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F White  Jun 2012
Adult
F White Jun 2012
Seriously?!

I'm a ****...

Wait. No you're not. Hold on.
I can't find...
I can't find my *******. Help me look.

blankets flung.
nothing.

You're...
you're laughing right now?
How could you not?


Can you see that
we're standing in a
giant pond of
ridiculosity.

a glasses lense
popped out.
hair a nest
of invisible
rodents.

his belt
all askew worried
face pursed
lips.

shirt tails- a crumpled
facade of the pressed
summer evening shadows
outlined behind
the lawn sprinklers from
the night before.

and in the cab
to work
phone almost
dies. 37 degree damp
heat pressing
against the car
like a monroe-type
kitten from the
50s.

the morning world
bustling awake
the driver asks
'you work this
afternoon?'

shake my head 'no'
slowly working the
knots out of my
hair

brace for the last
day.

And I'm
still missing
my underwear.
copyright fhw, 2010, 2011 ?

A.N: Golly this is...old old old. I found it in one of my folders and laughed at the absurdity. I'm about to get married now. To a wonderful man. Not the man in this poem. That one really actually was a ****.

Enjoy.
Here comes the day
With coloured hands and faces
To the music we sway

Touch not with intentions perverse
Its Holy
The festival of colours

Children
Gear up with your water guns and sprinklers
Filled with organic colours
No chemicals please
Look for revellers dressed in all white
Drench them all in the hues of the rainbow bright

Munch on the Gujia, a sweet treat
Time for a rain dance to the desi beats

It's time to cheer
Spring is right here

Happy Holi
The sprinklers would wash away the guilt
And we would be whoever we wanted to be.
Found unfinished from a year ago and decided it was finished enough.
If the only sound we had to hear at night
Was the sprinklers
Wouldn't things be so easy?
No, we just have to have those pesky kids playing Josie at 3 AM
Ronald Jones Jun 2017
on hot summer days
he'd prance through the sprinklers
this lonely boy, unto himself
and rush back to his apartment
to look in the mirror
at this glistening African Prince
1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never be as true as these
struck leaves letting go.

I, who chose two times
to **** myself, had said your nickname
the mewling mouths when you first came;
until a fever rattled
in your throat and I moved like a pantomine
above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame,
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled
like green witches in my head, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I must assume.

Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves
go queer. You ask me where they go I say today believed
in itself, or else it fell.

Today, my small child, Joyce,
love your self's self where it lives.
There is no special God to refer to; or if there is,
why did I let you grow
in another place. You did not know my voice
when I came back to call. All the superlatives
of tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe
will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.
The time I did not love
myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.
There was new snow after this.

2.

They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.

Part way back from Bedlam
I came to my mother's house in Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
And she never could. She had my portrait
done instead.

I lived like an angry guest,
like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child.
I remember my mother did her best.
She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.
Your smile is like your mother's, the artist said.
I didn't seem to care. I had my portrait
done instead.

There was a church where I grew up
with its white cupboards where they locked us up,
row by row, like puritans or shipmates
singing together. My father passed the plate.
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.
I wasn't exactly forgiven. They had my portrait
done instead.

3.

All that summer sprinklers arched
over the seaside grass.
We talked of drought
while the salt-parched
field grew sweet again. To help time pass
I tried to mow the lawn
and in the morning I had my portrait done,
holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit
and a postcard of Motif number one,
as if it were normal
to be a mother and be gone.

They hung my portrait in the chill
north light, matching
me to keep me well.
Only my mother grew ill.
She turned from me, as if death were catching,
as if death transferred,
as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt.
On the first of September she looked at me
and said I gave her cancer.
They carved her sweet hills out
and still I couldn't answer.

4.

That winter she came
part way back
from her sterile suite
of doctors, the seasick
cruise of the X-ray,
the cells' arithmetic
gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
them say.

During the sea blizzards
she had here
own portrait painted.
A cave of mirror
placed on the south wall;
matching smile, matching contour.
And you resembled me; unacquainted
with my face, you wore it. But you were mine
after all.

I wintered in Boston,
childless bride,
nothing sweet to spare
with witches at my side.
I missed your babyhood,
tried a second suicide,
tried the sealed hotel a second year.
On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this
was good.

5.

I checked out for the last time
on the first of May;
graduate of the mental cases,
with my analysts's okay,
my complete book of rhymes,
my typewriter and my suitcases.

All that summer I learned life
back into my own
seven rooms, visited the swan boats,
the market, answered the phone,
served cocktails as a wife
should, made love among my petticoats

and August tan. And you came each
weekend. But I lie.
You seldom came. I just pretended
you, small piglet, butterfly
girl with jelly bean cheeks,
disobedient three, my splendid

stranger. And I had to learn
why I would rather
die than love, how your innocence
would hurt and how I gather
guilt like a young intern
his symptons, his certain evidence.

That October day we went
to Gloucester the red hills
reminded me of the dry red fur fox
coat I played in as a child; stock still
like a bear or a tent,
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.

We drove past the hatchery,
the hut that sells bait,
past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall's
Hill, to the house that waits
still, on the top of the sea,
and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.

6.

In north light, my smile is held in place,
the shadow marks my bone.
What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone
of the smile, the young face,
the foxes' snare.

In south light, her smile is held in place,
her cheeks wilting like a dry
orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown
love, my first image. She eyes me from that face
that stony head of death
I had outgrown.

The artist caught us at the turning;
we smiled in our canvas home
before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
The dry redfur fox coat was made for burning.
I rot on the wall, my own
Dorian Gray.

And this was the cave of the mirror,
that double woman who stares
at herself, as if she were petrified
in time -- two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
You kissed your grandmother
and she cried.

7.

I could not get you back
except for weekends. You came
each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit
that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack
your things. We touch from habit.
The first visit you asked my name.
Now you will stay for good. I will forget
how we bumped away from each other like marionettes
on strings. It wasn't the same
as love, letting weekends contain
us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
You can call me mother and I remember my mother again,
somewhere in greater Boston, dying.

I remember we named you Joyce
so we could call you Joy.
You came like an awkward guest
that first time, all wrapped and moist
and strange at my heavy breast.
I needed you. I didn't want a boy,
only a girl, a small milky mouse
of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house
of herself. We named you Joy.
I, who was never quite sure
about being a girl, needed another
life, another image to remind me.
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure
or soothe it. I made you to find me.
Shane Carmichael Nov 2011
You see this secret side of me
Something I was never meant to be

With you I tried so hard to save this sacred place
But never getting there is my disgrace

Sometimes I feel like you’re watching me move
In and out but always and never to soothe

I wish I were lazy enough to do what I want
But alas I can never catch the ‘punt’

Syllabus to dexterous minus the outstanding wit
Equals my life with you and why I have this need to quit
MoVitaLuna Jan 2014
I don't want smart.
I want spontaneous.

I don't want roses and a candle-lit dinner.
I want drunken nights by the campfire.

I don't want a boy that says 'I love you'
Because I don't believe in love
And, even if I did,
I'm not emotionally capable of feeling it.
I want a boy that's okay with that.

I don't want a boy that showers me with compliments
or a knight in shining armor.
I don't want mushy love letters or romantic get aways.
I don't want a boy who's looking for a wife
because I don't believe in marriage.
And I don't want a lover.
I want a partner in crime.

I want a boy with chaos flickering in his eyes.
I want a boy who smiles a lot.
I want contagious laughter.
I want loud.
I want steamy kisses where he presses my body into his and my skin tingles.

I don't want late night phone calls or 'Good morning' texts.
I want a boy that calls me out on my *******.
I want a boy that pushes my buttons.
I want a challenge.

I don't want a boy that makes me feel pretty.
I want a boy that makes me feel alive.

I want a boy that taps on my window in the middle of the night
And brings me on a starlit adventure.

I don't want a boy that makes love.
I want a boy that will **** me raw.
And I want a boy that will let me pass out on him afterwards.
And I want a boy that won't get offended if I move away in the middle of the night
Because cuddling hurts my neck and his heartbeat is keeping me awake.

I don't want a boy that holds hands.
I want a boy that drives too fast.
I don't want a boy that babies me.
And I don't want a shoulder to cry on
Because I'm not fragile
And I can take care of myself.
I want a boy that pushes me into oncoming sprinklers
And doesn't hold anything back.

I don't want a boy that's looking for forever
because forever seems like a really long time.
I want a boy that goes day by day.

I don't want safe.
I want to go fast.
I want to live on the edge.
I want exhilaration.

I don't want to be wanted.
I want to want.
word *****


Comment any advice you can think of that might make it a little more worth reading. I'd really appreciate it!
Dani  Apr 2014
It's just a break.
Dani Apr 2014
I may be a bit high,
But I love you.
Even when I'm sober,
I'll still love you the same. 
I wanted to kiss you under the sprinklers because it's the closest we get to rain 
that will put my cigarette out if the sky starts crying 
like I have been since you left me 
to look at the stars by myself instead of holding your hand while I'm driving 
and you're asleep while I look at your eyelids gently fluttering every time we pass a street lamp 
that illuminates the most perfect face in the world 
that is cold like your arms without a long sleeve shirt and that's why I wear sweaters in the summer
that I'd hope to spend with you 
on adventures and maybe we can run through sprinklers again and this time pretend that it's rain pouring down our faces because my eyes look at you like you're the universe while yours look at me like I am a friend, I am a friend, who is in love with you, who now realizes that they are only just sprinklers, 
because,
it,
doesn't rain here.
Hannah Wild  Jul 2011
Peter Pan
Hannah Wild Jul 2011
Why do we have to grow up?
Why can’t we be like Peter Pan?

Grown ups lack creativity and imagination
They see blankets and pillows
While kids see forts, fights, and fun

They don’t understand
The joy of running through the sprinklers
Or why **** noises are so hilarious

They stress over everything
And are unable to be carefree

So why grow up?
I really don’t want to
And see no reason to

Unfortunately as I age it gets harder and harder
As I’m given more responsibilities
I have less time for blanket forts and sprinklers

But I’ll never grow up
Never
Felix Sladal Jul 2014
I wake from a false-flashed recurring dream
Flushed stuttering soaked in cold sweat
Heart beating out a old bent out of tune rhythm
Shimmers of hope dripping from my fingertips
As salt fades in time down the lines of my cheekbone
Looking at the crescents in my fluttering palms
Feeling the bleached light filter past my corneas  
Gasping out struck by the wonder
Will this ever cease to be?
Illinois
Dawn-Hunter May 2014
Rainbow danced across my face
as water nestled into my skin.
I wasn't the only screechingly happy child
that day.

It was a festival celebrating art.

But that's not why people came.
Cheap liquor
and a small band singing the blues,
that's what really drew the people in.

But I was young.
And I was drunk on rainbows and sprinklers;
far too juvenile to see the sadness.

People stumbled around me
it was early.

No one saw the art.

No one saw the beauty but the little children
playing in the sprinklers.
Too drunk on rainbows to know the difference.
An excercise in childhood. Of a time I never understood.

— The End —