This is a spoken word piece that I recorded.  Click to Listen:

https://soundcloud.com/venniekocsis/ghost-trails

To listen to me sing this, you might want to grab your head phones for hearing more clearly since it was an impromptu raw recording, and then click the link below to listen as you read along.

https://soundcloud.com/venniekocsis/disregard

I know there's times
when i feel afraid and
nothin' you say can
make the fear go away

I'm just a girl who
tries to live this life
the best way I know how but
you don't understand the times
I feel so alone I could
I could
I could
I could die.

I kept my head up high
when I was a child when
all that I was
stripped from my skin.

I never let them break, no
what lived within and now I,
I sometimes
can't get the images
from my eyes
oh, what am I doin' alive?

Oh, Mama don't you know what you have
left behind
all the nights I cry and all
the times I wanna say goodbye

How am I supposed to get through
this human life with
the greed
the strife
the envy
the pain
please make it go away, oh.

I said my goodbyes
on the other side when I
chose this life of strife
of pain
of crying
where I go I don't know

Every day I
I tell myself it'll all
go away
go away
go away
but I'm back
in your clutches

I've got flashbacks
and bad dreams to keep me warm
and I've got
anxiety and
times I can't even
make myself go to the store

you don't
you don't understand
what it's like to
enter this world fighting
just to live you
you might know your own story but it's
nothin' like mine

I said tonight I'd die it'd be
the last time I cry I would
wipe my eyes and say goodbye
to everything I've left behind

I'd tell them don't be sad
take my words and make them all
understand what they're doing
what they do to the children
what they do to lives
to lives
oh. why can't I

escape
and run
and go and be so brave
I don't know
I don't know why I can't
I'm weak
I stand right here
in this spot
struggling for my breath and I
I don't even have the guts
to enter death

this is not a story of
suicide or why
why, I don't wanna be in this life

this is
this is a refrain of pain
caused by
the eyes of disregard
and blame

v.k poetry
copyright @ venniekocsis.com

Click the link if you'd like to listen to me speak this poem.

https://soundcloud.com/venniekocsis/the-separating

I have stared at pictures
of my face with
closed eyes

I have imagined
this is what I would
look like in a coffin

so I will be burned
turned to ash
sprinkled into the
soft earth of this Mother

so they can remember
the sound of my laughter
when I visited the trees

Some say "oh, that is so morbid!
how could you think like that?"

I reply, "how can I not,
when I know I'll be back?"

I am but just a blink
on this thing we call a life
when I return to stardust
I'll sleep a thousand nights.

But for now
I trudge the wreckage
of a complicated pain
to see if I can
build the strength
to return this way again.

How does one hold on to hope,
dying in the snow,
huddled 'round a barrel fire
as the sarin seeps the ground?

I say I am a washer,
some ask me what I mean
I have invisible knapsacks
strapped behind my knees

I have wondered why
I'd choose this kind of life
to feel the saddest parts
of a human's broken heart

Sometimes I stare at photos
I don't recognize myself
not the upturned nose
or the slight overbite of my jaw
I stare at foreign eyes
who was she before
she was forced to survive

I remember planets
where I sat beside the blues
places just like this one
without the sorrow

It has always felt abnormal
to be inside this skin
like my soul has always
fought a war
with being in human form

I have gazed at my face
in colorful gradients
long to kiss my lips
and feel their softness
to know just once
what it is like
to stand on the outside
of a bullet riddled body

I would hold my cheeks,
look at myself so sweetly
in all the ways I imagined
would happen if I was loved
unconditionally, fully,
wholly, without expectation

I have stared at the darkness
like it's a Hearst
where my dead flesh would rest first,
carried through dimensions
back to the before
if I could just have the courage
to step through that door

It doesn't feel familiar
being in this place
with the indifference,
the passivity and
the down turned faces

It's not to say I
don't have moments where I'm happy
but how can I skip through rainbows
when there is so much weeping?

I feel each time they ache
like it's my very own heart
like they're a piece of my existence
their shadowing lingering
in my footsteps and
I cannot catch a breath
for the intensity of
their desperate loneliness

I have stared at my hands
folded across my chest
the way my fingers would interlace
before the skin decays and breaks

the way humans display
other humans
to feel better inside
about the way
their loved one died;
pomp and circumstance
taking precedence
in lifelessness

I have images stamped in my head
my eyes black and absent
the way they'll be in the end

take it back
put it in concrete
make a chisel with a code
so deep
they'll have to go to
great feats to figure it out
because there are two choices
love and doubt

and in the end
neither will matter
it'll just be you and the stars
and the echo of grief
evaporating into the mist

and you will see your face
on white paper
with words about
a second of an inch thick
before you become separated
into a remember when

let the shards fly
sink into my skin cause
I'll be back this way again
but until then

I wonder what will be
written on my epitaph
she felt too much
she let the sadness gush
she whispered in the silence

No, No
save the stone
instead, make me flame
in my last moments let me shine
and be light
then take me to the sea
where the waves will bury me

and I'll return home
to tell them of a dying planet
and the few eyes
who have not yet lost hope

v.k poetry
copyright @ dbv publishing 2013

There are times a person is
on the edge of shattering.
Not noticeably so;
Forced smiles they
Shape shift the mask.

All it takes is a push
An adverse action
A mere word
To send them tumbling
Over the ledge.

She has taken
One too many arrows
One too many breaks
Invisible, she sits
Inside the pieces
Knowing that she
Will never be the same.

Something's changed for good
She feels it deeply
Something's been taken
Leaving crumbled bricks
Left as the bombs explode
Riddled with wounds
She sits exposed

She hears the sounds
The roaring of the sweepers
Coming to blow away
Her remains
So she can be replaced.

Soon she will fade
Into remember when's
And forgetfulness
Indifference and
Negative inference

Because love is often faked
To gain access
To the remnants they take
Where flesh becomes flesh
And bone becomes bone
And the soul is left wandering
Without a home.

v.k poetry
copyright 2013 @ dbv publishing

She has aged twenty five years
in five
the lines around her eyes
from too many nights
of crying
the downturned frown of her lips
from her love dying

Now she's ancient, centuries old,
the aftermath of sociopathy
being fake loved and discarded
has left her broken hearted

There's no filler for this space
there's no way to erase
the deeds of the takers
so she huddles in a dark cave
silently scribbling out her mistakes

loving the wrong ones
trusting in the wicked
it's a sticky situation
when the heart is pure
like children who love the hand
holding the stick that beats them

everything is gray
the wispy strands of hair
the wrinkled skin of her hands
the callouses on the tips
the false admiration leaving their lips

The blood has left her veins
It was drained by every lover
who ****** her dry
then left her in the pain
like raindrops can erase heartache
like the moon can glue the breaks

She's a cup, shattered on the pavement.
She screams she's hurting
They say "well don't."
as if sadness is a faucet that
can be set to drip so the pipes don't crack
she watches them disappear
because she's too sad

this is the trap
the liquid seeping into the concrete
as she weeps on her knees
scabbed from falling repeatedly

She's aged twenty five years
in five
Sometimes she wonders
if she's even still alive
or if she's watching a mirage
from a death realm that fakes being human
just like when she was

Nights spent quiet away from the hive
counting days until
the one she dies
hoping it goes quickly
even in her sleep
so she can bury
all the secrets she keeps

but for now its
comparisons and agitation
dismissive relations and aggravations
humans walking obliviously by
caught up with their own
uncomplicated lives
they press their heels
into flowers until they expire
or pick them to hold as they wither

She's aging sixty minutes
in one
and the process is agonizing
she didn't make this deal
to be alive while she is dying
in the rubble of the aftermath
she hears God laugh

v.k
copyright @ 2013 dbv publishing

There are times
I miss holding babies,
touching the fleeting moments
of purity
and milk mouths.

There are times
I long for the womb,
to go back swimming
so I can be reborn
once more.

I am feeling ancient,
thousands of millenniums old
a speck of dust
carrying triple its weight
in my belly.

There are times,
my soul contracts,
breaking water almost,
becoming ready
for an arrival.

Tell me, how long
is the gestation of heartache?
How many embroys
must die before the soul wakes,
spitting an infant?

There are times
I miss tiny dimpled hands
a wink of a moment's reminder
of what was aborted
without my consent.

The cradle rocks
ever so gently in the corner
as my hands weave pink sweaters.
In the mist of the silky rain
I wait to give birth again.

v.k

It's the being set aside
that makes me cry
It's the knowing
of being the other
makes the pain
thunder through my head

I left wishes wilted
on the bedside
viewing them from distances
as my heart shut

down

down

down

You couldn't know the affect
unless you lived it

You couldn't know the loss
unless you've given it

There is water
and icebergs
waiting to reserve my soul

until I learn to
stop leaving it in
un-receptive spaces

v.k

The problem wasn't the money
or the fame,
not the taunt, ripe bruises
shining from her heart
or the painful creak of her
hip bones when she moved.

No, the problem wasn't
the seeping words or
the tightness in her chest
every time she passed a church.

It wasn't the way the holiday lights
made her head dizzy or
the floating sensations
in grocery store lines
and it was definitely not
how her associates nonchalantly
patted her back in passing,
blatant excuses to walk on.

It wasn't the smell of soap
or the staring for hours
at the ceiling.

It wasn't the long, smooth metal
of the numbing pipe or
the sweet taste of Sangria wine.

It wasn't the many times
she'd been used or
the indignation that set in
when the walls were quiet.

It wasn't even the tapping pipes
that kept her awake at night
with their torturous monotony.

The problem was not the comparisons
or the dismissive tendencies,
the disconnections,
the draining of her energy
or even the isolation.

It was not the quiet meditation
or the constant spirit guide speak,
not the unpaid bills on the mahogany desk
or the whirring sounds of
a radiator about to explode
in her only transportation.

It never was the monetary lack
or the diseased reality
she was never given
the choice to escape from.

No, the problem was the sadness,
living there in the base of her spine
like a tall, thin castle
spearing up into her vertebrae
until her whole being ached.

It was the way the sadness
made her muscles swell,
and her face become pasted
to cotton pillow shams,
the frown lines starting to
make their way to her chin and
the visuals consistently invading.

It wasn't the crass indifference
piling up on her skin like bones,
the remains of every person who
had touched her and left,
leaving another layer
added to the angst.

Instead it was the secrets
housed inside the sadness,
catacombs of skeletons
break dancing in her ballast,
as if her tears were raindrops
and the sobs a symphony.

So no, it wasn't the way she
robotically moved through her day
or the smiles she feigned,
not the haze in her eyes
left by too many nights of crying
or the sleep where memories faded.

It was just
the sadness.

{recorded version https://soundcloud.com/venniekocsis/the-sadness}

v.k poetry
copyright @ dbv publishing 2013

Sometimes people look
Old before their time
  
The lines on their faces
Come early like
The sections of pain
Just couldn't sit
Inside anymore so
They seeped out
Onto the bodies
Creating strained
Pockets of water
The sadness that
Never got cried out.  

I watch faces age quickly  

There are young women
Who look like grandmothers
The weight of their anger
Forcing their skin
Towards gravity  

Their lips smile but
Their eyes hold no shine
They are empty,
Morose hollows
Staring from pictures.  

I wonder who
They think they're fooling
Or if maybe
I'm the few who sees  

I understand the shine love can be  

I wish for magic wands  

Sometimes people become
Old before their time  
Trudging invisible walkers
Made of situations
With heavy legs
Constructed from blame
And tearless fingers made
From strings of bitterness.

How long can a
Spirit carry such weight
Before it bends beneath
The dark matter
Humans pile
On top of themselves

Sometimes people age
Before they've
Lived half their life
Walking skeletons
Constantly searching
For the graveyard
Inside their yearning

There's a fountain
Called youthfulness
The ones ancients
Used to sing of
This liquid called
Love
They could drink
Become infants
Until the lines became
Infinite

But sometimes
People choose to
Age before their time

v.k poetry
venniekocsis.com
copyright @ dbv publishing

There are ghost chairs
dancing shadows in my kitchen
it's a division of demons
creeping into the limelight.

I hold my fists tight.

I am riveted in this breath
staring at the darkness;
the lines on the walls;
I am re-walking dark halls
between men legs.

I can't break my eyes away.
I reach for pictures.
This is a trigger
in full blown affect.
Gotta document
so they'll understand
how unexpected flashbacks
wait lurking in corners.

Television screens
and movie scenes
always avoiding
in case I'm swept in reverse
to the times I was hurt.

Bruises never go away.
They're right here
dancing in the shadows
cast by the day.

I'm stuck in ghost chairs
missing fistfuls of hair.
and I'm there again screaming.
I shudder.
The memory echoes like
thunder in my head.

Turn away
Turn away
Don't travel there today

But you see
emotion lingers
makes the minutes go slow so
it's best to write a poem
and let it seep
to keep it from whispering
"remember me?"

I don't wish to recall
yet I long to fill the holes
sift through the dirt
and dig up the bones.

Someone's gotta pay atonement
for the innocence they took,
but death has come to greet the swine
and they're almost off the hook.

One day they'll return
to where the fires burn
and in the middle will be a chair
just waiting...
waiting...
for the wicked fan fare.

I hope they splay their wrists bare
and eat it with the twine
like they did mine.

All I have left are the pictures
the sunlight makes in halls,
unexpected incidences
when my mind decides to recall,
an ink stained bed sheet,

a thousand journeys
written on lined paper,
and a ghost chair
dancing on my wall.

v.k poetry
venniekocsis.com
copyright @ dbv publishing

I can't think of you
on days like this
when the gray mist
floats into my windows
dragging amber leaves

I can't think of
the aftermath
the way I cried
how I'll never know why
or have answers
to burning questions

All that is left
a deep burn etched
into a stone
in San Antonio

I can't remember
the sound of your voice
the cynical conversations
or the thick black
of your glasses

Days like this
I sit in the silence
between loss and innocence
flat like the rocks
we tried to skip
in the rushing water
of the spring snow melt

We're a scattered tribe
a silent sister
a brother buried deep
inside the bottle
and me, the one who
writes it all down
like suffering
formed a diamond
if that's what
we could call survival

I can't think of you
on days like this

v.k poetry
venniekocsis.com
copyright @ dbv publishing

You said you
wanted to hold me
because I feel;
wanted to
run your hands on my skin;
taste the baseline
in the hopes it'd
make you heal.

My stone face
chuckled inside
as if wounds get
mended by smiles
and aftermath
gets cleared
by denial.

It's a momumental
discension of sociopathy
human feet
shuffling
shuffling
away from the empathy.

So you want to
touch me,
drag me into
the abyss
of your kiss
because I represent
what you miss?

This predatory energy
is disrupting the synergy
of Us.

Why do humans
long so deeply
for the things
that keep them weeping?


Beaten down
blue in the soul
stand by watching
chemical clouds unfold
and you want
just one moment
or an hour of my time
before you go?

If I placed a mirror
in front your face
you'd still only see
what your mind creates,
a mirage
a wish
a death grip in your fist,
caring only if
you'll get to win.

Another notch.
Another barrel.
Another halo snapped in half,
this is the aftermath
of a sky gone cold
and here you are
wanting to
hold me.

v.k poetry
venniekocsis.com
copyright @ dbv publishing 2011