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Tom Leveille Jun 2014
while september cicadas
were singing my neighbors to sleep
i was up walking holes in my shoes
over love once lost
so many poems ago
that the only thing i remember
about the house at 38th & bluestone
is that it reeked of alcohol and is
as i'm sure of it
still saturated in perfume
and abandoned laughter
but that's not the point
give me a minute
what i'm trying to say
is i always thought god
enjoyed watching things leave me
it makes me wonder
what was on his mind
that night in september
when i stooped to cough
or tie my shoelaces
i no longer remember why
but i recall their trajectory
the way gravity cradled my hands
and brought them crashing back to earth like a 747
they landed inches away
from a scrap of crumpled loose leaf
folded in half like the smiles
of my relatives on a holiday truce
you see, lately i've been looking for scars in the newspaper
i find myself checking the obituary
for my former selves since the day i found your suicide letter
maybe that's why i can never explain my obsession with history
maybe archeology is just a funeral
in reverse
maybe hell is just rewinding home movies
or watching confetti
turn back into photographs
i never told anyone
the reason the doors to the gun cabinet in my family's house are locked not because they are afraid
i will take my life
but because sometimes
i sing them birthday songs
on the day you died
it makes me think
of how rooms only echo
when they are empty

*you know
i never echoed until you died
Austin Heath Jul 2014
4am and my eyes are killing me,
and I'm dull and sore and ****.
****. ****. ****. ****.

Leaning against an arcade booth
of Street Fighter 2 watching them
dance in green lazer lights.
We decided to go back to her friend's place.

Her friend got wine,
he got beer.
He ****** in the bushes.
Admitted he was drunk.

On the roof of her friend's apartment,
I ****** down a cold coffee,
and we played acoustic music.
We climbed higher on the roof.
They smoked and drank,
and just generally shot the ****.

Something bad happened between him and her;
she ran off crying, he's calling her a child, a baby.
He's pretending he's not mad,
pretending he's in control of his emotions
while lashing out.
Throws a beer bottle,
decides to leave. She
practically begs him for a ride home.
Me and her friend want so badly for her
to stay. Stay.
She leaves with him.
Drunk and ******, to drive her home.
I start walking home soon after.

I get lost on a street.
It's 2am and I'm jumping up and down
waving my hands, trying to get someone
to just tell me where I am.
A man across the street must be taking out garbage,
I walk across the street and say, "Excuse me sir?"
He shouts, "No! Go back across the street! NO!"
like I'm a ******* wild animal.
I ask him, "Can you just tell me where Bluestone is?"
He tells me to go north.
His input is useless.
I hope he dies of pancreatic cancer.

I kick a can and yell, "**** all of you, collectively!"
to the suburban nightmare I'm trapped in.
"I hope they nuke this ******* **** stain neighborhood!"
Kick an empty Arizona can in contempt and disgust.

I have a small monologue with myself
and almost break down on the sidewalk.

Walk back to practically where I came from,
and take the long way home.
On my way I pass a stranger who asks, "Dig?"
No ******* idea what they meant.
I dodge the skunks and grab a hubcap.
Wanted a trinket.
I think I'm gonna have a ******* aneurism.
A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion),
Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight;
Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware;
Scissors and lint and apothecary's jars.

Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from,
Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted:
Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach,
While at their ease two dressers do their chores.

One has a probe--it feels to me a crowbar.
A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone.
A poor old ***** explains his poor old ulcers.
Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.
ChinHooi Ng Mar 2019
Bluestone
speeding like wind
laughter
frozen in time
episodes of warmth
aftertaste like north
it's the very simple
and elegant steps
of bluestone.
Brandi Dec 2018
Dad, please show me the finger tracks
The flick of the wrist
To see the flint stone find its place
As it hops across the Bluestone

Dad, please tell me how to master putt-putt
How to not be such a mulligan
Rushing into things unawares

Dad, please tell me - oh I can't say it
How to keep my heart from ever breaking again

Watching me in the rearview mirror
He knows I'm there
Living in rearview

And Dad,
I need you to tell me I can stay there awhile

© 2018
Brandi Keaton
Jule Jul 2019
There was a time where everywhere felt like home
I found home in others
By actions, words and gestures
Then I would find home in places
By the familiar cherry wood my dad used on our first house
Or the bluestone that also lay by the gardens
Or the melodies my mother played and sang on the Young Chang
New places and people were never a problem
I always knew how to find a home
Until I met you
I realized I had been living in temporary homes
Now nowhere feels like home
I can't find the path to the ****** gardens
I can't smell the fresh wood
I can't hear the melodies
Did they disappear?
Did I stop looking or listening?
kfaye Sep 2023
Lost time
And lost to time

Measure me next, without the
Sun.


I am not yet the wake of air through the tussocked expanse//

Nor, the jazz-beat of her rain clamoring to disrobe that which is made modest by soil-cover.


Sky-wheel tithing .
Bluestone plaything.
Sight-line, leaching .

— The End —