#polish poems on Hello Poetry

Sarah Strack Sep 2016

I can judge time passed,
by the chips in my nail polish.

It collects in the corners of eyes,
at the edges of mouths it lies.

Sometimes I look for it on my hand,
each scar like a grain of sand.

Other times it remains unseen,
hiding behind a laugh or scream.

I glimpse it in a backward glance,
but it stabs with pain as if a lance.

The jolting sensation to look at change,
to see how life does rearrange.

Then I go back staring at the ground,
Ignore it though my heart does pound.

And pretend the only sign of time passed,
are the chips in my nail polish.

#life #pain #scared #time #remember #scar #sand #reminisce #nail #polish

JGuberman Sep 2016

Numbered Days, Counted Thoughts

Three

The night is young, but the day
is already old for it's age and
I am older by each day and each night,
as they roll over
polishing me like a shattered
clay pigeon in the surf.

#day #night #age #surf #polish

Johnny Nilsson Jun 2016

Holding the Nail Polish

Five thirty in the morning
Waiting for the first bus of the day, are a woman and her husband
Don't know how old
But a little round, a little gray, a little bald.
I guess is it was the woman, who was going places
They were dressed up
But just a little
So I guess they were going to Praha
Early
So maybe for some sale
No really
I am certain it was the well dressed lady who was going to the Golden City
To do some serious shopping
Today he was just an assistant
He looked bored as hell, holding the nail polish, while she fixed up her nails
Sure he did!
But, I am sure he knows that if he didn't do this
He'd be left to his own devices
That means drinking himself to death at the football club
And not knowing what to do at a birthday party even if he remembered when anyone's was
But I am sure he's happy he doesn't have to
Even though two minutes of holding nail polish is a veeery long time
At least that is how I recall it from when my mother made me hold it as a child

The view from a hotel in Rez in Czech Republic.

#poetry #stop #bus #nail #polish #middle-aged #jnilz

Grace Jordan Feb 2016

Deadly Mistress

There seems to be a culling of the stress pounding on my poor stable head. I would almost question why if in the corner there wasn't her, with her dark blue eyes, calling herself my old friend. I don't know if its a blessing or a curse that I almost forgot what depression looked like.

I have to adjust now. I adjusted to the anxiety and stress and possible mania. Now I must adjust to the lower end of life. She all done up, in the corner right there, drawing me in and I'm somehow hers once again. Always had a problem stopping her red-lipped words from dragging me to her.

But you know what's kind of nice? I never have to stay anymore. She never can chain me down and numb me down with narcotics until I can't run away. Yes, she traps me and I go back and its never pleasant. But after awhile I can throw my coffee in her face, tell her to get herself a different person to tear apart, and bid her adieu.

My limbs hurt. My neck hurts. I don't think I slept quite right chained in her arms. But I'm not there. I'm slower, I'm battered, I'm wounded. I need to recover. But I'm not numb, not dying. I am me. I am whole.

I can picture how beautiful I thought she was so long ago, her hair done up, her eyeliner perfect, her eyes an enticing blue. I was more attracted to her body than my own, and I gave her everything, anything. Then she took and took until I was ragged and too broken and tired to even die. I never knew human exhaustion could get so extensive; It only takes a twitch to pull a trigger and I just sat in the freezing snow, unable to even open my eyes long enough to find the gun, or lift my hand high enough to reach my ******* head. I was just too dead to die.

But now I look at her. She is so much glitter and polish. She is so much of what I caked onto myself, and peeled off until I was thin and weak and stressed, but something that could grow. I was organic, I was alive, I was human again. She is a paint-caked hollow woman whose only goal is to vindictively destroy my world because it doesn't sparkle with false reflections like hers.

I may be thin, and I may be weak. I can only carry so much with the little muscle I retained through all the sticks and stones I stuck to my body to try to make myself stronger with a nonsensical shell. But I am moving. I am lifting larger weights each day, my work, my academics, my friends, my family, my love. They may erode me a bit every once and a while; I am starting from near nothing and building a whole new person out of it. I am rebuilding the lost soul that got scattered among the cinder blocks. I am finally making myself be that person I wanted to be; not my parents' way, or my friends' way, or society's way. My way. Its hard and exhausting and sometimes so painful I can barely breathe.

But she's just some mistress, lurking around a corner to try to ****** me; a leech, trying to bite out little bits of my soul to wear me down again. And with each attack I push her further away. I can't completely ignore her, but she can't control me. We no longer share the same glitter and polish. Instead I and regrowing all the skin torn by her teeth, and its growing back too thick for her to cut to the bone. Eventually I'll grow a new skin that blocks her out, instead of me, instead of people I love.

Without my glitter and polish, she's nothing. Without my glitter and polish, I can breath, I can grow, I can see.

I can finally find my way back to me.

#love #depression #glitter #hard #me #skin #grow #tough #mistress #polish

Grace Jordan Sep 2015

Glitter and Polish

Grace has made it through Wonderland, and has seemed to find peace with it for the time being, so where does she go from here? This would be easy if like in books things just ended, closed up in a neat little bow at the end of the story and there is resolution.

But there is no resolution here. Just a desperate craving for meaning again.

I guess since my Wonderland is stable, the only thing left wrong is me.

Not to say that the baubles and do-dads in my head are still broken, no, Wonderland is at peace, remember? Must get you checked for that memory of yours, good sir.

Regardless, my ducks are trying to row and I must follow their orders as to not rock the boat. Nonetheless, though, who is Grace? I've been working so hard to keep the Jabberwockys at bay and stop the wars from coming and protect the heads from rolling, that it's like some part of me is missing. I feel like a hodge-podge, a hedgehog, speeding around and around in lost wonder trying to find something but never quite sure what.

Is writing truly the only distinctive, certain characteristic I have, with no contradictions and carpenters and changes? Is it the only solid footing I have on the edge of tomorrow? Am I not much else, with as much substance as a sellophone?

Everything seems to cancel, make me some sort of odd creation of jumbled things that don't seem like they would fit right at all, but enough glue was pumped into me that practically anything seems to stick.

I'm covered in glitter and polish, getting thicker each day, making me someone new with each passing coat. I'm not gaining weight, so is my inner soul just melting away?

Can a person just become polish? A person who creates themselves instead of something made, genuine, and real? Am I even Grace anymore, should I adopt a new name as if to show the difference that has taken a hold of me since my name was born years ago? Will I reach the point that when someone wants to know me and starts to chip the paint away, that by the end there is nothing behind the color at all? Will I become nothing but choices and farces to the point they are me?

I have no clue how to get back. Can I? The paths behind are gone, the bread I've been crumbling to save my path was gone years ago, as the Chesire Cat promised I'd find my way if I had nowhere to go. But guess now I have no way and have somewhere to go, and he's not to be found. Typical.

Do I want to get back? Am I too attached to my polish now?

My polish was layered to make others happy, so who am I without others, without the affections and pleasing of others? I don't know. That's terrifying. I can't do alone, and I have led myself here more and more with each passing day. I don't think I can be alone ever again, or the Jabberwocky will certainly **** me. I wish it was a maybe, but for once I can't even rely on those.

Guess I better keep on layering the polish and glitter, trying to find a semblance of who I once was. Maybe a mix of now and who I am? Possibly that could work.

Now only if I knew who I was at all.

That would make choosing polishing colors much easier.

#unknown #lost #i #glitter #wonderland #grace #am #who #paths #polish

Terry Collett Jun 2015

THE RED DRESS 1969.

Sophia sorts through
her parents' room;
they're out for the day,
some Polish old comrades

meeting of her father's,
old war pals. She opens up
the old wardrobe, sorts
through things, takes out

her mother's old dresses
and some new ones, puts
them on the bed. She likes
a red one, old but well kept.

She ponders, she decides
to try it on. She undresses
from her own jeans and top
and puts on the old red dress

and looks at herself in the
wardrobe mirror. Her mother
must have been her size back
then, it fits like it was made

for her. She does a twirl, looks
back at her ***, her thighs,
turns to the front and stares
at her *******. She doesn't

remember her mother wearing
the dress, not a dress she recalls
her mother wearing at all. She
looks down, it comes just below

the knees, although she's taller
than her mother, so it would
come lower on her mother.
She embraces herself as if

Benedict were there behind her
putting his arms around her
and breathing on her neck.
She stares at herself in the mirror;

stares at her full length. She
smells the material. It smells
of stale perfume, but not horrible
or clammy. She walks around

the room in it; looks at herself
in the mirror across the room.
She'd ask her mother if she could
borrow it, but then she'd have to

say she'd been in her mother's wardrobe
and that would cause hell with her
father and she didn't want that. She
take off the dress and stands there

in her bra and *******, and puts the
dress back on the hanger, and puts
it back with the other dresses where
she found it the wardrobe, in the right

place, and pushes the clothes back as
far as shes can recall in the order they
were, and closes the wardrobe door.
She dresses back in her jeans and top.

She pauses by the bed. The crucifix over
the bed. The Crucified staring down
pityingly. She touches the bed with her
fingers. She'd like to bring Benedict here;

make love here. But not after last time
in her room and her parents came back
after and that was too close. And some
neighbour had split on her and said

they'd seen young man and her come
here while her parents were out and her
father gave her the third degree over it.
Her father said she can only bring the

boy when they were home. Couldn't bring
Benedict back for *** while they were
downstairs sitting watching TV and
drinking their wine and such, and not

in her parent's bed, not beneath the
Crucified, except in her blonde haired head.

A GIRL PUTS ON HER MOTHER'S OLD RED DRESS IN 1969.

#boy #dress #mothers #polish #1969