#parkinglot - Hello Poetry

parking lots on suburban nights we would congregate there after long shifts, held captive as conversations and arm gestures played out like symphonies secrets drifted past lips and simmered at the surface. we ignored all the lines there was no place I would have rather been. when the moments of silence grew longer like shadows that disappear with the sun we marched back to our cars, one by one, or my favorite, two by two. fingers finicking with the temperature controls, my stomach crawls into my throat. one second your eyes flirt with the car door the next they’re teasing my lips. I learned a lot in that parking lot. I turned myself inside out every inch of me exposed illuminated by orange street lamps. in that car, you never dared to venture beyond those straight white lines, you painted over them, again and again, thickening the divide between your seat and mine. maybe it was the way the street lamps reflected on my face or the way the music made me feel, just sad enough or the look on my face in the rear-view mirror but when you ran out of paint the line began to fade away I faded with it. I learned a lot about lips whose I shouldn’t have kissed. so why do I coat my lips, first with lipstick then with tears? because I place my self-worth in the curves of my mouth. I cover them up just to wring them back out.

0

Jan 4, 2020

Jan 4, 2020 at 8:15 PM UTC

tread_lightly

Lines Made for Crossing

parking lots on suburban nights we would congregate there after long shifts, held captive as conversations and arm gestures played out like symphonies secrets drifted past lips and simmered at the surface. we ignored all the lines there was no place I would have rather been. when the moments of silence grew longer like shadows that disappear with the sun we marched back to our cars, one by one, or my favorite, two by two. fingers finicking with the temperature controls, my stomach crawls into my throat. one second your eyes flirt with the car door the next they’re teasing my lips. I learned a lot in that parking lot. I turned myself inside out every inch of me exposed illuminated by orange street lamps. in that car, you never dared to venture beyond those straight white lines, you painted over them, again and again, thickening the divide between your seat and mine. maybe it was the way the street lamps reflected on my face or the way the music made me feel, just sad enough or the look on my face in the rear-view mirror but when you ran out of paint the line began to fade away I faded with it. I learned a lot about lips whose I shouldn’t have kissed. so why do I coat my lips, first with lipstick then with tears? because I place my self-worth in the curves of my mouth. I cover them up just to wring them back out.

35

Funny, how brotherly love doesn't extend into the parking lot.

0

Apr 20, 2019

Apr 20, 2019 at 9:20 PM UTC

TemporalFugue

After Mass (10w)

Funny, how brotherly love doesn't extend into the parking lot.

2

Sometimes on days like these I watch rain wash my skin like whispers and it reminds me of you. I remember when you taught me that the drops splattering on your windshield like screams (making it impossible to see the impatient bloodlights in front of us) were beautiful. I couldn't hear you at first from the ear-beating whip of your wipers. Then with just one smooth, ink-like movement, you silenced them... and I sat in serenity, amazement, as your eyes lit the falling tears on the slowly diminishing glass-metal frame that swathed us. I forget when it disappeared... but before I had the chance to fashion your visage in my brain, I was sitting naked in the rain, letting you wash my skin while you murmured sunlight in my ear.

0

Oct 4, 2018

Oct 4, 2018 at 3:53 PM UTC

despairagus

Age is Just a Number

Sometimes on days like these I watch rain wash my skin like whispers and it reminds me of you. I remember when you taught me that the drops splattering on your windshield like screams (making it impossible to see the impatient bloodlights in front of us) were beautiful. I couldn't hear you at first from the ear-beating whip of your wipers. Then with just one smooth, ink-like movement, you silenced them... and I sat in serenity, amazement, as your eyes lit the falling tears on the slowly diminishing glass-metal frame that swathed us. I forget when it disappeared... but before I had the chance to fashion your visage in my brain, I was sitting naked in the rain, letting you wash my skin while you murmured sunlight in my ear.

24

Vast, empty, midnight hour, hunchbacked lampposts glaring over parasitic black earth choking its host. A parking lot, an ecosystem’s blemish— hot tar seeping into the pores of the earth like a stubborn blackhead in a lip line. When no cars burrow into the blackened hide like lice the great absence of life is an atrocity. I imagine myself skateboarding across the tier as the small town cops watch languidly with vague interest— A skateboarder’s paradise where wheels and accomplice minds roll across celestial barriers blasting infinite pulses into the microcosm. What greasy punks have their mother’s van parked here, huddling by the heat vents and jerking off into a Pringle’s can? Empty parking lot looks like a cemetery filled to the brim where headstones meld over a mass grave— delineated by white lines, the apparitions of vehicles and their hosts haunt the frozen space. Another horrible excuse to waste land, a wasteland in and of itself where Tom Eliot saunters aimlessly and buries the dead. The saddest sight to behold, this vacuous parking lot littered with stray shopping carts, phantasmal plastic bags, gum splotches, ***** stains, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, used condoms, lonely cops and patient drug dealers, ambulant skaters, tired punks, bored teenagers, somnambulists, stumbling drunks, hunchbacked ***** lights prying for life beneath its sallow gaze— The air encapsulated within the perdition stifling, the pavement below stifling, a constriction only visible when emptied of its contents. A cop wakes from their choking nightmare gasping to find themselves trapped, ****** in this parking lot where the walkie-talkie buzzes with the weeping and gnashing of teeth. The warehouse store looming above the waiting room lifeless, silent, dark countenance— Big Brother sees all in the gaping maw. Cascading before me, stretching towards the highway passing by, waiting for the panorama to finish scrolling, the treadmill to cease its cycle— all the while lamenting life’s absence and reveling in the potentiality it possesses.

0

Dec 28, 2016

Dec 28, 2016 at 10:18 PM UTC

jarjarrhine

Parking Lot Lament

Vast, empty, midnight hour, hunchbacked lampposts glaring over parasitic black earth choking its host. A parking lot, an ecosystem’s blemish— hot tar seeping into the pores of the earth like a stubborn blackhead in a lip line. When no cars burrow into the blackened hide like lice the great absence of life is an atrocity. I imagine myself skateboarding across the tier as the small town cops watch languidly with vague interest— A skateboarder’s paradise where wheels and accomplice minds roll across celestial barriers blasting infinite pulses into the microcosm. What greasy punks have their mother’s van parked here, huddling by the heat vents and jerking off into a Pringle’s can? Empty parking lot looks like a cemetery filled to the brim where headstones meld over a mass grave— delineated by white lines, the apparitions of vehicles and their hosts haunt the frozen space. Another horrible excuse to waste land, a wasteland in and of itself where Tom Eliot saunters aimlessly and buries the dead. The saddest sight to behold, this vacuous parking lot littered with stray shopping carts, phantasmal plastic bags, gum splotches, ***** stains, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, used condoms, lonely cops and patient drug dealers, ambulant skaters, tired punks, bored teenagers, somnambulists, stumbling drunks, hunchbacked ***** lights prying for life beneath its sallow gaze— The air encapsulated within the perdition stifling, the pavement below stifling, a constriction only visible when emptied of its contents. A cop wakes from their choking nightmare gasping to find themselves trapped, ****** in this parking lot where the walkie-talkie buzzes with the weeping and gnashing of teeth. The warehouse store looming above the waiting room lifeless, silent, dark countenance— Big Brother sees all in the gaping maw. Cascading before me, stretching towards the highway passing by, waiting for the panorama to finish scrolling, the treadmill to cease its cycle— all the while lamenting life’s absence and reveling in the potentiality it possesses.

72

i could write about a lot of things like my day or how the pavement looks when it rains slightly. or how the parking lot feels when it's full of cars and void of people or how i feel when i'm surrounded and afraid. how i'm angry and insecure and i don't owe anyone anything not my friends not enemies or elders not an apology or a single **** explanation. but i think i'll just forget about the whole thing and write about death or something nice like that after all it would weight less on me then the words on my fingertips. i had assumed that i was done struggling with all that identity crap but now i've concluded that everything we ever fight is a battle for our own lives. and it's odd to think that i can have such a strong sense of myself and yet my personality can be so unlike that self. there are more layers to a parking lot than what you might first expect. i suppose at one point there were grass and trees and pure unadulterated dirt and then somebody leveled it maybe added a coating of gravel and paved over it and put some vehicles on top. but that doesn't mean the layers aren't still there under the asphalt i mean. and that's what i'm saying is that i've got something under the pavement i just can't get the cars to move out for long enough to tear up the layers. i feel other people's wheel marks burned into my skin and the signs and lines that proclaim no parking have been vandalized and ignored for too long. how do you tell a parking lot to stop without looking crazy? and there lies the exact problem i care too much what people think i look like and i don't mind if they think i'm insane but i mind if they don't like me there's a big difference you know. and there goes another piece falling into place and the puzzle not yet completed.

0

Aug 10, 2016

Aug 10, 2016 at 10:37 PM UTC

be-mccomb

parking lot

i could write about a lot of things like my day or how the pavement looks when it rains slightly. or how the parking lot feels when it's full of cars and void of people or how i feel when i'm surrounded and afraid. how i'm angry and insecure and i don't owe anyone anything not my friends not enemies or elders not an apology or a single **** explanation. but i think i'll just forget about the whole thing and write about death or something nice like that after all it would weight less on me then the words on my fingertips. i had assumed that i was done struggling with all that identity crap but now i've concluded that everything we ever fight is a battle for our own lives. and it's odd to think that i can have such a strong sense of myself and yet my personality can be so unlike that self. there are more layers to a parking lot than what you might first expect. i suppose at one point there were grass and trees and pure unadulterated dirt and then somebody leveled it maybe added a coating of gravel and paved over it and put some vehicles on top. but that doesn't mean the layers aren't still there under the asphalt i mean. and that's what i'm saying is that i've got something under the pavement i just can't get the cars to move out for long enough to tear up the layers. i feel other people's wheel marks burned into my skin and the signs and lines that proclaim no parking have been vandalized and ignored for too long. how do you tell a parking lot to stop without looking crazy? and there lies the exact problem i care too much what people think i look like and i don't mind if they think i'm insane but i mind if they don't like me there's a big difference you know. and there goes another piece falling into place and the puzzle not yet completed.

96