Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
1.4k · Jul 2016
Morning Routine
John Hawkins Jul 2016
Editing my thoughts;
A spoonful of porridge in one hand,
a pen in the other

My two main forms of sustenance;
One for the body,
The other the mind

A bite turns into a meal,
A written word into an expression of 'soul'.
The primordial biological urge is constant

Without the food I would not have the strength to pick up the pen;
Without the pen I would have no desire to eat.
Their unison might be the only thing keeping me in motion

Long may it go on.
804 · Jun 2016
Mortality
John Hawkins Jun 2016
One day, I will leave this world.
The energy that pumps through me will dissipate;
The body I know will begin to rot and decay;
The thoughts and emotions I feel now,
with great urgency and severity,
gone.

The people I love will put me in the ground,
to cover the stench of my rotting corpse;
They will visit 'me' once a year with obligatory tears in their eyes.
They will auction off all of my personal belongings,
All the things I cherished and valued;
To look upon them will be 'too much'.

Slowly I will fade from their memories:
My personality;
My laugh;
My smile;
The way I held my face when I was concentrating really hard.
All the little things that make me me, forgotten;
Like I never existed at all.

In their loneliest moments, perhaps, they will remember me.
Not the real me, of course;
Just my name attached to a sort of vague concept of death,
An idea of what it is to no longer exist;
My memory will serve to give them a sense of their own mortality;
An occasionally present reminder that they too, one day, will die.
750 · May 2016
Untitled
John Hawkins May 2016
Woke up this morning with that kinda existential dread you feel, you know, when you wake up in the morning.
718 · Jun 2016
Scourer
John Hawkins Jun 2016
I sit scouring the internet
looking for some easy stimulation;
distraction more than anything

I sit alone,
a special kind of silence looming over me;
it would be petrifying if it wasn't so common

a pulsating energy bubbles inside me,
trapped, with no escape;
it just vibrates there, relentlessly

there is an itch in a cavern of my mind;
buried deep down and hidden away,
under piles of forgotten memories and unfulfilled dreams

sleep feels like a myth;
some old story told to cold scared children
to distract them from the horrors of our world

all four walls appear to be closing in;
the faces of the ones I love slowly disappearing from memory;
I am becoming someone else,
something else

it'll pass
it always does

until then I scour
690 · Nov 2016
Dog in Autumn
John Hawkins Nov 2016
The leaves crunch below
the weight of her frail,
thin frame.
I have never seen such freedom;
an expression of which this seems the epitome of.
Goose pimples rising on my arms and neck
in acknowledgment of the fractal quality of beauty
within this finite reality.
635 · Jul 2016
The Final Epiphany
John Hawkins Jul 2016
The heart beats;
The blood circulates;
The cells receive their required oxygen;
The breathing is sharp and rushed;
The shaking hands and fingers fumble with the packaging,
Nearly spilling the invaluable contents;
The arm is wrapped with a belt to cause the veins to rise,
and await the needle;
The parlous thoughts and feelings of discomfort begin to dissipate
as the lighter heats the spoon.

The skin pulsates and the muscles ripple under the point of the needle;
The natural reflexes of the body try to pull away from the pain;
The prefrontal cortex allows the will to keep the arm steady
and the determination to continue pressing;
The skin breaks and the needle slides into the vein
As the thumb plunges the plunger.

A warm, rushing sensation travels up the arm;
The mouth curls into a smile,
the eyes crinkling at the edges;
With a sigh of relief the needle is pulled from the vein;
The syringe drops to the stained carpet below;
A hot trickle of blood runs from the crook of the arm;
All the muscles relax,
sofa and body now one.

A wave of euphoria sweeps the body
and the mind;
The voice of God reverberates around the room,
revealing the secret to eternal life
and the meaning of everything.

The heart stops beating.
604 · May 2016
Unintentional art
John Hawkins May 2016
when words become flat,
their definitions frail or forgotten

they blur and mingle with each other,
like a cluster of long-legged spiders making love

no longer a block of text to be interpreted or understood,
but an illustration triggering loose and fleeting thoughts

thoughts uncoordinated and fatuous,
but there they are
John Hawkins Nov 2016
The light of the sun creeps across the duvet
under which you and I are entwined.
Our limbs entangled like a pair of neglected earphones,
stowed away in a now unused jacket pocket;
both of us pleasantly unable to ascertain where our body starts
and the others begins.

The room smells like stale cigarettes and wine,
which is only intensified by both the heat of the sun
and the warmth of our own biology.
The aroma transforms from stale to fresh as I crack a new bottle,
pouring us both a healthy glass,
whilst you light our last cigarette;
Taking a few draws then passing it to me,
along with the over-flowing ashtray.

Our unwashed skin is sticky with dry sweat,
accumulated during sleep and *******;
Our mouths rancid from the wine
and the lack of toothpaste applied.
To the naked eye there is a thick and smokey cloud of filth
occupying the space above our heads;
creating an atmosphere uninhabitable to anyone but us.

This mass of pollution combines with the salt-filled air,
streaming in from the open window;
making for an interesting cocktail of unpleasantness.
To all this we are blissfully unaware,
and we just lie there,
basting in it;
caring not a jot.
Our thoughts only for each other
and the tingling in our nerve endings
when we catch the others eye.

For eternity we lie there,
until one of us has to ****.
I haven't posted in so long, I thought it was time.
527 · May 2016
Haiku
John Hawkins May 2016
The sky is right there
It takes almost no effort
Behold its beauty
463 · May 2016
Untitled
John Hawkins May 2016
There is so much to say,
So much to see;
So much that sometimes everything
becomes overwhelming.

Language becomes cumbersome
and redundant;
Eating laborious and emetic;
Around family and friends you feel
out of place and superfluous,
Almost gagging on anxiety if
conversation floats your way;
Unfiltered thoughts overcrowd your mind,
thieving every ounce of your concentration;
Darkness fills your soul,
and it aches with every breath.

But then, one day,
after perhaps many difficult ones;
The sun rises and shines through the window
with the iridescence that only the sun can;
The birds sing their sweet sweet song,
inviting your ear drums to beat in alignment with all living things;
You find a pen in your hand again,
scribbling and scrawling your now interpretable thoughts;
Your shoulders, which were stooped, are now straight and
you stand tall in the stiff breeze, dreaming of possibilities.

Your alliance rekindled
with this enigmatic thing
called life.
410 · Nov 2016
Haiku
John Hawkins Nov 2016
Immaculate sun,
Shine your radiance upon
Her battle-scarred soul.
406 · May 2016
Destiny
John Hawkins May 2016
Destined
To
Fill
Profound
Silence
With
Frivolous
Noise
393 · Aug 2016
Dying Leaf
John Hawkins Aug 2016
It swirls
as it turns
and it twirls
as it spins
the beauty
is in the complexity
and the emotion is
in the movement
390 · Jun 2017
HP
John Hawkins Jun 2017
HP
An HTTP on which we release poetry,
supposed to capture our deep, inner 'me'.
And you can sense this fret with which it is met;
the desperate actions of some for adulation to get.

It kinda is sad, when you all try to grab;
hustle and bustle with meaningless blab.
Nothing it means, I don't see why you're so keen-
No matter your words, you will never be king.

He's richer than you, much higher up too;
from his birth he had you beat, ever since you were new-
There's levels to this game, you must have the fame;
lest every word you write from your soul become lame.

No joke you shout loud, with fervour and proud,
but unless you are lucky, to this life you are bound;
To the medial mess, and all its distress,
you'll never look good, no matter your dress.
344 · May 2016
Untitled
John Hawkins May 2016
I stare upon the stars,
In awe of their gleaming wonder;
And they back at me from their
distant but eloquent vantage point.

They gaze from the perspective of true infinity;
And I from the tiny piece of the infinte my consciousness allows.

If we listened for long enough,
With the correct volume of concentration;
Perhaps we would grasp a slice of the knowledge
Needed to calm our ever frantic minds.
Grab hold of some greater truth;
A truth so great and so true
It would grant us genuine happiness.
The kind of happiness only someone in their twenties can believe exists.
Real freedom from the constraints of the mind.

What is required for this assignment however,
Is impossible to obtain.
There is a restriction on this biological blob of atoms we call the body;
A restriction placed upon it from the moment it was spawned.

This restriction is Time.
321 · Oct 2017
Untitled
John Hawkins Oct 2017
My motionless body on which you grind;
Torrid, primal and seemingly blind-
My thoughts my mind, both count for naught;
My mannerisms I was so flawlessly taught.

Your body wants mine but where's your mind?
Above the inner lizard to which we're all confined-
Up top in your frontal lobe,
Besides those fingers with which you probe;

What's there? Anything at all?
More than the name your mother called;
Under all the impulsive acts and symbols and sounds-
At the core of the mass of meat to which you're bound.

It's got to be there, quelled by your grunts;
Beneath your instinctive need for ****.
Just stop it now, and sit real still;
Humanity must now continue, uphill.
275 · Oct 2017
Untitled
John Hawkins Oct 2017
You sit on that ***** bus seat,
all seraphic and glowing-
hovering above the filth.
The beauty your body possesses
makes my heart flutter
and my eyes avert-
unable to bear the spotless, striking
quality of your shining form.

But beneath That is what?
Under this gleaming exterior what is there:
If we were to peel back the skin of
your perfectly symmetrical face;
dislodge those glittering green eyes
to look within-

into your true essence;
that thing that,
although invisible,
exists inside your faultlessly proportioned
mass of tissue and bone.

Who are you?
Your name doesn't matter.
Jane, Justine, Charlotte;
**** all that.

what are you other than beauty-
other than a twitter handle,
or your favourite food;
Other than your preference of hot beverage.

I want to know you,
YOU

When you breathe,
what do you feel?

When you sit on this bus, gliding through streets
and past buildings,
are you over-whelmed by the magnitude of it all?

When you step from your little man-made cave in the morning
and above you,
instead of a closed off ceiling,
is the seeming boundlessness of space,
Do you wonder how the **** we can all just keep going on
and not loose our minds at the slightest
glimpse of this stark, partial reality?

Tell me all this,
tell me.

You can't.

You're just a ******* a bus,
and I'm just the guy who falls in love with possibilities.

— The End —