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jerard gartlin Feb 2010
oh jeez...
look at how unsanitary the air can be
this area's apparently embarrassed of the error
so please excuse this breeze abuse
& breathe in deeply...heavily.
be ready for the steady supply
of thickened oxygen that's boxed me in
pressed against the rocks again
fending off that wretched wind
it bends me with its petty whims:
my lazy lungs got stretched too thin.

this air
this air...this heavy necessity
wrestling emptiness endlessly
TESTING TESTING
please inhale as you're listening
i'm invested in your empathy &
especially your circulatory circuitry
every blood cell has its worth to me
every photosynthesized sympathy
is my chlorophyll currency
& i'm spending it like burning leaves.
sparklysnowflake Dec 2021
You and I would stand in front of my bathroom mirror and
just hold each other, naked, acquainting ourselves
with the strange, biblical union of joints and hair
and skin and crevices and curves that we make
together...

Fingerpainting reverently on your chest,
I'd kiss your freckled shoulder, eyeing your reflection as it melted,
falling for me again-- and you'd
tell me in return
that my eyes are beautiful, and that they are green,
just like yours.
They are brown, I'd say, and
laugh and
leave
you to
confront only yourself
in my mirror.

Every day that I stand again
in front of my mirror alone--
a similar but emptier amalgamation of joints and curves--
I could swear that my eyes
look a little bit paler...
like if I
point my nose up to the high hat on my ceiling,
with the fluorescent light spilling into them
the color could certainly pass
as the same green in your eyes and
I wonder,
and I hope

that being wrong all this time
doesn't mean I was wrong about you, too.
JDS
ahmo  Nov 2015
fingerpainting
ahmo Nov 2015
I have heard a heart
drop and a
heart burst,
but I've never quite felt
a contraction
or inflation
as red
or
as full of life
as you.

You are blue
in an ocean
that never knew.

Yellow paints
the sun,
and your hips,
too.

I gather flowers
in valleys,
blooming without
any stems
for you.
Devin Ortiz May 2016
Monsters are depicted one dimensionally
Paintings illustrate the difficult decisions
This is the observer's farce

Blood on one's hands paint the canvas
Fingers comb through the valleys
Defining the geography of pain

Trauma sets in, and out goes precision
Distorting one image to reflect another

A change is needed in perspective's pallete
Hands soak to wash away the day view
The crimson stain nevers leaves,
Vibrant ideas left to wade in the murkiness
Joshua Haines  Nov 2014
Daughter
Joshua Haines Nov 2014
These dead stares across the shopping mall
Wouldn't I care if I could have them all
Fingerpainting these eyes
**** photos: camera shutter sighs

But her breath is morse code
And my words are falling
Her dial tone dilates
As her moans are calling

She fell in love with a filter
And I fell in love with someone's daughter
We took pictures in the summer time
And she threw them into the water

When she lies, her cheeks flush
She swears that she doesn't care much,
as she sits in her underwear
with a light grin and a heavy heart.

She felt her pulse by the bed light
She was sad that she was alright
I watched her paint her dad on fire
while holding infant her.

I heard the window shatter
She never said what was the matter
I found her on the driveway,
broken like a family picture frame
Calling nearest janitor
response to minor spill
unidentified indefinitely
a k-11 spill

It bruised burned
extinguished extraneous existence
left minor mess
ignore and maintain
absence of mentality

Shuffle left
avoid sticky shoes
unattended children should abstain
from carmine fingerpainting

Chocolate rations rose
red rose
again this week
enjoy the rapture
thank you come again

A leaf falls
unnoticed

A **** at americana
not from it
belittled no napoleon

Big boy voices only
at the counter
naked pockets mean
no thing
nothing missing
no thing messing
me sing
last mess
cleanup, aisle twelve
Emma Liang May 2013
you said you only felt alive that time you almost fell off the Eiffel Tower.
some days I wished you did just so the suspended image in my head would fit –
eyes wide, lips parted, fingers splayed, every part of you split open head to toe,
spilling secrets into grey Paris wind,
settling like ***** snow on rooftops where I
play guitar and sing and pretend
that somewhere we are fingerpainting naked
and learning how to surf on beaches in Santa Dominica,
climbing trees and ripping jeans and loving
Julia Spohn  Mar 2011
The Suitor
Julia Spohn Mar 2011
I am in love with
Melancholy.
He is the sweetest of suitors,
Bedazzled in jewels that glint so smoothly,
And just enough,
And right in your eyes,
To shield you,
Maybe protect you,
From his abuse and his repetitive,
Cyclical nature.

He is so handsome in any light.
I sometimes love to just stare at him
And contemplate the rigid, weepingly gorgeous
Features that make up his seraph's face.

There is a sharp angle just beneath his perfect
Ears, which hear me splay cheeky compliment after
Cheeky compliment toward them.
This angle turns into his jaw,
Which opens up and down, not like a hinge but rather a
Hatchet, to tell me
So many lies.
He presents them just so - as lies.
But he sways them so wonderfully,
So persuasively and professionally
That I can do nothing but fall
Asunder to this dark suitor's mouth.

He pulls me towards him,
Like the Earth pulls the Moon,
Like the Spider pulls the Prey,
Like Love pulls the Fool.

Intoxicating, really.
His lips move like planets.
They orbit around his weightless voice,
And they spin on their own axes,
And sometimes they spin toward my own.
They plant themselves like magnets,
As if we were meant to be,
And they move in harmony,
Just as hard and stubborn as magnets,
Just as ineffably wonderful we sometimes
Find physics to be.

But then they release -
He releases.
He floats backward, his beautiful
Demonic grin enticing me,
Telling me, "I'll love you and
Leave you, and you can do nothing do
But enjoy it."

My Melancholy.
My beautiful, beautiful angel who blots out the night,
Sweeping the stars together to form a
White, blinding fingerpainting that he tapes to the heavens,
And delivers unto me what I believe is daylight.

But then his head bends back,
Exposing that beautiful hatchet-jaw,
And his crackling fire of a voice beams
Like headlights right into my doe ears and eyes.
He cackles, tells me he loves me,
And flies away.
Cheryl  Nov 2018
art pain
Cheryl Nov 2018
There are worse things
than a broken heart
but to a romantic
to a poet soul
it's fuel, it's fodder
we keep scratching the scab off
and fingerpainting in the pool of our own blood
still working on closing the wound..
Barton D Smock Mar 2015
an infant with still hands is said to be fingerpainting in hell.  a man who wears a hat to bed is said to give god hair.  a boy who strings up dead rabbits left and right is said to be fighting a toothache.  a girl who punches herself in the nose is said to be a plain woman who on roller skates entered a strange traffic of hearse and horse as two of her mother’s footsteps.
Lieve  Nov 2015
Poems, Palms
Lieve Nov 2015
I like to think of my palms as poems
or perhaps, my poems as palms
as I hold them both, hands up,
in offering.
begging for you to take them by the handfuls
grasping them with your own,
poems, palms,
palms, poems
I blow them in kisses
so another may hold them grippless
letting them slip to the sky
fingerpainting the framework
that pillars the planet
presented in feather light
poems, palms,
palms, poems
I breathe them in doses
healing myself in the powdered pressure of
poems, palms
palms, poems
to my wounds, cleansing and mending
in the touch of words, these
poems, palms
palms, poems
in offering, as I hold them both
for you to kiss and breathe and mend
as well
Jeff Claycombe Mar 2015
when i close my eyes, i still see light
a spectrum against my eyelids
hands outstretched
knowing its close
another uneasy step
victorious
hop-skotch dodging
trusting strangers is dangerous but sometimes neccessary
endless paces of paranoia
1 man snowball fights
repairing broken connections
realizing yet again, life can get much worse
snow on halloween?
fingerpainting and worksheets on feelings...where am i?
strategy is all i got in here
its easy when all you got is a basic blueprint
11/18/11
but with a liquor tongue & sober head
drafting and redrafting the words stuttering
on my teeth to keep you here
falling backwards on my *** will
prove nothing but that i’m not content
to be anything but in the table of contents
not a side character
in your favorite book
but god i can’t stop tripping
over air and chalked-up asphalt
am i first?
am i the only one? i growl
apologies & maybe’s
but honest to hell i am
filled with vice
glittering with ill-intent
dented craniums
punctured fists
bitten up pen caps

oh sure, you’re inked up pal
but those tattoos for the weak
aren’t going to lift any skirts
her lipstick ain’t gonna paint your mouth
for you
“rosebud”
hah

we walked with ghosts that one time
kicking trash, dodging dead squirrels, singing
punk rock---betting quarters & Arizona cans
to run fast against traffic
(this was back when) we wanted
to look for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
chubby fingers & a BIC stick pen
tracing imagined cartoon lives
our speech planned in bubbles

timestop: fastforward
snarling, “oh baby she’s a classic /
          like a little black dress”
with opened siamese mouths /
          rolled out tongue
fingerpainting bruises on skin
with pixie stick smudged thumbs
          “she’s a faded moon /
          but you’ll be faded soon”

between muffled dashboard speakers
streaming swears came the stillness
of carving numbers (each other’s
biography pages)
safety pins hinging on rawed knuckles
forever scarred visual bookmark

waiting for words to cause earthquakes
and fault lines in lungs
what was painted across the wall
in looped ‘*******’ cursive
timestop: graffiti
          i fear the human condition
don’t look at me or i’ll shatter
a powder touch would ****.
reworking "VICE" a little bit... want to see where i can go with it, switching around bits of poem here & there from other poems. Just shuffling **** around.

— The End —