"airbags" poems
Give him a skinhead, insignia, boots
Less scruples, a swagger-stick, crowds, money.
No black shirts visible. Just business suits,
and pride is restored: tragic but funny.
Proud like a skyscraper, godless as sin
Babylonian promises, towering lies
Reality shows when plutocrats win,
Their rhetoric raining from empty skies.
She-wolves, elected by uninformed sheep
behave predictably, eyeing the flock
Their wool (and the lamb-chops) are hers to keep
Grazing voter—this should come as no shock.
It’s a bitter pill (more like pilloried)
So shall we now be ******* or Hillary-ed?
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 8:59 PM UTC
Thirty years of monthly
payments for a roof,
garage, and backyard,
The house burns down
the day you pay
it off,
A brand new model,
heated seats, leather
wrapped steering wheel,
more speakers than
you can hear,
pride and joy,
taken from you
by some careless *******
focused on "Me"
not focused on red
lights or stop
signs.
The frame is bent,
airbags deployed,
the insurance
writes you a check
and sends a form
apology with next
month's bill.
The newest clothes
aren't so new,
once they're washed
twice,
but we base our wealth
on fleeting things,
wood, status symbols
and cotton,
We pay ourselves
by saving money
already spent,
and paying old bills
so we can have new ones,
Wealth isn't tied to these
temporary things, easily
replaced by more
work and money
No
Wealth is created,
easily sustained,
by good night kisses,
road trips just because,
and matching shirts
for family pictures,
things that make us
remember how to be
happy,
because we are all temporary,
but our love is
not so easily
replaced.
So even if
you rent, or
you take
the bus
or you have clothes
in your closet for years
The time spent
with people you love
wil always cover
you until the
next paycheck
you've already spent
anyway.
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 3:43 PM UTC
My father is an old truck
Sunbleached red
Breathes broken bottles
A faulty catalytic converter throat
All the smoke trapped inside
But the nicotine helps his brain function
Cinderblock sturdy
But skinny
A single pillar holding the roof up
A man built in a time when you had to tell things it was time to die
Leave them in a field somewhere and forget about
How do you write a love poem to a car of a man
Built in a time without airbags?
A car of a man who crashed with you inside so many times
You learned about rebuilding from experience
From trial and error
And how do you forgive a man who can no longer tell you he’s sorry?
Trucks
Don’t feel
Don’t give up
Don’t hurt you on purpose
Sometimes something inside just breaks
And no one catches it
And maybe you crash
Break a nose
Black an eye
As far as I know
I am not a broken man
But I’ve learned where all the parts go
And if I am my father’s son
A mechanic more often than a car maybe
Then I will be fine
The truck is dying
And beyond repair
You forgive it for that
It is old and past its time
And maybe it can’t say that it’s sorry
But there is a field somewhere that you plan on leaving it
To collect weeds
And rust
And be forgotten
So you forgive it
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014 at 4:59 PM UTC
Hope is, by definition, a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen, a feeling of trust
Hope carries anchors on it's shoulders, afraid it will only meet the standard of almost
We all hope, but we do not all receive
Hope is the product of human weakness
We long that's why we aspire
Imagine how weak man is, we are not like birds that can fly when we want to go to places or we want to see people
We are frail and easily inflicted with illnesses
We are fragile bottles that easily break physically and emotionally, hence the development of the helmet and airbags
The study of human emotion called psychology and psychiatry
And worse, we die, that is why men searched for the fountain of youth to no avail
Hope helps us to move on and continue
Hope is a wish, hope is a motivator
Hope gives a reason to keep going
Hope is the whisper telling us that it will get better in time
But I ask, why do the hands of my clock have arthritis
Hope is not a liar
Hope is encouraging but hope is also deceiving
Hope is joker, a trickster
Like an amateur magician, everyone could see the trap door but me
Hope will disappoint you
Hope is not perfect, hope does not always work out like you think hope should
But hope is valuable, hope keeps balance
Hope carries the unable, the dreamers, the optimists
Hope is the guide
Without hope, we're lost
Without hope, we're nothing
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 5:27 PM UTC
I like making
plans I know I won't make,
I just like they're there.
It's sort of like how we prepare
in our cars with airbags.
Sometimes we thank God
they're there.
I like waiting at
bottoms of skyscrapers to catch
cripples' stares on stairs.
It's living up to a dare
trying to walk with one leg, one
crutch going up, look at their
Stares on stairs.
It wasn't a hippy
in tie dye that gave me
that squabbled piece of peace.
It was a horrid beast
who claimed I was the first
to not shoot, he gave me his last
Piece of peace.
I didn't like the tone
of his voice when he said
you can't bare the bear
Even outside the lair
you'll shave his fur and run your
hands in your hair, you
can't bare the bear.
I have years of your
wind pattern because my
vane detects vain in your veins.
Mar 18, 2013
Mar 18, 2013 at 12:06 AM UTC
My head tilted back like I was
Tasting raindrops
But what fell to my mouth was you
Cradling my jaw in your hands
Steady
As if I were a porcelain doll you might drop
It felt like goodbye
Because it was
And now I am afraid to turn corners
Locked in a haunted house
What will drop from the ceiling
Grab my leg
What will scare me back into submission
Besides you mounting someone outside
Which is perhaps
The most disturbing of all
How you wanted me until suddenly
You didn't
And how I didn't believe you
And how you fed me excuses like pacifiers
Quieting. Comforting. Soothing.
But I spit those out
Realizing their purpose was to
Quiet me into letting you go without a fight
But I took out my fists and fought like hell
You held them and pleaded with me to put my guns away
Surrender my weapons
And let you go in peace
This was all for you.
It was easier
For you
And only you
But what about me.
Grabbing at every part of myself
Pulling hair from my head and scratching flesh from my bones
Slowly and painfully pulling myself apart
Abandoning parts of me in gutters and streams
out windows and in ditches
I can't be myself anymore
Every inch of my flesh has your name written on it
Scratched in a pen using your own blood as ink
You sacrificed for me
And I for you
And we sat on a rock and smelled ocean and let the water spray our faces until we were sticky and wet and still we sung.
We had songs
Some silent, but I could hear the music when there was none.
I still do.
I can't look up down left or right without some yellow light telling me to
Slow down to a stop and take caution,
for a reminder is coming hard and fast your way.
Airbags go
Bitch-slapping me in the face for being stupid
For having been smart and throwing my morals to the wind
I'd like to regret you
But I don't
I'd like to hate you
But I can't
This makes me weak yes I know this
But
I gave you all the parts of me that were strong
And mere visions of you take the wind from my lungs and you use them to set your sails
You're a deep sea diver. Swimming. Living. Lying.
And I drown here.
You told me once that when I jump from a plane
The moment my parachute refuses to open
You'd be there carrying me to the ground
I won't let you fall, you said.
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 8:52 PM UTC
Clockwork heart
It beats hands free
Pumping steel
Though the assembly line
That’s me
Watchtower body
Skeletally strong
Calcium foundation
That carries on
Life’s long
Air’s free
Gridiron lungs
Empower me
Breathe in
I live
Breathe out
I’m dying
Machine-like body
Keeps me surviving
Microchip mind
Making choices
Basic instinct
Reprogrammed
By voices
Crash course
In life
Without airbags
Wheels and gears
Slow and cease
Assembly line halts
Rest in peace
Mar 18, 2012
Mar 18, 2012 at 11:13 PM UTC
Gravity seems to cease in mid air,
Time began to rewind like the VHS tapes we used to peruse.
Lost to the hopelessness of remembering all that was spoken,
Still trying to grasp what I was destined to lose,
Hungry for that which will fill the emptiness,
Clandestine decisions create all the rules.
A black hole type of control,
I went maniacal and shortly afterward became betrothed; enthroned though alone.
The bigger picture will soon unfold,
That night on the country road,
Driving the whip-it was an evening so cold.
Fairy Tales told in the fool's forest sparked
Demons perverse and sordid.
Fight or flight was being sorted,
The plight was horrid, closely courted,
Shield and sword defended horror.
Pretend to mend the chip on your shoulder,
Put up those walls around your border.
In short, the more you fake your disposition,
The closer your back gets to the corner.
Tire tracks in the grass led to the tree line,
Screams transcended smoke and steel,
Like hot steam rising from a forsaken teapot.
I wish facts weren't so ossified,
Because the force behind discourse and pride
Is hacked, controlled, and lost to time.
But truth remains in purest rhyme.
Mar 31, 2019
Mar 31, 2019 at 2:50 PM UTC
I've been breathing in everything I hate
Such as the smoke from fire that bellows beneath my feet,
It burns and it scalds and yet,
I do not learn my lesson.
My lungs have become airbags- deflated, charred
It hurts me to breathe but yet,
I do not learn my lesson.
I have been shown the sweet smells from the valley,
The honeysuckle kisses against my dried lips
But nectar is far more vicious than tar.
For it sticks to you like a bad memory
It will coat you in a sweet sickness,
A birth from a joyous hospital room
Honeysuckle kisses upon dry lips,
While they pump you full of the tar.
So while my lungs cannot heave anymore,
And my organs coated with depression
The nectar does nothing but upset my stomach
It causes it to wretch like a screaming baby
Lack of honeysuckle kisses fuels the fire.
I will continue to burn and scald my feet-
But I will not succumb to the iridescence
That will one day leave you sick,
And sticky sweet.
Apr 26, 2018
Apr 26, 2018 at 11:46 AM UTC
a month ago, i got in a car accident that totaled my car.
i was making a left turn at a stoplight
and the driver of an suv was paying no attention to her red light.
she barreled into the front end of my car at full speed before i even saw her coming,
and then everything was shattered glass and metal colliding and screeching tires
and suddenly my airbags were puffed out like sinister clouds and my engine sounded like a death rattle.
when i opened the door to get out, the hinges grated like a scream.
but i wasn’t hurt.
i cried for six hours that day but i went to school the next one.
everything was fine.
it's just that since then, everything in my life resembles a car crash.
i smelled burning for weeks.
i still blink and see spiderweb patterns of broken glass.
i cried for two hours when i realized i lost the cd i made
just so i could listen to my favorite songs in the car.
when i hear the song that was playing, i have to turn it off.
my father picked up the shrapnel still on the street a week later
and gave me my charred, crumpled, unreadable gravestone of a front license plate.
he straightened it out and put it on my new car when we got it.
i broke up with my boyfriend three weeks ago
and as i left i heard sirens from inside his house.
the day after that, i was talking to another boy
and his promises sounded like ambulances with no paramedics on board.
last week there was a fatal car accident half a mile from my house
and i couldn't breathe for the rest of the day after i heard.
i have to turn left at the stoplight where my own accident happened every day
and when i turn i clench my fists around the steering wheel
like it wants to tear itself out of my hands and maybe it does.
i still check left and right and left and right during turns
even when someone else is driving.
call all of this a reaction to trauma,
but honestly i don't know what's wrong with me.
all i know is i cried with frustration, immature, pathetic,
when my mother and my father couldn't find a new car.
all i know is i grieved for my ford focus
like it was my only friend in the world.
all i know is i keep talking about this accident
even though i’m even getting annoyed by myself
and my fingers on the keyboard sound just like the policeman's as he wrote up the report
as i perched on a plastic backseat, shaking, face covered with tear tracks,
waiting, alone, for my father to arrive so i didn't have to be an adult,
waiting, alone, for an explanation of why this happened to me.
all i know is everything in my life resembles a car crash,
and there are sirens in the distance,
and i'm still waiting for the smoke to clear.
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 6:21 PM UTC
I didn't get to say goodbye.
Again.
Not in the way I wanted to.
Not in the way that made clear as the glass
you shattered,
that this
was temporary.
Not in the way that I could promise you that every firing neuron in that beautiful brain
lights up your eyes
like shooting stars.
You think like the sky.
Not in the way that came anywhere near answering WHY?
Not in the way that stitched every I love you on the tip of my tongue together
into so big a blanket
I could swear,
you would never feel cold.
Not in the way that apologizes for maps making miles into inches
that should only equal minutes
But you realize once you're in it,
wading through the hearts that could never find their way,
objects on maps are further than they appear.
Much like the face that i see in the mirror.
I wish I was there.
I wish you were here.
I hope you don't hate me
But I'm grateful to the sea.
For catching you gently
before rocking you to sleep
in the arms of a stranger
who in saving you,
saved me.
Like I am grateful to light
and time
and airbags
and the dark side of miracles.
I am not a religious person.
But if you dont believe in guardian angels,
then I have to believe in mine.
Because I,
sellfishly,
cannot lose you
one
more
time.
My heart knows my throat like the inside of it's cage
because that is where it found you,
where I find it when I sit
and I miss you,
warming the words I always said I'd say.
So until I do,
stay.
If it makes the space seem smaller,
I have written you so many unsent letters
that if I lay every word down end to end
I could build you a bridge
that wrapped three times around the moon
So we could at least pretend,
I'd see you soon.
A bridge,
strong enough to hold you
and the fifty tons of memories
that ware you like waves,
Crashing against your ribs
in a storm
Where no heart is safe.
I'm sorry you wake in sandy sheets
That no matter how high you climb
there's a beach at your feet.
But not a single broken piece of you
will ever be sand
no part of your spirit
was made from this land.
You are one hundred percent sky
spread between two precious hands
And I'm just a star,
who followed a bridge to the moon.
I'll see you soon.
I'll see you soon.
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 3:03 PM UTC
it took a few months to recognize my first car.
i’d wander through parking lots reading license plates
as if they were names i should know, but forgot.
i just looked for the college parking pass to show it was my own.
i graduated two years ago.
i still looked for the parking pass last month.
it took a few months to recognize my keys.
they didn’t feel like mine for months;
i was used to touching doors with the reticence of a guest.
i couldn’t tell which unlocked what,
i just looked for the college logo lanyard.
the red fabric may have unlocked as much as the keys did.
it’s taking more than a few months to move on.
i’m still in therapy for the therapy i didn’t ask for
when people couldn’t tell the difference
between the will to live and the will to die.
the keys on my lanyard led to doors that weren’t mine anymore.
none of the other cars there had to leave.
the parking pass laughed as i drove away.
it took a few weeks for the airbags to stop ringing in my ears.
i didn’t hear the sirens until i saw the lights,
kind of like the way i didn’t feel myself being pushed
until the door was shut. i didn’t know what to reach for—
i would have held the steering wheel tighter.
i would have looked a little longer.
i would have watched what they did and not what they said.
it takes longer when i’m in the driver’s seat now.
words need more salt. i take roads more slowly.
the car that was my home through shut and locked doors
was my safety one last time.
i have new keys. i have new doors.
a home where i’m not a guest.
i walked from both crashes, but only one still haunts.
the parking pass was towed away, and i wish i had laughed.
Apr 14, 2025
Apr 14, 2025 at 3:27 PM UTC
i love how you can make me feel high
like a child's balloon, which floated out of her hand
and into the air, soaring
higher
and higher
and even higher
until it reaches a simple tree branch and
pop
and then the balloon begins to tumble down
onto a innocent driver who's on their way to work
who's windshield the now deflated balloon lands on
when they swerve to not crash into the ongoing traffic ahead of them
now that an object is blocking their view
and they drive straight into a tree,
and their head bangs off the the car's dashboard
since a worker who inspected the car's model
did not realize that the airbags did not deploy
and they are dead,
all because of a balloon
which a careless child let slip out of their hand.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 9:47 PM UTC
He didn't see the patch of ice;
She had closed her eyes for just a bit.
When she looked,
Guardrails tearing...
No time to shout,
Windows blowing out,
Merciful airbags slamming oblivion
Through muffled thudding
sliding,
rolling,
plummeting
plummeting
down.
Silence....
"Some day, if we die at the same time,"
His mother had said,
"We want to be together in the grave."
An ominous request, that,
And one to be perused, ignored,
Revisited now
As her life hovered
"Ten percent," the doctors said.
Shattered body, all alone
.../\.../\....../\..................
Alone.......
They were together again.
"Do you remember what they asked?"
"I do."
"And do you think...?"
The mortuary
Obliging,
Compassionate,
Arranged them
Arms encircling,
Her head upon his chest...
Embraced in life,
Embraced in death.
Lowered gently down,
A warming day,
In spite of snow,
A circling of friends around,
A mercy to have lived and died
Through every harm
Encircled in each others' arms.
Feb 14, 2013
Feb 14, 2013 at 9:14 AM UTC
I was lying on a highway,
Next to crashed cars,
With blood trickling down my face.
I was with my best friend;
She was so adamant on buying that dress.
That blue dress we had seen a week ago,
Through the window of a closed store.
Now, she was in the car
With airbags against her body
She was alive, thankfully;
But with a broken arm.
As now the situation was contained
With no unusual movement around us,
We walked to the hospital nearby
And were given first aid.
Unclear about what had happened
Until the news channel spoke about the meteor.
The car crash was at the edge of the crater.
After dropping her to her place,
I got back home after 2 hours.
It was 5pm and exactly then,
The country was under attack;
It was a war.
The enemies were attacking from all sides,
And Oh God! From us they were not far!
As we hurried to leave the place,
From the window, I saw a man loading a grenade.
I was white as I shouted for my Mom,
In reply I heard, "It's nothing".
"But Mom, you have not seen what's happening here, we have to run!"
"Yes dear, we have to hurry, after all it is 5.30".
Now the man was aiming the grenade at us.
"5.30?! Mom we have to run, we all are going to die!"
"Not we, but only you!"
I was surprised,
"It's 5.30, for God's sake, wake up!
Or you'll again miss the first hour of the day!"
***And all this while,
I thought I was surviving an apocalypse.***
Sep 20, 2016
Sep 20, 2016 at 2:14 PM UTC
As I light this third one,
your face came up to my mind.
I suddenly wished that your love is like smoking.
When I desired to let in the smoke,
the addictive nicotine of your love
inside my pitiful tired airbags,
I could easily tell myself
to exhale the white
lung filtered ghost
out of my system,
out of my life.
But your love doesn't work that way.
Love is inking your name on my skin
deep through my bones (if it can).
Living in me, thousands of needle bites
In each second piercing through who i am
for the rest of my breathing years.
And through the pain, your name is complete.
Yet when you leave,
your name, your love,
will remain
in blank ink
on my young
cigarette-fumed
skin.
Jun 26, 2014
Jun 26, 2014 at 1:46 PM UTC
I met this girl who means a lot to me.
This is dedicated to her.
Love.
Please forgive me for letting you get too close
Although I did warn you
There is no outlet down this road
and there are no life vests on this boat
and there are no airbags in the car
and there is no harness or safety net for when I am falling back into my own body...
Have you ever tried to breathe underwater knowing you've run out of oxygen and the light is so far away yet you keep swimming towards it but it seems like the more you swim the further you get from it and just as you're fingertips graze surface the ocean claims your name so the voice of your lost soul forever screams in the shells that are a home to a series of hermit *****
Have you ever sunk into your own bed by what feels like the force of a thousand boulders, unable to move, unable to speak, and just when you think it's all over, the demons that haunt you come out and now you're unable to breathe, there you go hovering over your body and not being able to do a thing
Every night I pray to God that I never see you in my dreams
because for your entire life, everyday that you wake up from your dream you lose a little bit more of yourself to those demons that haunt you
Every time you close your eyelids you see the monster that's trying to be Neptune and drown you in his seas
But baby I gave you the moon as the light to see the path that leaves behind all of those hermit shells
Now your the voice of your lost soul is no longer trapped in the home of a monster
It has found its way to me
Finally you can get some decent sleep
and wake up to me
from this day forward I can't say that you're the woman of my dreams because I'll be ****** if my demons trap you too
When someone asks you how we came to be, you tell them that we met on the moon every night
To calm the ocean tide and make it out alive
and if you are to drown in your dreams again, I'll still be here on the moon for when you find my light again
Waiting to build you a new home away from all of our demons...
Mar 9, 2017
Mar 9, 2017 at 10:36 AM UTC
smoke fills any negative space between the two of us in the back seat of your car
your face is changing, love.
morphing and melting into sludge dripping down my inner thighs
you said i'm cold in nature
but god, when you touched me,
it burned
each night I find trouble staying asleep
eyes closed, broken mirrors, headlights on
a snap back into reality
and i'm crashing
my head hits your steering wheel
the seatbelt tries to contain my heart beating out of my chest
but it isn't until the airbags come out
that it stops beating entirely
and my eyes are unengaged
and there's rubble for miles
but even after I'm thrown in plastic white
zipped up
I do not immediately awaken
instead I stay for a while and walk around
until I turn around to see your arms outstretched towards me
and that is when I sit up, back to the realm of the day dreaming
Feb 13, 2017
Feb 13, 2017 at 10:49 PM UTC
I can feel it wearing on my skin, a deterioration of my bones, sandpaper on my heart, carving holes and smoothness in paces were they don't belong, polishing me into something it isn't. Inside my head I'm screaming but its hard when everyone knows better, everyone is telling me what to do, no one is willing to let me just do things my way, those ways are wrong, always wrong, and I need to stop them or else. Or else what? I'm not even sure I just know its bad and bad is bad and that's something I'm not supposed to be doing.
My body is caving in on itself, but I don't have the time for it, I'm late, so very late, for all the important dates and I can't let the axes fall and the queens to get angry for I can't waste any time with my head chopped off. I have to keep it together. I must keep it together. I have no choice but to keep it together.
I can't lose anything. I've built my mountain of progress and though my heart is being sandpapered into a mess and a circle of conformity and pain, I can't stop I can't breathe if I breathe a breath of my own air they reject it and my new lungs they gave me reject all air that is original. I can't breathe. I can't keep things together. Everything is a broken cacophony of madness and I cannot silence them and they fill my lungs and bleed me of oxygen until my body is panicking and I'm not breathing.
I want to feel better. I want the monsters gone and the fear and the shattered fragments to find their place somewhere safer than the tips of my fingers and the center of my heart. I'm so scared. I'm so tired.
I'm tired of trying and failing and having no time to breathe and when I try to give myself time to breathe I'm not better and things hurt more and everything spiraling down, down, down, and I can't stop it its like my brakes are broken and I'm careening into traffic and I'm trying to save myself but my airbags are broken and my windshield is shattered and my bones are brittle and my seat-belt is choking me and I know that if I don't get the brakes to stop soon I'll be dead but I know if I stop driving I'll hate myself more so I pray to unnamed gods and figments of my imagination to let me live past one more intersection so that I don't have to stop never stop and just keep on going forward.
I don't know if I'll make it, but I can't stand the idea of braking now. I could lose everything I've ever dreamed of, and I can't stand the thought of that.
I'm so tired and everything hurts, but I can't brake now, I can't sleep now. It might **** me but losing everything would **** me too. Stuck between a whirlpool and a seven headed ***** guess I'm picking the ***** and hoping I have enough marbles by the end to make it through.
Please stop being tired.
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 12:55 PM UTC
Well it's hard to tell what's left of this mess.
Glass shatters and crashes, the air leaves my chest.
In a moment or two life will seem like a privilege.
And I've never been this close to the edge.
Headlights bend, and silence falls like the heavens.
Knuckles turn white as we're nearing the end.
Well when the glass breaks, will you cry out for help?
Or grab onto something to save yourself?
Brace yourself for what comes next,
Twisted wreckage and broken necks.
Would I trade their lives in order to say,
That we'll live to see another day?
Step out into streetlights, reflections of what could have been.
Counting to make sure I've got all my limbs.
Words come out as whispers, I stutter to speak.
Remember the rain as the breaks start to screech.
The concussion of air sends my head to the stars.
Smoke fills the cab, and we're looking at cars.
Well they could have buried us here in this steel casket.
Terror on the roads, with no way to mask it.
I'd sure as hell
Bury myself
to keep you unharmed.
I can't believe
Here in the streets
I thought I was unarmed.
When I posed such a threat
now full of regret
But at least our bodies are warm.
Well glass shatters.
And I clear the fog around my head.
Nothing matters,
As much as the fact that we're not dead.
We come to a stop as rain falls out of the sky.
Pieces lie, in a pile along the street.
Save our souls from the devil, denied his chance to meet.
Well we're alive.
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 1:56 AM UTC
my life is a wreck
a paralyzing car wreck
you are the tree
that came from nowhere
causing me to swerve
into this depression
though the crash was quick,
the recovery will not be
and I will never be able
to walk freely
again
the cuts that line my body from the crash
stem from the shattered glass
made of shattered dreams
and malevolent words
that i'll never forget
my airbags come in a small pill bottle
and though they do not cushion my head,
they cushion the blow
of the destruction
my seat belt is his arms
gripped tighter than a buckle
and stronger than any nylon
that would be designed to save my life
I become lightheaded easily
from exposure to the smoke inhalation
more commonly known as
anxiety
**my life is
an absolute wreck**
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 5:00 AM UTC
we sat in the car in front of the fabric store
talking about the pink elephant that had found
a permanent residence inside of our home:
my future.
i wish that eyes came with personal windshield wipers
because you cried over the fact that i didn't believe in god
that i didn't want to go to a christian college
that i didn't want to worship
and i wish my kneecaps came with airbags,
so i would find it easier to pray,
but i'm sorry mom, that is not who i am.
your baby girl has been cutting the strings from
being sewed in for so long, and using them to patch
up your own heart because it hurts me to know that you know
i am not saturday morning church pews,
i am not someone who judges the length of someone's
skirt because deep inside i really wish i had the legs
to pull it off. i am not empty hallelujah's, amen's, preach it,
i am not a believer in depending on god to choose where the dice fall,
because i refuse to believe that life is rigged,
i'll take the punches as they come and put on my boxing gloves,
i don't care if i fall out of the ring, because i know now i'm strong enough to get back in,
and for me that hasn't been something realized through bowing my head
it's been something realized through holding my head high
and trying my best to do right,
and it's sad that you don't believe there can't be good without god.
what hurt the most
wasn't that you refuse to pay for another college
wasn't that you have so much faith invested in the guy upstairs
that you forgot to put some towards your daughter
who's only looking for pride from her mother,
it was when you said,
"next thing i know, you're gonna be bringing a girl home."
this closet, is getting smaller everyday,
and being trapped in here with all of these skeletons
is starting to hurt.
boys are cool,
but *****
are ******* awesome.
and if i ever do fall in love with a girl,
i'll write our names into all the bibles i can find.
because there's a verse in there somewhere
that says that our bodies are a temple,
so with her i'll have no problem with going to church everyday.
if i had a genie, i would never stop rubbing my lamp,
wishing that i would be able
to care for things without the expense
of losing the ones that care for me.
I've been listening to sermons since i was a day old,
and what I've learned is that God is love,
so if there is someone looking out for me up there,
he should know better than anyone else
that loving someone with the same
secret body parts as mine
is anything but bad, is anything but a sin,
is anything but wrong,
it is me holding a girl's hand
it is me being just as human as anyone else.
Mar 28, 2014
Mar 28, 2014 at 11:30 AM UTC
I need to go back in time
when family was family
communities where tight knit
and church lasted all day Sunday
You know... back in the day
when disputes were decided
with fists and not guns
and meals shared at the table
Once in a while
on any given weekend
we'd pile in the sedan
for a classic SUNDAY DRIVE
No GPS or directions to guide us
just following the open road
no seat belts or airbags
free spirits in every essence
I miss the road games
I miss the family time
I miss those good old days
I miss that SUNDAY DRIVE.
Jun 25, 2016
Jun 25, 2016 at 5:35 AM UTC
I ran like a head on collision. A car crash which you don’t look away, like a bicycle crash flung over the handles. Pondering then, in that moment, why I didn’t wear a helmet. I guess I didn’t have a thought to think about that before crushing my skull on the pavement. I wonder in these instantaneous moments, why you pull away first, before knocking the teeth out. Gumless and bleeding with remorse. Things that have foresight, but maybe no hindsight: an example would be falling on airbags like a grenade. I read once, somewhere, that 290 people were killed in 28 years by airbags. I wonder then, before flying into the sediment, if they had the same feeling of regret (or maybe confusion) when something supposed to save them, killed them.
Flaccid airbags, then. 1 to 2% of frontal deaths are caused by un-deployed airbags. Try to imagine the surprise before hurling through your windshield: “but? my airbag?” We can never really rely on anything, I guess, except for at 12 to 18 miles the airbag might, should expand. Marshmallow cushion, cotton ball fuzz clings. A white christmas dressed in harlot red; a sin of plain bad luck for those people. For me, it’s ignorance
I should have worn my ******* helmet
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 11:38 PM UTC
When two cars crash it is a cataclysmic event,
Glass shatters,
Airbags burst.
Things break.
People break.
There is tragedy.
When two cars crash there is a crack and shards fly.
Look up at the sky during a car crash,
The glass in the sky twinkles like stars
And how beauty can found in something so broken is beyond me.
But look up at the sky.
See the stars twinkle like the shine in your eye,
It is beautiful.
When two atoms crash,
Energy is released,
Heat is given off,
Light is blinding.
Bonds break.
But look up at the sky after an atom collision.
The light you see is from that horrible thing.
The beauty is blinding.
How something so catastrophic could be so beautiful is beyond me.
But the stars shine bright with chemical reactions
And atoms colliding.
Someone somewhere crosses a ‘t’.
Someone somewhere dots their ‘i’.
How something so mundane could become beautiful is beyond me.
Look up at the sky.
The crashing of two things is never good,
It ends in pain,
Or sorrow, Or brokenness.
Every time.
But when two souls crash?
When two hearts collide?
Lay down and look up at the sky,
Rest your head on my chest
And someone once told me love is always reckless.
So look up at the sky,
Tell me, what do you see?
Stars?
Those reactions that created our universe were reckless
They were random
And how beauty can be found in something so reckless is beyond me.
Look up at the sky I tell you,
What do you see I ask.
“A moon,” you say,
“A moon as skinny as a sliver.”
You rest your head on my chest.
I tell you to look at that moon,
“Remember it,” I tell you,
“As long as it floats in the sky, our love, this everlasting perpetual love, will never die.”
Because how can something so mundane,
A rock in space,
Be beautiful.
I understand.
Just a set of eyes that crinkle when you smile,
Teeth that turn up at the corners when you grin,
Ears that perk up at your name,
Lips that curl to the touch of mine.
All placed atop a face.
How could something so mundane be beautiful?
Because it is not mundane.
It is not cataclysmic.
It is not reckless.
What it is,
is love.
Apr 29, 2018
Apr 29, 2018 at 10:24 PM UTC