"backslides" poems
Lift it to your lips
& let what falls adrift in the form of ash
dissolve in the wind
as dried bone thrashing,
bashing against dust & grit.
Pull; take a long hit.
Dregs to be kept until last in the bottom
of your broken lungs,
taken as deep as breaths:
to rattle against your teeth.
"O", takes the lewd shape
of your chapped mouth as you break free
from your caged-in chest,
skeletons left sat, to wallow
as ashen bones & yellow teeth.
Hold your knuckled joints
against tenderest flesh of your upper lip
& sniff, as if a try to void
all signs of violent backslides
to clandestine nicotine meetings.
Flick blanked eyes to lit but
dying embers ground between sole & soil,
& morosely swear never
another, not one more; after
this next one, this last one, never.
Jul 12, 2014
Jul 12, 2014 at 5:35 AM UTC
"Grey, I wish I was you!
You're so happy!
You never give up!
You never struggle!
How do you do it?"
Daily, I get told this.
Always saying thank you,
as if my vocabulary bit my tongue,
spitting something else out,
someone else into my place.
My throat burns with screams
I can not release,
as if my own carbon dioxide suffocated my thoughts,
leaving a waste of capacity within the room.
This paint consumes my face,
concealing any trace of reaction
that I want to give.
That I need to detoxicate from my chemical unbalance.
I want to speak
but the flood of anxiety
grasping at my air,
makes me too terrified to be heard.
If I was heard
no one would believe it was me.
They would all look around,
and say nothing,
worshiping the silence I yet to give.
The consequences hide behind the lines,
that my mind can't bend.
The ventilation of my corrupted system
backslides into error,
shutting down the coordination
of my world to come.
Turning my everything
against the collapsing forgotten,
that I didn't raffle for.
I didn't sign up for this
scenery that rotates my sights to the
desperate calling
of a separating cell.
"You look so different, Grey. Have you lost weight?"
Oh, thank you for confusing
my sorrow
as cackling ossein
that lost all their symbolism
as a whole.
Why satisfy the ocean
if the waves tug between
the used and abused.
How did my appearance affect the way
vitality takes place
between the lines
of an open book
that I elope
with the desperation
of being found,
Being saved.
“Why do you sleep so long,
even though you went to bed at 7:30?”
I don’t sleep for the sake of depletion from the world.
Sleep calls from the numbness attached to my dangling limbs,
the rumination of death,
but somehow,
still isn’t convinced.
Why bother to contrast me
to the markings of the sun,
if only to be controlled by the skin.
"Sweetheart, why are you so quiet? You're never quiet."
Mar 1, 2018
Mar 1, 2018 at 9:31 AM UTC
You met him just like others before him, he was rough and very very raw.
You detested him, saw him below your level.
He wormed his way into your heart and became part and parcel of your being.
He had nothing, no life, you breathed purpose into him.
He used to crawl, you became his legs.
A blind fellow who had no vision, you gave him sight and reason to live.
Just as a fish can't forget to swim,
just as a donkey itches to bray.
His past at times calls him and he relapses.
Two backslides you forgive, then warn him.
Just like a bad *** that doesn't forget to ****
You argue with him on his fortieth relapse.
Being the human being you are, a child like him.
You call it quits,
Like a river drained of its water, like a night stolen of its stars. Like a farm without its produce or a bee without its sting,
he is.
He tries to stand, you were his feet. Opens his mouth, your were his voice.
He tries to think you were his brain.
And looking at his heart, he has none.
And that's how to **** a man
May 5, 2018
May 5, 2018 at 5:02 AM UTC