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6.6k · Apr 2016
The Land of Honey
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 Dec 2016
The pipes are knocking in the walls; groaning and dying.
You roll to the other side of the bed.
I roll out of bed and put a *** on.
The lights outside are strewn in no particular order and just on the door;
as if to say 'we tried'.
We try until the pipes burst.
We try until the coffee runs out.

I let skynet tell me the news brief and sit here.
I could be studying a way out of here.
But I don't go in until after noon.
I make another cup of coffee.
Listen to Teagan and Sara.
Look at ways to **** time...

The pipes haven't burst yet, but they're still knocking in the walls.
5.9k · Mar 2011
Unemployed
Kathleen Mar 2011
The world pours in.
I wake to my morning coffee.
The cream of that idle Tuesday,
The wakefulness of regret.
Flashbacks to appointments I would have missed,
had it not been for this stupor.
Mulling over what activity to engage in,
the clock strikes never-mind.
So I fall back into my sheets,
stomach churning from hunger I can't quail
and work I can't get.
5.8k · Oct 2010
Decision making time
Kathleen Oct 2010
That time.
It’s come ‘round again;
Reared its self to meet me.
Staring me down like a gazelle.
What I wouldn’t give for one more cup of tea,
One more glance to the left or right depending.
One more sinister smirk at another's expense to be wafted forward
With some sad regress or another in response.
Not now,
Not when it was getting all intense and fearless.
Don’t cut me off,
Give me another ounce of this.
Whatever this is.
I won’t ask questions,
I won’t move.
I’ll partake in silence.
Just give it to me for an evening more.
But there it is in front of me,
Bearing down on me,
Leaning into me,
Expectant.
creative commons
5.0k · Dec 2010
You Flickered Off
Kathleen Dec 2010
I'm starting to dream in color
swimming in Silvia red night gowns
and dancing into silhouettes of purple and crimson.
psychedelic actually,
if you take the time to think within that perspective.
it's like a toned-down rave set in slow motion by overdose.
and where are you?
are you passed out on the lawn in front of some closed down swapmeet?
did the flicker of insomnia turn you off like a light switch you hadn't paid the bill for?
who now, will answer your phone or pay homage to your quips
or late night phone calls to God?
I wish I could say that I relayed the message
but my nerves never were enough.
I wonder if the angels ever picked up on the twisted games you played on their names.
Many people never bothered to decipher it all.
But on occasion I did.
When the time was convenient,
when the moments were dull.
I delved into it.
I tried anyhow.
Forgive me for never letting you pass.
For standing arms and legs wide apart to halt the inevitable.
I wish for so many seconds
that I was there to do something,
to show something,
some inkling of understanding through sarcastic grimaces.
To you, who will read this and play dead for flair,
may you call upon me from the imaginary casket when you get this.
Fore I do see that you could never leave like that.
creative commons
4.3k · Sep 2016
Suddenly Preferred Me
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.
3.5k · Oct 2010
street dancing
Kathleen Oct 2010
rescinding messages of longing and lust
cast off to the wind like a broken record
skittering, twisting down the street in early morn'
your laying to rest your tired conscience on me
like one of those lovers in a movie theater
brushed off like salt on a shoulder
twirled like a young girls hair mid flirtation giggle
i think we're dancing in the streets now
scuffing shoes against concrete
mind-melding as we soft shoe across the yellow lines
i'm kicking you to the curb
like a rock into a gutter
your blowing through me like a chilled breeze
shuffling past me hurriedly to another time
like a scarf mid swing o're a cold shoulder
i turn 'round swiftly to meet you
dizzily.
creative commons
3.0k · Feb 2011
Charity
Kathleen Feb 2011
Pick a cause, any cause, and slap your receipt on your bumper.
Everyone is doing it.
Everyone needs something to be passionate about.
What's your disease?
Not a one of us has it but **** if we don't act like it.

Walk it off.
Blame federal taxes.
Blame the government.
Why not your cause?
Why not your ailment?

***' you know Johnny is going to die if we don't do something,
and Susie's just runnin' outta time.
Buy a teddy bear to show you give a ****.
Donate that extra quarter.

It all piles up somewhere.
But who, I mean who ever bothered to cure anything?
A million lab coats are workin' on your answer.
Just give em' a sec,
this stuff takes time.

In the mean time throw another buck in like your the only one.
Like this is the only problem left.
Like Santa only cares about breast cancer
or the church only cares about Alzheimers.
It's got one of their own you know.

Uncle Jim's got cancer of the liver,
where's his save the children fund?
Timmy's got cerebral palsy.
Sara's got Aspergers.
Randy has the Typhoid.

Pick a brand any brand and show you give a ****.
Like the only one who gives a **** about the only thing that matters.
Forget them, what about me?
What about my issue?
What about my family?

Does the take a penny leave a penny in the seven eleven make you feel important?
Good.
Look here, buy this pin. 10% goes to Katrina victims
creative commons
2.5k · Apr 2013
Lost in Vegas
Kathleen Apr 2013
For the record, I suppose it should be stated I lost my soul in Vegas.
I would love to go back there and find it among those glittering lights and buffet tables of never-ending artful desserts.
It's funny that all I really remember are those pretty desserts and fried mashed potatoes.
I want those things back.

I'm like a raver with those lights.
I want to consume them.
I want to glow in my pores.
Not the cliched glow that wraps itself around the impregnated many,
but the glow that comes from sitting next to neon for too long.
That it could somehow stain you.
Rub off like fairy dust on skin.
That I could fly away due to its energy or wishful thinking.

Take me back to Vegas,
where they still hand that out for free by the boatload.
I need not gamble.
I need not glad-hand.
I would simply sit idly by the buzzing of pinks and blues and greens and reds.
And me and those cheap 1920's lights will have a moment,
a moment I can share with the cocktail waitress who asks me for the third time if I'm sure I don't need a little refresher drink.
2.3k · Nov 2013
Cozy Little Homes
Kathleen Nov 2013
my friends,
write big letters on big pages,
filling magazines.
we make the summers
look like golden lit kerosene
and trail in conduct laden rows
off to our cozy little homes
where we make life a little rougher
for the souls that came before

such a silly little episode
she left her coat,
and we all grabbed it
and held it fairly close
until she finally stumbled up
all the stairs that we drew up
all those cozy little homes.

say that you remember,
late november,
late autumn or early winter,
when the changes weren't much

Say that you recall that fading fall
when we thought that we are all
the happiest we'd ever be.
1.9k · Dec 2010
Ode To The Holidays
Kathleen Dec 2010
Remember when following twinkling lights down sparkling hallways that life is but a dream
and here is the essence and truth of the whole thing ripping at the seams,
spilling out through bell peels and peeking out from bows of holly.
Once a year reality shows a bit of leg.
So enjoy it thoroughly through rounds of eggnog and sugar comas,
through cellophane and paper napkins,
through pointless conversations omitting drug references and financial statuses.
Just put some snow down someones back,
and if it isn't available,
good ol' ice does fine.
Forget that in a few days and a few minutes the world will close up again and deny it's divine nature.
Add a bit more weight to show that it happened,
to prove that it happened for the next few months.
creative commons
1.8k · May 2011
End of the Railroad
Kathleen May 2011
Sometimes I go visit the end of the railroad.
I sit down on the tracks,
drink wine and think back to the time when I had somewhere I had to be,
desperately.
It ends in a wall about seven feet tall that's been newly painted by some hooligan I cherished.
When I first wound up there I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
I tried climbing that wall for a few hours or days,
trying to go further than I needed to be.
But I never did like the destination bit anyway.
So I wandered off and found some new uncharted way to be for a time.
Every now and again I get the urge to reminisce.
I trot on back to the place and remind myself of the bliss
of knowing what the hell I was doing or where I was going.
I tag my name on a corner somewhere,
trudge down the tracks onto the parking lot,
hop in my car and go home.
1.6k · Oct 2010
Irrata
Kathleen Oct 2010
Cry me a river.
Douse me in the irony of conflict.
I'm just a rock on the edge of it,
sitting patiently for your sigh.
We both sit idly by, tensed for the precious birth of words in silence. Trust the ever-living body of guilt that is boiling over the edges of my self-concept.
Don't speak to me as if I'm some dignitary for justice, but simply as if I might irk out some monochrome of truth whilst I sip my coffee in exasperation.
Irritation is also intoxication might I remind,
so I'm fumbling and tripping over my own flawed reasoning.
I got to this point somehow,
so let us examine it rationally and see why I drowned in the liquor of my own rhetoric.
Or, we can sit tentatively vacant waiting for some resolution to spring from the ether that is the growing chasm between us.
creative commons
Kathleen Mar 2011
I’m obsessed with drowning you out,
of pushing your head under water
of choking the life out of this,
for fun.
For kicks to the ground,
for rocks in the gutter,
for some desperate need I have to ruin you,
to ruin this,
to **** it before it kills me.
1.5k · Oct 2010
I'm so easily losing my mind
Kathleen Oct 2010
I'm so easily losing my mind
as if it wanted to leave me.
my mind wanders off.
drops to the floor unnoticed
and rolls under the couch
co-mingling with the change that fell out of my pants.
1.4k · Aug 2014
Prenatal
Kathleen Aug 2014
Today will be retroactive; in penance to those times spent wondering.
The will they wont they has finally calmed.
We wont count today,
so I'm noting it now as an important moment left undiscovered and forgotten later.
Today something came into being that was already there.
The gestation cycle forgotten, we only count the time after birth.
Sometimes I like to think of myself as nine months older.
So, with that I say we were in womb before now.
Welcome to the world.
But for our own purposes we can count those months spent in utero.
1.3k · Dec 2010
Dining On Canaries
Kathleen Dec 2010
She looks at you,
feathers still protruding from her mouth.

She's handing you a ticket to her way of thinking.
If you take it, you're in.
You have access to her mind;
unadulterated access.

Just renounce your humanity.

She's looking for a partner,
another wolf to connect with.

Be it for her.

She looks at you teasingly.

Take it.

Be one of her,
and she will give you everything.
She wants to dine with you on the flesh of the living.
She wants you to play with her.

Take it.

She looks at you,
feathers still protruding from her mouth.
creative commons
1.3k · Nov 2015
Jeans
Kathleen Nov 2015
You are fading jeans again
Try ripping them to shreds by skinning your knees
Try to squeeze blood out of stone-wash
You just crumple and fall on me love
Tired and trapped in denim
Too many buckles and buttons and zippers
But in freedom you do nothing more than drape over the sofa
Love in compasses you, freshly laundered.
1.3k · Jun 2012
Welcome Homeward
Kathleen Jun 2012
Welcome yourself into a brand new world,
rife with neologisms,
teeming with abject complacency.
where all the shiny cars get off on your exit,
assigned parking spaces before them and all the gifts of heaven behind.
My fellow, he lives in a pea-coat some 3,000 miles from here.
He smokes Cuban and knows a great deal of city streets I know not a suit of.
We've yet to meet,
but he says great things about you through the mail.
feverish as those fingers may be,
chasing wildly after some long legged bottle.
The girls become mirages,
and the ground becomes the cold hands of a dead friend.
mountaineering mole-hill after mole-hill until,
dry mouthed and beaten,
he makes his way in this-away direction.
all broken and ill-willed as fate intended,
Twinkle Town's got places for even the most dejected of us.
1.2k · Sep 2013
Like A Lantern
Kathleen Sep 2013
"I'm not sure I believe anything,"
words spilling out my mouth,
staining the carpet.
"And everyone's like Christmas on the outside."
Cold as it may be,
right as you were,
hanging like a lantern from a streetlamp.
1.2k · Jan 2012
Girl Crashes Into Windshield
Kathleen Jan 2012
If someone's going to write me a novel I think we should title it 'Girl Crashes Into Windshield'
Then everyone would be intrigued by the violence of the whole thing.
Then maybe, also, you can use that old photo of me as a reference point.
With a dramatic asterisk next to it that says before.

That will get 'em going.

The first line would be something like, "Death is such an ugly word."
Then we could detail the effects of having your face smashed in at 70 miles per hour.
Make some remarks in scientific terms about trajectory and blunt force.
Get some of those good 'like an egg on a sidewalk' analogies too.
End it with 'had she only stepped into the street two seconds later'.

Now we're gettin' somewhere.

The whispers of bestseller start to breed in the aisles of Barnes and Nobles' everywhere.

Because everyone loves a good car crash.
1.2k · Mar 2014
I Don't Watch Porn
Kathleen Mar 2014
I don't watch ****.
You're more likely to see me squirreling away pictures of elaborate bathtubs, in shame.
Sometimes,
in the still of the night,
I look up well thought-out Murphy-beds and closets that disappear into secret home offices.
I keep a hidden stash of blackout poems
and lewd photos of street artistry around my neighborhood.
I savor notes my best friend gave me during middle school.
I walk a crooked walk down to the seedy underbelly of my past
and read feverishly all my past feelings and relive them to remember how vivid they once were.
But,
just like ****,
in watching and re-watching and savoring all the same flavors
everything tastes like mud now.
1.2k · Jul 2011
Death of the Mercurial
Kathleen Jul 2011
I'm flesh again.
Ripped out of the heavens.
Snatched up by something turning me from a metaphoric whisper,
to a tree stump.
I enjoyed being ethereal again after so long.
I've been metamorphosed;
repressively manufactured as the recipient of love;
been made 'real' again.
Soon I'll dilute,
wash out,
become irritable and complacent.

The death of the mercurial.

My deepest darkest fears of happiness.
1.2k · Aug 2018
Califa
Kathleen Aug 2018
Look at her,
she's remembering when she was native,
when she was Spain,
when she was Mexico
There she is now,
fondly thinking of her future;
the one where she falls into the sea.
1.1k · Jan 2015
Unsung Artist
Kathleen Jan 2015
I learned he'd died through a friend of a long distance friend.
I heard he had snuffed it.
Kicked the bucket instead of the usual rock into a gutter.
'Give me another', he'd say until his eyes went glassy and his face went numb.
Until the hands dropped from the weight of his fingers.
No one lingers to watch.
No one ogles the brilliant light of dawn over this collapsed stranger.
New and old to the neighborhood, we all stood where he once stood.
We all walked away from that place.
His mouth agape but no words can escape the blue lips of a fading memory.
He is dead and his time died with him.
1.1k · Dec 2010
'Education'
Kathleen Dec 2010
I've payed my dues, so to speak, when it comes to being in your gestures and your manners and your rigid forms.
Now I believe is a time for movement,
for adjustment,
for freedom.
Since you have no sense of these terms,
I will ask you to pay full attention as I define them for you
in no uncertain language.

Movement is the outstretched arm towards another,
the subtle nuances of fingers upon hand,
or back
or lip;
the tiny twitches of a toe in beat also cleave themselves to this definition.

Adjustment is the shift between lines that adds to the complexity of a speech.
It is the new extra last minute bits of imagination introduced to a new dish,
or a conversation,
or in your case an institution.

Freedom, though it be plastered on every hall and shouted in the name of horrendous injustice,
is not what you have perceived it as.
You seem to be tricked by the simplicity of the word and have such lost its meaning.

Freedom is the gift that we are given by having the mind to interpret the sickness of this most insidious crime against humanity,
this marring of creativity,
this block of nonsense-
we receive via what you like to call 'Education'.
creative commons
1.1k · Oct 2010
A Controller's Love Song
Kathleen Oct 2010
Listen.
I like you.
I’d like to keep you,
In a little box and blow smoke over you.
Hold you in my arms,
So you can’t move around freely.
I want to look deep into your eyes
And assume horrible things about your character
Listen,
To everything I say.
Because I like you so much
I can’t help but smother you;
In kisses, in grudges, in rules.
Call me some very specific time.
creative commons
1.1k · Aug 2014
Spill
Kathleen Aug 2014
Let the beauty and pain of the world spill over the coffee table and onto the floor.
Use the raw materials to construct a reason-
a reason for why my mother tells me
what her grandmother told her:
"Like cream you will rise to the top".
Make something of yourself out of the chaos
and jagged edges of the world.
Let the bits and pieces of reality loose
to align in nothing but piles and small bits.
Then tediously right all wrongs,
in steady and purposeful motions,
until you are but dust and granules yourself.
1.1k · Oct 2010
Deny me the pleasure
Kathleen Oct 2010
I want to kiss you right on the mouth and tell you lovely things about yourself,
Just so you might deny me,
Just so you might say ‘no thank you darling I just changed’.
Just so that you might be the man in this situation that we have going on here.
This little awkward dance we seem to be doing between commitments and running.
How empowering would it be for you if I were to say ‘I like you more’
So that you might respectfully decline it.
I would like to give you that as a gift,
an offering to turn down.
creative commons
1.0k · Jul 2013
Glen Rose
Kathleen Jul 2013
When I was young my mother painted the ceiling with every color there was.
She made the falling stucco and sealant into clouds and rainbows and horses;
horses of blue and purple and green.
One time I left my room and stared all night at the stars,
they were so much more vivid.
You couldn't deny their presence,
they were like little beings coming straight toward you.
Didn't need to look up, you could stare straight forward out of the window and it's like they were looking at you too.
But cautious, they never came close enough for me to grab them and trap them in my hand like a rolli-polly.
There were fireflies that loved to gather like tiny self supporting oil lamps by the tree next to our house.
They would swim around me because they knew they were far too clever for me.
There were toadstools that I would kick out of principal and river rocks that were never smooth enough for the current hadn't the will.
Caves where the ivy would circle for no reason but to give me the best hiding place of all time.
We ate snow that one time, when it had snowed for the one time it would in 7 years.
There was a single stoplight in a square of one tiny block where I would get dizzy riding my bike.
Then the Crawfords would let me ride their horse.
That's where I got stung by a bee for the first time and I fell on the red dirt road and cried and cried.
One time a tornado almost swallowed me whole while my trailer baby-sitter wasn't looking.
I remember asking with all sincerity for the third time how to spell cat.
Lolly-pops adorned the daycare where I watched trolls singing Kokomo.
These are all the good things I can remember,
so I cherish them.
1.0k · Oct 2010
Old enough to not want it
Kathleen Oct 2010
Let's live just long enough to fear the compassionate desires of our ancestors.
Trust that no one save for the testimonials of strangers can save you from the 'coming evil'
To this end, we shall salute our own graciousness in response to someone else's hard work;
Make up a story filled with woe and peacemaker rallies depicting those formidable glory days.
Suffer no one but fools.
You know,
Fore you are wise and we shall all know someday what is to others like you obvious;
that everyone is blind but you.
There is a glazing in the eyes of a once mistress,
fallen over a reclining chair grasping at dusty bones.
This is what is left of the great ending,
nothing to clean up after, save for spittle looming over a coffee table.
The nightmare returns to me in a simple waning smile
and a sweet, but bitter to only me phrase:
"let's grow old together"
creative commons
1.0k · Aug 2011
The Strain on Branches
Kathleen Aug 2011
I let my words drip onto a keyboard, since I don't cry anymore.
I am shocked that we never have time to talk, saving breath for breathing.
I cut down trees to reveal the forest.
And at my poorest, I never blamed you for being true to the version of you, you felt most comfortable in.
A second skin, for skin walkers.
I've had more and less,
in less space than one can have with the bitter tastes of phrases caught in the back of the throat.
What we wrote on pine trees scars me,
taking far too long to heal over.
But I grow as growers do. And so do you.
1.0k · Nov 2016
Horror Show
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.
1.0k · Dec 2014
New Orleans Funeral
Kathleen Dec 2014
She wants the trumpets to play.
She wants them to play all day long until their lungs give out.
She wants to see them marching down the street, keeping the beat of another failing heart.
Don't start. I can't.
I cannot pick your roses,
I cannot breathe in the sulfur of your departed memories.
Don't make me weep at your parade.
She stayed long enough to orchestrate the players.
Stayed long enough to write the tunes.
Stayed long enough to make the costumes.
But not long enough to watch the charade.
Watch it blossom and screech and wail
There it goes down the street named after you.
There it goes with you at the helm,
Waltzing down to that other realm,
where we get to watch you pass.
1.0k · Dec 2010
zero carbonation
Kathleen Dec 2010
For once I'm letting myself entertain the concept.
I'm mulling it over.
Because, I'm the glass-half-empty type.
It's not that I don't want a refill,
it is simply that I cannot get the attention of my server.
In the meantime,
the soda goes flat and the ice melts into it.
But unlike most, I have realized that drinking it leaves you with less.
I can be glass-half-empty, knowing that there is still some lukewarm liquid souping in the glass.
The problem is that I simply refuse to experience even the watered-down aspects of life,
for fear that that **** waiter never does show up.
creative commons
995 · Oct 2010
Dust In The Wind
Kathleen Oct 2010
And then you say, "All we are is dust in the wind."
Little specks,
enumerable and miniscule,
grains of the infinitesimal,
listless,
pointless,
directionless,
fading dreams of nothing.
Well, I say "Thank God, I love the prospect,
there is freedom in being nothing."
Why are you so displeased with this conclusion?
Is it that the contention you wrought is dispersed by my contentment?
We'll let it drift then on the wings of some updraft on it's way to God.
invisible to the naked eye,
just as you and I shall drift thoughtlessly into the atmosphere.
Little particles of dust fading into nothing and immeasurably free.
creative commons
958 · Jul 2012
If This Were It
Kathleen Jul 2012
I would drag your broken body from a heap of ruin and pull it close to mine.
I would sit with you while we watched the fireworks of the undoing light the sky.
I would weep with you the tears that came with every broken bone in your body.
And together we would wait.
Wait for that God neither one of us believed in.
To pick us up by the side of this pile of rubble,
we used to call the world we knew.
957 · Jan 2011
Splotched
Kathleen Jan 2011
She was a gamine,
an urchin and a recluse.
Tattered and waifish,
scrounging for some small morsel underneath a city bus.
Tarnished,
a lot like brass that's been exposed to water;
she's splotched.
Even whilst disenfranchised,
she carries some valiance hidden beneath her turncoat.
There is beauty in the loose pages she's giving to the wind.
She is,
and will forever be,
floating in the updraft of a sidewalk vent.
creative commons
932 · Oct 2013
Fed
Kathleen Oct 2013
Fed
She broke the bottle over our heads
and the milk mingled with the blood.
That's how one feeds monsters.
The fingernails dig in deep and pull out threads of fabric.
It might have held the world instead of bled, she said
But I can't toe the line of a killer.
914 · Dec 2010
"You're Beautiful"
Kathleen Dec 2010
Everyone wants to get into those pants of yours;
get into those jeans.
They'd all say a lot of things
to get in between.
Keep in mind the bottom line
is beneath those clothes you cling to.
So strip yourself clean string-bean.
Let them play tambourine on your heart strings.
Let them lye next to you,
tell you sweet lies that mean nothing
till you take it off.
Take it all off.
Do a little dance
make a little something to be remembered for in the morning,
when they leave.
creative commons
862 · Jun 2012
In Bubbles and Glory
Kathleen Jun 2012
the glory days of forever ago,
we drug ourselves into thinking that this was a good idea.
but of course,
as luck would have it,
i slipped through the cracks in the gene-pool that would have called me an addict.
life is good and all is quiet on whatever front i'm at,
at the moment.
life swirls on.
and so does the dust in my eyes.
big surprise, i'm still here,
mumbling indecency after indecency.
sip after sip,
soothsayers make mention of my doom,
in bubbles and in glory.
858 · Oct 2010
Swelter
Kathleen Oct 2010
There's a swelter, a stickiness to life as of late.
Syrupy.
Its as if I've been coated in a thin layer of substance.
Sweat maybe.
Salty and inescapable.
I wake up drenched in it.
The smell of ripeness.
The clinging of clothing.
The desperate need to disrobe and cleanse
Only to be swallowed up again by this heat,
This permeating throbbing heat that surrounds me.
That sticks to every surface.
That claims to be more me than I am.
I'm shocking myself in ice cold water
Scrubbing it off of me,
But in a few moments past now it will return.
Thick and imposing...
So I wait for nightfall when it gets colder and I can rest again.
creative commons
854 · Oct 2010
A drop in the ocean
Kathleen Oct 2010
I want to be thrown-
def dumb and blind into your arms
So I can feel
what you really have to say.
It's only when I close my eyes and drowned out the words inside my head
that I see-
the way I am and who I really want to be

A drop in the ocean
metaphorically
speaking.
A needle in a haystack
we are searching
for meaning.
A feather in your cap
I adorn you with my attributes.
A trinket you collect
to be posted on your wall.

I want to be tossed
aside
with your other castaways.
It's only when I crash into the median
going 90
that I-
really get to see,
I mean,
really get to be
who I-
really,
truly, have to be.

A drop in the ocean
metaphorically
speaking.
A needle in a haystack
we are searching
for meaning.
A feather in your cap;
I adorn you with my attributes.
A trinket you collect
to be posted on your wall.
creative commons
849 · Dec 2013
The Deep Long Pause
Kathleen Dec 2013
This.
This my difficulty I can never show in public.
My shame.
My family name tarnished on a pause.
A stumble.
A fumble forwards towards the right answer that won't come tumbling out of me.
So I wait.
I wait for a crack in the seams; a break in the watch.
A moment to breathe where I can escape away from the responsibility of knowing.
Knowing what is to others obvious.
The poetry of integers,
the finger-tips of legacy I may never grasp.
843 · Jul 2011
Heavy Feet
Kathleen Jul 2011
I'm whistling you a tune to waft into.
Some say to walk with the wind on your heels.
I don't do that.
I crash forward with clunky, massive steps
cracking concrete,
shattering asphalt and charging onward like a directionless bull.
If anything, I barrel into you like a semi off a freeway.
You smile and say you never knew what hit you.
You fall backwards.
As I run towards, you cave in.
I'm pressing my lips against you with something akin to force.
(the desperation of the intoxicated)
I burrow into your chest trying to make a place to hide in.
You sigh and fall to pieces;
crumble into dust to lay in.
Kathleen Feb 2011
I'm a terrestrial being.
so down to earth I might just be below it.
Up to my ears in the sands of time;
grounded, forever glued to the microcosm.
Entrenched in terra firma.
Homely maybe, there's tracts of guilt all through it.
creative commons
830 · Dec 2012
In The Hands of Others
Kathleen Dec 2012
If she stands,
legs wide apart,
holding your broken soul in her hands.
Maybe she wants to grasp something greater than herself.
But what holding does is little,
and your fates are not suddenly transferred to those bones.
And if carpal tunnel should cause her to drop it,
or if her hands should simply grow tired of the weight and relax after some time,
where is the blame rested?
Whose hand do we place that in?
and in this ever exchange of weights and balancing acts,
when does anyone get to waive goodbye;
hands heavy with guilt and promise.
Kathleen Jan 2011
She's bleeding into thoughts painful and obtuse;
reclusive mysteries made apparent by violence
and forceful introspection.
Severing ties and reforming them
licking wounds and digging at them.
For once let the madness cease to be so vivid
that it erases me.
creative commons.
Kathleen Aug 2011
She's bleeding into thoughts painful and obtuse;
reclusive mysteries made apparent by violence
and forceful introspection.
Severing ties and reforming them
licking wounds and digging at them.
For once let the madness cease to be so vivid
that it erases me.
creative commons.
817 · Jun 2011
My Sister
Kathleen Jun 2011
My sister my sister my sister,
turns out she wasn't a doll at all,
once push came to shove.
She'd been beat up and blistered like the rest of us,
just clinging to the mast of certainty found in encasing oneself in plastic,
layers and layers of it.
I don't know how she didn't suffocate but she's still breathing in there, somewhere.
She cracks at the edges,
I try to look in, nosy as I am, and get her out of there
but she doesn't want to get out.
She hates me for trying.
But I miss her I miss her I miss her.
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