"alibis" poems
Glide your fingers down the railing
As you make your grand ingression
Meeting the faces you are destined to meet
As they fasten their first impressions
You are one to worry what they think
And wonder how or why
But, know that they have trained themselves
To create facades and alibis
They would be just as scared as you
If they were the ones walking down that stair
So hold your head up high, my dear
As if you did not care
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 9:12 AM UTC
The young seeds unsown
buried beneath
long forgotten granite reasons
a waste of stone
and otherwise arable soil
which now lies fallow and barren
like the ancient womb
from which they were given way
unsafely into the world
of parks and laughter
of tears and monumental alibis
for another's selfish desire
to raise a flag upon a distant hill
and bury beneath it
like supporting struts
the very bones of our future.
Aug 29, 2016
Aug 29, 2016 at 6:35 PM UTC
Regret washes over in oceans,
Drenching a hot head with
Unholy sorrow and disgust;
Time reigns over as Almighty Queen
Who casts a permanent chill over
The land, the mirrors, the soul.
The molten mistakes cool solid
In the prison of our brains—
Forever materialized, measured, weighted.
A prideful ego never dies—
It's only masked by alibis.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 10:43 PM UTC
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign --
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.
I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant's teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was...
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger's seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
****** up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down --
I don't care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.
3.6k
*is it like a feather
is it now or never
our faces are neglected
our souls are introspective
gravity collected
space and time dissected
water is our mother
the earth is our shelter
a blessed sacred elder
lilikoi is my favorite fragrance
tastes like innocence
and you must respect her
amazing feelings to select
the headwaters call collect
protect our sacred mother
dance upon the other
call upon the winds
feel them on your skin
remove the falling stones
that cover up your bones
rest in love unknown
concentrate until it is shown
phone calls steal our happiness
accidents dent our marriages
darkness is our daughter
streaks of light and color
falling stars kept captive
we plant them in our yards
keepers of the spark
sisters of the sparrow
made of light and yarrow
feathers flicker softly
all our woven glory
givers of the heart
singers of the dark
if you wish to hear them
make yourself a part
of the symphony
lifetimes of abandonment
oh so quick to fill you in
on all the tragic stories
what if we ignored them
and stayed present in this moment
filling up our cups
simple days spent with simple eyes
kindness supplies our alibis
respect is valued
like a stream in our hearts
we are dipped clean
threads of beauty
borrowed from the scarecrow
next lifetime you’ll become
another source of hope
ports of pleasure in our seas
forever we are feeling these
hopeless ropes tying up our antidotes
confounded sounds mounds of hope
stereoscopes and isotopes
poets freely speak
seek islands of wisdom
on stormy seas of chatter*
Oct 24, 2017
Oct 24, 2017 at 9:34 AM UTC
on account of you:
she says: do you know you often smile when, day dream dozing?
me says: on account of you
she says: c’mon sweet talking man, ain’t gonna fall for that hooey!
me says: hooey, phooey, on account of you
she says: nah, you writing poetry, no fooling me no more!
me says: on account of you
*she says: I bet you got one of your girl friends singing to you, through
those wireless earbuds, doncha? who is it this time? a Sara or Joni?*
me says: on account of you.
*she says: you think big shot, you can multitask b.s. me? doing three things
at the same time!*
me says: on account of you
*she says: on account of you, I’m seriously ****** you don’t tell me anymore
sweet lies and alibis, probably writing an ode to one of your poetry gf babes!*
me says: on account of you, can’t count no more, how many love poems in my lifetime written, and this one too, going out to you, charged to my tab, you babe,
are my account, my accountant, my accounting....
Jun 21, 2020
Jun 21, 2020 at 1:43 PM UTC
Open yours eyes
Let go of sweet alibis
You know those are just sugar coated lies
Open your eyes
I am standing in front of you
Quiet the chaos inside
You've got to get out of there
I took a peek inside your brain
and I've got to say,
Those voices sound quite insane
But don't pay mind to those voices
They do not own your name
They are just voices that feed the lie that you're not okay
That you'll never meet the measure
Just open your eyes,
And experience life and all of it's pleasures
I'm standing here before you,
Can't you see me?
A living, breathing, sentient being
Your internal chaos has vanquished you
It has stolen your sight
All you can see now are the lies that rule your life
Open your eyes,
I'm here for you and I understand
Can you not move, can you not feel?
I reached out my hand
Now reach out yours,
I will grab hold of it
And lift you up from the floor
Open your eyes
Love stands before you in all of it's purity
But you are unsure and full of insecurities
I bestow my love with no requirements or
debts
Because my heart just gets stronger
The more I love unconditionally,
So, let me in,
Please
Open the eyes of your heart,
And finally, you will see.
Feb 6, 2016
Feb 6, 2016 at 11:57 PM UTC
Screaming midnight chimes,
hidden alibis illuminate your crimes,
ferule moonlit beams of light,
recoil in the shadows, glowing in white,
shaking soul in the twilight zone,
kicking up dust as you run for home,
emotions take you by the hand,
scatter away like the desert sand,
cold trip in a purple haze,
eaten away in the last of these days,
haunted, we are all haunted,
ghosts of the past gnaw at our thoughts,
searching in vane for safer ports .
Jul 20, 2016
Jul 20, 2016 at 6:32 AM UTC
I'm going to cut your supply
I'm going to starve that destructive fire from oxygen
The one which burns within you
That desire to hurt
I'm going to sweep your breadcrumbs from my doorstep
Take back your sullen energy
You who delight in sowing destruction
Look into the mirror of your empty eyes and see what's inside your toxic well
Your jealous empty heart contains nothing but deceit and destruction
Your blatant lack of empathy has unveiled your deepest secret
You have showed the world exactly who you are ... and finally we believe you
No more alibis for you
And once a serpent's head has been cut off
It will rage out of control ... but only for so long
Before it is no more
Like one who has been struck with madness
Like an addict without a drug
I am no longer your supply
I will save my empathy for those who deserve it
And I forgive myself for unknowingly enabling you by buying into your games
But most of all ... I'll be good to myself
Aug 10, 2021
Aug 10, 2021 at 4:04 PM UTC
Sad, mooning morning
Lost beasts and time
Disgust for machine lust overwhelming
It's not that I don't love you
That you don't love me enough
To sinfully and wantonly **** me
After all it's my birthday
Cause I'm old and you've lost interest
in being the man I loved
That's why our children tricked you
into writing and sending your confession
Stand up and take a bow
we learned your lessons well
who to trust, how to trust, and when
Turned us kids into your spies,
your lies, your alibis
to get us to create the software to do it
So you could **** your mystic **** genie
please know our kindness as hatred
All access passes to dumb *********
This memeallscene is a gallery crawl,
a gallow's walk of perps,
who should have known better
Just a thanks for clogging
the artists' ether with kiddy ****
much love for Kate Torn
we used your magick
to put us back together
Your address is on the ticket,
the reddress that you bought her.
Tap lightly, tap lively not,
the tuoche of Jack Frost is upon you.
All the best and much kindness.
Perfection is a trick of the mind.
This poem will change and tighten
the ties that bind us together
From the women and men of Bandahache.
for the women who sign away the right
to tell their stories
I hear you Anita Hill
But we've been stalked and stifled long enough
Yes, that's what prayer can do
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 2:12 PM UTC
I stepped in through his ears, covered in hot mud
and rolled off his tongue clean as a whistle.
I was no longer a whisper, he uttered in a painted mirror.
Scratching out two eyes that saw nothing but themselves.
He came to wonder
if there are ants in my stomach feeding an army
off the peaches I couldn’t eat for six summers.
Three winters with no springs yet, the snow up to my neck.
My eyes spilt pearls like a Japanese ghost, onto the white cold
he buried me in.
and when that melts into the lush green we’ve yet to writhe on,
I hope there are limbs left to entwine us,
I hope there are streams made to wash us.
My body unchilled is sight for him to absorb,
and record and plan a trip.
Diction may be a skill he knows
that I have learned to be versed in,
but no matter the assemblage of my alibis,
he finds me guilty, so I choose to make quiet familiar,
and comfortable and the stringy nerve endings I've grafted
into his skin and his kiss when I love him,
are threatened to be severed with scalding water,
poured from the darkest kettle called
doubt.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 7:58 AM UTC
.
*He had ascending eyes
of sapphire,
the kind in which angels sloshed in their
royal chalices,
the kind of blue Poseidon gnashed
his teeth for.
Born in the 25th dying date,
Septembers’ autumn bleached scent flows along
his bloodstream.
A smile that belonged in the crooks of these sapphire seas,
a soul unholy as Adam
& Eve’s.
His love was not fierce enough
to contain this poet's heart
my pitiful phoenix can be ripped asunder
by the wrath of
a dandelion.
He couldn't swallow the sun
so silver fire rained
anytime it pleased.
We are the skylines
not gallows
and yet we hang ourselves upon the night skin
and collect
the stars as if they were
our alibis.
If you love me,
let me go?*
My silver eyes don't see you in color anymore.
.
Jun 1, 2015
Jun 1, 2015 at 8:56 PM UTC
I tasted every bitter lie
As you shoved them down my throat
Now I'm full of poison-soaked phrases
Badly in need of an antidote
Lost promises rest in my abdomen
Next to the deception I was fed
I need a cure for untrue words
Before this illness renders me dead
Fallacies come crawling back up
Venom rising in my windpipe
Sick to my stomach with acceptance
Your falsehoods have become overripe
I can't contain the toxic deceit
It's overflowing from my gut
Excuses pour out from my mouth
Alibis Ive managed to rebut
The ***** burns my weary tongue
Sour as it leaves my lips
Betrayal has me feeling queasy
Unwell from hearing your rehearsed scripts
My stomach empties it's contents
Spewing intricate facades
Until it is rid of all the
Charades, illusions, and frauds
Infected with dishonesty
My body is rocked by unease
I've taken a turn for the worse
Consumed by this relentless disease
This virus I have come down with
Takes it's toll on my heart and mind
I grow more fatigued each day
But relief I have yet to find
Chills, shakes, soreness, and migraines
Plague my organs, bones, and skin
My muscles are endlessly cramping
I loathe the fever I'm burning in
I do not know why I feast on your
contaminated reality
I'm sure if I continue to
I will soon be a fatality
My health is deteriorating
Still i dine on fantasies unreal
I hope for a miracle pill but
My flesh may not be able to heal
I fear I'll be plagued as long as I
Swallow your lies, deranged and uncouth
The cure I have been longing for
is a simple medicine called Truth
Feb 15, 2018
Feb 15, 2018 at 5:33 AM UTC
~
*Black as coal.
Moth or myth?
It helps with the lights out.
And travels by thought.
Cleopatra enters Rome,
Dropping names,
Reciting pagan poetry,
Knocking on forbidden doors.
Nicole sees shadows
Of her former self
Staring back at her,
Rock paper scissors,
The color of three.
Give and take after take
On the burning soil
Of a blurred crusade.
Typewriters
And other assorted weapons
Form white lies and alibis,
Calibrating the dusted variations
Of a caught-on-camera obscura,
It is a dark waltz,
Some small hope still,
Yet there's a comma after still.*
~
Jul 27, 2022
Jul 27, 2022 at 9:57 PM UTC
A stilted stay, a pregnant pause,
as shadows sharpen midnight claws.
A dimming dome oppressed by night,
smiles weakly on this parasite.
It enters as a Trojan horse,
along a crawled collision course.
Its hollow husk holds silent spies,
who have no room for alibis.
This craven creature starts to nest,
in memories you'd long repressed
and darts behind your mood's eclipse,
a smirk of sadness on its lips.
From weary womb the beast begets,
its offspring weaned upon regrets.
Until it stirs with needle teeth,
to tear the tenderness beneath.
It stalks from shade, a grievance grown,
to steal the thoughts that were your own.
Its brittle bark a bare refrain,
before it leaps and snaps the chain.
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 12:59 PM UTC
My membrane is a flower and too many people have plucked my petals from the stem.
I ripped out all of the pages that had scripture in them, scripture that told stories of who I was back then, scripture I had written with a broken pen.
I kept your voice in a box that's in the attic, it's safe inside a headache, it still sounds nothing less than tragic.
Remember my hands and how they shook when you took everything away, when the demons weren't at bay,
when I screamed for them to stop but still, continually,
everyone's been taken away,
so when people stay please understand that I have to push them away like waves from the shore and **** I know that's clichè but I'd rather die than let them live in my heart for only a few days.
They still try to talk and I reverberate about how it's unholy to say my name that way, it's unholy to keep me in the fade.
It's unholy to remember me by my eyes and not by my lies.
I have good alibis and it's nothing but true when I say that
I forgot what love means,
I believe it's an illusion that most people just dream, they told me I'm crazy but **** I think I've had more nightmares than dreams so I would know better than to keep my lonely stem stuck in bad weather.
They're over there seducing themselves now, they're seducing themselves with medication that leads to hours of a permutation of all the items in her chest, he leads her to a mutation of what he thinks is best.
I only weep between sheets.
They're far too confident in their self extraction and I just don't understand how that happens, how self absorption can lead to something so terrifying, placing yourself in a box so you can delegate yourself, you're too delicate, it's not good for your health.
That voice inside that box talks in third person now, it says you're not doing too well.
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 12:28 AM UTC
Tuesday’s star lights have been fading
And Fridays have been brutally narcotisized
Monday midnight is reduced to break down lanes
And Sunday suffers from self hate
Wednesday’s tragic dawn is hard up for alibis
And Saturday lacked the capacity to drink the rain
Thirsty Thursday is such a waste of such a pretty face.
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 10:42 PM UTC
Broken heartbeats feel like broken bones.
This soul stripped bare, so naked and alone.
High hopes turned into severed ropes...
Severed ties, bad excuses, and alibis.
Massive contusions and mass confusion...
You're a walking weapon of mass destruction...
A master of illusion.
Intrusion.
Delusion.
Deception.
And so this soul stripped bare,
so naked and alone still sleeps solo.
And for now, I'm ok with that.
Because sometimes broken heartbeats feel like broken bones.
Oct 22, 2010
Oct 22, 2010 at 10:58 PM UTC
———*"that familiar boiling yolk of a sunrise—comas richer than russian dark chocolate— & saturn smoking a cigar while playing chess with gravity... i have been here before."
ocean dove, pardon my excuses for not writing as of late; been busy fulfilling a prophecy that can't even look me in the eye and ask me to change. in the june wreckage of two thousand and sixteen; i retired my tongue with the dormant volcanoes before the world could end in my mouth. and yet my poetry informs me that there are some wounds too sophisticated to even flower into scars—kind of like how my words will never feel like honey again, (but vinegar nonetheless.)
how cruel of me it was; to condemn you to a death without one final cigarette slow dancing with your lungs. i miss the shadows of you most: the belt of venus caged like a wild animal in your eyes, your rusty guitar silky voice dripping off the haunted house we called home, countless a.m. drives kicking up filthy moonlight in the rearview mirror, but most of all—the way you said 'i love you' like it was nothing dressed up in something fashionable.
it is now the june of two thousand and nineteen. this wreckage sat on a throne and filled into the moon's shoes. a crown crawled it's way home to my head and kissed me with knowledge drenched in your name. this queen started from lesson no. 1: broken instruments, will preach broken sounds— and how lovely it has been, planting a world war in my soul only to raise eden in it's stead. i will miss your company, but your ghost is no longer a requirement for me to be complete.
i have learned to stop loving falsehoods. i have learned to start loving the leftovers of who i am becoming. we would have been star crossed lovers had you not tried to swallow that bottle of pills that famous night where we fought like madonnas— but it looks like you got to death's fortune cookie before i did.
"and one day, you will have lived long enough to taste your grief turn bittersweet too"*———
Jun 18, 2019
Jun 18, 2019 at 12:13 AM UTC
My brain is your atomic nuclear warfare paintings
All the while you face-lift X-box babies
Needle-thread we're dead babe don't you make a man crave
For things he can't quite understand but doesn't want to hit the hand.
Severance is fiction in the hands of friction,
****** deviance and erratic disobedience,
Covers the covers like a silk-screen layout
Jack it up and crack it up to be ****** up takeout.
Oh yeah? Well over we're starving ripping pieces off the mountains
Dentistry mythology, who needs a medical degree?
The label on the box said the tape was all in my head
But I don't hear a ******* sound except the fire all around
Grass is misleading and graffiti complaining
The AK is God here and through towns we're raiding
You think you got it so bad this is all the life we ever had
And don't you ever stop by cause our values are just alibis.
Okay, enough! This is all a double feature burger for here or to go
This is all a Catholic preacher in a Red Cross rodeo
Life is an airplane flying overhead carrying passengers with nothing in their heads
And turning all the lights out and pulling all the blinds down so they can't see the truth.
Disguise misguide and everything in between
Have you seen the ***** film with Jenna Haze and Jimmy Dean?
Garden salad, Diet Coke, check now and choke
Give us our bombs so we can run and go and rig the new VOTES.
Let me run it by the city council one more time
We're seeing flying cars and houses of cards and stumbling and tumbling
And rumbling and rumoring the hilarious splinter consumering
Maneuvering, assuming bottles fly with seagull eyes
The trees burn here like candy canes and run in the grass like membranes
Toxic fumes and entrails for reasoning and cold shame
Shudder at the thought of a shutter in a hot fuzz tee shirt worn by the slick insane
Generating heaterpuppy psychologic fragile now, undertow, the fifth row in the theater at the Apollo.
Feb 17, 2011
Feb 17, 2011 at 6:58 PM UTC
Now that I have begun to heal
I do not want to remember
The heartache you made me feel
Those cold days in December
Tonight I am destined to fail
Mind will take me back
The concrete wall surrounding
My fragile heart will crack
Memories will trickle out,
One moment after the other
I will try to make them go away
They're too strong to smother
I have hidden them for far too long
In your quiet presence they awaken
Reminding me that I cannot have
Back pieces you have taken
All this time I have avoided
Mention of your name
Because I will not allow myself
To fall again into your game
Every once in awhile
I forget that you are a liar
It slips my distracted mind how dangerous
It is to play with burning fire
Hear a maybe in my head
Feel a little flicker of what we had
I reminisce about how it once was
Before our relationship went bad
I should know better
I see through your disguise
A master of illusion
You have one billion alibis
So tell me that you have changed
You're sorry you didn't stay
But do not expect me to believe
You're as different as you say
I could not handle all the hurt
Although you bring laughter
Because I finally realize with you
There is no such thing as "happily-ever-after"
Jun 28, 2018
Jun 28, 2018 at 1:18 PM UTC
For God's sake, you got to give more power to the people
There's some people up there hoggin' everything
Tellin' lies, givin' alibis about the peoples, money an' things
An' if they gonna throw it away, might as well give some to me
Yeah, they seen an' heard it but never had misery
There are some people who are starvin' to death
Never knew but only heard 'em an' they never had happiness
If you don't have enough to eat, how can you think of love?
You don't have time to care, so it's crime you're guilty of
For God's sake, you got to give more power to the people
For God's sake, why don't you give more power to the people?
Cut this jive an' see who's got the power to **** the most
When they run out of power, the world's gonna be a ghost
They know we're not satisfied, so we begin to holler
They give us a promise an' throw in a few more dollars
There's no price for happiness, there's no price for love
Up goes the price of livin' an' you're right back where you was
So whatever you got, just be glad you got it
Now we're gonna get on up an' get some more of it
For God's sake, you got to give more power to the people
For God's sake, why don't you give more power to the people?
For God's sake, you got to give more power to the people
For God's sake, why don't you give more power to the people?
For God's sake, you got to give more power to the people
For God's sake, why don't you give more power to the people?
For God's sake, got to have it, more power
For God's sake, got to have it, power, power, power
For God's sake, why don't you give more power to the people?
For God's sake, you better give more power to the people
For God's sake, why don't you try it? Yeah, power, power
For God's sake, can't deny it, no, no, no, power, power
For God's sake, why don't you give more power to the people?
For God's sake, you got to give more power to the people
For God's sake, why don't you give more power to the people?
For God's sake, you got to give more power to the people
For God's sake, why don't you give power, power?
For God's sake, you got to give
Songwriters
RECORD, EUGENE
-The Chi-Lites on Soul train!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSIr5a4L8os
Joss Stone - São Paulo, Credicard Hall, 11/11/2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iyd3Dgi1xY
Aug 28, 2013
Aug 28, 2013 at 10:03 PM UTC