I took out a pen and some paper, looseleaf,
Not worth the words I sponged onto it but it’ll do
I wrote down my feelings about everything
The silence of people on a subway ride to work
The closest star to us that isn’t the Sun
How the Bermuda Triangle got its shape and why the other ones
Weren’t cut out for it
Were it not for the clocks in my room, serving as reminders
That time still existed and would far outlive me
I swear I would have written forever
I swear I would have

Sometimes I would write letters to friends and never send them
Instead cram them into envelopes and into larger envelopes
And stack them in the fireplace, under the wood
And sometimes light it, other times just hold out my hands
And feel invisible warmth

The ones I did send, though, felt hollow
Words typed or written but not the words I needed
Or wanted
To say then. I’d rather ask you how your day was than to receive
A strange ****** expression because a question concerning
Cosmic dust and how it rushes together to create man
Doesn’t really serve as a good icebreaker.
Most of the unsent letters were to you
You and the clouds that guide you around, shifting rain
Back toward the sky

I wrote how are you today?
And meant I want you to keep auditioning for dance because you’re wonderful
I wrote doesn’t this weather feel strange?
And meant get a bigger umbrella so I can be under it too
We should try to go for dinner
We need to have an excuse to be together
Are tattoos a bad thing?
Look, topics to occupy us
My house is empty tonight
Where are you so late and what do you think about?
I miss the vase we sold
I miss you
I feel like today is longer than yesterday and will be shorter than tomorrow
I miss you

And they stacked, one upon the other
The spaces between each squeezed under the weight of the next
The weight of the words compounded more than the previous
Filling the spaces of my apartment to the point where
I could not see out the windows

“Today is Monday the 16th.  To whom it may concern, I’ve contemplated the ideas laid before me and can finally take confidence that I’ve chosen the right one. Many people say that virtuosity is next to solace and I believe that. Many people also claim that it takes a life to learn how to live, and I believe that too. I’ve so many things to say to everyone, even the people I’ve only met once or twice. But those people are just as important.

I can hear echoing between the televisions between the open rooms. The same words delayed by seconds but still audible and clear.  The reactions aren’t echoed, they’re different, variant on the person and how they feel about it. To make sense of my claim, I guess it’s just a matter of perspective, and now my perspective is clear, and now I want it to echo between the people to whom I send these letters. Whether the variation between reactions will be the same or not I am all-around unclear, but I know the reactions may have enough weight to keep me held to the ground, or even a bit lower than that. Either way, I’ve spent my life reacting to things as if acting on an echo.  I want to change the channel now. I want to close my door so the sound can fill the room and make the stacks of unsent letters shudder. I want to keep it there and turn the air the color of the closest star to us other than the Sun. I want to-“

I wanted a lot of things, to do and to say
But that letter and those that followed joined the others in the quiet spaces
Spaces which kept the frays of this life muffled and still
Like an ocean scooped into a bucket
Or the world’s smallest word
Backspaced by one letter

7 and one half years ago
you were in my room
and i was on my computer.

i wrote the password to log in, but i
made a mistake because i was nervous
and i backspaced all of it.

you noticed.
you said "i do that too when i mess up"
i didn't realize at the time, that i would remember that about you

and my birthday party.  you were the only one
to show up
and my dad made you listen to ICP,
i'm still sorry about that.

i haven't forgotten any of it



i wish i could think about you without hating myself

Hey you
I was thinking about you last night
Wrote a paragraph
Then backspaced all the lines

I'm sorry it's become this way
That things get in the way
That it's always too long
When I speak to you again

I think about you from time to time
Send a little prayer your way
I hope all is well
And life is treating you swell

I think of the troubles and harm you face
And believe you have the strength
To pull through and keep good pace
I hope these problems are never long in length

My friend I'm betting on you
I'm cheering on the side
Some battles have to be faught alone
Whilst people like me watch helplessly on

There were times I didn't go a single day
Without speaking to you
My friend I miss you
And I wonder at the changes life has done

Responsibilities
And duties
Have tied us down
I didn't know that growing up meant growing apart

When I took my words to
The permission man, he was
Less than enthused. “No, no,”
He said, “these won’t do. They’re
Robotic and archaic - and this one’s
Overused.” “Well pardon me, sir,
But all I have are these. You see,
My pen is a keyboard, and I have
Backspaced all the previous drafts.”
But he just frowned and turned away
And told me to return some other day.

I have now backspaced
Probably, too many times
All for a haiku

I sat up for endless nights, staring into the imaginary mirror of perfection; just trying to get it right.
See, the mirror once struck fear into my inner ear.
I recall being a mess that year.
Looking into something that was so clear, I didn't understand why clarity showed no signs of being near.
Maybe the glass was fogging up from the steam that would leak from the seams of my pores - the doors to the things that I should feel more.
The numbness was an empty vein, but it sent a shock wave to my nerve endings.
It was in this moment, I knew the rest of my life was only pending.
I hated the message I had been sending.
So I backspaced into a new place with a new face.
When I went back to the mirror, the glass broke.
I listened to the sound of the shatter and it reminded me: I am my last hope.
I am the last note in the song you wrote to everyone who's told you "no".
I didn't know I could be so bold. Or maybe I did, but I had only been told.
I am no more than what I allow my soul to feel. I am no more than what I perceive to be real.
So here's the deal:

I won't conceal this passion until I'm in that casket. And even then, you couldn't bury me, when my legacy is my tactic.
But will you listen to my echoing voice? Will they send you the chills that I feel? Will you understand?

I will scatter my soul in all the grains of sand on which you'll stand, contemplating if you should have ever ran...

- L.G.

He’d been tapping away at the keyboard
So he could get the ending straight,
A labour of love he’d called it
But it was dark, and getting late,
The villain had to be sorted out
By the heroine, called Cath,
He wanted it all to jell before
That final paragraph.

The Moon had risen outside and shone
In a strange and subdued light,
He should have finished before, so this
Was not a welcome sight.
He backspaced over a typo, then
He looked hard up at the screen,
But all that he’d typed was gibberish,
In a font he’d never seen.

It must have jumped to another font
Was the first thing that he thought,
So he scrolled back up, to see how much
Of his work had gone for nought.
The font looked vaguely Arabian
With a hint of Russian too,
Had taken all of his storyline
So he didn’t know what to do.

He tried to highlight the paragraph
And switch to the font he’d used,
But when he read what the wording said
It had left him quite confused.
‘You’ve stumbled in to a place of sin
Have opened an ancient page,
Locked down for over a thousand years
You’ve opened the world to rage.’

‘Delete the whole of the manuscript,
Don’t let it stick in your head,
The more you read you will feel a need
And will probably end up dead.
Delete the curse, and the final verse
And destroy your hard-drive too,
Be sure, if you wish to stay alive,
To do what I tell you to!’

He thought of the work that he’d put in
And the rebel within him stirred,
‘Why should I wear some other’s sin
When I only have your word?’
The screen grew misty, and Cath appeared,
The heroine of his tale,
‘Take no notice of him, my dear,
I’ll die if his will prevails.’

His villain pushed her out of the way
And snarled at him through the screen,
‘Where do you think my evil comes from,
Not from some fictional scheme!
You drew me out of an ancient well
Of lies, of sin and deceit,
To clear me out of your sub-conscious
You’d better hit the delete!’

He heard the footsteps pound up the stairs
And beat on his garret door,
‘You’d better not have my wife in there,
Or else, I’ve told you before!’
And Cath appeared for the final time
In the tale that wasn’t complete,
His neighbour beat on the padlocked door
As he sighed, and hit the delete.

David Lewis Paget

What should my first short story be.

Kid loses his ball...

Being a bad person before I’m good...

Venturing out onto a tall ship to sail…

These are adventures, yet none of them are calling to me.  So..

I paste and type, I grab and hold on to every word ever so tightly

What if I’m bad

What if I’m good

These are the two are having conversations in my head

While I trickle words down on to the page

Each letter getting slowly backspaced

Yet I still keep going even though, I should be negative

I’m done for now,

getting up to get some coffee.

See you in a few, says the excuses




The rhymes are over for now, they have gone to rest

Just the prose is left, and even he wants to go, but like an annoying house he stays

Not letting him have peace or space  

I keep writing the little words hoping the weight of them grows,

Do I have a thumb for this, Can the greats hear me,

My call forth, into the dark, telling them I’m here.  

Only time and my punchy little fingers floating down the river of this keyboard can tell

Here, I roar, if ever so silently.  Here I am.

Here’s my bow.  

Signed,
Isaac Ramiro

I deleted you.
Backspaced your name.
Unfollowed your face.
Closed your window to me.
Shut down your connection.
Cut the cord that bound us.

It felt good for a minute...
Then I wanted to add you.
Follow you again. Snap back.
But it's too late.

Your memory is corrupt.

I overthink everything.
I overthought this starting poem, writing and re-writing it time and again in my mind, smudging the subdurma and grey matter with graphite smears and flecks of rubber eraser.
I’m not a poet
I’m not artistic or good enough
I’m not comfortable with vulnerability enough to let people see me as
I am
I don’t know if I trust myself enough to not betray everything
I’ve ever believed in with my musings and thoughts from
Somewhere. That thought was cut and backspaced prematurely because I’m obsessed with perfection and pleasing everyone but pleasing me isnt okay because
I’m not okay to let myself be okay.
I’m done. I have to let me be me, and let go of the
I I never was, but was presenting alone

My mother wouldn’t like this poem. She’d say it’s choppy and why doesnt rhyme and what are all the spaces for and I don’t like poetry or get it and I think it’s just a bunch of people pretending to be impressed by something they don’t understand
This isn’t for you, mom.
I love you, but it’s not for you.

I saw your eyes from the hospital sheets, bewildered.
You were scraping the last chunks of chicken out of
the tray like a fly-speckled grasshopper.
Questions sunk into my face, scarred by
every change wedged in your wrinkled heart,
No one knew the melody you hummed
those countless days, wheezing, dragging,
drenched by your scripted skin. Languid rhythms
were yelling through my stomach, binding my body,
jagged letters sizzling in my misplaced mouth,
as I knew the bullets were close to your skin.
There was nothing left for me to do, you were
slipping out of my hands, creeping branches
covered in jellied sand. The purplish figure that stared
at me one last time was ragged, blown skin
backspaced, deleted.

As I stood here in shadowed darkness, the dreary sky
filled with damaging screams and ****** verbs spit-stained
and slain, the towering trees growling in heavy languages,
trying to understand the rhythm of the landscape, my soul
was slowly becoming invisible.  My days as a slave was
dragging me down and leaving me backspaced metaphors
across my soiled skin, craggy similes sizzling on my beaten
*******, glazed diction drifting on my slumped shoulders.
I was tired of listening to my master yell at me like I was
a filthy ****** diminishing beyond brokenness, his charred
hands always grabbing me by the wrists, forcing me
into submission, whipping my blazed back if I didn’t obey
his commands – ripped, bladed flesh smoked and floating
in a hall of hollow chambers, punctuated syllables, suffocating
adjectives sinking on the surface of my dry tongue as I stared
around the grassland, my mind watching How the endless fields
my fellow slaves and I tiled, stretched bodies buried in sweat
and hard cracking symmetry.  And as we worked throughout
the day, our restless limbs lingering in space, dazed, caged,
slated, breaking into bitter bridges beyond slit stiches, our worlds
were falling apart.  How could we go on living like this?
the harsh depictions of death so close to our existence,
the ****** name-callings crawling in our throats
like slimy maggots, slashed angles and triangles,
mangled and wrangled, fainted conjunctions
dying in despair, our fallen kingdom lost
in thunderous torpedoes.

I was convicted of a crime that blew my mind,
charged for the ****** of two white girls, ages
7 and 11, that I never took part in, a 14-year-old
black boy hated by the white world, shut off, dissolving,
devolving, feeling like I was hit by an atomic bomb
as I sat in the electric chair, my mouth strapped,
rainy blue tears cascading down my cheeks.  I was
displaced, misplaced, backspaced, staring into the darkened
eyes of crazed white men, my mind divided, subsided,
blinded, sliding into drunken seas, unable to breathe
as they placed a face mask over my face, slippery saliva
oozing from my mouth, wanting to rewind time and find
a better route.  But I was at the end of the line, my ragged
design powerless and declining, my teeth smoking, one eye
missing, drifting downhill to nothingness.

The plot was terrifying, intensifying,
haunting my soul deep inside, slicing
my cells into shattered pieces, my breathing
steady increasing, my blood rapidly
flowing in runaway rivers, all burned
out, sinking in silence.  

I could see my slave masters sly smile,
his wide blue eyes relishing the pain
he inflicted upon me, his lips dark
and dangerous, crusted, rusted,
a twisted dimension of rising
flames smothering me.  

There were smashed syllables
swirling on my tongue, cascading
down my throat, clogging up my lungs
as I was castrated, bladed, damaged,
upturned, squirming, screaming in agony,
feeling a part of me drift away
into unknown places.

I felt misplaced, backspaced, a ragged
bridge of despair, wanting to escape
from this sunken state, wanting to flee
the scene before I reached the resolution,
the mass confusion clouding my conscious
level, ******* me up in the head, my chests
tightening, trying to survive, but the pain
was too unbearable for me to stay alive.

Your love was suffocating my cells,
blazed, crazed, smeared tears spinning
my soul into frantic positions, darkened
compositions, intangible, conscientiously
backspaced, scratched out, implausible
equations feeling like nothing, feeling
like blades hidden away in depressed
dimensions.  I was trapped inside your
poisonous love, your worthless emotions
floating in abandoned oceans, all empty
and depleted, scarred, overflowing
with tar.  I was lost in your passion,
saddened, shattered, the pain incessantly
crashing upon me, wanting to escape
from your drunken landscape, but every time
I thought I was done, I found myself
running back into the dangerous waves
of your reckless storm.

I see your disgust of my blood, your savage thoughts
making my stomach crawl within, making me feel like
I could regurgitate slimy rhymes, drunken songs,
damaged verbs gone wrong, my tongue numb,
my lips a flaming volcano erupting blazed bullets
and tear gas, almost passing out as I cried out in agony.  
I realize the destruction that has been subjected upon me
by your perilous existence, your loathsome lyrics so bitter
cold and swollen, a crashing wave of smashed beats
screaming in my ears as I felt like I was becoming paralyzed
by your poisonous design.  I was inanimate, irrelevant,
a backspaced paragraph deleted and depleted, suffering
from your distaste of the rich brownness running through my face.

They left me scattered in flattened grasslands
where my damaged limbs became stretched,
disfigured, unstitched, cramped, jammed,
super slammed, raw rammed, crawling
upon high and thick grass, rough flesh
bleeding, leaking, fingers weakening
as I yelled out for help, but there was no one
around.  They had all abandoned me,
my anxiety rising, clouding my troubled
thoughts, my sanity corrupted, disrupted,
smudged, decreasing, violent winds
consuming my determination and imagination,
my memory and energy, shattering manifestations
of reasons within nonlinear reasons, speeches
within squared speeches, fractions within half
fractions.  I was an imbalanced derivative,
an imprisoned prism, an unparalleled equation
of nothingness, a befuddled puddle of dank
dreams mixed in with deteriorating consonants
and vowels.  My life was single-spaced, misplaced,
backspaced, periodically perplexed, dejected, evicted,
uncontained, deranged, tangled melodies
becoming amplified asteroids with destructive
noises, scorching my soul as everything surrounding
me came to a pause, my heart slowly beating
for the last time.