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Jon Tobias Feb 2012
You are so much bitter music you dancing devil
Like a last minute psalm for freedom
One that you have memorized so carefully
You don't recite it
You feel it
The buckle of your knees bends you beautifully in prayer
So many words in your perfectly timed gasps for air

Breathe on my neck again
Bitter sweet beer breathed passion
My fingers dance
Because I need so many ways to say unrequited
So many ways to say
Patience is something I can do without

And I stand still like a tree
Like the wrong tree
And I am barking up it

This is hot mess remix love
Through faulty filters
Burning up my coffee lung
Fingertip singe nailbite frustration

This is bitter music
Full of flavor for all the wrong reasons
A happy accident proximity
Of misunderstood gyration

Hands like dead tree branches
Fingertip curl to write
Sounds of late night windowpane taps

The songs dont match
Though the music ends at the same time
Shoulder shrug and careful backstep

My friends are waiting
It was nice meeting you I guess

You broken bone remix
Of passionate smile
Right foot forward fire
Perfect pitch like a ***** psalm for freedom

And bitter music
Had to christen my new computer with a poem before I did my homework. This was inspired by a poem titled "If I Controlled the Internet" by Rives. If you happen to know it, or listen to it, don't ask me how that poem inspred this one. I couldn't tell you.
Jon Tobias Feb 2012
He wants to tell her of a story he read once
About that gorilla who could sign
And taught its baby to sign
How when the baby died
The flailing of her fingertips
And the movement of her hands
Said more about loss than anyone ever cared to know

She looks at him
Hot pho steam moistening her face
There is a man pacing outside the windows of the restaurant
It is a whole in a wall
In a small city
The city is *****
Next to the restaurant is a bar
They listen
Juke box bass hick thunder through the walls
She ***** a noodle into her mouth

“Is this a date,” she says
    If you want it to be
“It’s not exactly romantic”

He smiles
thinks about what it means to be romantic
Remembers the list with the boxes to check off
  Of will she **** me later

It’s all too generic
And we are so talented at romanticizing the trivial
That people forget how to be charming

He thinks of death-beds
And what she might say to him

Maybe it isn’t now. But later, you’ll remember this guy
And you’ll think of that weird place he took you to this one time.
It wasn’t exactly romantic.
But for whatever reason
You will remember me for doing things like this.

He wants to tell her of the gorilla
With the sad hands

His own hands tremble

He thinks of languages people spend lifetimes learning

She sips her water
Wipes sweat from her face
She smiles
It is beautiful when she smiles

He smiles too
Shivers as the doors open and the cold comes in

Maybe in some other universe
The words would have meant more to her
They would have made sense

He fills the silence with the sound of soup
She looks at him again
The thunder through the walls stops
And all he can think of
Is the gorilla who learned the language of love
And lost the need to use it
This is inspired by a short story written by Amy Hempel. (One of the most talented writers to ever set foot on this earth) The title of the story is "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried". I forget how good it feel to write until I have a really ****** day, a few beers, and some time to myself.
Jon Tobias Feb 2012
A cube of ice resting on my tongue

                       I inhale

                                    It cools my mouth

Press the cube against my teeth until it hurts
           Then gulp coffee and listen for the shatter

                                                        ­                       There is no sound

Only the understanding that pain has layers

                                                         ­           I can hurt in just as many ways as heal

Kiss me bitter devil

I know I will feel guilty when I leave you in the morning
                      
                                                                ­                   But I will leave you nonetheless

You loved the way my mouth tasted when it was cold
                                                
           ­                                                  You shivered

                                                       ­            From the kiss or the cold

                                                           ­                                                     I don’t know

But you shivered
               And I lied
                 So you would shiver again

                                                          ­   And you loved me like a liar


An ice cube on my tongue
                      I chilled you
                                   Killed you a little more than
                                                            ­                                 Le petit mort


Sometimes

                                            Cor­pses can have goose bumps

You cold again?
      Or did you see a ghost
                         After you found my side of the bed empty?

I never said I’d stay for breakfast

                                                   I never said I’d stay

                                                           ­                                                               Th­ere are just as many layers to hurting

As there is healing

                                                        ­         Sometimes I can’t tell the difference


Hurt me like a lover

Who is frigid and fearful

Until we temper our bones to burning

And listen for the shatter

It never comes

And I always leave
                                                           ­          First thing in the morning
Not only is this a first line poem with a wonderful donation from lp, but it is a serious (beer induced) experiment in structure. Thank you so much lp for inviting me to play!!!!!
Jon Tobias Feb 2012
I had never seen the truth turning into a graveyard
until it passed through my tombstone teeth to
sit in your ear like a ghost

These aren't sweet nothings
my sweet nothing

And you deserve much more than  the devil
living inside of my cheeks

This is the way truth sets us free

The same way a suckerpunch leaves us winded

I imagine that is how our souls leave us

But you try and explain that to a nurse
who is busy checking your mouth to be sure
you've taken all your medication

You know how you're supposed to live like you are going to die tomorrow
I say
How 'bout six months from tomorrow?

I really have tried everythin
including ******* down the backwash of a sunday baptism

It only tasted like fear

The kind of fear I don't need right now

We bought a casket

Plotted a plot

I got a tattoo of an expiration date on the bottom of my foot

No day or month
just this year

And you've been brave
saying
You are saving your tears for when I am not here anymore

And I honestly never saw how the truth could turn into a graveyard

Til we both started talking to each other

Like ghosts whispering all the things we never got to say in life

No matter how you look at it
I tell her
*The truth always feels like it's arrived too late
Thank you so much g for that amazing first line. I hope you approve of what I turned it into.
Jon Tobias Jan 2012
Dear Devil,

Thank you for sin

Thank you for beer and bad decisions

Thank you for encouraging me to steal that twenty

The old man dropped

It paid for pizza

Thank you for my first arrest

Thank you for my second arrest

Thank you for my ****

Thank you for teaching me how to make bad decisions

And how to be happy I made them

Thank you for selective hearing

When I know someone is begging for help

Thank you for my father’s fists

And my mother’s manipulation

I have taken both with me

And they serve me well

Thank you for inventing rock bottom

If I could fall forever

I’d be in hell already

Thank you for nooses made of bungee cords

I only blew out my knee when I hit the bottom of my dry well

And I gasped at the choke of where I found myself

Before I shot back out

Thank you for self inflicted sand paper refinement of my soul

The grass is always greener after you **** it

I am thankful to see it grow back

Thank you for showing me what not to do

So I can decide to be better

Dear Devil,

Thank you and,

PS

You are a really ****** friend
Jon Tobias Jan 2012
Being drunk is not cute

Drunk texting is not cute

Vomiting is not cute

Waking up next to a homeless man you were cuddling behind a bush in order to keep warm is not cute

Homeless men are not cute

Stealing a stranger’s phone so you can sneak away to the bathroom and take a picture of your ****

Is not cute

Drunk *** is not cute

But it is awesome

Crying after drunk *** is not cute

Crying during drunk *** is not cute

Crying is not cute

Despite whatever I have set myself to believe

I am not cute when I am drunk

I’m not even cute when I’m sober

And when I find myself

With head hanging halfway into a gutter

While leaning out of the passenger seat of my car

Looking at the chunks of red-orange

Sour and burning

I know it is just my body

Trying to rebuke my ***** mouth

That’s what my mouth looks like

When I say the things I do

And it is definitely

Not cute
Jon Tobias Jan 2012
Your lips tasted like smoke
From the buildings you watched burn
While standing dead center

Our bodies are practiced in the art of
Collapsing

If these walls could talk
They’d be livid from your laughter
And semi-suicidal for paint thinner
To cause just enough wither so the broken glass can finally fall out

I will gladly buckle at the backbone
Bulging out my belly to
Reveal all that beauty inside

If it means you’ll forgive me
You can take it

Because I am sorry seven ways to Sunday
Just seven days till Sunday
Seven chances not to **** up before
I have to beg for your forgiveness again

This is the church of falling apart

The church constructed of the things
Tempers make
I am one baseball bat bash away from being broken and saved

You might’ve told me you were trouble
I should’ve noticed
After I saw you smash a
Cinderblock through a car window
Just to take a pack of smokes from the dash

And you could have called my bluff
After I ****** your best friend behind your back
For the fifteenth time

Lemme catch your deer in headlights again
Because our last conversation wasn’t ****** enough
Lemme bend willingly into your bed
And fall into whatever mess we forgot to clean up the night before

Stop quaking my fault lines with your fingertips
I know laughter when I hear it
I can see your sneers in the dark

And I can light a match
Light a cigarette
Burn a house down

This is the church of falling apart

No one ever asked forgiveness while standing

The church where the shape of prayer is a ball
Hands clasped behind neck
Head between knees
And morse code  shivers

Signaling

I don’t really know why you hate me so much
But Please
Forgive me
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