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 Jan 2015 KD Miller
Kaitlyn R
Never the knee
because god forbid
your thighs melted together
and then the men in toupees
wouldn't be able to stake their claim.
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
Jon Shierling
I have now gone from this place,
this running river
this journey seeking a farce.

I shall walk no more
those tired paths
leading nowhere.

The desert has been my
companion for so long
and I do not know how to
leave her embrace.

Nor do I know
how to put your
bare shoulder behind
who I once was.

You have left signs
and messages written
in the sands, upon rocks
at the shores of those oasis
we once made love near.

Yet I cannot read them,
I cannot understand these
portents drawing me
further toward a love
that I know I am unworthy of.

Perhaps I may get up and go
body as well as spirit,
I may answer this call
felt since I was fifteen.

I shall get up and go
I shall go to where you live
that place you call home.
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
vf
duke
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
vf
sprints on the university track,
January chill causes steam to
rise from my head and arms.
my leggings feel too small now and
the Gatorade tastes like chaser,
I'm getting the hang of it
finally.
you push me, telling me "Durham's got the hills"
you've got the calves, you get the girls,
and I'm the one who runs with you
I'm the one who tries keeping up.
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
vf
cheap
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
vf
do you think of me as much as I think of you,
running circles in my mind like a rolling penny
and diving into my skin like a rash.
a beautiful raspberry
bruising my lips, staining my mouth bright pink.
flushed cheeks are flowers,
are carnations, are cheap and fast and loving,
blooming (and can be picked up at the grocery store for 5 dollars)
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
Jon Shierling
He is used to waking most
mornings, and there is nothing.
No fluttering heart,
no breathing other than his own.
It is better in a way,
knowing what to expect,
come time to meet the day.

At some point in life,
he decided that it was
easier to stop longing
for things that once
made waking something
worth looking forward to.

Those tired hopes and
those memories aching
with romantic sentimentality
never did serve any real
purpose other than to
foster eventual solitude.

Writing is all that he
allows himself now,
the only recourse back
to that ancient past
full of magic and great
soul-shattering loves.

He both loves and
hates the nothing of
these mornings,
just as he loves
and hates this fire
that has almost gone out.
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
JR Potts
I gave you serpentine kisses in the morrow,

wore two faces when I confessed my love

but we lay together in the dotage of the day

and you are the only person I can think of.
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
vf
sinatra
 Jan 2015 KD Miller
vf
what can I do with a sleepy heart,

what can i do when it is sprained and strained,

a heart that makes me feel crippled and dazed.
I can’t react to his words,
his lips,
his smile does not warrant mine. Sinatra plays in my head
and breaks up the black hole in my chest, grinding it away,

"good bye, good good good bye"

it’s just one of those nights
 Dec 2014 KD Miller
Jon Shierling
There are some moments
which bring true clarity,
whether by song or by
substance or merely by
the warmth of a human
touch against fluttering
fingertips grasping.

Those moments after
the heat of good ***
lying quiet and perhaps
content or maybe not,
staring at the ceiling
and listening to the
perfect rise and fall
of your lover's breathing.

The few minutes of
the workday paused
to take in the grandeur
of a sunset over a lake
with the simple open
happiness of a smoke break.

That one point in a
song when the world
dissolves around you
and there is no past
nor a future but truly
the here and now filling
you up with all you
feel has been lacking.

There's that singular
point of intoxication too,
when all things that
seemingly make no
sense at all when sober
suddenly come together
into one complete whole
to be lost upon waking
next morning hungover.

There are some people
who say that love is a
mere illusion, the same
as an acid trip or the
endorphins women
experience during birth,
mere chemistry that makes
us all that we are.

And there are also
those who preach
that all we are is
simply an experiment
by some divine personage
to see if free will works.

I don't have it in
me to believe that all
we are is anything that
can be quantified by
any singular theory
or description encompassing
all of human experience.

I don't have it in me to hate
anymore either, though I
have been given many reasons
to do so, it just seems so
adverse to everything I
have ever been taught by
people who loved me.

Yes there has been pain
and yes there has been suffering,
personal as well as that of
our nations', as well as that
of our understanding of
what humanity is as a whole.

We have done terrible,
unspeakable things to
each other in the name of
some rancid idea or another
and yet, others of us have
given all that we have
in the name of something
called empathy, maybe passion?

All I know for sure is
that I should have been killed
two years ago by my own
idiocy and yet I was not.
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