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Kathleen Nov 2016
If soldiers ride under the flag of someone else's dawn
what choice do we have but to march right on?
So he says, "Just like god I never meant to be,
and just like time you'll never know the end of me"

"Your answers lay in the middle of an enclosed glen
I wonder if you dared to step right in"
He says, "Just like god I never meant to be,
and just like time you'll never know the end of me"
Kathleen Nov 2016
I feel the urge to disappoint myself again.
Like conjuring up the dead.
There is a willfulness to open the box,
to play with the bones,
to say the words in the right order and make the right incantations.
I don't want to off myself.
I want to set to motion a series of events that spells out my own doom.
To be responsible for the end of my own world.
To set my own house on fire and warm myself, homeless, in the ashes caused by my own hands.
It's a sickness. An allure. Damage.
An unquenchable curiosity of what happens if I push the glass heirloom off the shelf.

No one is ever able to stop the teenagers from renting the beach house.
Let's get this horror show started.
Kathleen Sep 2016
Oh here I am in the back room while you sing my praises
cohort with the neighborhoods and their dogs.
They spin around you and you laugh a hearty laugh.
An honest laugh.
The laugh of an honest man who does good for good's sake.
I torture myself in the back room and listen to the conversation over some desperate woman and a guitar
as I write about my mother.
How did we meet and why?
I don't think there is an honest answer to it.
I just love you, simply and purely.
The way you are with everyone else.
Kathleen Sep 2016
Happiness bled all over my bathtub.
Silliness dried at my feet.
But maybe it's just the parts that we're made of.
Maybe that's all that we mean.

And dreaming suddenly preferred me.
And themes suddenly addressed me

Mirrors and make-up, tripped over playing cards.
Drowned in the chivalry,
Heroes and worshiped gods that were made up,
furrowed their brows at me.

And dreaming suddenly preferred me.
And themes suddenly addressed me.
Kathleen Apr 2016
A safe dog doesn't run the fence.
She wouldn't break the good leash to leave you.
Kathleen Apr 2016
How many marbles can you fit into a bowl until you say you can't count them?

I do not want events layered upon events.
Birthdays toppling over birthdays:
a layer cake of responsibilities that aren't 'responsibilities'.
That do not count.
That cannot be measured or described as taxing or numerous.
I am outnumbered by numberless nonsense.
I am outweighed by weightless wafting pleasantries;
and opportunities;
and life-sustaining things;
that bowl me over.

My womb is a desert called Death Valley and you wish to comb it for antique glass bottles.
I care not.
I cannot partake in any more suggestions of what I might do with my 'free time'.

But you're not feeling the tingling sensation in your gut every time you wake up and the lights don't turn on.
The wheels don't work.
The mechanical arms don't move like they are supposed to.
Like the parts of you you're supposed to have on automatic have just given up the ghost and abandoned you.
You're alone and miserable and none of it rings any bells.
None of it gives out any signs.
None of it counts.

I'm crying because the milk spilled and there isn't any milk left anywhere in the world.
We're out.
We're just the land of Honey now.
Kathleen Feb 2016
I've been nervous all day
and finally-
at the end of the day
I love it.

I guess I'm not as 'above it' as I wanted to be.
I'm sure my mother could see this more clearly-
than me.

But the butterflies in my stomach have now morphed into an odd satisfaction
I guess I just wanted the action-
after all.

It's all for the greater good,
and shouldn't I-
be proud of that.
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