"bookmarked" poems
It still smells like human iron in your pool.
There's a crack in the concrete where the bullet stopped.
It still smells like human iron by the side of your pool, there's a stain.
I still can't find where that bullet went.
I always thought that your "love" of the higher life was overrated.
Nobody ever talked about how great it is to be rich as much as you did.
Even though you talked about it so quietly, most of the time.
You spoke a lot about Daisies.
I'm more of a Lillie type of person.
There are a lot of people in New York, Gatsby. Too many people in New York.
New York only needed you, Gatsby, but it looks like New York didn't want you anymore.
That's not sad though, is it?
Carraway's book is like gold. I bookmarked eight of my favorite pages in it with yellow cigarettes. I'm too afraid to smoke them.
When your old mansion was bought I expected to see you as a ghost in it,
you weren't there.
That green light across the bay isn't there anymore, it's red now.
I believe I'm sleeping in the same bedroom you once did.
You aren't one of those ghosts that haunt a house, you haunt a human concept of want.
I wish I'd never bought your house.
I'm going to tear this place down. Along with Nick's old place next door.
The memories here in these empty, furniture filled rooms, are unbearable at best.
Of course they're not my memories, but I'd be a familiar person to you if you knew me.
I smash and break things, and then retreat back into my money and vast carelessness.
Farewell Jay Gatsby.
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 3:01 PM UTC
Your smile dawned on me
As the moon rose and you walked out
Into the night to sing . . .
. . . And then return later
With the glow of music on your cheeks
To sit and talk sharing your day
Between slices of Jarlsberg
Grateful beyond words
That this could be so
I kept bringing you to me
To confirm that you were really you
Buoyant with Vivaldi you climb
The steep stairs to your attic room
And there sitting on the bed
Take this carved wooden box
In your hands and with joy open to me
your childhood your adolescence
your young womanhood bookmarked
With precious paper tokens
Cards letters drawings
certificates of membership
Ephemera of memories
Every piece a jigsaw of your early years
I see you twelve fourteen twenty
A dear girl bright eyed so alert to life
Gathering its mysteries to herself in
Trophies of love and experience
Still and more so
and more so still
Sep 10, 2012
Sep 10, 2012 at 1:40 AM UTC
Pressed flowers
Forgotten in the pages
Of the that book
Oh what was it called
But anyway,
That book is sitting
In my father's bookshelf
Somewhere between
A history of the civil war
And an encyclopedia from 1949
It is lost in the depths
Of my mother's bookshelf
There the book with the pressed flowers
Covered in dust and memories
Waits for me to recapture the lost moments
Collecting and absorbing the words
And ideas trapped within the binding
Lost flowers, pressed in time
Lost in the pages of my childhood
Bookmarked, forever.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 11:28 AM UTC
I kept the pages of your heart
Bookmarked
Knowing that one day I’d lose my place
In them
And that you might
Open that book again, and show me where I fit
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 22, 2011 at 11:58 AM UTC
Good job!
You went to church for Grama on Sunday
...And you texted the whole service
Good job!
You helped out and watched your siblings
...And showed them R-rated movies
Good job!
You wore a Bible verse T-shirt to school
...After buying it with stolen cash
Good job!
You got a purity cross necklace to wear
...Then "hooked up" that same night
Good job!
You got a brand new Bible
...And stored it under your bed with the rest of your " junk"
Good job!
You visited your church's website
...And bookmarked it right beneath *******
Good job!
You went to that Bible-study group
...And afterward, to a party
Good job!
You turned down a smoke while you were there
...'Cause at the time you were just thirsty
Good job!
You prayed at the dinner table
...To get your turn over with for the week
Good job!
You call out to God before falling asleep
...To blame Him for your problems
Good job!
You plan on going to church again tomorrow
Just don't forget your cell-phone
Good job, Christian
Keep it up.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 10:17 PM UTC
the definition of consecutive
is
following continuously.
For the first couple months of our relationship we kept finding ourselves at 11:12,
not as kismet as 11:11
For the longest time
I convinced myself the universe was investing in the perpetual almost that was the keystone in our relationship.
We almost saw each other the weekend that I crashed my car.
I almost said
“i love you” the day
before he did. But I think really, the celestial forces bookmarked us at 11:12 as a
token of our consecutivity. We
were both destined to
follow the other to
the end of
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 29, 2018 at 1:37 PM UTC
*dreams in colors that don't exist,
and 'mares re dear sir, deadlines missed,
wrestle~arrest poet,
instant awake
in the wee time,
pouring liquidity,
fluids and words,
puddling, stinking,
coming,
from the
always dangerous,
always interesting temple inner inside,
sanctimonious no more sanctum*
this particular sleep,
shortened, irretrievable,
bookmarked "closed,"
chapters,
hours too soon,
this rest business,
arrested
filed in an ugly
grey metal file cabinet,
in an unfinished manila prison
with your other unimportant poems
*the dark room universe
populated by
hints, shadows, voices,
waiting, welcoming,
mirrors on the walls
unified in one voice
deep, obtuse,
demanding recognition
"hither hither come"*
forced march
to a visitation,
to the the parition,
of your reflection,
clearest ever seen,
in the black pitch,
uncovered by guise, feathers
the clothes of normative pretenses,
the man-made borderlines of
preservation falsehoods
*seen your own semblance,
parts rearranged,
uncanny,
the mirrors are screaming:
shameful lovely,
this, our artistry,
your apparition,
now accurate,
reflecting your under-
lying
condition,
at last,
an accurate portrayal,
of your inaccuracies*
do you find yourself attractive?
this new balance,
the unregulated pieces
of you
before your dissembling,
discerning,
dissecting eyes?
*feeling the valence,
an introduction,
a physical magnetism
any attraction
any resemblance
to the semblance
that writes
this s.o.s.?*
answer us thus,
do you up
and like yourself
unvarnished,
grunge, swag,
truth trammeled,
don't you want to kiss yourself
goodbye,
or better yet,
fare thee hell?
*go ahead,
ask yourself now,
that one question
that prevents conception,
from your inception,
what is it that
makes you exceptional?*
don't you realize,
everything about you
ends in a question mark?
*how dare you write poetry?
you are the false poet,
you live on the division
tween artifice and self-deception,
this, your only precept,
and now that you are
clarified,
answer this,
knowing you know
nothing
but artifice,*
how dare you write poetry?
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 5:07 AM UTC
America the Brave,
did you ever look beyond the porch, and see the smoke?
I have felt each gunshot wound and bookmarked each media news story
and even catalogued some photographs
for you to look over again.
because it seems you have a strange habit of forgetting
all the times
where places that children should be learning and laughing
began to look like cemeteries, the doors closing like a cruel purgatory,
when another **** maniac rages in with a legal firearm –
“mommy, I’m okay, but all my friends are dead.”
red crayons will never look the same—
I’ve found that bleach does not clean out
the stains on the carpet and words alone do not console the masses.
America the Free,
have you heard the terrifying orchestra of screeching tires on pavement?
didn’t you learn that running away is the same as running to meet a date with the reaper?
America, please tell me why
I cannot look for safety in a blue uniform, tell me why
the word “police” inspires more fear and pain
than it stands for justice?
there, in the empty streets, are the echoes of the voices in the night that you failed to hear when the sound of
sirens drowned the world in shades of wrong--
“I can’t breathe.”
“I don’t have a gun, stop shooting.”
“please don’t let me die.”
I stand at the gates between crossroads but nobody looks each other
even if there’s the unspoken truth
that some of us are more likely to be studying obituaries than studying to
be finishing our high school and college degrees.
America the Bold,
please listen when I tell you that there is a pain you cannot hide
beneath IPhones and reality television,
when all I see is hallowed eyes,
empty hands, and
more parents that shouldn’t have to know
what it’s like to buy caskets in mass production, before they even knew how to read, before they could sing praises of your liberty, before they even had a chance to pray for a different fate, one they actually deserved.
America the Beautiful,
for all your Spacious skies, and amber waves…
have you looked at the ugliness of your ****** palms?
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 2:51 PM UTC
Open internet bookmarked pages,
creased and cut newspaper pages
and what do you find laying there?
Lies! Written and typed white lies
that can change the minds of men
and the diet restrictions of nervous, plump women.
I know what is real, I think:
1. Gradient blue skies that are swiped across the Cambridge ceiling at night. They are real.
2. The feelings you feel for those you have felt feelings for. They’re real
3. Falling hail and wet shoes, socks moist with Spring’s choice of weather. That was real.
4. Falling shrapnel of the Boston Bombs that embedded themselves into the tired thighs of marathon runners running upon high. That was real.
5. This poem may well be real, but I haven’t the guts to say in concrete-words that it matters in the grand scheme of things. This might not be real, I regularly think.
Apr 28, 2013
Apr 28, 2013 at 11:20 AM UTC
I’d be trapped in the ethereal net of your Charm,
neither here nor there, kidnapped,
lost – or technically dis-located,
entangled in your deftly woven labyrinth
of passion and desire.
You’d encode the script for my every move in a
binary language I can only see but not read,
you’d graph the imagery I see in my mind-
short films of you and me and just you,
you’d lay out the days of my life with you
like pages of a book neatly bookmarked,
you’d optimise the color of my emotions-
between deadly sorrow and maddening joy,
you’d make me interesting to read-
like a woman of substance,
you’d come back to tune my background music
everytime I think you’re gone forever,
you’d keep me outside those search engines,
yet I’d get a 1000 hits a day
for you’d be my sole visitor.
I’d be kidnapped, and trapped by you,
I might break down any moment,
yet I’d resist for my love for you.
For **you'd be... my WEB-designer**.
Mar 22, 2012
Mar 22, 2012 at 9:39 AM UTC
"What? When?!"
"Yesterday," he said, deleting
another bookmarked engagement ring.
Mar 8, 2013
Mar 8, 2013 at 11:17 AM UTC
Ever since I know you,
It has been the too many glow worms twinkling in my life,
Benevolence words making my palms a stifle,
I sob into lost poems,
I bookmarked all golden days,
And unearth a new language’
Only two of us spoke,
Ever since I know you,
It has been’ I start loving you,
And also learning mild ways to love myself’
For just to love you more and completely!
By: Nida Mahmoed.
Aug 20, 2016
Aug 20, 2016 at 1:27 PM UTC
another night’s ocean liner passage, now
sunrise bookmarked, by prayer hailed,
when wet cheeks express emotional
humanity and a tissue better be handy
too many times this is how the day
greets me, and I, it, wetted and vetted
to have made it as far as one more,
having lived you in me, me in you,
an exchange of tonguing word
kisses,
that break me into pieces of
consolations
it’s embarrassing an elder man
weeps for no reason other than
words have swept him overboard,
crazy love this fascinating addiction
to a new morning’s addition composition
incision on a plain soul indistinguishable
amidst the mist of millions of others
who rise up beside, aside, reside within
and his breached heart, even strangers,
complete the neuronal connection
that demands his years of years upon
awaking to the grinning fawning dawn
mooning him with pure white light that
wrecks him open, rents his disposition,
an inquisition of words intrusively intruding
causing wept tears fully formed energizing
emerging, songs of words that you give
him as a question to be loved, for finding
the answers multiple is a penultimate thrill,
confirming this wetness that he lives to
be loved, give love, and breaks h a p p i l y
into pieces of/if contented peace
and thus summed, the day’s obligations
seem less daunting, and with some
luck and bulk coffee ingestion, there
will be solutions to anything
and then
he types,
**and this one,
done!**
<>
6:49am
march 2 Sun Day
two zero two 5
Mar 11, 2025
Mar 11, 2025 at 2:31 PM UTC
The story of our lives
May not tell the sweet tales of our love
Meandering on the pages,
Down the memory lanes,
Leading to where our destiny strives..
But the yellowed parchment of my book
Where the tale of you and me unfolds
Will always be bookmarked,
By the blush of your rose,
Forever pressed in its nook...
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 6:13 AM UTC
You ask me why we never talk anymore
It's like you've erased from your memory
The fact
That we never did
Maybe you don't remember
The days that you told me
That I was worthless
Maybe you've forgotten
That December afternoon
When you manically drove full speed
Into the car ahead of us
And cried of disappointment
When you found your family
Still breathing
Or perhaps you can't recall
The Friday night
When I told you that I wanted to take my life
And you went to the kitchen
To hand me a knife
Maybe you think
That your newfound success
Makes you a better parent
Maybe you've convinced yourself
That envelopes of money
And elaborate gifts
Will heal open wounds
And fade tattooed scars
Maybe in your mind
You've rewritten the past
But I'm stuck on a page
That I simply cannot turn
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 1:54 PM UTC
Life as a word, as a concept, has been very intriguing for me. The trip however, that happened a few days back, has left me with new questions while some of the previous ones that I had seem answered, for now. I am particularly not good with writing long texts, long pages of articles that might make sense when read all together at once. Generally, all of what I start off with the intention of writing about, loses its essence after the first few lines. Therefore, I am not going to drag this one and start writing that I came across, the incidences, the faces. It is more of a personal documentation as I know that these stories would be lost somewhere if not bookmarked now.
Take what you can and leave what you think needs or is felt to be expressed.
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 8:04 AM UTC
Why do I go into the talklamakan desert
To trace the steps of my love
His gentle Buddha like face
Engraved in both
Mind and heart.
I travel with a broken heart.
Why do I go into the talklamakan desert
To see the last places
That my love
Went to.
The memories
Of our coupling
Seared into my being
I travel with a broken heart
Why do I go into the talklamakan desert
To find the disembodied
Soul of my love
Memories of talking about the teachings
Bookmarked in the heart.
I travel with a broken heart.
Why do I go into the talklamakan
Desert
To be reunited with my love
Into a place of souls and demons
It’s night
I sleep next to
A watch tower
Hearing: “nga kayrangla gawpo nebo, I always will!”
Was this the last place he went
I travel with a broken heart.
I dream of the times in Lhasa
When you were still with me
Coupling in the eachothers arms.
Then I hear his voice
“Nga kayrangla gawpo yo nebo, I always will!”
I awake in the middle of the night
In the middle of the talklamakan
I finally see him
Still that monk I loved
But he was undead
I did not care
We embraced
And kissed
Our tounges danced
We both wanted to couple
But he was a zombie
And I was alive.
I hold him
As if he was so precious
I gently kiss him
And I walk into a town
Crying to my self.
I traveled with a broken heart.
Dec 14, 2018
Dec 14, 2018 at 7:14 AM UTC
Moral inconsistency
fuels the minds of the masses
What is right for you
I should never even consider
and what is acceptable for the eyes
you wouldn't dare reciprocate with your hands
Stroking your pet dog while biting into a cheeseburger
Preaching "no ****
when you know **** well
lesbian **** is bookmarked on your browser
Double standards are in place everywhere we go
Pointing fingers at others
when in reality they should be aimed
directly at a mirror
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 12:08 PM UTC
My mother and I met on Cupid.com
I was thirteen and she was forty-five;
but on her profile she was listed as
twenty-nine. We agreed to meet
at the local Starbucks on a Sunday afternoon.
The sun was out;
it's rays like orange sprinkles dusting
the dead, green earth
and snake-like sidewalks.
I sat in the far corner, my head
in a book; every now and then
peeking over the pages my
finger bookmarked. I was reading
****** and I had not made it
past the first page. Lo-Lee-
Ta, or something rather.
She arrived ten minutes later
than the time we agreed on,
but I wasn't angry. She offered
to buy me a Iced Vanilla Frappuccino
and salted caramel cake-pop but I declined.
We sat there for what seemed like a decade.
I was too busy looking around; acting
like I was admiring the art on the walls;
and she was playing with her hands;
humming to a popular female folk singer-
songwriter that was playing over the loudspeakers.
'I can go,' she said after the track finished.
'No, it's okay.
Stay, please' I said.
There was silence.
'It's been a while since I've seen you'
she said.
'I know, I know' I said,
'You lied
about your age.
That's not cool'
'Sorry about that.
I just didn't know
if you'd like me
if I was older
than forty..'
'That's the entire point,
no?' I interrupted.
And I didn't notice
she had bad posture
until she started fidgeting
with her hair; it was in a loose,
unkempt bun. She tugged
at the hair tie until
it all fell down to her shoulders.
I was finally relieved
to see that I had a beautiful
mother and soon suggested
that we go to her place
and talk about my childhood.
She smiled, and made
an attempt to grab the car
keys she left on the table,
but I was quicker.
'No,' I said laughing,
'I'm driving'.
And that was the first
time I ever took charge;
and nothing has changed since.
May 8, 2016
May 8, 2016 at 3:01 AM UTC
The first step is admitting you own nothing.
You have borrowed a vessel of perpetual motion,
transforming matter into joy. Or sorrow.
You prepare a lament for
every object being shrunk in volume
to the point of liquefied singularity.
Your soul resembles a berseked monach
harpuned by the overflowing thoughts
of a whole world outside his sacred temple,
rediscovering GOD through a moment of NO BIG TRUTH.
Every item is handelled with utmost care.
Every hour of every day carefully measured,
overligned, overlived, predicted,
enjoyed to the highest crest of pleasures.
The excitement turns you into a dormant rage
of two incandescent lovers, sharing their last kiss.
A particular moving object (which borrows your empirical mass)
runs away over roads and tracks and clouds and temples,
from the decay measured in seconds of standstill, if at all present.
You left the last version of yourself at the doorstep.
The footsteps on the street are an echo of
your forthcoming change. Your exhaltation.
How am I supposed to fight this disposition,
the everpresent catarsys in each corner of the soul,
as the end is postpond by the black guitar’s lament
in the indigenous version of history.
Sometimes things overlap without obvious reasons.
Sometimes the foundations of our sorrow -
buried deep into everday house hold objects,
is the only threat which holds the secret
to the way back.
To the memories bookmarked in your going-away-ness.
To the saved points in your story
(to which you could return back in case of a disaster).
Like a tale, in which the bad prevails,
but
as she lays in your arms,
in a particularly ephemeral moment
all that matters in the end
is the desired absence of space
‘tween the most lonely abbrevations of
the two of you.
Jul 25, 2015
Jul 25, 2015 at 8:16 AM UTC
a bouquet for a secret...
what’s with these girls these days?!
once they liked to fingerprint their bones to paper,
now, because of paper shortage
and the deforestation of the amazon
they want to touch trees because all text is symbiotic with pixels
and touch-screens! i refresh had i might,
what comes after trees? tongue and skin and
a quasi bereavement due to a lack of writing?
well there’s hope and beer, because those girls who
once caressed paper as tenderly as not to fold it,
have only been given a literary present of a bulging wrinkling tree
to touch with all this technology of quick & easy fakes of the never bookmarked;
and aren't the poet's tears the envy of all actors faking it?
Oct 6, 2015
Oct 6, 2015 at 11:59 AM UTC
it’s only i get a little scratchy across my shins at 1:33
forehead against work desk
leant down to run a track on my legs
phone untouched, shortcuts retraced
HTT ..PS//
ishouldntcheckyoursocials. us.
couldn’t make me an addict of loss
which really is the untapped potential
for the future internet of things
safari, waystone.
safari, favourer of webpage rerunners,
safari, guide me back to a bookmarked
cliff-edge of ache.
cookies know me better than my housemate who’s sweetness blocked his accounts before something broke and we’d have to talk about it.
once the whiter lines appear on shinskin like my algorithm
I can sit back up
if not satiated at least appeased
the sound my lungs make isn’t really laughing or crying but
a wheeze.
Mar 27, 2024
Mar 27, 2024 at 9:45 AM UTC
still opened to
June
your presence bookmarked
by well worn memories
that dwell in every corner
every space
on the wall
jam packed
with life treasures
my mind can't erase
your spot in this place
and struggles to accept
what actually is fact
remnants of you
are all
that exist
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 4:39 PM UTC