#slampoem poems on Hello Poetry

Jaxton Tyler Redmond Dec 2015

He bought me my first binder for Christmas with the money he borrowed. Too bad his parents don't even know who he his. They spell his name as if femininity can be felt through the words of his given birth name. C for the courage he has to go through , h for his pronouns. R for every word they speak he will always make faking it look revolutionary. I, I will never be as strong as him. S, do they see that he is not their daughter but their son? Their emotions dripped like candle wax slowly melting and hardening against each other and for them it was their safety, their dreamland when reality just couldn't feel any worse. His parents scoffed and said that he must go to therapy like the confessionals he's forced into each sunday. His sins he must beg god to forgive but they don't see him like I do. A, for the days he can't appeal to them he appeals to her to make their refuge. N, not for nuture but nature this is all human nature. T, time, he must wait to be who he is. O, I will always know him as an overcomer. N, he can't muster up the words to say never. Even when they mispronounce his name and give him the wrong gender. He will merely play dress up for them and they will never know the Anton that I know

#girl #not #iloveyou #but #slampoem #guy #anton

Jaxton Tyler Redmond Dec 2015

Fatherless prayer

Forgive me father for I have sinned, wait what's the part after that? Isn't it go ahead my child? I don't really know because religion has always felt like a relationship I just can't commit to, while others are on their knees begging for forgiveness I was on the white tiles while the only blood of Jesus I saw was my own. Forgive me-wait you see I'm suppose to say forgive me father but it's more like why did you forget me father ? You breathed the life into my mother's stomach and then like hoodini disappeared only to reappear when the sting from the cut had started to scab you ripped it off like the bandaid I had to leave on for so long because as a child all I wanted to do was heal. Honor thy mother and...thy father? Is that really the thing to do after barricading yourself into my arteries with the knife you chased mom with. Forgive me father I don't know what I've done but somehow being born was the sin that condemned me from ever feeling your love as a soft emotion but of something I must always beg for. Forgive me father I cannot seem to see things straight and for that you will surely disown me as if you owned me when you put your DNA into the mixing bowl to recreate your mistake that you so proudly claim on taxes. Forgive me father for I have sinned I wrote another poem again thinking someone would care to hear my voice, but they shot it down like the deer I am. Now I lay me down to sleep I pray--- who has my soul because they told me I lost it when I kissed her when I tied myself down and told them how to pronounce my name. Forgive me father for I have sinned? Just by putting on the female body I live in.

#religion #slampoem

Jaxton Tyler Redmond Dec 2015

Letter to my depression

Dear crippling sadness that makes it so tragically difficult to get out of bed in the morning,
You’ve been the imaginary friend i just can’t seem to outgrow the people who use to stare at me and get paid to tell me “oh that’s normal you’ll be okay that man will never find you again….you were after all only five” they told me that i had to take this tiny white happy pill because you….you are the chemical imbalance i suffer from daily. Instead of taking a prescription or therapy i take my thoughts bundle them up like a bouquet and pray to a god i can’t seem to believe in that today i’ll be okay.
Dear monster that lives inside my brain that i can only see,
when will enough be enough? The people who matter most to me are starting to realize i’m a project that can never be finished…..but was i really even started to begin with? You are that failing grade that is sinking my ship that use to be heading for graduation.
Dear Depression,
you see you and i play so well together, you say jump i ask how high. You teach me that this low i feel can get lower and deeper until i’m six feet deep with a tombstone to decorate how my life has been lived. Everyone will wear black, but my life was so colorful it does not need to be represented by the ugliness of you but merely how creatively i lived. While others were super outgoing and ready for the day i liked to play a little game of “drink some coffee and remember that today is just another play im starring in”. Others were talking about how dances and parties were coming up i learned to play “dressup” i could dress up a wound, i could dress up my look so you would not leak through the bandages of an already forgotten night.
Dear ‘I want to care but it’s not in me today to even care to try’,
Having anxiety and depression is like not caring about anything but caring way too much about everything, to the point i get a new assignment and start crying. Depression, the summer before my ninth grade year you taught me the trick of how to disappear, coffee in the morning, salad at dinner there was no room in my stomach to eat more than that. My therapist stared at me and told me our little friend ana was on her way to take over me completely and out the door into the coffin i would go. They said my body will cave in on itself as if my ribs were too fragile to carry this weight i had left on me. So it began to eat away the bad. I’d lay in bed at night and the gnawing feeling at the pit of my stomach was each award i was given for every rib they could see.
Dear mom and dad,
You told me to just be happy. So that day i took all of my antidepressants i was just doing what you told me to do. Who knew it’d be labeled under an overdose.

#depression #slampoem

Lexi Cairns Dec 2015

Wolves Are Not the Only Ones Who Can Howl at the Moon

You have been told that rapists were men in black hoodies
hidden in twisting shadows and dark alleyways.
****** offenders were always leering old men in rags;
never blonde haired and blue eyed and always smiling-
not once did you think to question the intentions
of his warm and familiar fingertips.
When you find yourself locked in his claws
and he tells you
that you must want it
don’t be a tease.
Look at what you’re wearing.
A sliver of skin mistaken for an invitation.
Do not be surprised when your mother
also asks you what you were wearing-
but do not forget.
Remember this for the next time.
You will also try to convince yourself that you asked him to,
but the scars on your sister
and the tribe of women with cut out tongues and pleading eyes
who stare back at you from your reflection
tell another story.
Tell your mother that no matter how many flowers she throws over the mass grave
she cannot hide the stench of rotting corpses,
do not pretend that you are okay when you feel all the lights inside of you begin to shut off
because your body has grown tired of sounding alarms and raising knives
against intruders who wield toxic gas and atomic bombs.
You have been taught to hold your tongue and to smile like nothing is wrong
but now your mouth is filled with your own bite marks and it is hard to hide the blood.
You should not have to.
Your words can crumble empires
and redeem centuries of trauma embedded in bleeding wombs.
It is time you used them to stand up for yourself.

This is a poem I wrote for my creative writing course at school and is a revised version of one of the spoken word pieces I posted here previously.

#slampoem #**** #feminist #sexualassault

Jaxton Tyler Redmond Dec 2015

Words I'll Never Tell You

I could never muster the courage to tell you every time I had to beg for the rights to my own body. I can never tell you, spinning stories woven into my temporal lobe and locked into my spinal column; how everywhere I look I see* his face. My failed attempts at opening up are wilted by my desire to open myself up to you like a late blooming flower. Drowned by the tears I cannot show you I shed every night when i'm all alone and can't seem to keep the poker face strong anymore. I will never have the audacity to clearly show you how damaged i've become, you can already taste it in every kiss.  I don't know how to bring myself to let you hold my demons inside your arms as if they are a newborn baby you have yet to love. Every single time i open my mouth my past begins to talk as if possessed by my greatest fears . My guts are spewing , spilling overboard and  I am terrified to show you what he did to me
*One year,  ten months, that's how long it's been since i  sliced his presence from my body and yet it's still haunting me. They keep telling me that i will never be okay that i will  solely  learn how to  cope with the amount of trauma he caused.  For every message that appears on my dimly lit screen that tells me he's been thinking of me, i suppose i failed at completely blocking him out of my life like those unwanted friends i never seem to delete.  Today it snowed, and i couldn't help  but remember how safety use to feel and his fingerprints still linger against the pale skin i live in. That's all it is now is my body bag that still seems to breath.
I can never tell you how much i adore that beautiful face of yours i'm afraid you'll see too much and leave me in the dust like he left me in that tunnel, on that carpet in that park. How do i let him control me?   I still manage to cower down  and be the submissive but he's no longer hovering over me, towering to  get complete control. He will forever be that ghost that remains a scar way too deep to heal.

#ptsd #slampoem #****

Jaxton Tyler Redmond Dec 2015

How can February Be a Feeling?

Flowers are suppose to grow in february right? The ones you layed across my pale skin while the IV dripped into my veins, mixing with the bottle of pills i let sink in. I didn’t want to be that mystery that could never be figured out. Love is suppose to be in the air in february right? The love he gave me in the back of that beat up white secluded car i can’t forget. The taste of freshly smoked spice lingered on his lips, this is not what february is suppose to be like. The flowers they gave me with the look of sympathy in their eyes are slowly wilted and now to them i’m something to fix, like that old beat up car. They hope that if they work on me long enough i will be able to run like new again. Breathing heavy in the back of an ambulance that is as red as the river that has staind one too many of my sheets.
7 Months Earlier…….
Her gray eyes stared at me and i wondered how could someone be so empty, it was only once i had seen her give herself to him that i saw the last little bit of herself simply dissipate. He looked at me and all i saw was blue but all he saw was another number to put in his tally board of people he has taken to bed, i wonder is the shape of my body still imprinted into that ***** floor or are the marks still on his body? The day he left the flowers on my dresser dried out and i wonder was it merely lack of imagination that they stopped believing in the infatuation i had felt. The flowers they all gave me with the smiles of not knowing how to react piled up in the corner of my room and now they are all singed from the fire i started on my skin, leaving the trail of kisses like third degree burns where no one could tell that who i was is no longer. August, September, October, is the thing in my belly finally growing or have i killed it with my thoughts? They sent me white tulips for your grave…. too bad i was never able to make it to my own eulogy. November, little movements are no more and that is the day i say you left me to be an angel. February, always back to the same **** month. My mother’s blank stares and venom dripping words* “How dare you, what the hell were you thinking”
Laying there in that hospital bed surrounded by the four white walls, that poked fun at the failing act of trying to take my life. I sat there. One face blurred to the next, her tiny body laid to mine as she begged me in a hush tone to not die, that’s not what big sisters are suppose to teach but in all fourteen years of her life that is all i have taught her how to do. I spent that night alone pondering if i closed my eyes would my lungs stop needing oxygen and would my pathetic life flash abruptly and all i will repeat is “What the hell were you thinking”
That house went up in flames and i am still spitting up ashes, coughing up thorns from all the roses i never got.
**What the hell was i thinking?

#depression #memories #slampoem

Jaxton Tyler Redmond Dec 2015

Thunderstorm euphoria

I am apprehensive to hold you for fear you will slip through my hands like the sand from the hourglass that keeps pouring out into my lungs and i long for the possibility to finally stop running from all the ghosts in my closet, but every time i come around they come out like the monkey on my back that i’ve had since i was eleven. How do you spell deep affection without saying it’s L-O-V-E? I rue the fact i cannot seem to open these infirm bones enough for you to make your forever home. I do not have the power to paint happiness across your skin, when i do i leave tracks of agony and it’s unbearable to watch you stitch yourself up after every love affair we hold against that lovely flesh of yours.
When you kiss me can you ******* past and all the puzzle pieces that have yet to be put together or do you taste a happy ever after?
My hands no longer trustworthy, i have seen people like buildings, abandoned after an adventure that didn't last long enough. Like the wind I am afraid of going unnoticed like a small thunderstorm I called your happinessI do not want to be forgotten like that essay you just procrastinated to do, I do not want to be that failing grade that's suffocating you. If not for the metals I have dangling in front of my face you are the only razorblade I will ever let destroy me, each and ever scar will always remind me that with you my happiness was not faked. I am apprehensive to hold you because I don't know how to be someone you'll love.

#love #scared #slampoem

Rebecca Kohlmeyer Nov 2015

Legal Limit

There will come a day
When all of the colors fade
to grey
When all of the flowers
In the garden start to wilt
When everyday is cloudy.
The headlines hold names
Of kids you grew up playing kickball with
Being killed by people who thought
That one more drink wouldn’t do any harm.
People who thought that a party
Was more important than
Everyone else on the road.

Now,
We have a four year old boy whose mama
Won’t see him graduate preschool
We have an eighteen year old girl whose daddy
Won’t see her graduate high school.
We have teachers
Who don’t know how to educate
To a classroom full of students
Who have so many questions.

But the legal limit isn’t taught in textbooks.

This isn’t whether or not you feel
That the law applies to you.
This is life or death.
This is Russian Roulette with a bottle.
This is driving blindfolded
With the music on too loud.
This is a four year old boy
Who still doesn’t understand
What Heaven is.
This is an eighteen year old girl
Who’s wearing her graduation dress
To her father’s funeral.
The dress that her father helped her pick out.
He said,
“You know, sweetheart, I always loved you in black.”

This is crying for someone
You never met.
This is military homecomings or
Babies smiling for the first time.

Except in reverse.

This is military homecomings in a box.
This is babies crying for a mother
Who cannot comfort them.
This is empty spaces in a poem
Where words should be.
This is “I just saw them yesterday.”
This is “I’m sorry for your loss.”
This is...
not knowing what the right thing to say is.
She still had clothes in the washing machine.
He had a T-Time for next Thursday.
We had a dinner reservation next Friday.
This is knowing that he will never have a birthday again.
This was not something I was expecting
I mean, who would?
Photographs can’t capture a lifetime.
They may be worth a thousand words,
But you my dear are worth so much more.

#drunk #driving #slam #slampoem #drunkdriving #legallimit

Maddy Balli Nov 2015

Hesitant

Lights flash yellow, red, green
You’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen
Your eyes shone recklessly of immortal eighteen
They’re luring, persuasive, hypnotizing
I am stuck in a cycle of us, and then me. It’s terrifying, but I could not hide
Behind walls I built; the cement had not dried.
I tried.
Tried to keep you away, but now you’re inside.

This vulnerability was not what I wanted;
I was content with loneliness, to me this is new.
You said I’m too hesitant, too timid. it’s true.
But I think now I’m only part me, and part you.

Pills- blue, white, pink
“Love is a mirage, a marketing technique. A concept that gives humans a reason to keep going, keep searching. It’s just ignorant hope, a made-up belief.
Dependency is unnecessary, I never needed anybody. Love is a confectionary lie
Attempting to sweeten the cruelty of life.”

Love is an illusion that I wanted to stay an illusion
Love was a transfusion of your mind into mine
An illusion that I screamed wasn’t real as you held me tight and my bones begged you not to let go
A concept that has arms and legs and walked up, knocked on my door and said hello
I know now it’s real, but I just wish it would go
Away.
Because you left with my soul, now I have no control.

Cause I gave you everything, and I have nothing left.
I know you weren’t new to this, a heart and soul theft
I have an uncontrolled tendency to imagine you somewhere far away from me, and I’m nothing but a memory. An out of tune melody that plays here and there.
And I hope you’re reminded of the one begged you to stay far away from her soul. but you broke in, took all that you could carry and fled.

#love #heartbreak #sad #slampoem

Mia Lee Dunbar Aug 2015

I'm already saved.

I don't understand how I have to wait
For a Prince who feels
He's untitled to save me
From a tower, that is labeled as a jail cell
As if I hate the walls that hold me here

My freedom comes in solitude and thought
The ability to write on my stone walls without fear of a censored eraser
I can watch the night transform into the day from my tower
The stars wrapped up in a soft blanket of sun
As the pink and orange glow of the dawn peeks through the horizon

As if being carted around like a prize
In front of a strange land
With the 'oh so glorious' title of Queen
Would compare to my soft sunsets and my vibrant words on stone

Many say the tower was created to make sure he saves me
From a dragon that does not exist
I think, it was put here to protect me
From the dragon that calls himself a Prince.

#truth #beautiful #creative #slampoem #princess #mine #relatable