#fiveyears - Hello Poetry

Today I'm going to stop This ridiculous destructive thing I've been doing it to myself For five. miserable. years. I talk so much about How I hate to be controlled but this is controlling me I'm wasting my life and this is my fresh start I don't want to paint over the same old canvas I've already painted black I've gone down this road before and I could have been a killer I don't want to be her anymore The girl no one could help and just watched her waste away before them I'm no longer going to count the numbers and measure and weigh and cry and hate I'M DONE it can't control me anymore she told me she was worried about me now I know it's too far what do I care anyway about all this? It won't be very easy but I'm not going to do this to myself anymore I'm taking this canvas and BURNING IT I'm starting fresh I'm done with this I'm finished I need to be strong enough for her I won't become a statistic under the earth in a wooden box with only a block of cement to prove I ever existed because pretty doesn't have a size and for her I'm going to stop Five years is long enough

0

Oct 20, 2014

Oct 20, 2014 at 10:50 PM UTC

ember-evanescent

Five Years is Long Enough

Today I'm going to stop This ridiculous destructive thing I've been doing it to myself For five. miserable. years. I talk so much about How I hate to be controlled but this is controlling me I'm wasting my life and this is my fresh start I don't want to paint over the same old canvas I've already painted black I've gone down this road before and I could have been a killer I don't want to be her anymore The girl no one could help and just watched her waste away before them I'm no longer going to count the numbers and measure and weigh and cry and hate I'M DONE it can't control me anymore she told me she was worried about me now I know it's too far what do I care anyway about all this? It won't be very easy but I'm not going to do this to myself anymore I'm taking this canvas and BURNING IT I'm starting fresh I'm done with this I'm finished I need to be strong enough for her I won't become a statistic under the earth in a wooden box with only a block of cement to prove I ever existed because pretty doesn't have a size and for her I'm going to stop Five years is long enough

42

The sunshine, The pain. The light, The dark that bites. Her fine, My coarse. Her untameable soul, My awkward presence. The smile of a thousand suns, Her face of similarity to a Goddess. Five years. Five years. And it is her. Jemima

0

Mar 6, 2018

Mar 6, 2018 at 5:27 PM UTC

magicbroccoli66

Jemima

The sunshine, The pain. The light, The dark that bites. Her fine, My coarse. Her untameable soul, My awkward presence. The smile of a thousand suns, Her face of similarity to a Goddess. Five years. Five years. And it is her. Jemima

14

Two and a half weeks into this quarantine Rainy days and no poems No words forthcoming All quiet I decide that perhaps if I just put one Word In front of another And keep on for a time Words upon words something will come? At 8:30 every morning A man passes walking a Pomeranian mix A joyful little dog (I’d steal him in a heartbeat) They walk He twirling the leash round and round The dog leaping higher and higher still. They dance together eyes meeting and smile as I know a dog can and I remember how I would dance with my last greyhound. We would tango and box-step. I always led. These days the little Pomeranian can’t get his attention anymore The leash doesn’t twirl above its head He’s pulled along impatiently There are no more smiles Their eyes won’t meet He’s slow to realize that he’s become a drudgery I want to yell out the window I see you EVERY MORNING AROUND 8:30! Where’s your joy gone buddy? Don’t you know that’s all you’ve got? You’re bumming me out for real and your dog loves you! Wake up! You fool wake up! I think that now I’ll walk to Ralph’s I have various thoughts while doing so Children race their bikes passed me as if they’re in an entirely other reality altogether and maybe they are. The wind blows through their hair effortlessly As if it couldn’t mine. Front lawns offer up fields of dandelions as if their orbs the most prized bounty Freshly mown grass smells new and clean instead of putrid, rotting in the sunshine The fulsome wafts of springtime’s jasmine and osmanthus heaving with citrus and pepper evade me as I pass their blossoms Yet on the rare occasion a fragrant rose pierces through the weft and hits a nostril but I can’t tell which bloom. The smooth talking homeless girl has finally covered up that diabetic open sore on her left ankle the size of a flattened crimson football which is something, although I can see that she’s being told to move along as she just can’t sit anywhere she pleases. I’m counting every time I see the word “dead” along my way. In the store the ladies that buy their bottles of white wine in the afternoon are starting earlier now with supplies and deliveries unsure It’s one thirty and I see Two bottles of Clos du Bois And four Domaine St. Michelles in the cart to my right and nothing else as they do. I’m not going to ask her about her dinner party. While I stare at packages of coffee A man pulls off his mask to sneeze into the air before him And I say to the older man approaching I don’t think that you’ll be going any farther in that direction. It was under my breath. He didn’t hear me. I have a mask on. He turned his cart around and walked back the way he came. I have this urge to talk to everyone. I have this relentless desire for ice cream. I miss everything. Nothing here will satisfy anything to do with me. Can one survive a global catastrophe with candy and magical thinking? Older people And by that I mean really old people Eye me suspiciously Almost fearful As if I myself alone embody the menacing contagion and I guess I could. Perhaps I do. It’s hard to read emotions with these masks But their eyes seem terribly unkind and brows, furrowed One stares at me hard with beady anger and a ready insult another will jump me in the checkout line and with great solicitude unwrap her money from the white notebook paper pulled from the manila envelope Now re-folded with rubber bands and string And placed back into her chest She is so sweet to the cashier with her black acrylic wig askew that he seems quite shocked to hear she cut in front of fifteen people without so much as a word. Who cares really? My first mask made me sneeze for four hours straight and made my nose burn like a hit of **** ******* I’ve been handed a free mask by a representative from my local assemblyman made of a softer material I find that it won’t stay up and fogs the base of my glasses. I don’t think it’s working. It reads We’re All In This Together. I still can’t breathe. The doomed asthmatic selling his single ciggies on the sidewalk dies on Staten Island from a policeman’s chokehold. Eric Garner In those desperate last moments of his 2014 despite his pleas and confusion surely there before him appeared although not quite the end that he’d envisioned or feared what with steroid inhalers from the pharmacy a crystalline moment when he knew without a doubt that he’d never take another gasp of air like a bloated goldfish on its side expressionless and saucer eyed outside its bowl What happened to his mind then? What will happen to mine? It has been said that certain tribal kings have brought before them after battle their most worthy enemy in the process of imminent death while they sit in numinous splendor and wait for that perfect moment to lean in close to the mouth and inspire greedily the purest most sublime expiration of their life force, now a pristine delicacy of the infinite, for themselves alone.

0

Apr 28, 2020

Apr 28, 2020 at 2:13 PM UTC

swiggins

I Don’t Think You Knew You Were In My Song

Two and a half weeks into this quarantine Rainy days and no poems No words forthcoming All quiet I decide that perhaps if I just put one Word In front of another And keep on for a time Words upon words something will come? At 8:30 every morning A man passes walking a Pomeranian mix A joyful little dog (I’d steal him in a heartbeat) They walk He twirling the leash round and round The dog leaping higher and higher still. They dance together eyes meeting and smile as I know a dog can and I remember how I would dance with my last greyhound. We would tango and box-step. I always led. These days the little Pomeranian can’t get his attention anymore The leash doesn’t twirl above its head He’s pulled along impatiently There are no more smiles Their eyes won’t meet He’s slow to realize that he’s become a drudgery I want to yell out the window I see you EVERY MORNING AROUND 8:30! Where’s your joy gone buddy? Don’t you know that’s all you’ve got? You’re bumming me out for real and your dog loves you! Wake up! You fool wake up! I think that now I’ll walk to Ralph’s I have various thoughts while doing so Children race their bikes passed me as if they’re in an entirely other reality altogether and maybe they are. The wind blows through their hair effortlessly As if it couldn’t mine. Front lawns offer up fields of dandelions as if their orbs the most prized bounty Freshly mown grass smells new and clean instead of putrid, rotting in the sunshine The fulsome wafts of springtime’s jasmine and osmanthus heaving with citrus and pepper evade me as I pass their blossoms Yet on the rare occasion a fragrant rose pierces through the weft and hits a nostril but I can’t tell which bloom. The smooth talking homeless girl has finally covered up that diabetic open sore on her left ankle the size of a flattened crimson football which is something, although I can see that she’s being told to move along as she just can’t sit anywhere she pleases. I’m counting every time I see the word “dead” along my way. In the store the ladies that buy their bottles of white wine in the afternoon are starting earlier now with supplies and deliveries unsure It’s one thirty and I see Two bottles of Clos du Bois And four Domaine St. Michelles in the cart to my right and nothing else as they do. I’m not going to ask her about her dinner party. While I stare at packages of coffee A man pulls off his mask to sneeze into the air before him And I say to the older man approaching I don’t think that you’ll be going any farther in that direction. It was under my breath. He didn’t hear me. I have a mask on. He turned his cart around and walked back the way he came. I have this urge to talk to everyone. I have this relentless desire for ice cream. I miss everything. Nothing here will satisfy anything to do with me. Can one survive a global catastrophe with candy and magical thinking? Older people And by that I mean really old people Eye me suspiciously Almost fearful As if I myself alone embody the menacing contagion and I guess I could. Perhaps I do. It’s hard to read emotions with these masks But their eyes seem terribly unkind and brows, furrowed One stares at me hard with beady anger and a ready insult another will jump me in the checkout line and with great solicitude unwrap her money from the white notebook paper pulled from the manila envelope Now re-folded with rubber bands and string And placed back into her chest She is so sweet to the cashier with her black acrylic wig askew that he seems quite shocked to hear she cut in front of fifteen people without so much as a word. Who cares really? My first mask made me sneeze for four hours straight and made my nose burn like a hit of **** ******* I’ve been handed a free mask by a representative from my local assemblyman made of a softer material I find that it won’t stay up and fogs the base of my glasses. I don’t think it’s working. It reads We’re All In This Together. I still can’t breathe. The doomed asthmatic selling his single ciggies on the sidewalk dies on Staten Island from a policeman’s chokehold. Eric Garner In those desperate last moments of his 2014 despite his pleas and confusion surely there before him appeared although not quite the end that he’d envisioned or feared what with steroid inhalers from the pharmacy a crystalline moment when he knew without a doubt that he’d never take another gasp of air like a bloated goldfish on its side expressionless and saucer eyed outside its bowl What happened to his mind then? What will happen to mine? It has been said that certain tribal kings have brought before them after battle their most worthy enemy in the process of imminent death while they sit in numinous splendor and wait for that perfect moment to lean in close to the mouth and inspire greedily the purest most sublime expiration of their life force, now a pristine delicacy of the infinite, for themselves alone.

178