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It's quiet in my house,
except for m o  v   i   n   g air.
Soft snoring from    distant rooms,
and bedspring creaking under
s i t n  weight.
  h f i g

My mouth is bruised and swollen,
from teeth ripped from gums.
But pain meds drift me far away,
from everything I know.

Though sleep does e-v-a-d-e me,
I am bothered not with that.
For some of the best WoNdErInGs
happen when you're ******.
david badgerow Oct 2015
i'll let you be recluse & writer
you can describe how strange horrible
it feels to suddenly realize that one of us will someday die
the other left standing in the dark middle of a railroad
silhouette illuminated by a single streetlamp
mouth open with a granite rock wobbling in hand

i pray that it's me who falls first
after our parents so they won't have to bury a child
& you my only brother can remove my name from
the lyrics of every song you wrote for me

i can't give you the words to write
but find them & add them to your own memories
of me on a spring afternoon standing in shorts
on a softball field or rooftop with
hands on my knees & two wisps of hair in my face like
moths orbiting shafts of remembered yellow light

stick out your tongue & i'll teach you to whistle
without your fingers if you teach me to scowl & squirm
**** with my armpit & spit melon seeds at lowing cows
we'll dangle from plebian treebranches upside down together
& when i fall off the monkey bars you laugh
but when you're on your head in a heap of kinetic energy
i pick you up & brush ***** tear spirals off your chin

i'll drift away first into sleepland with a smile plastered on my
strawberry cheeks squirming legs & my body
coiled tight like a bedspring with laughter stomach cramps
from the stories & jokes you whisper on the floor in the half-lit gloom

i will be your darling sister forever lying to mom
about the time you burned a hole in the linoleum
& you will throw rocks at the back of my head
from a young persimmon tree like a noisy bird gargling bug juice
pretending to skip them across a pristine lake in the
blue grayness of the churchyard before dawn
CK Eternity Jan 2016
I got in a fistfight with the sky. I have bruises on my
knuckles. they ask me what I want for my
birthday. I said nothing. I lost my
virginity in a parked car. it felt like air tastes.
I robbed a house using my birthday present. I keep my
wits about me. I take apart the wires in my
speaker. there's no god in my
underwear. it sounds like a crucifix.
I got in trouble with the law. I used up all my
funds in a plethora of traffic violations. my
bedspring heart came undone when you fingered my
locks. I set off fireworks in your backyard. you broke my
aquarium. I'm the last ******* dinosaur. and you,

my meteor.
RJ Days Jan 2014
scars are love and memory from the world
which (though oft accused of indifference)
does care enough to pierce the skin

not the broken glass
not the rusty nail
not the bedspring from an old mattress
or the handsaw that slipped
or the edge of the coffee table to a wobbly toddler
not the knife
or scissors
too blunt at first - but try, try again

not the careless indifference of others
made manifest in flesh

or the million failures headaches heartaches
sicknesses
tears

no, pain never forgotten is formed
on brain and skin

just like cheeks flushed, heart pounding, sweat-dripping
you make your move and are checkmated by a far
more skilled opponent-- it doesn't take much

feel something if you try
feel alive and awake and know

that somebody loves you, and remembers
just like your skin.
Garrett Country, Maryland, February 27, 2009, 8:38 p.m.
Anurag Mukherjee Nov 2018
I do love you with aphasia- to wit,
in brief collages that intervene and string
merry hands to gasped current acts of beat
grasped through a foamy mad bedspring
with a blanket spread for the hiding of the tests
that are ranged from the edge of a queue-stretch
to the census of mites on the fan above the head
who agree to shift their scales, but circumspect;
and in unforgotten deals made with the plate
with melting butterscotch shipping the remains of smell
of your shoulder where the friendly promise was made,
besides the impressions of wings of dazzled grace
under the shoes, while fingers remain calm.
To wit, I love you in the deepest pockets of arms.

— The End —