"atrophied" poems
I’ve finally stopped
writing
unrequited letters;
there were too many
wasted breaths
left unsent
Lapsing intentions
befallen on timeworn
tawny crumpled pages;
aging like spent flowers
in fading earth tones
and rumpled paper regrets
Multi-hued words uttered—
mummers of voiceless exhalations
spoken without a sound;
indelible spilled ink
left behind,
lays fallow for so long
A love once new, and
a growing silent ache—
a hungry heart
left for dead—Déjà vu
We leave a lot behind,
fallen leaves in unspoken ink
a restless soul laid bare
by a passing moment's
random gust;
atrophied
like unwritten poetry
stifled stillborn
in a wadded up paper lament
jesse stillwater ... July 2018
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 11:28 AM UTC
¤¤¤
I've had dreams by day
That brought the nightmares back.
In the daylights exposure it was dark
When the negative light was bright.
In the sea of people
I was the floating remains
Of a Great White's meal.
On the lonely roads of thought
My mind was in gridlock.
Comforting memories were suspended
Over a psychic black hole
By jagged and rusted
Medieval-type surgical tools.
My remaining senses
Were nailed to a cross-section
Of psychically atrophied grey matter
Along neural pathways
Guarded by gladiator-type tormentors.
Left with nothing
But the stinging desire to be freed
From a curse that had to be cured
And the hell of searching for a cure
When I was convinced there wasn’t one.
The powers that be come with force
To quell primal lusts & desires
Forbidding you of them
As they seductively
Dangle them before your eyes
Until you are so frustrated and unfulfilled
That you no longer
Care for your world.
This cracked glass remains empty
Even though it is constantly being filled
Then spilled or leaked on the floor
Until you learn to lap it up
Like the lapdog that you have become
For their amusement.
You remain with a love for freedom
But your cage is so large
That you think you are free
Lost in societal fantasy.
You think for a while
That these fantasies are real
Until you come to your senses that aren’t
As you join other fools
In comfort that you're not the only
Broken-back pack-mule.
But in spite of it all
And in the face of them all
Don't let these birds of prey
And powers that be
Deprive you of what they
cannot see
In that hidden corner
Of what is still untouched--
The real you
Uninfected by the world.
Take care of your spiritual affairs.
Don't let the global beast
And your primal hissing forces
Make you be your own pallbearer.
Jun 27, 2017
Jun 27, 2017 at 6:28 PM UTC
I'm sorry, my sweet
But the dolphins don't swim anymore
They just float on the surface
Of the cruel, tempting ocean
And wait for the waves to move them
Oh, no! They aren't dead!
Don't be absurd
They're just lethargic
Atrophied
And gathering ocean dust
Since Ahab drowned
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 5:10 AM UTC
I've been using crutches ever since I was small.
It used to be my parents when I would fall.
Lacking the strength or knowledge to stand on my own,
they would lead me
teach me
support this insecure child.
I've been using crutches ever since I was small.
A shot of ******* another sip of alcohol.
Liquid courage to face the day,
flexing my beer muscles for the ladies
my true self atrophied from years of inactivity.
I've been using crutches ever since I was small.
With my crutches gone, it's time for me to stand tall.
I've worn out every crutch
under the ballooning weight of my insecurity
and now with wobbly legs and unsure steps,
I must learn to stand on my own.
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 9:26 PM UTC
I saw the sun steep
into the seascape ―
lonely as a drowning
wave
on still-waters
the dimming of the day
rescinding evanescent daylight .
fading with the slack tide
lost at sea ―
a gloaming moment
let fall from
the remains of the day,
like some other passing
sea bird's molted feather
drifts away untamed
I sit silent as the driftwood
lingering at the watermark,
watching a random gust
erase the footprints
of another recurring day,
bearing abandoned memories
and vacant heartbeats,
atrophied in the drifting sands
and I see you walking
towards the abating
midnight sunset ―
but I know
you're just a mirage;
like the dimming afterglow
of so many waning moons
elapsed
ever-changing tides grow low
and promises made lightly
do ebb away
Scanning the distant horizon ―
a blindfold heart
mooning all at sea;
parsing a deserted shoreline,
wondering if love
is too late ,..
to stem the tide ―
harlon rivers
30 May 2018
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 12:59 PM UTC
i went into absorption for months...
upon returning to words i found
they had atrophied--like spotting an
ant through a keyhole.
they came so sparely, one by one...
wondering why i wished to violate
the silence that so blessed me.
so they sat next to one another in
lotus position, and poems were emanated.
they became more and more voluminous,
to the point of daily.
as if being summoned by a spell...slowly
poured into a glass and spilled into a pair
of lips.
to be reabsorbed by her mouth.
Jul 18, 2018
Jul 18, 2018 at 12:11 PM UTC
Those sleepless summer nights
Sweat pouring from every crack
In thinly layered sunburnt skins
It was all panties-on-the-floor
Blood-on-the-sheets
And *******
Living out highschool fantasies
Like the cool kids
Life before 22 was all a dream
Of midsummer swelter and
Salt water
In the mind of the dog
Chained up in the universe's yard
Tethered to the ether world
Racing rabbits through space
While I was turned into an ***
Staring at the mirror
And my expressionless face
*This must be how cancer feels
Growing increasingly smaller
In a world where cabinets
And aspirations grow increasingly taller
She met the devil
For coffee on diagnosis day
But the deal they made didn't take
Her hair fell out
And her body atrophied anyway
She found herself
Floating far far away
Her blood coagulating like
A broken thermometer
Of mercury*
Salvador Dali painted this fall
The house of salvatore
Minds gone to roost under warm eaves
Staring fireplaces
Hungry couches and singing windows
It's all ******* drooping like clocks
And derailing thoughts
The local biddies
Cluck their tongues
At the absurdity of infinity
And the girl in Ace Hardware
Buying shoepolish to hide her tan lines
Yawns, as her boyfriend feels her up
*Meanwhile I collapse
Like a house of cards with a flick of the wrist
Thinking about life's mathematical beauty*
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 6:11 PM UTC
There's a Sofa in my kitchen
and a Bread-bin in the lounge-
the missus won't stop *******
and the kids are on the scrounge.
the atmosphere is thick with queer
Simon Cowells on the telly,
Tom Jones's bones are
th' microphones n
his bowels are
Ooozzing smelly.
through atrophied
arseholes who choose
between iconicity
n the domesticity blues.
There's a Sofa in my kitchen
and a Bread-bin in the lounge
the missus won't stop *******
and the kids - are on the scrounge.
May 7, 2012
May 7, 2012 at 2:41 AM UTC
Watching smoke curl in the sky
A simmer reflection, a residue of death stealing life
The scent of sweet burning arrives
Between breaths misting predawn light
A womb collects dead children
We hear them shrink and shiver
Their limbs atrophied, their eyes wide
Every kiss is wildfire
Every yearning is weathered
Like the shedding paint on the boards outside
That needed a touchup, a lifetime ago
Every touch is parched
Every trust is dystopian
The flesh departs from neuronal collections
Untraceable to the heart inside
No daughters, no sons
No lovers, no love
No affection, connection; truth or simple trust
No daughters, no sons
No lovers, no love
No future
No hope
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 1:24 AM UTC
Scanning from the ground upward over my torso
Reveals an disturbing inventory of dysfunction
brachymetatarsia, in both feet!
Unequal leg length
Reconditioned knees
Atrophied right quadriceps
Hernia Scar
L4 & L5 Vertebrae way too chummy
Are these *******
Are these jowls?
Gum recession
Moderate gastro intestinal reflux
Three diopter challenge in both eyes
Dermatochelassis, left and right
Scintillating scotoma
Male pattern baldness – rear solar panel developing.
And yet when asked
I reply, Oh, I’m fine! I’m fine.
And you, and you, still love me.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 12:53 AM UTC
a pale neurology
within
pale iron gates
painted in pallid shades
of steel, gold and myrrh.
locked within recursive delusions of grandeur
like granite, horizontal and brittle
snapping within their multiplicities
lost within blindness' entangled waves.
drowning at the cusps of its own banality:
vacant plasticity
homeomorphic sludge
betraying nothing
of the mystified real
but an idempotent of
projected projections,
of a recursively flickering reel,
an echo-chamber,
of pale
gated communities.
aether.
flesh.
bronze.
iron.
silver.
gold.
gold.
ink.
(tape)
flesh.
silicon.
pale.
pale.
ether,
aether
(void)
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 7:57 AM UTC
The white dove has been
symbolic of abstract things.
I ask it to fly
far, put muscle on its wings.
Until recently the dove
atrophied inside
the skull. Now I’ve forced it out,
favoring strong emblems,
images too pure for doubt:
The Ark, the raven, the dove.
The raven flew the globe
but found no carrion worm.
Because of instinct
it was unable to confirm
any paradigm or thought.
Next the dove took flight
and, though it failed at first,
found a concrete
symbol to quench the parched Ark’s thirst:
one lonely olive leaf.
But even olive leaf
allows interpretation.
Each stronger symbol
creates its complication:
the skull, the Ark, leaf and bird.
Aug 11, 2012
Aug 11, 2012 at 7:12 PM UTC
The daydream-y miss gazes out the
watchtower of enchantment,
heart atrophied,
neck bound in a Gordian Knot,
riding nautical swells of
fear and love that
ebb and flow in
cursed duality
Calling to the cavalry trouper in
subdued hysterics
who, in an oceanic barrel surge,
will sever her lasso collar and
rebind their anchor hearts in
blood knots,
ascending the ranks, he will earn the
highest standing stripes of
Strength, Honour, and Equanimity
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 2:23 PM UTC
My heart condemned to a cell
became so shrunken by disuse
All my lovely things
shoved to a corner
near a radiator
for its rhythm, right, and heat
Crushed by all the useless rules
reigned down from The Above
proclaiming—
"Certainty!"
of “what should be.”
My heart was never made for such a small space
But now—
atrophied and bowed by fear
prison garb seems comfortable
I don't think too much of hope or love in here
Too wary and too tired
to defend the right or wrong of it—or me
The sentence: so much more than I could bear:
“Life of Loneliness
no parole"
It’s good I didn’t hear the words
I would’ve died of grief
But all those years—
I served!
____
I wipe my eyes on the reprieve
Spent some time—
on my release
in cold gusts by the shore
where there’s room-- so finally
to breathe
Lifted my eyes into
the risk of clouds
the withered sun
If wind and sorrow
share the tears
that have returned
I figure...
so can we...
...share love
in a large room
knocking down guilt’s darkest walls
where souls make jails to keep from getting free
...Let them find each other there
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 5:24 AM UTC
Those words are now meaningless
compared to what you mean to me.
Where I thought that there was no way to feel deeper,
you prove me wrong.
I am ice
and you were the cool breeze
that keeps me from melting and evaporating away.
No four letter-word could ever measure against you.
I was eating cigarettes for breakfast;
now I subsist only on the health of you.
I was dreaming of the day
I was born,
strangling on an umbilical noose;
you have slid your pink life-giving cord into my navel.
I was writing my suicide note,
but you came and lit it aflame,
blew away the embers,
wrote a story with a happy ending.
I dangled, atrophied, off of an edge,
my chalk-outline superimposed over the gaping black.
Your hair, strands of raven steel,
snaked their way through my fingers,
held me long enough for you
to pull me back.
You held my hand,
guided the crayon it held.
Where I saw only a blank
page, you showed
where the lines were and created
a piece of art beyond
anything the world has ever seen.
You are my life-support system,
Holly,
and without you,
I wouldn't be writing this.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 3:50 AM UTC
There goes my mind, snapping like an elastic lifeline
over a sea of daggers.
Waiting on words like waiting on fuses
to be no more, in hopes the explosion won't **** my so-called pride.
...Whatever is left of it.
This isn't the first time.
Knowing my luck, it won't be the last time my hope relied on the sympathies of a bomb.
And wouldn't you know that bombs are unsympathetic?
I'm wasting away here, as I have been for years.
Enduring bombardments with every day, more and more of myself blown away.
I just hope when my day comes, I'm not too damaged.
...If my day comes.
...Will it come?
My heart: already nearly gone.
My face: atrophied to deaden all emotion.
Am I worth anything anymore?
So much blasted away,
day after day,
I only recognize myself
by my scars,
the craters,
like torn earth.
May 16, 2010
May 16, 2010 at 3:05 PM UTC
The depictions of
the gods are headless.
The pillars have crumbled.
The spirit has atrophied
and the wonder has gone.
No longer for Dionysus,
a temple to Aion.
Profaned by order and rule,
rigidity takes the place of passion.
In the name of culture,
the wealthy get wealthier.
No longer for Dionysus,
a temple to Plutus.
Blind to what is before them,
passerby’s idolize themselves.
The ancient amphitheater;
a backdrop for plastic portraits.
No longer for Dionysus,
a temple to Narcissus.
Power shifts in the modern age.
Worship changes form.
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017 at 3:58 PM UTC
#**she hides her sadness with
chemicals and the next
John
Doe
between her thighs and her
painted smile
evidence of last night stained
on the
sheets she wears around
her atrophied heart
as she carves another vaporous hash
mark on the last available
patch of
bare
skin**#
Mar 17, 2017
Mar 17, 2017 at 11:18 PM UTC
the magic
the writing
grows difficult
the wrinkles
growing old
or unwanted?
Don't worry
life will change
you will grow to accept it
but the change
what makes the change?
I need to know
the waiting, the decay, the atrophy
smiling hurts because the muscles have atrophied
can feeling atrophy?
Young children
want trophies
how is this for atrophy?
all this pain
contained inside
nice and shiny
everybody gets some
all you have to do is participate
or not
in life
on teams
just breathe
they say it helps
my breathe says they lie
it hurts
the muscles have atrophied
Mar 21, 2012
Mar 21, 2012 at 3:44 PM UTC
The arms and legs of Atlas will atrophy
Buckling under the starry dome
The sky will crush our cities
Of concrete and of chrome
Riding a wave of Mother's screams
We crash ashore and into orbit
Into this malicious circuit
With hair-trigger so delicate
No mercy and no cares
Another round of musical electric chairs
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 22, 2010 at 11:27 AM UTC
I spat out quotes and poetic verses,
Despite how everyone else converses.
I hoped that brains will win the war,
But I never had any brains at all.
I spat out quotes and poetic verses,
Despite how everyone else converses.
I hoped my brains will take me far,
But I never had any brains at all.
I spat out quotes and poetic verses,
Despite how everyone else converses.
I'm stuck here, ****** here, quoting still,
But I never had any brains at all.
I spat out quotes and poetic verses,
Despite how everyone else converses.
My brains are gone with atrophied will,
But I never had any brains at all.
On my tombstone lies a quote
From verses other people wrote.
A lackluster creative must
Existed within; my internal, eternal, rust.
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 3:48 AM UTC
Comfotably numb-without the Floyd
Comfortably numb
not dumb:
Just mute.
Riding silence
instead of life.
A presence atrophied.
An altered mind.
The kind
of
High
that drops you low.
The kind of stale
that leaves you pale
And weak at the knees
Id cry,
only tears take time
and the
seasons
will change
without waiting
for
my voice
to saturate
my face.
Translucent
liquid nuggets.
...
noiseless
as they slide
off the record
and onto my plate.
I'd offer you a bite
but
we all know
what happened to the hand that
fed
the hunger.
You look at me
as if
i were a ghost,
a spectre:
The nightmare
that anticipates your every
move.
Look in the mirror
for
an emulation
of the degenerate
debris
that is,
was,
has become,
U/us.
Comfortably numb.
in this
miasma:
This miriad of mechanical madness.
Feb 9, 2010
Feb 9, 2010 at 2:35 AM UTC
*When I turn 18
I'm gonna exercise my rights
That atrophied muscle I was denied
Since I was born.
I'm gonna start with a lotto ticket
And a pack of cigarettes
(don't think I'll smoke them though)*
I turned 18 eleven days ago
And since then my dreams
Like puffs of smoke from the cigarettes
I never bought
Have dissipated into air that just barely occupies my lungs
I have no home
No family
No rights to the one thing I wanted
The one thing I convinced myself I deserve:
Happiness.
Gangrene eats the atrophied fibers
And loss of hope eats my soul
Aren't these trials supposed to make me stronger?
Or am I too weak?
I don't want to carry on.
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 1:00 AM UTC