorite tree.
I really feel like
This abandoned Mountain Dew bottle
On the side of the road
Perfectly captures where I am in
My life right now.
Oct 2011 · 13.8k
Single Mother of Two
Suddenly,
buttoning their jackets and making sure
their sleeves were straight and perfect
as the train quickly approached her stop
became more important than
anything she'd done.

Only child. Straight A's. Good athlete. Church choir;

But this suddenly was the most
important moment of her
life.
Oct 2011 · 688
Survivor
Suit & tie,
make you look so nice. So official.
You've got it all now.

You came to this ****-town--
why?
For a job. You would never
ever
set foot in this town if it hadn't been
for that.

You're perfect now. Now you can sit and
watch the show of your life unfold.
You've done a good job setting up all the
pieces, all you do now is sit back and
watch and get fat and die. Congratulations.

You have the wife you really like and
the kid you were supposed to have, because
what the hell else would you do?

But now you've got this job, and now you're really
doing it.

You're surviving.
Oct 2011 · 459
!@#$
Oct 2011 · 677
What Ever Happened
What ever happened to touching real things?
The brisk rapture of sand against cold skin,
the intensity of sandpaper to your finger?
What happened to things made by the earth?
Things not of space but of time?
What will happen to the things here before us,
when all we do is touch with our eyes?
A world,
a blank white room,
you touch and drag projected pictures,
and have fun with your awesome toy,
which will be upgraded next week,
left obsolete,
rotting along with trailer parks and
abandoned roller coasters.
What happened to digging down in earth
and seeing what she had to offer?
What happened to real? What ever happened?
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1K8lN6/www.good.is/post/minority-report-comes-to-life/
Next page