Strung: Poems

Feb 2023 · 107

Hurt

Strung Feb 2023

Hurt

I hurt you
and I hold that,
I feel it,
I know.
I am trapped between
Silence and consoling.
I love you
because, even with these empty words,
you hold me closer
than before.
We are so afraid
of losing
what we've built.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.

Jan 2022 · 1.2k

Piano Man

Strung Jan 2022

Piano Man

When it rains,
do the cracked tips of your fingers itch
to play?
The secret between creator and created
overwhelming.
You, piano man, live.
Empty slowly full
letting go but never fully going.
Sunburn on your back, music in your ear,
I will never understand life
as you do.

#piano #music #life #understanding #rain

Feb 2021 · 2.2k

Heavy Beast

Strung Feb 2021

Heavy Beast

Heavy beast and heavy burden
Burned into growing feet,
a mile above all great sentiments of
Home, clouds settle into molds
Carved inside carnivorous minds.

There is no quadrant on this island
You could go
Where I could not see who you created
In me, fiery and dormant, whirlwind
Of silence and fear. I see you everywhere,
In every line on my face,
You exist.

I exist amongst a million cold dandelions in a weary field.
Inescablable youth, river stones wrapped to knarled knees
To ground me to three separate waterfalls,
All who whisper of the dead
To creatures who eat the love from out the backs of children’s heads.

I own a million fragments of a life
And nowhere have I found the one
Who makes them whole.

#love #pain #die #death #old #young #child #island #water #waterfall

Jan 2021 · 690

Fire

Strung Jan 2021

Fire

Was it you, who burned a city
At my fingertips?
I’ll blame it
On the rampaging fire wildflowers
Suffocating California.
Either way, I cannot breathe.

What haunts me?
It’s you, isn’t it.
The 12-33, code 12-56,
No help is coming,
“Refusal to comply” morphs to “missing persons,” reporting
The silence.
The screech, the blip
Of a scanner, seeing red,
Like I could hear the pain
Of a few thousand shaken children
Who lost
Their mothers
To a cloud of noxious smoke.

That’s what haunts me.
Isn’t it.
Children, charred and homeless,
Roaming crumbling streets.

That’s what haunts me.

#fire #pain #loss #lost #alone #crumbling #aflame #city #burn #burning

Jan 2021 · 1.1k

Memory Place

Strung Jan 2021

Memory Place

Open gangly arms are reaching
Forward, to a magic gate
Red and faded, painted beady
dragon eyes.
Little water house, you sing to me,
Ears floating from my head
Towards wispy cotton cattails.

I crave a jaunt with ducklings
In icy morning air,
Even if the pond is softly frozen.

Who lives in murky water?
And sings early winter songs
To a fragile gangly girl
Who's prone to listen
And respond?

Palm-sized apples, bitter cores
Losing noons to grape groves.
I wished to be a raspberry ferry
Floating downstream
Forevermore.

#memory #pond #duck #cold #winter #morning #safe #quiet #calm #tranquil

Oct 2020 · 701

of the Lake

Strung Oct 2020

of the Lake

Inferiority perched ready in the waiting misty lake.
Like magic, she floats atop a rippling plain.
Rest in water, breathe deep - the fool.
She flutters above, air bubble out of reach.
Drown drown in the void you create and breathe deep.
"I pity the corpses who lie in the water," you say in the grasp of dead hands.

You are a force and your mind is the block, so do as you wish, but lay still.
However long you gasp for air, you will die regretting free will.

#lake #magic #death #alone #inferior #drown #dying #breathe

Aug 2020 · 1.0k

Antiques on Dusty Shelves.

Strung Aug 2020

Antiques on Dusty Shelves.

Chipped or ***** or dying
and you can't look past it.
What's special about new? Or is it
that it is
unused?
How much beauty
can you see
in damage?
In use?
I'd like to believe you see worth
in the imperfections
of me.
But what do I know
of your soul, really? And who is to say
you will leave me in any better shape
anyway...
All I can do is hope.

#used #damaged #hope #sad #love #dust #antique #waiting #wait #alone

Jun 2020 · 309

Orange Flowers

Strung Jun 2020

Orange Flowers

Orange flowers
Catching all the hills on fire
Just to see them burn, I take a breath.
Smoke and dust bind my righteous life underneath my eyelids.
Blindness.

#orange #flowers #blind #fire #smoke #burn #binding #love #life #struggle

Apr 2020 · 602

China Doll

Strung Apr 2020

China Doll

I creak in this cold.
Calm, china-doll-like purple hands
Icy veins
Fingers Frozen
To my zipper,
Chatter
Of my teeth reminding me
Of my callow views
My doll-like skew
On everything.
— if I broke, i'd shatter,
And I could glue myself back together
Full of cracks.

#doll #china #sad #alone #depressed #broken #cracked #crack #cold #chatter

Dec 2019 · 383

You Look More Beautiful Every Day

Strung Dec 2019

You Look More Beautiful Every Day

I don’t think I see you anymore;
I don’t see anything besides the
Dangling red-stones and reckless curls,
Sun-kissed smile shivering for more
I cant comply to.
I don’t want to lose you to the life you can’t give up and I lose myself every other day to
Monotony. Maybe
You could end that?
I’m tired
And blind
And I can’t stop seeing your hidden sort of side—The one that glances at the person you wish I wore
And writes of all the sensuous aspects of the world.
See these fake words you assign me, I am not a crisp morning
Or beckoning sea breeze entangling you in lust and mystery—I’m frozen.

I don’t know what else to say now,
Standing in the un-lit streets of memories unwinding—holding close the heart I guess I broke—Staring at your shifting soul,
I wonder who I would have been without you
And who I will become once you are gone.
Love-Locked looks I hide inside,
Beside my permanently damaged sense of pride.
So instead of any other sad display
I’ll tell you
You look more beautiful every day.

#love #broken #heart #sad #alone #cold #crisp #cracked #lights #sorry

Nov 2019 · 470

At Least He’s Eating Lunch Today

Strung Nov 2019

At Least He’s Eating Lunch Today

At least he’s eating lunch today.
Scrambled-egg-sandwich smell of telling me to worry less—
I never do.
“I can’t do anything”
“My mind is gone”
I suppose life is splitting through your bones,
But don’t worry,
Spatula in hand,
waving fates away like flies amongst an endless strain of pain,
He tries to stand
Against the demons eating him
Away.
But hey,
At least he’s eating lunch today.

#depression #anxious #anxiety #trapped #sad #depressed #alone #struggle #try #trying

Nov 2019 · 525

She Left the Gate Agar

Strung Nov 2019

She Left the Gate Agar

She left the gate agar
And the sun crept in to steal my time,
Adding the ever-careful wrinkles round my eyes.
Dead strawberries withered with care
And Rainy, ****** skies weighed down with weeks of meager, longing stares.

Is there more I can hold in the folds of my fingers?
Drip through the cracks, I fumble.
I wish I could see my darkening eyes...
And hear the seeds of my labor
crumble

Are there ever enough days? Enough time? I’ll never do it all...

#wither #sad #alone #depressed #crumble #blood #****** #skies #sink #sinking

Oct 2019 · 379

Today, I am the Antithesis of Beauty

Strung Oct 2019

Today, I am the Antithesis of Beauty

Today, I am the antithesis of beauty.
I rot at the roots of my hair and I reek of falsified overconfidence.
Today, I have no right answers. I stumble over feelings, cling heavy on each word and fall face first in explanations no one needed.
Today, I walk like lumber. I am doubtful of my passions and my body and my stride.
Today, I am the antithesis of beauty, I deserve to be alone.
I think back so painfully on how light my body traveled, simple traipsing passes of sidewalk lines and inclines I simply mastered.
Today, I stare my own eyes down—
How dare you ever think you had a right to smile? I have to have a **** that everyone can see,
I am a desolate piece of half-self someone alone amongst the sea
Of perfect people and lovely lives.
I spew forth all full of frothing lies to make it seem as though I do not hate the face I gaze with.
Today, I am the antithesis of beauty
And I cannot escape my own painful accusations.

#beauty #terror #depression #depressed #alone #sad #trip #stumble #fall #falling

Oct 2019 · 753

Secret of Life

Strung Oct 2019

Secret of Life

All at once
Or nothing at all—
I’m falling—
Blackhole kind of lovely lines
Cutting cross my angled fists
These endless daunting lists I fill to burn.

#nothing #everything #overwhelmed #daunting #stress #anxious #anxiety #stuck #stranded

Sep 2019 · 487

Alone

Strung Sep 2019

Alone

The deep-set abhorrence
Of standing alone—
Where is it from?
I stand on dead grass
Staring dead eyes in the face in the glass reflecting off my screen.
I look mean, dead angry eyes and my brows too dark—
I look mean;
mean and alone.
On dead grass in dumb boots
Waiting for too many factors
To change
Before telling myself
To move on.

#alone #dead #dying #solitude #depression #sad #mad #angry

Sep 2019 · 291

Gardening

Strung Sep 2019

Gardening

Slowly...
Slowly slowly creeping up the vine
How many ants will die in my lifetime?
How many crave the sun deep below the earth
And care nothing for the vine the mind is telling them to search?
Grapes grown over
Over over over
Crushing wooden posts and stealing sun from most
My watermelon plants.
How many questions circling uselessly...
And how many ants never get the chance
To see the end
Of a daunting, pointless task.

#garden #life #grow #plants #ant #mind #numb #questions

Aug 2019 · 419

Set it on Fire

Strung Aug 2019

Set it on Fire

Fire sparks along the walls of my gut.
Smoke pours from mouth—the cries I tried to release, gone.
Lies lies lies lies and excuses,
there’s a burning in my stomach.
I feel words wither on my tongue
As yours overpower and overwhelm.
Questions asked
About every word.
I’ll set it on fire
I’ll set it all on fire.
Coals to your wisdom,
Embers to your truth.
I’ll set it on fire.
Stop asking me
And doubting me
And lying.
I’ll set it all on fire.

#fire #burn #pain #lies #lying #lie #death #gut #fires #coals

Jul 2019 · 488

Broken Cages

Strung Jul 2019

Broken Cages

Demons held in jars on my shelf.
I pick one up and talk to it,
"I think I'm wrong..."
Malice and the dead look in its eyes answer.
"... You're nodding. What do you know?"
When you go, will you haunt me?
Demons,
freed from their jars on my shelf,
run wild.

#demons #glass #free #cage #run #depression #anxiety #anxious #trapped #freed

Jul 2019 · 539

My Mind is Expiring

Strung Jul 2019

My Mind is Expiring

I am a nothing nothing nothing person
Nothing here to see
I am a nothing failing bailing person
Clinging to a dream.
I am a nothing nowhere no good one
A one who dries out eyes
I am a nothing but a husk person
Who can’t fight the dark demise.
A Dark Crystal demon look alike
It’s true, I’m not dead yet
I look my nothing in the face
And question it’s true taste
For if blood was what it wanted
Then blood it would’ve had,
But my nowhere eyes are missing spite
And deep down nothing me is glad.
A demon eyed me is nothing new
But here, I find a light,
If a nothing me was fighting so
Why can’t I feel the bite?
Give up then! I always do
A nothing keeps its name.
Look my nothing in the face
And play this telltale game.

Dark Crystal creature crawling to the surface of the world
To tell everything
To Shove It

#dark #crystal #demon #light #crazy #expiring #mind #brain #melt #done

Jul 2019 · 304

Bitter.

Strung Jul 2019

Bitter.

You
Who does not do enough,
Slacking.
You who is tired, who is angry
At yourself and at the world
For making you do it.

You who is scared to make mistakes
So you never leave your head.
You who is missing everything
Trying to keep it all
For the future.

It is you
Who is tired and who is painfully bitter
At yourself

#sad #depressed #alone #depression #tired #bitter

Jun 2019 · 391

Concrete Smile

Strung Jun 2019

Concrete Smile

I envy those
With a constant smile.
What life have you lived
To morph a concrete face?
And how do I get there
From here?
Perhaps I need to stop
Staring at the sky—At the birds—
As if one day
My bones will go hollow
And I’ll fly all the way
To forever.
— maybe I should just work harder

Beautiful people walk light on the earth and I find my feet sinking deep

#concrete #smile #beautiful #face #love #care #compassion #birds #escape #freedom

Jun 2019 · 911

I Don’t Want to Talk

Strung Jun 2019

I Don’t Want to Talk

I don’t want to talk
Locked
Somewhere between my eyes and my trembling hands
I couldn’t hold the pencil
To tell you.

It fell from between my fingers
And I watched the chance to yell
Hit the ground
— my voice thins with your hair

#silent #silence #sad #alone #quiet #hold #held #keep #project #protect

Jun 2019 · 511

Armageddon.

Strung Jun 2019

Armageddon.

You liar
Little liar spitting in my eyes
Who am I to tell you who or what is better?
Pain and rhymes and all our ******* time
Is wasted playing games of true or false
Deep in our own seething breathless hearts;
Life and death and all the painful nothing in between
Is a dream we can’t begin to see
As surrendering to nothing.

Burn it all—
Armageddon—fall.
Kneel to God’s great wrath
As he takes your heart deep in his throat and breaks it will his laugh.

A demon crawling along the floor of my mind
Breaks the silence

#armageddon #god #death #time #pointless #demon #end #burn #fire #dead

Jun 2019 · 567

Charcoal Thoughts

Strung Jun 2019

Charcoal Thoughts

I’m thinking all my charcoal thoughts—
Scorching on my mind—
I’m thinking all my crumbly words
Are worth the dark’s dull time
I sit here in the dark
And watch the embers burn
The feelings of the faces here
Mean nothing in the urn.
I sit against cold tiles,
Hiding in the dark
The fire burns me inside out
I’m alone, I’m hurt.
I sit deep in the fire
I have no more bones to give
All my blood is boiling
And my eyes have all but caved
I sit here in the fire
And think my charcoal thoughts
I want nothing else to do
With anything but dust.
Burn the legs and up the arms
I’m done with walking free
Burn the brain, the heart, the soul
I retire to the dream.

#charcoal #burn #burning #fire #dying #thoughts #thinking #pit #dark #cold

Jun 2019 · 463

Do you notice?

Strung Jun 2019

Do you notice?

Do you notice?
Jumbling tumbling out of line
With glasses pressed to nose
Too scared to show my eyes
Nervous tick of pressing them
closer into skin
As if it hides me...
—I guess it does
Because who would speak
To someone without eyes?

Confidence building is a *****

#eyes #glasses #hide #empty #hiding #scared #quiet #alone

Apr 2019 · 256

I should have gone to bed instead of speaking out of turn

Strung Apr 2019

I should have gone to bed instead of speaking out of turn

I should have gone to bed instead of
Speaking out of turn
And forcing them to listen
To hours of unnerve
If you find yourself so trapped with me,
Just plug your ears and wait
I tire of the voice I have
I tire of the weight.
Words are endless, are they not?
As if they don’t catch fast
When thoughts I have refuse to bring me
Further from the past.
Promise me you’ll listen?
You’ll push past all the noise?
I need to speak, I need to shout
And I need in me your poise.
Pointless was my favorite word
To scream inside my head
Until I found these words in me
To fight my faceless friend.
I know I’m here to be someone,
Stay here, I’ll find out who
Until then, stay and hear me
As my poems shuffle through

#listen #stay #poems #pointless #promise #endless

Apr 2019 · 543

It’s supposed to be spring

Strung Apr 2019

It’s supposed to be spring

It’s supposed to be spring
So where are the flowers?
The brightest of stars
Bringing beautiful laughter
-
If it’s supposed to be spring,
Then where are my flowers?
My laughter my love and my beautiful chapters?
-
If it’s supposed to be nice, if I’m supposed to be done
Then why do I feel like just flesh without bone?
-
Why am I empty
And frozen throughout?
Am I missing my springtime by having this drought?
-
My flowers have settled
To stay in the ground...
I’m sorry, my spring never showed up this round.

#depression #spring #flowers #blooming #dying #sad #depressed #cold #alone

Apr 2019 · 298

What if you just listened?

Strung Apr 2019

What if you just listened?

Take my words in sections
Held—breast-pocket poetry—in times
When I keep my heart between my ears
My poetic little lines.
When you hold them in your pocket,
At least I know they’re heard
I dont want to die alone without you having heard my lifeless words

Steal my words
I work so hard
To make them sound like honey.
Sweeter till you listen
Then it sticks unpleasantly

Ask me to explain,
no one ever does
They are not simply stanzas
Not rhyming lines of empty thoughts

Hold my words like glass
I’ll take them back I swear
I don’t want to have to tell you
You broke my heart somewhere

#listen #hear #break #heart #alone #quiet #poetry #steal #stolen

Feb 2019 · 260

Hunger

Strung Feb 2019

Hunger

I just keep thinking
It will end.
But we create
Monsters
And feed them
With silence

#hunger #love #sad #depressed #monsters #demons #silence

Jan 2019 · 332

It’s okay

Strung Jan 2019

It’s okay

You can’t stand to see me.
It’s okay,
I’ve put it
Away
In the locket I keep
Deep in my heart—
The chains
Scraping my lungs;
It’s why I can’t speak.
It’s okay,
I hurt you
And you hurt me
And it’s okay.

#lonely #anxious #sad #depressed #pain #heartbroken #alone #lies

Nov 2018 · 180

Patterns to End

Strung Nov 2018

Patterns to End

Is it sad, you think you love me?
That you think you need to be someone else for me?
It ******* breaks my heart.
Or, not breaks—
It feels like there's a thin lining of glass
around every *****, and every section of my body—
And with every thought
With every tiny anxious idea
It cracks
And sends shards shooting through every vein and cell.
That’s dramatic, but so is this.

You say you’ve fallen for me
And I can’t help but call your bluff
Because
I can’t stop picturing all the others you’ve ‘fallen’ for
And where they lay now,
Floating like scraps on the floor
Of your conscience.

Love is a void
And a concept
And an idyllic little photo of a lighthouse on a cliff;
It does not apply to you and I.
I cannot handle what you’re handing me.
I’ve decided to be blunt,
Because, isn’t this the time for it?
I do love you
But I do not have to be in love with you
And you do not have to be in love with me.

I have a very hard time
With love
And everything it entails.
But I know it does entail you
In a light much different to
Traditional ‘love’
Like the fairy tale ‘Prince Charming’ love.

Can I tell you something?
I was angry at you, for doing this.
I never wanted to be a victim
Of this tiresome game
People seem so desperate to play.
I’m not going to play it.
I won’t play it.

You are my friend and someone I hold very close,
But I am not in love with you.

And I will not ever be in love with you.

Look at all the ******* poetry we could write
About our
Empty words
And how full
They’ve become.

Here are the fullest words I have for you:
Don’t let this ruin us.

I think I want to be angry
At your patterns
Of endless seeking.
You have done this before
And I have seen it.
Please see
You play a silent game
With yourself
and the people
you love
Trying to find someone
To tell you you’re enough

I can’t fill a void
I can’t complete you
I can’t be someone to fawn over.
I can’t do this.
Not this.

I have been handed
So many things.
I roll up my sleeves,
pick up my shattered pieces,
And handle it.
But not this.
Don’t ask me to handle this.

And don’t you dare
Ask me to choose.

#love #game #hurt #pain #sad #broken #friend

Nov 2018 · 1.7k

Hungry Love

Strung Nov 2018

Hungry Love

The earth is tired
Like the lids I peer through
Back to you
And your pursuit
Of endless hungry words,
So spill, tell it all;
The words that ****.
Poison, it’s an intimacy
Like the tattoo sleeve you lean on,
Dreams that fill your ego
Feeding lies of which you dream on
But what I know you reach for
Is more hungry love
So continue draining life or love from me
Leaching words,
— Just keep them

#love #hungry #sad #alone #tired #words #drained #poison #lies #endless

Nov 2018 · 571

Shatterable

Strung Nov 2018

Shatterable

Am I glass to myself?
So easily shattered.
See through the image I talk about;
Do I pretend to be different
Than a mirror of doubt?
Reflect back only critics
Buckets of loss
With every look in the eye,
A victory tossed.

#breakable #glass #mirror #loss #lost #weak #eyes #reflection

Oct 2018 · 6.5k

Convincing Monsters to Lay Dormant Hurts Like Nothing Else

Strung Oct 2018

Convincing Monsters to Lay Dormant Hurts Like Nothing Else

You’re forcing my hand, forcing the lungs to constrict,
What will you do
with the bits of love I’ve left to you?

I don’t trust you anymore

“Nothing is wrong”,
Let it be known
I’ve just had a bad week,
Though that’s naive.
A crooked dream
I like to think
about.

I know I’m surrounded.
Blood red hair you dye to stay pretty,
Like the blood drawing sharks in calm waters.

— I guess I deserve it.

#stop #enough #anger #pain #hurt #blood #red #criminal #broken #again

Sep 2018 · 358

Listen

Strung Sep 2018

Listen

Pushed into the pavement
Like the imprint of a leaf
A simple stain on concrete
- Haven't I got anything to say?

#simple #alone #quiet #pushed #unheard

Sep 2018 · 917

Too late (to call)

Strung Sep 2018

Too late (to call)

It got too late
to call
I hung up my hands,
the wall
always hits my head—
When the moon is so high
I can't watch from my window,
I know,
It's too late to call

#moon #sad #alone #late #night #overwhelmed #depression #anxiety

Sep 2018 · 577

I Lost Respect for You, Sorry

Strung Sep 2018

I Lost Respect for You, Sorry

Tattoo your love of normalcy
Up and down your sleeves
But don't ever look at me
Like that

#love #disrespect #respect #loss #pain

— The End —