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Odi Apr 2021
Man like monster with
A mouth as a spinning wheel of hands/
Prey between teeth

One game of chess away from losing my
Mind/biting my head off

Man like wolf bleeding between gums
Man looking like both survival and the gun between it.
Boy looking like boy in mans body

Another poem about falling in love with dangerous people

Failing to see how they resemble every single red light you’ve ignored

Leaving home
On the plane
In the car to the airport

My blood cold, my gut sucker punched into submission

Could feel the well of grief somewhere inside of me
Like I would just
Sink
Sink
Sink
And never hit the bottom

A penny in a well makes a sound
The penny inside me finally drops

And I crack like a mule at the whip
Like birds at dawn or spring

Staying up so late I never dream

The part of the puzzle I get wrong is; fitting everything inside out and calling it beautiful/
He tries to put it back together but I tie his hands back with my tongue
Call it a game/

One where I’m safest where there are no hands
And eyes
To hold me to my promises
Love me into submission
My failed potential

The shame that filled every corner of my body
How it grew till it could not fit anymore

The year of empty
How it became a  larger and hungrier thing,

Larger than the men in my nightmares.

The silver we couldn’t melt, whispers over a fever and forehead.
When adults are talking you pretend you don’t understand

But you keep secrets locked up inside yourself

I still dream of war
Have never been on a battle ground.

They call it generational trauma ,

I say,

You don’t know the hand holding the gun to my head
What the trigger is made out of is my own flesh and blood

There are things I can’t speak of

Things I will not say but this:

I was wearing a ruffled blue top with a unicorn logo and jeans

I didn’t have any hair down there

Then I did

I liked how it felt

and then I didn’t

There is no place inside of me that can hold these two truths and not split wide open

Like a smile

Like a wound

Like the rabbit finally caught up

In the mouth of the thing.
Odi Feb 2021
The year I choked on love
The year I swallowed grief and it’s sharp edges
Tore ribbons out of my own throat
A sentimental offering to anyone  brave

enough  to bare their teeth
The year I let the boy hurt me for the last time
The year the boy hurt me, one, last, agonising time

I found out my brain is on fire



No actually medically on fire


The year I tried to juggle all the acts and ran out of hands
Out of hope
Almost
Out of rope to give
To tie up my loose ends

Like the four good reasons I listed not to **** my self, how they all had names and faces similar to mine
Like the bottom I didn’t reach
How hard I kicked to stay afloat


I didn’t choke
I didn’t choke
I didn’t choke
Odi Jul 2016
A marinate was played
Full of granite and fine rings
A bathtub of nosebleeds Danny and a bathtub of kings
All the cards that were dealt all the hands that we played pulled the curtain bell
Of my sleeve up to delay what I'd say and
All the cards we swept under the rug Danny all the music we screamed
From my sore throat and broken hands came the sound of suffering on a silent note in an empty room a bell jar and a piano and a single key being pressed in time to the sound of my weeping Danny
My friends ignored my cries
But here we are now with a new drum set and two sets of sticks for hands and we break everything we try to touch Danny thinking it can be played like the single key in that lonely room
Listen there are vultures in my throat in all my baby teeth and landlocked blues
I know that's the name of the song but I wanted to play it for you
Just in case you forgot I could sing out my suffering
And it doesn't sound so horrible now does it Danny
Because you don't know the story it tells
The blood diamond behind the curtain
Well it glimmers just as well
And I'm sure we can find a way to forgive ourselves for everything that was done
But I'm in a two step programme
Where everything gets reversed
And no I haven't slept in weeks Danny you're right I know I look like ****
I just haven't had time to think about what I'm putting in me
When I try to scream and I come up on a single static piano key
Listen there are ways we broke each-other and I'm sorry I tried
But the sound of my suffering
Doesn't mean waving goodbye
A poem inspired by a series of bright eyes songs.
Odi May 2015
Here it is
the poem on survival, the one you've all been waiting for
where I learned to untie the noose from my smile,
my smile from the trigger warning.
Here's your trigger warning:

I shivered when you kissed me.
I had a hard time believing my heartbeat was a good thing; had a hard time
believing the front door was still an option.
I wake up some days and remember when I used to sing bruises onto my skin,
fill up large towels with my blood,
watch it go black,
watch everything go black.
Still remained smiling;
still stood with the scars; with the ink between my teeth baring
a warning sign for whoever comes next,
for whoever wants my body without wanting my mind.
here it is
here is how i survived:

I hurt myself

I still do it just doesn't show
the scarring.
here it is baby boy come inside its about to get ugly,
you're about to see me cry,
you're about to see me shake,
you're about to find out what im really made of,
I'm about to find out if you break.

are you scared yet
this is a challenge you never step down from,
you brave boy!
you with your sword and white horse;
shining at the darkness inside of me; shining at the stench inside me ; come here,
make me feel whole.
Dont say I didnt warn you.
  Apr 2015 Odi
Thomas McEnaney
Jonah asked me,
‘Thomas, do you wear sunglasses all the time because you don't have eyes?’
In my head I said ‘yes Jonah, you’re right!
I wear them because I don’t have eyes,
I hide behind mirrored glass because I’m scared of the world, Jonah.
I am terrified that maybe someone will understand me--
But I can't stop you, can I Jonah?’

Those words circled round and round in my head and heres what I did say:
I have eyes, Jonah, they’re blue.

In a dream I dreamed that I was Odin,
That I gouged out my eyes in exchange
For all the wisdom and understanding the world had to offer.
Jonah I have ******* holes for eyes,
Big empty spaces where every thing goes in and nothing comes out.
I have dark pools of disbelief and
Grown-up thoughts and
The pictures in my head have edges as if they were film
Instead of fog blurring edges with reality,
And all the caffeine coursing through my bloodstream
Cannot possibly give me the energy you have, Jonah.

Maybe I was Odin once, maybe I was a god--
But that was long ago and I grew up, jonah,
So, I don’t have eyes anymore,
But these blue-black-holes will watch you grow up,
And each year they will grow darker as you grow older,
Until finally I fade to nothing more than a name painted on a wall and
empty sunglasses staring out of the past--
Watching,
Wishing I had told you:
Don’t ever, ever give up your eyes, Jonah.
Odi Dec 2014
I am awoken by a nagging in my head
its in my mothers voice
the urgency,
I don't know what for, its 5 am.
my submission doesn't speak.
I fill the air with the sound
of my nonsense, a rambling of dreams,
"dont burst the bubble, burst the bubble, burst the-"
a never ending melody.
Because there is nothing louder than this, I have wanted to crawl out of my skin long before I knew it was mine.
And theirs, not mine entirely, composed of DNA so imperfect
even the gods would've laughed.
If you ever want to **** something up to the point its unrecognizable,
give it to me, look what I did to my own potential.
Squander doesn't begin to cover it, almost out of spite.
and i must stop it before it reaches my eyes
it has a certain way of clouding them over
and I just dont want people to realize
that I am swallowing a lump
at the back of my throat
what seems like forever
trying not to get my eyes to burn or
dig my nails deep into someones throat
just to feel their artery and scream
"YOU ******* FEEL IT DONT YOU?
ARE YOU ALIVE? ARE YOU REALLY HERE?
YOU ARE ALIVE, ALIVE ALIVE!."
Then place the sharp bits of my nails
against my skin, hard
and not feel
anything
I struggle with self control
especially with ***
and drugs
and alcohol.

I yell too often, never loud enough to make them hear me.
I am afraid of my own voice
telling people to shut up
Jack knows its not a good thing if I whisper
last time I did I said
"I don't have a pulse, I cant find my pulse."
Before I freaked out and smashed that vase against the wall
and laughed at what a sad broken cliche I have become.
My anger came out in sputtering sobs

And he tried to hold me
because that's what people do in movies
cue the background music
but I didn't let him because I was never any good at acting,

and he never got mad when I hit him
I can hear that "Sshhhh" at the back of
my ear
Forever.
and I could wince at my own humiliation if I gave a ****.
I wont lie it was awkward he sounded scared
"aww dont c-c-ry"
thought I saw a tear there too
Im trying
Odi Nov 2014
He plays the the sound of a rainfall in Manhattan.
As he chases paper thin skin out of this sorry sob story
another fairy tale in his head.
I think you've had enough for today Alex
why don't you sing of pretty things?
Eyes like coals too dark to see,
do they stop your hands from strumming that guitar?
the tunes you play
the melodies
echo in the absence of your voice
and alex you taste so sweet
sweeter than the alcohol you use to get to sleep
I tell you one day the past will catch up with you;
but your smile looks like a well adjusted childhood.
Something were all surprised to see.
And yeah your fingers pour over the strings,
because
the only time they dont shake is when you play
so play for me
play play play
sing sing sing
dont stop
dont breathe
just play
A series of poems for the boys that have left a mark
somewhere
somehow
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