"backtrack" poems
Man has been gifted a great prize
Although they never assumed it would be their demise
Centuries ago the technology produced
Relied upon humans for a little boost
However now it seems every thought by a man
Requires for technology to come up with the plan
It seems man's intelligence has began to backtrack
Similar to being subdued in a flashback
All the knowledge they've acquired
Is something that cannot not be admired
Their lives are corrupted by the media
They get information from the Internet- not by encyclopedia
There is still a chance for them to turn it all around
And use these faults to help with the rebound
However if they continue on as shown
Their advancements will soon be marked with a headstone.
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 1:52 AM UTC
Do I relate to the post-postmodern
True-life voodoo incomes are hard-earned
If I put a hyphen between words
Does that spawn a new one like lovebirds
Isn't love the same word that I saw
Don't crows live like bandits and outlaws
Don't they have the outlook of bourgeois
Carry stolen crackers in their claws
There's no change that I couldn't change
Every change that I change always stays the same
I wanna sing with a slingshot serenade
I wanna donate change to a masquerade
I wanna die while I'm in the spotlight
I want my death to inspire a rewrite
I want to blur the lines of insight
I want to make them think that I'm their height
So give me all your red green yellow blue
If you can find a pool then I'll refract with you
You're a mirage and your favorite color's see-through
You're my fata morgana from this point of view
Are there any words for my freakshow feelings
Isn't sugarcoated terminology appealing
Wouldn't it be easier to represent the meaning
Of a hard to swallow concept with an arbitrary ceiling
Cryptic cultish crease in the catalog
Paranoia backtrack to analog
I can run much faster than I can jog
Magic circle summoning Chernobog
I can break the barrier of sound and space
With these essential elemental explanations in your face
But it doesn't matter everything I say will go to waste
Because the power of the mind is putting power out of place
Hindsight reflecting, teenagers texting
Late to the punch with the big money flexing
Let's settle this with a match in the ring
Or a match to the rope of a cannon firing
I wanna die while I'm in the spotlight
I want my death to inspire a rewrite
I want to blur the lines of insight
I want to make them think that I'm their height
I wanna hypnotize and paralyze
I wanna make them think that I'm their size
I wanna break their spirits drink their blood
I wanna **** their souls I wanna **** them good
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 7:58 PM UTC
Long lost time stretches blacked out questions and
white
in the place where it should have been
A triple threat of time, continuation, and displaced memories
Backtrack
Slapped back into the
black again
I know it's a sin but I ******* love it
Push it, shove it down, choke on the smoke and the fumes of the ancient
Wisdom is the loss of purity
Awakened
Ravaged
Blended back into the swirling twirling Universes, such perverse pleasure in the pain of it all
I love to fall
The wind in your face, blend it with a trace of sweat and blood as it all
clicks
into
place.
I love the taste
Blasphemous and decadent, giving in and giving out to **** it all back in again
RISE and FALL
I grin a bladed smile all the while, never minding the cries
Such pleasure as it dies
All taint of purity reviled
Desecrate the sacred, mutilate this inviolate aspect of creation
Only a seed of destruction contained within the potential
I see and I lust and I take and I ****
Not a drop of precious life spilled
Without cause
The laws remain, rise and fall, rise and fall,
I saw it all and then I sought a call of FLAW
For in the impurity lies perfection
An insecure dissection speaks the truth
As I now lie and speak to thee uncouth
I regret the best was yet to be
Blinded stumbling through Infinity
....just let it be.
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 9:50 PM UTC
You broke me...
& I allowed it because I so loved the moment before you uttered how I meant nothing. The moment when you could be redeemed.
The moment in which my breathe would catch in my throat.
The moment in which I desperately wanted to be inlove with you again. The moment in which I wanted to delude myself just one more time into believing you might love me.
Believing that you could value me in my human form.
The form in which my exhale became reminiscent of your name.
You were absorbed into the essence of my very being.
You were everything. & now you are nothing.
This is neither good nor bad.
It simply is.
Because you were poisonous and I loved every second of it ; basking in your presence.
I was a wilting flower and oh how your kiss felt so much like rain.
You were incomparably beautiful to me, but beautiful in the destructive sense.
Beautiful like a forest fire.
But you are not a forest fire.
You were the moon- deeply inconsistent.
You could not be redeemed.
Not by your smile or the way my name tasted leaving your lips or by the rare tears you would spill whispering a belated apology.
You were lost to me.
in all your cruelty- completely lost.
Except for when i would stand lonely in a crowded room- your voice sounding like the insecurities in my mind.
In those moments I'd choked back tears and pretended that the ***** was to blame and not you.
I'd Spend the night hurling insults at the stars whose usually beautiful form seemed a grotesque witness to my aching heart.
And then I'd want to hurt you how you hurt me,
scar your soul repeatedly but then I realised you don't have one.
You never did.
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 1:17 PM UTC
With mechanical portals known to be doors
That either lead to different worlds or take you home,
These cabled vehicles like tunnels on wheels fastened on a railroad track
Stretch to both ends of the universe under a single route.
And as you get in for closure,
You put your trust on the obscure.
Just say the magic words;
It will take you anywhere you wish to be.
Even though magic always comes with a price,
The only cost are countable units of your time
And also a few dimes,
In return for the travel of your life.
Across the carpeted walkway of reaching out,
Through the glass windows of visible silver lining,
Behind the blank and arid faces that lure the soul to sink in deep wonder,
The lights and skyscrapers, and mist silhouetting the scenery,
All appear in bokeh, all blend in your eyes;
Your eyes that glow brighter than fire on ice.
The coldness lashing perennially on your skin
And shaking your bones to its final breakage,
Couldn't beat the absolute zero amity between these strangers.
But your fascination has enough radiation
To melt the tip of the iceberg
And shine over what's behind their opaque walls.
Settled on the plastic seats that serve as time machines,
They nestle between unfamiliar bodies;
Static, in a state of inertia.
Blocking out force, resisting change;
Like cars stuck on parking mode,
Couldn't bring themselves to unload.
Grasping on loose handles
With a grip more secure than seat-belts,
Some tend to pull away despite of the constant push.
Like engines on reverse, they take time to backtrack.
For all we know, for every action,
Is an equal and opposite reaction.
The brakes hit; there goes a screeching sound.
But when it comes to a break, we don't really hang back
Or fall to a complete stop;
We only slide forward.
For we must keep moving ahead,
In order to keep our balance.
The portals once again unlock to let you out to the open galaxy
And let in another for the same adventure.
You've reached the end of the trip,
But not the end of the road; nor the destination.
For the journey is infinite; you know you are going to ride again and again,
Until you've run out of wishes of where you want to be where.
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 12:33 AM UTC
The years had brought me here.
It has been a far walk.
But it’s time I took a breather.
Just to muster a look back.
Many were shed along the way.
Perhaps met with many a forked path.
Or simply that the ticks of the hands
had decided different for them.
I’d dug deep,
and I’d seen you…
Amongst several others.
Making your mark
at every checkpoint.
I haven’t been alone.
And I’ll never be…
As long as you’re here,
making these marks with me.
Jul 29, 2023
Jul 29, 2023 at 9:38 AM UTC
There are flowers springing from my bones
in places they were never planted
fracture my skull and call it apathy
I say pain is a better road than dying alone;
can't you see the way my vision is blurred,
squinted too long at the sun now I think I've done damage
burned holes in my corneas before the age of 21, but those are just
surface things, right?
the road feels a lot longer when the cold air hits all my soft spots, like my neck so I cover it up
pooling all my efforts into growing thicker blood that will keep my skin warm
;keep kissing bruises on my arms, thinking that love will heal each new halfhearted attempt at self-sabotage
or manage the leftover evidence;
did somebody forget their brakelights on?
I'm trying to figure out how to get these needles out of my head
rocket science, learning to reverse detonate what might be left
in my system
system check, leaving sticky residue
behind me in my heavy concave tracks
softly trailing back
gotta learn to do it right the first time before I backtrack
my ears ringing like a sound clap;
bringing up old war wounds like we've lost gives us some sense of entitlement
things we don't want to lack,
leave the last stack
where I can mull over the aftermath
digging graves for those who are still alive,
burn my skin tonight
burn it right off my bones so I'll know I'm alive
still kicking like the second round
the afterthought that realizes what went down the first time
don't let me out of the house tonight,
god knows what I might find.
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 11:40 PM UTC
Honesty is the best policy,
One we've chosen to abstain.
Honestly I'd rather you be honest with me;
Walking on eggshells we could refrain.
Tiptoeing around so we don't step upon the cracks in our floors,
Holding our breath tight so we don't breath in the thick truth-
God forbid we just speak honestly anymore,
God forbid we let all of the unsaid thoughts loose.
Honestly I can't say I know you like I once did,
And that's absolute fact.
All because we have absolutely forbid
Ourselves from a backtrack-
Backtracking to when we could actually talk without thinking before speaking
Or worrying about what we have said.
No worries of the truth leaking
From our honest hearts and heads.
I don't want your meaningless quips,
Your aimless remarks.
I prefered the small notes on slips,
Our conversations in the dark.
Honesty is the best policy,
A policy we tried and found true-
A policy we have declined to upkeep,
A policy we once knew.
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 12:52 AM UTC
I've been trying to write something of substance for quite some time now,
trying to collect fresh thoughts from newer moments of you
and rearrange them into phrases that would gift me a new remarkable piece of the puzzle that is the immeasurable complexity of your soul.
I've been trying to bottle up this obtrusive, demanding feeling of utter awe that comes when you and I climb into our honesty and wear it to bed, side-by-side.
I've been trying to backtrack slightly, wishing so desperately (though stoically!) for the return of those painfully dire professions of unadulterated romance, reminiscing in the saturation of your love letters and how the color red is breathed into me time after time to remind me how powerfully you've shifted the balance of my life.
I love you, I love you, by god, do I love you.
My fears are still the same, though, Darling, and I feel that with the redness of passion shall also come a redness of a quality that pertains to homicidal gore,
for you have, still, that scalpel in your hands,
and my heart blooms every moment of my life, not for its love of me, but for the hope that it may one day bloom for the last time cradled in your blood-soaked palms.
I've been trying to say anything else for a week but nothing will break from the gates and give me a solid night's sleep anymore.
I can't tell you how mad you've actually made me.
Though I do dare to hope that I've evoked similar sentiments in you.
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 1:49 AM UTC
Icicle heart
I can't tell if it's cold outside
Or
I'm froze inside.
Icicle heart,
melts to raise the sea levels,
Then we drown in tears,
defeated by fears,
we see Devils,
The water is clear,
but crimson cold.
Your
cool calm and collected,
so level headed,
After all this years,
It's the apathy you feel
that makes fools of us.
Now there's swimming pools of regrets,
when
Icicles melt.
A cologne of shame,
pungent in the air,
carried by breath,
to pollenate the common class,
this
Icicle heart,
can never last
at least without
changing state
as
the landscape moves like a bad mood,
but the worst has passed,
and we backtrack.
Scrap that,
Take me back to the start,
Dinosaurs,
reptilian nature,
evolutions mistake,
Are you down for me and
My icicle heart,
melts into the stream,
and down the river it seems
an estuary divides us,
as we reach the sea,
impeach beliefs,
and the buoyant
keeps
my
icicle heart,
afloat,
I hope you feel me.
and
however it may seem,
you were nothing less
than a dream,
nothing more than a
drop in the ocean to me,
and
my
cold cold icicle heart.
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 12:23 PM UTC
crazy days
crazy places
crazy nights
crazy faces
turn around
crazy ways
backtrack
crazy haze
colour smothers
colours fading
careful don't stomp
on my crazy paving
crazy dudes
crazy girls
crazy fates
crazy pearls
make it crazy make it good
I wouldn't want anything else
in this crazy neighbourhood
BE CRAZY
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019 at 6:05 AM UTC
Some would call it a back stab,
I just call it a backtrack,
Every path that was once unseen,
Is now unearthed right in front of me,
I could say that I'm wrong,
I haven't always been strong,
But in my weakness,
I always bounce back like a reflex,
A metaphor of burning ashes giving birth to a Phoenix?,
But I'm still sleeping,
The giant still grows,
Nearly 24 and not a clue of where my future is going,
2 years, countless hours, spilling out my heart,
A piece of me is out there idle,
Waiting for a spark,
Somebody to notice,
But everybody has their own ideas, opinions and motives,
Square one wouldn't scare me if I had pushed so much,
Maybe I'll be proud if I suffer enough...
Jan 11, 2017
Jan 11, 2017 at 12:15 PM UTC
Been lost too long to find the right road
To save squandered time thrown away
Backtrack the past but I'm wasting the present
Cannot erase regret
Tried every which way
Jun 2, 2023
Jun 2, 2023 at 2:08 AM UTC
I read to forget
I read to feel
I read to escape
I read to heal
I read to remember
I read to distract
I read to connect
I read to backtrack
I’m okay when I read
but it hurts when I don’t
Characters are my friends
when my real friends won’t
The words are my freedom
from this desolate kingdom
Isolated by feedback and uncontrollable flashbacks
I need release from the pain
To breakout of these chains
They torture my brain
looking to blame
I keep running away
from the grief in my mind
I’m tortured by thoughts
I’m not ready to find
I’m trying to outpace my agony and resentment
But my only liberation is to accept contentment
My bookcase is filling with more empty reads
Who am I kidding, what more could I need
Jul 11, 2018
Jul 11, 2018 at 12:48 PM UTC
One step forward,
two steps back.
Every day brings
another setback,
another backtrack,
another reminder
of the things I lack.
My mind never quiets,
I can't take the feedback.
An eternal panic attack,
I should double the Prozac,
it's making a comeback.
One step forward,
two steps back.
Dec 12, 2017
Dec 12, 2017 at 2:26 PM UTC
The soothsayer only smiles and whispers,
stays anticipation and decays til you kiss her.
Leaning in:
Posture is, as much as
a broken back,
lacking.
Caught,
stiff and bare,
in a stare.
"I'm not acting,"
I'm retracting my opinions
backtrack to begin again.
Pinioned by inclusion;
on the right foot, left
to my conclusions.
If it's a game,
then i'm losin'.
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 2:31 PM UTC
There's a Route 22 near you.
A licorice asphalt road,
Twisting as opposing currents of time,
With anticipation and apprehension,
From home, to unknowns,
From comfort to expectations.
A rural ribbon of signage,
And milestones.
I traveled mine yesterday,
In an overdue Spring,
From Melrose to Bright's Grove.
I writhe and bend with its winding,
Former times arise like heat waves;
Mirage puddles flood my head,
Always just out of reach.
I recalled hitchhiking through Warwick,
As I backtrack,
And almost stop
For one today on the curve
Where they sell the garden gnomes.
I once looked wryly at them
When waiting across the road.
Sprawling upright over the northern landscape,
Towards the Co-ops of Arkona,
And the beer store in Thedford,
Wind farms thrive like techno giants,
In a mutant Utopian world.
****** Mary's red sign no longer hangs
Outside the white house in Lobo,
Where she could bring you in touch
With your dead.
Poplar Hill's trees no longer snow in the summer,
The water wheels are seized, barns are exposed.
The lofts collapsed.
I had to stop near a culvert, to listen to the sound of run-off,
The melt reflecting the transition under the sun,
Converging at Black Creek, Pulse Creek, or Cow Creek,
Carrying forward to the St. Clair River and Lake Huron,
Then onward and back.
Weathered iron fences enclose pioneer graves;
Settlers who cleared the dense Lambton forests,
And made the first ruts along my way,
With wagonfuls of backache.
I know well how you fared on our Route.
Mar 24, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 at 9:48 AM UTC
Today it took me two hours
twelve markers
half a roll of paper towels
and seventeen redos
to fill a whiteboard at my place of work
Today I counted steps
in the sidewalk blocks as I walked
1
1, 2
1, 2
1
only having to backtrack and repeat
twice
Today I stood in the tiny wooden doorway
of my apartment's fire escape
for the entire duration of my cigarette
terrified to step foot on the steel grate
all for fear of the lightning in the distance
because after a brief ocular inspection
I was so certain
that there is no god ****** way this building
is up to code in that regard
Today I couldn't help but wonder
what ever has happened in my life
to once again trigger
these neurotic thought patterns
that plague me from time to time
Sep 2, 2016
Sep 2, 2016 at 3:13 AM UTC
WHY should I tell you I love you
when the moment I close my eyes thinking that I am safe you crept up and left me
WHY should I tell you I love you
when the only thing that is certain in my life you want me to turn around and backtrack into uncertainty
WHY should I tell you I love you
when you don't even realize all the pain that you've put me through
WHY should I tell you I love you
when the past of my life is a shadow of a man beating me down with words
WHY should I tell you I love you
when the stretch marks on my skin are proof that I have done everything that I've can just to hear you say I am pretty and then not believe it
WHY should I tell you I love you
with all these tears creeping down on my face and you act like they're not there
WHY should I tell you I love you
when I have given you my bones and every fiber of my being and you responded with thats it?
WHY should I tell you I love you
when I wrote out my heart on this wholesome message that you acted like i didn't even write it
WHY should I tell you I love you
when you cant even say it back
WHY should I tell you I love you
when the moment that you said you do, you put distance on us like I am all the way across the world
WHY should I tell you I love you
when you question every thought in my mind
WHY should I tell you I love you
when I'm doubting everything you gave me
WHY should I tell you I love you
when you say the things I do are not fair
WHY should I tell you I love you
when you left me for someone else and never looked back
WHY should I tell you I love you
that the moment you did, you thought that was enough
WHY should I tell you I love you
when you don't even know how to apologize to me
WHY should I tell you I love you
when you take back every word you've said
WHY should I tell you I love you
When that is not all you did
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 11:40 AM UTC
Fix me with subterfuge;
one-hundred feigned smiles
crash, condense and disperse,
all because you shot me
that polar glare.
Trick me with posed gesture
and we backtrack, for miles.
Your stare ignites, melts and
drools off of your frozen eyes.
Wet blue tracks
through Salt Lake City;
these roads need gritting,
these walls must melt.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 7:29 AM UTC
You slid to me
with ice on your heels,
flame on your back,
the wind in your face,
and the stars in your eyes.
It's a scritchy scratchy situation
made from a wishy washy connotation.
Shift, shaft, shake the muscles beneath my skin.
You crick crack creeped to corner of my grin.
Broken with a kiss, and sealed with a sigh.
You remain my favorite little white lie.
Confessing that I don't know why
I will write about you until the day that I die.
You pretended; I embroider the delusion
with every hiccup of a heart's confusion.
Remember, child, what you can't see?
I won't stop, I still fancy that fantasy.
I pushed you away, but you threw me out.
I was your trash; you were everyone's treasure.
Internally screaming with scarcely a shout,
all in all, the torture was my pleasure.
Backtrack back, to this and our state.
A slip of strength but not a slip of the tongue,
Because like destiny and the idea of fate,
I stopped believing in you when I was young.
So I stole your
ice for my heart
and flames for my belly,
because it's windy in my head
with your stars on my mind
Nov 5, 2015
Nov 5, 2015 at 1:44 AM UTC
i think back, i think back
but i never think forward.
© Matthew Harlovic
May 6, 2017
May 6, 2017 at 2:20 PM UTC
I'm in love with a girl who washes her hair in her bathroom sink every morning.
Truth be told,
She washes it in the kitchen,
But I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea.
Let's backtrack for a minute.
You see she has a shower right behind her
But she hasn't used it since the day the water ran red.
She tells me she likes the way dirt looks under her fingernails,
The way people on the street wonder if she's lazy
Or just excavated a body.
But what's the difference right?
Either way you find yourself in a hole.
I wait for her in the kitchen every morning.
Hand her her coffee.
Watch her stare into the yard as she sips.
I mention the birds
and she sighs something about the night she had to chase away the neighbors cat.
How she wishes her father would stop feeding them.
But you see,
I've heard this story a hundred times.
And though the ending's always different,
Nothing really changes.
Her dad keeps feeding the birds,
And her uncle keeps dying.
Sometimes it's an accident,
sometimes it's a disease.
Either way he ends up in a hole
And her dad only comes home when the birds get hungry.
I picture her sitting cross legged on her grass,
Her eyes envying the way it always shines green,
And I get lost in thoughts of how I'd like to make her my emerald.
But you see she's always wanted to be a diamond,
And there's just not enough warmth in my soul,
Or pressure in my hips
To give her that.
You see she washes her hair in the kitchen sink everyday
Because her best friend killed himself when she was eleven
And let the blood run down the drain.
She dyes her hair the color of a crime scene,
But forgets the caution tape.
She says she hates the mirror in her bathroom and the way the lighting makes her look,
But I've never once seen her bother to open the window.
You see I never minded though
Because the longer she stayed in the dark,
The longer I got to pretend to be her sunshine.
Jul 5, 2015
Jul 5, 2015 at 11:31 PM UTC