"assed" poems
Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.
But what they don’t know is that depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,
it’s feeling the blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of “Oh, look how beautiful the red is” (they always say red is my color).
Depression is lying on your bed for hours on end, salt tracks lining your face like the scars on your ankles, staring at your ceiling tracing patterns in the paint and accepting death in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.
Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.
Depression is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the pain like a gift because you deserve it.
Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking.
Depression is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear, and then telling you to your face that you have no right to cry, as if sadness is a privilege and you’re so pathetic that you don’t deserve it.
Depression is shutting yourself up in your room and hearing your family laughing downstairs because you feel like you can’t be a part of them and learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love
Depression is wanting to take love and your heart and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves, to throw them away
Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet, is you when you haven’t broken life in, is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.
Depression is wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”
Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.
Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway and when you close the door out of fear it keeps pounding, possessive, ****** and when you open the door out of anger you shout, “I’M SCARED” to thin air but your voice comes out as a whisper.
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 8:34 PM UTC
Falling in love with someone who is bipolar will never be easy.
There will be minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months where I'm unexplainably mean, or recklessly happy.
For a period of time, I may be all over you and want to smother you in my aforementioned reckless happiness, that I will forget to ask how you're doing and if you ate anything today. I will forget that unlike me, you need to sleep for 9 hours a day and that you're not fully ready to take on the world.
At some point, I will take a turn for the worst and will mope in unbelievable sorrow due to the death of my false happiness.
I will cry about everything and will stop calling, and forget to remind you that I love you so much and just need some time away.
My deep sadness will soon turn into unrelenting anger and I will tell you abusive things that I don't really mean.
I will be confused as to why I say them, and apologize a million times and try to explain that I can't control my anger, and that I need to leave and be away from people for a while, although I know nothing will really help.
You will insist that it's okay and tell me you love me.
For days, weeks, or months, I will do this, and you will soon think I am lying and think that I am just genuinely terrible.
My constant apologies will become nothing and you will soon distance yourself and start falling out of love, but still have a glimmer of hope.
After this episode, I will have a period where I feel nothing and am almost robot-like. You will feel unwanted and unloved and look at me with such sad eyes and get nothing but a shrug and a half-assed "sorry."
When you finally walk away, I will have more bad days than good days because I will regret not saying I love you more.
I will hate myself for being bipolar. I will fall back into my bad habits and soon you will be a distant memory.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 10:50 AM UTC
I’m sick of hearing my life’s a haiku.
I’m into magic, love, and other sorts of things that are typically voodoo.
I’m half ***** from a half assed absent African baby boomer brat.
I’m half white trash.
Here’s a well formed of dried tears turned into something to sooth my canine teeth.
It tastes like Moonshine.
I can’t swim anymore, so I’m here drowning in a concrete pool.
Always, I look for the hell in you.
I sharpen my boot knife for ****** assault protection.
The first swipes for the plus 200,000 in counting.
The seconds for the 66 percent underreported.
The lasts for me,
the 29 percent victims aged 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, and 12.
We have a higher rate of risking everything.
For depression x3.
For committing suicide x4.
For post traumatic stress disorder x6.
For alcohol abuse x13.
For drug abuse x26.
You all think I’m crazy,
I’m not.
I sometimes get called
stupid, ugly, ***** and thot.
I’m in pain, in sorrow.
I can’t help it.
He did it.
No one can undo it.
What do we do about it?
I wont scream, I won't cry.
I’ll ask how he’s doing with glitter and tears in the corner of my eye.
And after he's done molesting me,
"Want to go grab some coffee or tea?"
Personally, I like the cafe down the street.
They sell good brunch with amazing croissants.
And after this is over,
I’d ask him how it was while he turned me over.
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 12:11 PM UTC
You fell asleep before I even got my bra off
Giving me a B for half-assed, dreaded, and deadened effort
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 12:45 AM UTC
My my, what a special little snowflake.
Why did you choose to be this way?
You chose to be different, you chose to rebel.
No binary for me!
You chose the grief, the pain.
You chose this abuse, bruised by
the verbal ferociousness, forged by physical fallacies
To be thrown out of bathrooms
because doing your business in the bathroom is abysmal.
You chose to be derided by decisive discrimination.
You chose to be murdered by misconceptions,
***** by ridiculous requirements.
You chose to be beaten, assaulted.
You chose the words I weave to weaken your will.
You chose the sacred sermons I spit at you.
You chose to be
What I find disgusting, despicable
because you chose to be what you aren't,
but I realize what I really regard you to be.
My my, what a special little bigot.
You think I chose to be this way?
You think
I chose the injuring, injustice,
the jester, the joke
the target, tortured,
This pain, my poison,
the prey, praying,
the sinner of sins so bittersweet,
So I could be "special"?
Special isn't a sacrifice of physical self
Nor the gunshots and gruesome grief
Nor even the crass comfort of a half-assed comrade.
You think I CHOSE this,
and you didn't choose
to spit and spew your sour speeches
to disperse your disgust in discrimination
to integrate your ignorance into my existence.
Or did you not choose
to deal the abuse
by your hand
yourself?
My special little bigot,
You live as you are.
So be it, if I am so "special", the special little snowflake.
Yes, we are the little snowflakes that your palm's presence melts away,
And you're that burning persistence of life
Blocking with your own self our slow, wistful descent,
As if it were futility and not of your own will.
If I am the snowflake, you are the fire.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 8:42 PM UTC
.
A hard-on
doesn't count
as personal gro
wth.If you want
to hear the pitte
r - patter of littl
e feet, I'll put s
hoes on my cat.
This isn't an off
ice , it's hell wit
h florescent lig
hting.How do I
set a lazer prin
ter to stun? I m
ajored in Libera
l arts. Will that
be for here or t
o go? Too many
freaks, not eno
ugh circuses. I
have a comput
er, a ******** a
nd pizza delive
ry .Why should
I leave the hou
se? Stress is wh en you wake up scr
eaming and you re alize you haven't fal
*** asleep yet. I like dogs too . Let's exch
ange recipes. And yo u r c r y b a b y
whiny- assed o pinion is? Al
low me to intro duce my selves.
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC
Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,
Blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of “Oh, look how beautiful the red is”
(everyone always says red is my color).
Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars, cutting on ankles, not wrists because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble but you so desperately need to be seen, and never are.
Depression is accepting ruin in life with this hole in your chest because death is a reward, an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.
It is writing the word “alone” and seeing the word “home”, accepting the torment like a gift because you’ve earned it.
Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people, and loving the broken things, hoping to tie them together, thinking maybe things will get better, but knowing that’s just wishful thinking because
Depression is tying yourself together with the severed nerves in your heart;
It is rope, it is ribbon, it is thread, it is DNA;
It is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting through the too-thin walls of your door when she thinks you can’t hear,
And depression is sadness being a privilege you’re too pathetic to have.
It is a hug, a freezing touch, a reminder that
Depression is being birthed a lie.
And it is shutting yourself behind that wooden doorway
And hearing your family laugh like cackling hyenas,
Eating at your self esteem like softened prey
And learning at a young age to love family always but that family isn’t always love because
Depression is family.
It is an unfurnished home,
An empty frame,
A foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet,
you when life hasn't been broken in yet,
Seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same, like the front covers of magazines with grins reaching their eyes while yours can’t, and wishing you could package your smiles into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of “I’m fine”
Depression is having to view your past as if it wasn’t yours, because to accept it as reality is to accept finality of your life through suicide.
It is the note masked inside of a poem,
Envisioning pills as if they were peace,
Depression is the last stanza,
It is the audience,
It is this microphone,
It is me standing in a room full of strangers
And for the first time finally feeling like I'm being heard.
Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway that keeps pounding, possessive, ****** but when you open the door out of anger and shout “I’M SCARED” to thin air, your voice comes out as a whisper.
And silently, the figure replies;
“I know your favorite color.”
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 8:04 PM UTC
Everyone talks about depression as if they know it.
But what they don’t know
is that depression is a hooded figure standing just outside of a wooden doorway,
it’s feeling the blood dripping down your skin and having the sick thought of
“Oh, look how beautiful the red is”
Depression is lying on your bed for hours on end,
salt tracks lining your face like the scars on your ankles,
staring at your ceiling
tracing patterns in the paint and accepting death in life with this hole in your chest
because death is a reward,
an escape from this pain you deserve to feel.
Depression is writing sick poetry on skin and publishing it with scars,
cutting on ankles,
not wrists
because you’re scared you’ll get in trouble
but you so desperately need to be seen,
and never are.
Depression is writing the word “alone”
and seeing the word
“home”,
accepting the pain like a gift because you deserve it.
Depression is admitting suicidal thoughts to paper and not to people,
and loving the broken things,
hoping to tie them together,
thinking maybe things will get better,
but knowing that’s just wishful thinking.
Depression is hearing your mother call you monster and disgusting
through the too-thin walls of your door
when she thinks you can’t hear,
and then telling you to your face that you have no right to cry,
as if sadness is a privilege and you’re so pathetic that you don’t deserve it.
Depression is shutting yourself up in your room
and hearing your family laughing downstairs
because you feel like you can’t be a part of them
and learning at a young age to love family always
but that family isn’t always love
Depression is wanting to take
love and your heart
and break them into tiny little pieces and throw them into waves,
to throw them away
Depression is a foot when the shoe hasn’t been broken in yet,
is when you haven’t broken life in,
is seeing happy people and thinking they all look the same,
like the front covers of magazines
with smiles reaching their eyes when yours can’t.
Depression is wishing you could package your smiles
into tiny little piles and hand them to people more deserving of them
because you know you’re wasting them with half-assed lines of
“I’m fine.”
Depression is having to view your past
as if it wasn’t yours.
Depression is a hooded figure standing just outside
of a wooden doorway
and when you close the door out of fear
it keeps pounding,
possessive,
******
and when you open the door out of anger you shout,
“I’M SCARED”
to thin air
but your voice comes out as a whisper.
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 11:01 PM UTC
It was supposed to be
The dawn of a new age;
A new set of dialogue
On a more balanced stage
With better lines for
The actors to deliver.
It was supposed to start in
The sixties and last forever.
We didn’t really know for sure
What this Aquarius stuff was
But it seemed to us to be
A metaphysical enough cause,
To change the way we acted
And to shout down the rest;
To face the demagogues
Then put them to the test.
We stopped wearing uniforms
That said we went along
With the hard-assed leaders.
We put a lot of it in our songs.
We called them what they were
Greedy warmongering ******
We protested and picketed
And promised so much more.
We spoke out loudly on TV
And in crowds in the streets
That we were through will genocide
And would not accept defeat.
We cried out that our government
Had assumed the role of villain
And was murdering for no reason
Not just men, but even children.
But, we let it all die down;
We let the government slide
On investigating the truth
And keeping the truth inside
A carefully chosen batch of
Criminals in public office.
We let them go on making war
And making money off us.
We let them cheat and lie
And re-write acceptable laws
To support their bloodthirstiness
And we gave up on our cause.
Maybe all that protesting gave
All our marching feet limps.
Or maybe it’s because all along
We were just a bunch of wimps.
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 9:38 PM UTC
On the curvy shoulder of my (i want to say, girl but
know that offends her) presently both of us red-eyed
looking so un-real on this back-assed country
road with only shoes for transporting
a long way from being home
smiling all the while
hitting it again
smoke arounds her green red eyes slitted
baby, I cry, as we walk again,
Are you my girl?
She keeps walking.
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 10:57 PM UTC
My friend and I talk about it
Neighborhood got decimated this year
One after another the corners of community are gone
We touch the elder memories
as one might touch a head in blessing
as loved ones pass
We linger longest over John
Found dead after ten hot days
by other-worldly hazmat crew
flanked by cruisers
with their special, yellow truck
and zipper bags
...found 'im
glasses folded neatly on the night stand
in his jammies
all tucked into bed
No one thought it strange
that strange young guy would die
already decomposing in his head
Lost
among his personal effects
his fleet of rusting cars
and half-assed projects
Deck tacked to garage
his herds of “pets”
Easy to pretend he wasn't really there
between jail stints or some imagined threat or theft
of crap
haunted by the shadows of his persecutors
caught in motion lights
and cameras' blinding evidence of
jungle-jumble and malfunctioning alarms
going off in the wind
Everyone's out to get his stuff
We could dismiss him--
mostly
sorta
...except for times
he mowed his grass at night
or hand-built “the lunatic tower”
just for mom
from scavenged scraps and
hammered hours
power-sawed
through the housing codes
and horror
of the neighbors...
...Such a special spectacle...
******* crazy-- John!
He was enough for one day at a time
like when
he flung that threatening bolder
on bilco doors
for percussive effect
"Get off my fuckin' property!”
(not using his “inside voice")
“Next time, that'll be your head!!
He announces his intent
to not get mad, behave himself
to call the cops on me instead
Fake-dialing
While his mother screams in dread
“John is off his meds!”
My phone is set to speed dial
911
____
“How did we miss this?
How did we not miss him those quiet days?”
How we miss him now
How quiet
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 4:18 PM UTC
I want more than a broken town with cracked windows and broken locks.
I want more than these broken promises and half assed excuses.
I want more than sunless mornings and moonless nights.
I want to finally wake up.
Wake up with you again.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 5:31 PM UTC
Have you known the winter days?
Late February falls like frigid snow
Merciless undertow
Of evergreen and alpenglow
And grey ground pavement walking
Like Grocery shopping
and weak chai tea
Moonlengths from all family
And surrounded like strawbury temptation,
Late night lamp light contemplation
And drowsy-dampened mornings
Grey glaze of diluted boring
Spattered over every orifice
Charcoal eyes, platonic kiss.
Pull your bow to shoot and miss
Tell me all this is is what it is
And I will tell you, “okay”
(but you know this isn’t what I wanted)
Hide the roadsigns
Blur the guidelines
This is how I love you
Have you known the winter days?
Late February fell like fire on hell
And shook me from my sleep
Ashes cover snow-banked heaps of rubble
I slice my wrist on the sharpened stubble
Of your half-assed beard
(this is how I bleed my dear)
This is how I bear my soul
******* smile
And dominoes
Carnation cults
And buried bones
(This is how I build your throne)
Hide the gravestones
Burn the rainbows
This is how I love you.
And have you known the winter days?
Late February fallen like Lucifer to the underworld
We both knew I wasn’t altogether that typeof girl
But we pretended anyways
Alcoholic halo haze
And foreign intervention
Of somewhat insidious intention
And the legitimate logistical question
That defined our discourse on fear
(this is how I think my dear)
This is how I speak my mind
All that grey
Those missing roadsigns
Smoke and soot and
Blurry guidelines
And Gravestones gone
And rainbows ash
(and we are never coming back)
This.
This is how I love you.
Mar 4, 2015
Mar 4, 2015 at 11:43 AM UTC
My Sweet Spaceman
where are you now?
Trying to see between
those little glows
that speckle the sky;
similar to those
no longer in your eyes?
I just want to see
the world in which you're lost,
so take me please,
I'll pay the cost;
I'm sure it's less
than the price I pay
for the half-assed smile
you gave today;
I miss you babe,
it's been too long,
so let me save you
from this wrong,
because believe me when I say
I'm alone in this crowded room
while you run around the moon.
And you said you never wanted to be an astronaut
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 12:52 AM UTC
I’m not quite sure, yet everything I do
appears to me as being viciously half-assed
yet sincere.
I write this mid-winter [I guess?] on the RTA
with twenty dollars on me and I don’t want to know
in the bank, with cold feet, both literally and metaphorically.
The future looks decent from a distance in bar light.
As I feign some resemblance of being classy and
collect more sodium on my footwear,
I ponder the passing of an officer who flashed a light
to look at me in the dark on my way from home.
It makes me glad I speak English, where there
are such hard, sharp and unsympathetic undertones
to phrases like, **** off”.
It’s dark on the way through Cleveland.
Try to stay warm.
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 6:22 PM UTC
it was suggested
that there be no nexus
between texas and your pal-
omino - tagging the alamo, **
en el barrio, yo(u)-
and your gringa homecoming
queen in tight-assed jeans
-running with ms-13?
-playing twister with your hipster
sisters misters smith & wesson
oiled up and and ready to go
- new mexico?
i found you in tres piedras
at a place called ortega's
eating huevos rancheros
- shooting jose cuervo?
-muthafucka mara salvatruchas
in a red camaro and two bruthas
on a burro with bow and arrows
-stole your palomino?
*-they shoot horses
don't they?*
riding the black el camino
-on the blue mesa.
r ~ 9/30/14
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 6:08 PM UTC
There’s something about you that
makes me want to write
bad poetry
and half-assed short stories.
Something about you that
makes me want to take all my
unspoken words and turn them
into something beautiful,
something worthwhile.
You make me want to be an artist
like Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath;
you make me want to create.
Maybe it’s that blue wave
that crashes down like
an incoming tide on the beach—
your eyes
when you look at me in
a certain way, in
a certain light.
Or maybe it’s
the way that you say
my name and then say all
those horrible things that make
me want to rip something
open.
Those words that rip me open.
You make beautiful stanzas get stuck in my
head like lyrics to a bad pop song;
I can’t erase them and the
only way I can think of to cope with it
is to write them down like a schoolgirl
with a well worn diary.
I think I might as well have hypergraphia.
I am an unprofessional
medical doctor with
a pen, paper, and
Word Document
suffering from a form of
verbal ***** because I
can’t possibly think of a way to
speak my mind.
I think I would make a very good mute.
I wish I lacked a voice box
because then I wouldn’t have to
be the one that has to
say all the right, comforting things
at the all the right times
and all the right places.
Sometimes it feels as if I’m
being eaten from the inside out
by some sort of paratrophic organism
that sits atop my frontal lobe and
dictates my life and fluctuates my
anxiety and I can’t even think about
some things anymore because of this
nervous clench I get in my gut when
I let my thoughts get too jumbled.
But you—you make me want to write
the most heartfelt and sappy sentences
and you make me want to
be more than just ordinary.
You make me want to be extraordinary.
I guess that what I’m writing is
an apology in the shape of
a few stanzas and a few metaphors.
And this is an “I forgive you” for that night
that we spent outside your house
arguing over the stupidest of things,
so stupid that I can hardly
remember a single word I said to you.
Nothing gratifying is ever
painless to obtain
and I want to be a fighter like
Hercules or Alexander the Great.
I want to be extraordinary with you.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 11:56 PM UTC
you are essentially an object to me.
no one dare invent words that pick and **** and litter our ears
with shards of doubt, dismissive declarations.
the victorious are those who cover their ears and screen their eyes from
someone else's misery: bruised knuckles and a wall that wouldn't budge.
but all I see is a woman crumpled on the floor, her pride
posed like a crow on a branch in the open window frame,
mocking her failing strength and shattered resolve;
someone's fist tingles with accomplishment
for putting that Thing in her place,
close to her true place,
on the shelf
she dusts and polishes fastidiously,
lest he call her out on her "half-assed attempt,"
no one dare invent words
that limit little girls to the plastic boxes
for their plastic dolls
with plastic smiles.
when the seed grows buds,
that become flourishing leaves on a solid stem,
reaching up, up, up
can they see me yet?
but all they want is the fruit.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 2:34 PM UTC
You don't understand how I hurt
You can't know the pain you caused
When I even think of you
My very insides boil
How can you influence me so?
How I view myself
I look in the mirror and see
The wrath of your actions
I throw out a half assed smile
You don't understand how I hurt
Deep, hot, throbbing pain
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 12:41 PM UTC
she was young
and had struggled all her life
like a cursed devil doll
with the darkest impulses
pain was ***
*** was pleasure
and death she thought
oh wow thats an ******
while her little girl friends
all
may berry kittens and sunshine
screamed in terror
at the horror films
like minced mice in cleavers
she thrilled to the part
where little innocent
katty bratty blondy
got it hard and ******
with an ice pick in the belly
and then stumbled
around
waring her surprise face
blink-less
trailing blood
finally getting to the ice box
pulling out her last
ice cream on a stick
and while eating it
fell head first into the cooler
dead
she thrilled witnessing
the girl poked through
like butter
by a guy with eyes
like spider bites
in a jet black
motor cycle jacket
and electric bolt tattoos on his face
all blond
duck assed
jelled like filigree in
wild root cream hair tonic
she imagined his ****
pink longish arterial
a real throat gager
she, helpless, sacrificial
and oh so willing
being murdered by a boy
who loved her that way
his **** a
a piercing blade
the very death of her
her little hot pink ***** *******
a gooey cauldron
of drooling tears splatter
she thought
how can any body want this
Oh but i do
*** yes please
Aug 18, 2016
Aug 18, 2016 at 6:32 PM UTC
What the Tide Knows
—a Sestina of one night shared with our sister moon
Night’s first blush leans low against the tide
that licks the sand; moonlight unhooks the darker seams of our skin.
The air stings sweet, crystalline breath of salt.
A feral moon, she leans close—silent, luminous, wet.
Her ******* dip the water; the water dips us—oh…slow pull
after slow pull—silk unraveling into constellations—we are, at last, bare
bare-foot, bare-hearted, bare-assed—every hush of fear laid bare;
satin chill a caress, sliding up shins, over knees, exploring the secret tide.
Between us, dampness trembles—a harp-chord plucked across our skin;
notes of brine flare and fade in the hush of moonlit salt
Desire itself echoes each pull she tightens—loosens—tightens again in the moon’s slow, intimate pull.
Night after night we bend to nature’s lust—its intimate pull
a deep, slow kiss—honey for dreams, our spirits once more bare
on a starlit shore that forgets and remembers the faithful tide
that knows each breast, each soft fold of skin
until our footprints shimmer, then vanish in a tidal pool of salt
while water’s slow tempo keeps time beneath our same bare-breasted, sister moon
Brine prisms drip between our thighs—soft, shimmering salt
as we sink into sand—breasts and breath—utterly bare;
above us, the hush of waves keeps time with the tide
while our sister, the ****** moon, unbuttons herself—O luminous moon,
her silver hand wandering, circling, stroking her own pale skin,
her gasps spilling down to embrace us oh so tight into one, shuddering, pull
Dawn’s silk-white wraps moon-bruised ******* gathering the last flecks of salt
that cling to lips—a hush of spent sighs riding every slow pull
of breath. Ocean-wet, sunrise-warmed, we rise wholly bare
beneath a sky tinted with our spent, satisfied sister moon,
and wade until cries of ecstasy between waves swell, matching the tide
washing footprints, sand, and shy shimmers from our glistening skin.
We become as one, a shared pulse—wave after wave pressing into skin,
A sousing of honey and ocean on lips—sweet with salt,
as night’s last breaker swells, arches, cups—one unquenchable pull
before it raptures. We bloom wide, throats singing, utterly bare
of nothing but vision of her white-hot spasm, our sister moon,
dragging us under—flinging us back—gasping—embraced by the heaving tide
O sister moon,
embrace our last slow tide,
your gentle hand forever filling our dreams, forever caressing our skin
Sep 1, 2025
Sep 1, 2025 at 6:01 PM UTC
No, no, I haven’t been doing this myself,
but I live in Cambodia,
and 2 guys and a girl were deported recently
for riding around on a motorbike in the ****
in broad daylight. Actually, you see,
naively or deliberately,
they rode right past a police station.
Now that must have been a sight for sore eyes.
So the police set out in hot pursuit,
rubbing their sore eyes, or whatever they rub,
maybe their truncheons, eh?
And when the perps were pulled over,
the cops didn’t fall about with hilarity
when these riders said quite calmly
that they were going to pick up their laundry.
Truly! They were backpackers! As if that explained it.
But publicly, the cops said nope,
these perps are obscene to be seen like this
and they violate Khmer customs and culture.
The cops even took pictures of this outrageous obscenity.
Indeed. The riders' rapture of being bare assed
and naked and **** free is not for Cambodia.
Certainly not at this juncture.
So their capture resulted in them being deported,
never to show hide nor hair in the country again.
Just goes to show...
But you can get away with ****** here,
particularly shooting union leaders or critics or protestors,
or you can throw a grenade into the opposition,
and **** a few right there. Those killers go free.
It's probably dangerous to speak openly,
but I don't think these guys read poetry.
They're probably busy oiling their artillery,
and even rocket launchers, as the PM
threatened to use against the opposition recently.
Seriously.
They're on the lookout for dissenters here.
Oh yes. And bare ***** Obviously.
So watch you **** in Cambodia,
especially if it's bare on a bike.
And ssshhh! Watch out for your mouth.
You need to cover your mouth up properly, too.
Mike T Minehan
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 5:01 AM UTC
Sometimes it seems like I'm not sad enough
About the fact that I've never seen a passenger pigeon,
So I tried to write a poem about one
"The bird that's lost from the skies,
I wish I didn't have to see the smog behind your wings"
But I couldn't conceal from myself
That the effort was half-assed.
And I knew that if I wrote one more line,
The pigeon wouldn't really be a pigeon anymore.
I know I'm wasting too much energy
And pumping too much gas into the air.
Even though I drive for hours I'm always
Just one minute from home,
Trying desperately to fall out of love with the idea of being in love.
The real sadness hasn't been in love though. Not in the illusion
Nor the loss thereof,
But in circling around the block again and again.
And in failing to write a poem
About that passenger pigeon.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 11:24 PM UTC
I have half assed memories
of mostly slurred words,
tempting me
with the curious thought:
how strange is it that our biggest fears
are centered largely
around others.
How ironic.
The sober neglect this,
But
In whisky kissed souls
these truths
cling deep.
Dec 13, 2017
Dec 13, 2017 at 10:29 PM UTC
I know this foreign method
made my throbbing veins its home
'cuz the familiar's not familiar
and I'm not fine
lest I'm messed up on
wine.
And 9/10 of all the times
I've tried to crack a smile
since I lost you have
turned out as half-assed lies.
I wander streets, worn out,
while I wonder where you are
and what you're thinking about while
you drive down Henderson...
I'll try to dry out
from time to time
but fall back into bouts
internal I'm interred in
eternally--and I'll never win them.
I'll. Never. Win them.
Not without...
Sorry...
I meander through months while
you walk through my mind
--and I'm glad if you're happy?--
but you were quite angry
with me that night I took
and torched our collection
of 5 years' shared memories
QUITE ANGRY
with me.
And the things you said were mean
but you meant them.
And you were right
About how wrong I was
how bad I am,
and how I taste
like lemon lies
on the tongue.
You were right.
And I'm drunk.
And sad and sorry and selfish
and stupid and absorbed by a
salted skyline of cold, purple steel
every night.
It *****
You teach kids for a living,
about the age of 9.
Me? I try to dry out
now and then, time to time,
but it's hard.
And you're far.
And I'd still come if I could,
but it's hard
following this heart
when it's buried
at the confluence
of the Red and Assiniboine
Rivers.
Beneath The Forks...
And that heart? Like the ground above it,
it's covered
with ****** commercial architecture
and the clothing of bureaucracy,
but ****
we had fun there.
Didn't we...?
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 1:47 PM UTC