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JJ Hutton  May 2010
fallback
JJ Hutton May 2010
collapse into the bed.

i love the hours we ****,
the hours when our feet
forget the floor.

close your eyes.
pleasure centers and crazer neurons.
old soul music and moans.
****** asian neighbors and some televised war.

every sorrow dissipates,
every worry alleviates,
and every thought is silenced
by white knuckles grappling with skin.
Copyright 2010 by Josh Hutton
Tommy Johnson  Jan 2015
Shigris
Tommy Johnson Jan 2015
Reanimate the dead air
But not with mindless banter
Blither blather
Comprised of
Contradicting compromises
Less is more
More or less
That's more like it
Your'e just a statistic
There's always room for improvement
Your'e only human
An ectomorph waving a white flag
A mesomorph crying "SOS"
And endomorph in the shallow end experiencing the ripple effect

It's a white world
White washed
Yup
You need a strategy
To win this raffle
So you can win a chance to rub elbows with the ****** upper crust busybodies-chatter boxes
It's  win win
A win lose
In all its forthcoming splendor
Enhance your station
You spineless jellyfish
Taking your work home with you
Giving yourself scoliosis
Bending over backwards
Looking for something to depend on
A fallback anchor
You're in the hot spot
You cold sore
It's an inside job
You canker sore
blue mercury Mar 2017
ripped out my lungs because it was already impossible to breathe;
there was a light in the dark, there is something that i need.
i will keep going, stand on this glass beach, and
i'll sing baby, baby, baby, i just want some sleep.
yeah, i just want some sleep.

when she's talking to you your mouth hangs open
but not as open as her heart that she sewed to her sleeve
when she was thirteen. everyone says she reads like an open book,
but you think she reads more like a tombstone.
she has an expiration date and everyone knows it,
but you want to be there until her light dies out.
no doubt about it, you've lost your mind, but she
was something you couldn't slide under the rug
she kept coming back.
oh god did she come back, looking like a goddess,
and you were taken aback, trying to stay honest
but honesty is only the best policy until it reveals her frailty
over frivolity, she's precious, impressive, and beautifully combative-
but never ever yours.

slept with the devil when he promised me the love i lacked.
somehow i was surprised when everything went black
his face and eyes gave me a heart attack, and
he was my baby, baby, baby, i was just a fallback.
lust never more than a fallback.
beautiful minds are often marred
martha  Jan 2019
pause
martha Jan 2019
Big parts of ourselves are based on what we know best
What we do
Who we love
Where we are comfortable

The safety of familiar

When a rock the size of a delayed trauma is thrown between those cogs
The machine is still capable of continuing the way it did before
Something just makes it break that bit more
Quietly camouflaged beneath the surface of certainty

Everything now slopes to subtle disarray
As if the plates you had been balancing this whole time have suddenly stopped spinning
And the poles are threatening to snap under the pressure

I have separated myself into sticks and stones
Promised to break my own bones with every unstable step I take towards something I’m blind to seeing shadows of

Talking about it is impossible
It comes out in tongues of unintelligible
Crashing on tired ears too kind to tell me how badly they need a break

Discovering that who you thought you were isn’t who you can keep being
Makes me envy anyone who has had their identity stolen by an outsider

Constrictions come with self analysis
My body now moves through an ever-changing state of inconsistency
My figure defined by dislocated assumptions
Curves contract the changes in all the wrong places

Worries spread their seeds under an ocean of unnoticeable
Trust is now a stranger in my own home
who has figured out how to cut their own set of keys every time I change the locks

Blame is a fallback and the only ones to place it on are those who taught you everything you thought you knew

Heaviness is a weight I can’t brush off my shoulders
I carry everyone else’s burdens on my back because at least it is something I can be good at
A care taker who neglects to take care of herself

Eroding with every passing hypothetical
Every second thought
Every doubt
And every 'what if'

My impermanence is solidified in the knowledge that where we came from will soon call us back

Constellations can’t hold conversations but at least I know they won’t worry half as much

‘Nothing is permanent’ is one tattoo I can’t remove with laser surgery

So now I look for the missing parts of myself in others
In sizes and figures and numbers

What I am not is always something I could become
There’s always been room for improvement
and the empty space is running low on oxygen

Comparison has her cruel hands wrapped around my throat with a thirst I’m incapable of quenching
Self-deprecation isn't attractive
Insecurity isn't ****
Sharing so many similarities with someone who is everything better than me has turned itself into an internal torture device
an omnipotent ‘almost’ that lingers with every non-existent like-minded interaction that will never happen

I place my worth on the pedestal of peoples perceptions

Nightmares show reruns every second night
of the possibilities that now manifest themselves in the lining of my limbs
Leaking toxins that won’t go as far as my throat in case someone else overhears them

An unspoken competition for admiration and attention
The hollow has started to build scaffolds in my stomach for further renovations.

Easing it is a process
I seek shelter in laughter and forcing to forget

And loneliness has become a friendly companion in their absence

Afloat with overthinking until it jumps overboard
Dissolves transparent in glass coloured water

And drowns in it’s own pretty poison
Megan Grace  Jun 2014
Five
Megan Grace Jun 2014
breathe.
because you know what you
do when someone ***** you
over? you calmly take your
heart out of their hands
and leave. you think maybe
you'll sew it back on to
your sleeve but not now, not
today. you put their things
in a box (their cds, their
shirts, their books, their
notes, the little things you
picked up on your dates)
and you put it on the
highest shelf in your
closet, because someday
you will want to remember
them, maybe. if you don't
want to remember them, you
give them the box, you
donate the box, you throw
the box in the river. and
you breathe. because you
deserve better. you deserve
someone who doesn't consider
you a fallback, a plan b.
you will be someone's plan.
you will be the only plan.
you will be my-god-what-
was-i-doing-before-you-
walked-around-that-
corner. remember that
you are enough.
breathe.
I will be okay.
luciana Dec 2020
a single note
a minor incident
but          
a major fallback
Yule  Jul 2018
fallback
Yule Jul 2018
I'm gonna give up this fight
you never once laid your hands on.

— I'll surrender the hopes I fight with
180613; 4:48 pm

{nj.b}
Tommy Johnson  Oct 2014
CATFIGHT!
Tommy Johnson Oct 2014
It's winner take all
For the tile of "Belle of the Ball"
You know the in's and out's
Your familiar with the ropes
No retreat, no surrender
Don't let this siphon your energy
Don't let 'em ruffle your feathers
Bob and weave
Head, body, head, body
Feed it through
Never hand over hand
We're at such a high altitude
There is so fallback
No drawbacks
To getting this off your chest
It's fight or flight
In the moment of truth
So chalk it up to natural selection
- K T P - Apr 2012
One day I sat alone
Staring out over the endless tides of blue.
Dark thoughts scouring for a moan,
As my mind ‘s eye focused on Nature’s hue.

Incessant honking, sirens and colored lights plagued the night.
As I sat there, peering out into the world I left.
My neighbors came by hiding sympathy for my plight.
Ever confused as to my serene chin’s cleft.

A crowd grew as they wandered around my yard anxious for a show.
I sensed a uniformed officer approach me.
Her energy vibrated with a dull maroon glow.
I blinked at this new energy I could see.

She stopped mid step as she watched my reaction.
I looked down at my hands and found them full of blood.
My once serene face quivered with curious reflection.
She reaches down to her hip, as her mouth opens like a blossoming bud.

Her mouth moved but her words I did not hear.
That voice so sweet, so pure, so near!
“Where are you my love!”
My face twists to the sky as I hear her from above.

It was only then that I heard the officer’s words.
As my eye wanders to a man’s body bleeding at my feet.
“Put it down Mr. Birds!
We all know you got him beat!”

My body quivers as images flash through my mind.
My wife, tied to the bed.  My son’s door kicked in.
Serenity flushes from me as rage begins to unwind.
A man lies over her on my bed, doing his cardinal sin.

The rage surges as my scream erupts throughout the night.
My neighbors fallback as the officer grabs her gun.
I see her gun and confusion set me right.
Again her voice!  Telling me not to run.

Her sweet voice yearned me to drop the knife,
I instantly react as the knife falls to the ground.
The officer sees this and takes a few steps wary of strife.
I look and see all the pained faces around.

The officer pats me down as my eye wanders to heaven’s gate.
“I am sorry dear!” was all I could say.
Her voice sweetly answered in a tone definitively innate.
“We love you dear, please find your way.”

The officer puts my hands behind me as she places the cuffs.
A new voice pours from heaven’s roughs.
“I love you dad.  We are finally safe.
Now go and find your way to us without anymore strafe.”

His pure words shocked me to the core,
As water gushed from my long dry shores.
My emotional rigidness was no more,
Leaving the sadness and grief free to explore.

Only then did I see all the brighter blue hues,
Of my comforting neighbors, and friends.
There to mend what they could of what was left from life’s blues.
That was when I knew, that love never ends.
Samuel Lombardo Sep 2014
FALL!
away
living,
lively!

Waking
Intellectually-
Novelty
Travel­s
Entering
Road.

Smiles of
Playful
Rain
Ignites
Naked
Green...

Sounding,
Understanding, and...
Musical
Moments of
Everlasting
Rain...

Fallback
Astounding
Lives to
Language of
Seasons
Mike Essig Oct 2015
A Zen Drill Sergeant
once told me,

(screamed at me)

you always got to have
a fallback position, boy.

I asked what happens
if you don't.

He said, you don't
want to know that,
**** for brains.

The Buddha is
everywhere
at once.

Enlightenment
arrives from
strange mouths.
  - mce

— The End —