"bookshelves" poems
Never what you were,
my retina dulled your rays.
Optics adrift in poetry, prose,
charity shop sweaters.
I spoke of dreamed ambition.
You nodded, morose.
Eyes chasing space.
Never what you were.
Bookshelves, potted plants, a bicycle bell ringing.
Coffee steam clawing New Zealand winds.
This and more flickered in our hazed tethering,
only snuffed when the tap of illusion ran cold.
Jul 17, 2018
Jul 17, 2018 at 7:38 PM UTC
I’m buried in a cocoon of stories
From poetry,
To biographies,
To dystopia,
And romance
So many stories
Of so many people
Real,
Or just figments of the author’s
Imagination
Sitting atop wooden bookshelves
Waiting for the right person,
To pick them up
And get lost in their story
For everyone has a story to tell,
Some are overly exaggerated,
And other’s are rarely heard
The important thing is
That we share our stories
Through word of mouth,
The internet,
Or in a notebook
To be found by future historians
Tell your story
Believe me, you won’t regret it
May 26, 2019
May 26, 2019 at 4:41 PM UTC
there's a world inside your mind
and it wants you to find
a place for others,
without changing
the bookshelves
the music
or the way that you walk through the door.
It might be the means of replacing
the fear which stops you from living
and giving
and laughing
as yourself.
Nov 19, 2019
Nov 19, 2019 at 8:30 AM UTC
Many moons,
have passed over my headpiece,
as you leave me behind,
in moondust & ashes each night,
You collect on the bookshelves,
I keep here,
collecting on hearts with your light,
dusting my world with your beauty,
diminutives in bits of the white,
This is not the end of the journey,
this a mere tiny part of the flight,
and I've not seen any more shiny,
or any star nearly as bright,
Though I am unable to see you now,
or touch your skin ever again,
or truly hear you with my ear,
I still miss you so my friend,
I know I cannot be near you now,
I cannot be where you are,
as you are but a twinkling light,
a brilliant & distant, star-
If it was not but for the moon dust,
my heart wouldn't,
be able to see you anymore either.
Ma Cherie © 2017
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 12:21 PM UTC
I knew a kid in highschool
Rather to say I knew him would be an overstatement,
He was a friend of a friend at most,
The boy that sat directly in front of me in my economics class
Second seat from the right, second to last from the back
The corner of the classroom between the whiteboard wall and the windows
I remember that scene like a diagram,
I couldn’t tell you anything I learned from the class but,
I knew a kid in highschool
He was best friends with my childhood best friend
He wasn’t quiet, wasn’t loud- he was a normal highschool boy
I remember the last words I said to him
Well not quite, I remember the vague idea
Something along the lines of it only gets worse
He was talking about the theoretic project where we role played
Each kid acting out as if they were in the real world
He said he was overwhelmed by the amount of work
I told him it only gets worse
I knew a kid in highschool
He killed himself during the weekend
The Monday they announced in I was sick
I was sick
His obituary isn’t up on the internet anymore
Neither is his facebook, he is nothing but a yearbook page
The page to a book I couldn’t afford
He is a memory on bookshelves filled with dust
I knew a kid in highschool but I had to ask a friend to confirm his existence
That I didn’t just make up a daydreamed suicide
I’m so tired of wondering what’s left of us when we die
I spend most of my life running from evidence of my existence
No photos, no yearbooks, nothing with me or my name
I knew a kid in highschool
Jul 2, 2019
Jul 2, 2019 at 4:28 AM UTC
Writing a story on a topic,
Hazing away at the microsoapics,
I write stories that aren’t meant to be fun,
Just the basic humdrum.
Reality is my Inspiration,
No matter the mood I’m in.
Dragons and Wizards are to be left on the bookshelves,
As I run to work,
And meet my colleagues for a day of writing reality.
We walk the world in actuality,
And see people with all different vitality.
People of all different ideas of reality.
They speak,
I listen,
I ask,
And they answer,
And we both learn about reality together.
I then write what I heard,
Tell what I saw,
And let the ideas fly like birds.
I've seen all people of life,
I've heard many of there trifes.
I laughed at their victories,
I cry at their lost,
And I hear all their vivid histories.
I write all types of reality,
From the memories of all different types of vitalities.
And as I write about how reality unfurls,
I write about the greatest dreams of this world
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 11:07 PM UTC
pinecones are
childhood summers spent tripping over the syllables of dense forests
folded somewhere between real world Europe and my very real imagination,
nestled against each other on bookshelves made of pinewood -
a childhood game of hide and go seek pressed in photo albums
where a version of me lived;
a version of me who delighted my mother and father,
a version who to me remains a stranger -
smiling gap toothed, shoes in snow boots,
sticky fingers pressing pine cones against her nose -
the present, a fragrance;
the future, a rolling pine forest.
pinecones are what the years between 17 and 19 felt like
in perennial wanderlust,
soul spliced into shards trying to make sense of
everything I felt and everything I thought;
everything I needed and everything I still want.
pine cones perfume the edges of a dream
dipped in the streams and stories of far-off lands,
pine cones are the crutches of a crippled mind
still building a new home for itself
in the basements of other people’s hearts.
pinecones are
platforms which I danced from,
leaping limber, slaying fear, the win always near;
pine cones are a reminder that while
a man can break his shoulder trying to tear one from the tree,
the true mark of bravery lies in how well you can break free.
pine cones are
the skeletons upon which hang the colourless drapes of my future
before stepping into galactic puddles that splash colour
all over every unmade plan,
memories’ strands shining technicolour through translucent skin -
the touch of your fingers no longer feel like sins.
pine cones are young green and supple,
seeds of love lust and chance encounters
that blaze into fiery shades of yellows and oranges,
every colour turning a tinge darker, a daily time marker;
pine cones are what remain, dark and unyielding
after a lifecycle of fires starting
and dying
within the embers of consciousness.
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 2:56 AM UTC
There are several books inside my mind,
one of which is a turning tide.
There are many rooms inside my dreams,
one where I balance on ceiling beams.
There are a couple bookshelves in my head,
one that hangs merely by a thread.
I have instances in my reality,
where I hold my breath cowardly.
I have a voice inside me, disguised,
that says I am a mad man and lies.
I have moments that tear me down,
so I fall and drown.
I have a God who fights my battles,
but still my head spins and rattles.
I've developed a tendency to do my own doing,
and that's why my fears are moving.
They move through the night out of sight.
But in reality, my hope is never losing.
Aug 17, 2018
Aug 17, 2018 at 10:08 AM UTC
Marissa Ann was a firecracker of a little girl.
For her, there was no fence too tall to climb, no bully too mean to face, no street too busy to cross.
She was all tangled hair and toothy grins.
And she'd yank the book right out of my hands and say, "Gabrielle, we have more important things to do than read."
In the jungle of our lives, Marissa was a lioness, queen of the pride.
I was a mouse not indigenous to these parts of the second grade.
The world was a terrifying place, and I had no problem cowering in the corner, knee-deep in a pile of Nancy Drew.
I tried to stay huddled behind my words, drowning in the ink, attempting to let the pages be my armor.
Marissa would not let me.
When I allowed bookshelves to be my shields, she came guns blazing, and kicked them all down, then stood me back up on my feet.
She'd grab my hand and pull me head first toward adventure.
Marissa was tough, and everyone knew it.
There was not a soul alive brave enough to pick on Marissa Ann.
But me? I was an easy target.
The other girls said I was "weird" with my enormous wire frames resting atop full cheeks, and my frayed jeans, a glowing reminder of my mother's lack of wealth.
I heard the whispers on the playground about the chubby girl who read, (can you believe it?), chapter books.
Brianna was a demon of a child.
She'd bat her pretty little eyelashes and everyone would melt.
She had the entire second grade class wrapped around her tiny little finger.
She'd corner me on the soccer field and do everything she could to remind me that I was different.
But one day at recess, she was nowhere to be found, until I made my way through winding halls, back to the warmth of our classroom.
There sat Marissa with a devilish glint in her eye, waving me over to sit in the desk beside her.
Behind us, a sniffling Brianna, looking forlornly at the teardrop stains on her pink lace skirt, her mouth pulled tight into a perfect straight line.
I looked back at Marissa with a curious glance, then intertwined her hand with my own.
The sound of stifled sobs behind us and the warmth of her skin on mine sealing an unspoken vow between two girls with puzzle piece fingertips that only fit each other.
Mar 11, 2014
Mar 11, 2014 at 2:21 AM UTC
like failed
bookshelves
or crushed
steps
the hill houses
of poorer
classmates
worry me like weather
and put in me
visions
of large
men
called away
to feed
at a trough
maintained
by a family
of flat chested
asthmatics
who sell
magnets
one can later
dot with glue
and give
to the mother
who has
everything
quote unquote
crucifix
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 11:34 AM UTC
Now, moving in, cartons on the floor,
the radio playing to bare walls,
picture hooks left stranded
in the unsoiled squares where paintings were,
and something reminding us
this is like all other moving days;
finding the ***** ends of someone else's life,
hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit,
and burned-out matches in the corner;
things not preserved, yet never swept away
like fragments of disturbing dreams
we stumble on all day. . .
in ordering our lives, we will discard them,
scrub clean the floorboards of this our home
lest refuse from the lives we did not lead
become, in some strange, frightening way, our own.
And we have plans that will not tolerate
our fears-- a year laid out like rooms
in a new house--the dusty wine glasses
rinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelves
sagging with heavy winter books.
Seeing the room always as it will be,
we are content to dust and wait.
We will return here from the dark and silent
streets, arms full of books and food,
anxious as we always are in winter,
and looking for the Good Life we have made.
I see myself then: tense, solemn,
in high-heeled shoes that pinch,
not basking in the light of goals fulfilled,
but looking back to now and seeing
a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl
in a bare room, full of promise
and feeling envious.
Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward
into the future--as if, when the room
contains us and all our treasured junk
we will have filled whatever gap it is
that makes us wander, discontented
from ourselves.
The room will not change:
a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint
won't make much difference;
our eyes are fickle
but we remain the same beneath our suntans,
pale, frightened,
dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time,
dreaming our dreaming selves.
I look forward and see myself looking back.
3.8k
My house will be filled with the things that I love;
Goldfish, dandelions,
Green sofas, Greek mythology,
Books of psychology.
Books. Lots of books with lots of words.
Multiple copies of the really good books too.
All stacked to the ceiling
on bookshelves adequate to
The height of the house
All equivalent to
My love of the place I’ll call home.
A sock monkey here or there,
pillows and throw blankets.
Pictures of Lake Louise, and a souvenir
If I’m ever lucky enough to go there.
I will print poetry, frame it, put it on my walls.
My walls will be yellow gray and blue,
I will have a boombox with speakers that go BOOM
(but at night it will sing me to sleep
with many sweet lullabies).
And it’s music will fade to the sound of voices
Voices of people I love and admire
Who can walk through the door,
of the place I aspire
To make my own,
To share and not waste
With the precious presence of others
And their ideas
And hopes and dreams
So if you aren't a thing I love,
You have to leave.
I’ll probably have a lot of lamps too.
Nov 23, 2012
Nov 23, 2012 at 4:24 PM UTC
The most beautiful thing I've ever read-
was a love poem that I found,
hidden between the dusty cupboards of my mother's room,
filled with things that just
"didn't matter"
anymore.
It was flooding with thoughts I waved off as-
"foolish"
with fake plastic vows of love,
not unlike those crisp, shiny valentine heart rings,
only given to the most attractive every February.
Stories of parting,
from which shone a glossy sparkle like that of a fake glass diamond,
labeled with black numbers as something worth a thousand.
I've always thought that if you were going to leave someone, you should be aloof and cold.
If you make "warm memories", won't the parting just be that much harder?
That sunset that was described as being unrealistically
ethereal,
I tried to see it myself,
even hooking my feet around the cold metal bars of the balcony,
and pretending that I could fly.
But that sunset was fake too, I discovered.
A synonym of those medals that you eagerly await to get, but in the end,
aren't gold,
or silver,
but just a sheet of mocking plastic,
thousands of identical ones of which have been made,
in a factory choking on smog,
thousands of miles away,
in China.
There was always that villain,
who would try to break the lovers apart.
Sometimes,
the villain was described as, "dark", and "Irresistible".
I was puzzled by that fact,
mulling obsessively over the idea,
Why didn't the protagonist get with the villain in the end?
I was undeniably jealous, of the heroine,
who seemed to draw everyone to her with a warm light,
that I didn't seem to have, no matter how hard I tried.
She was a perfect damsel in distress,
waiting for her partner, who would always,
always,
without fail, come to save her from danger and the unknown.
They were both risking everything for what they loved.
"Stereotypical love poem,"
I scoff,
willing myself to throw that piece of paper away with the trash,
But-
to this day, the most beautiful thing I have read,
is that stereotypical love poem,
now tucked between two bookshelves,
which are full of things, that
"matter"
now.
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 8:33 PM UTC
my past is part of who i am,
i cannot erase it.
it’s written in the books collected on the
bookshelves between my ribs,
stacked upon my spine.
the stories of who i am are carved into me,
scripted on my skin,
branded on my bone,
there is no part of me that is not built upon
this blood of black ink.
i am a collection of my own tragedies,
of my own comedies,
of my own romances.
a library of my own experiences.
not all the collection is good,
some books are quite damaged,
but not all the collection is bad,
my pages are still full of love.
you can pick out which books to read,
which stories you like
and which you’d rather leave,
but it’s still
there,
my past is still a part of me.
― personal library
Jun 29, 2018
Jun 29, 2018 at 6:12 AM UTC
it doesn't have to be
perfect.
you're cutting demos
not diamonds.
i'm creating paragraphs
not parachutes.
she's drawing pictures
not pistols.
he's constructing bookshelves
not buildings.
we're making differences
not disasters.
we don't have to be
perfect
to be
poets.
Jul 24, 2016
Jul 24, 2016 at 5:53 PM UTC
fell from her home
Skies of ohio
stumbled from a cloud
Grew her wings on the way down
hellboy in the back pew
cigarettes, blue dress shoes
closed her bible, "I refuse"
She said, "To be a mans property"
Honeybee
Honeybee
honeybee spread your wings
Honeybee
Honeybee
neither bird nor angel,
she flys free.
"I'll take the skills to cook and clean
our sneezes will still sound the same
I'll vist on holidays
but don't you ******* bless me"
"I'll be Domestic for myself
clean home and the best of health
Foster bees
a book to read.
But the bible ain't for me."
Honeybee
honeybee
Somewhere in the inbetween
honeybee
Honeybee,
apartment on deering st
she met me
at a speakeasy
"if you want me you better find me
Through the bookshelves I'll be waiting"
I turn the pages
Find her wedding ring
kept under the mattress,
not even god as a witness.
Doctor in ireland, she told me
escape in comic books
while he's away.
"Before we start, you have to know
One day I'll leave forever
Let's live a life we won't forget
In the meantime, together."
"I live with no one to respond to.
I live without boundary.
My ride or die resides in ireland
I'd like to love you while he waits for me."
Honeybee
honeybee
I've never tasted honey so sweet
Honeybee
Honeybee
Honeybee, Come lay with me
A few kisses later
cross legged in an office chair
sipping warm tea
I wake
green eyes watching me sleep
It's these moments
in between
Honeybee
Honeybee
were those mornings just a dream?
Honey bee
Honey bee
you leave
Remember me
in the old and green
honeybee
you were always free
guiness jogs my memory
The little things
inbetween
Jul 10, 2017
Jul 10, 2017 at 1:28 AM UTC
Once I sat,
unaware & unassuming,
on an unaware & unassuming Tuesday
in the far corner of a coffee shop
full of commotion.
I sleepily sauntered
behind the dusty public bookshelves
where if one were to peruse
they may find philosophical gems
- such as Proust or Voltaire.
I sat enveloped in the
warm vanilla air,
clutching at a cup of caffeine
& hoping to gain some
mild morning enlightenment
or gentle mental stimulation.
I tucked myself between
the covers of a bent & well-read book,
content to remain unaware & unassuming
& uninterrupted
as I wandered through its printed prose.
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 1:33 AM UTC
When I come home at night
I lock my doors
and draw my shades
like an allegory of something
long forgotten that itches
six inches deep
I turn my old radio on
and a song is sung
like a toothache
from sometime in the past
I set another place at the table
don't ask me why
for the same reason there are
no longer any shotguns
or guitars in my house
but there is lotion for my hands
each blister another
bloodshot moon
my yawn a blessing in disguise
I search the bookshelves
I built from lumber
from the tumbled down barn
I read books the dead light
their stoves with
and some that howl
like a pine on a ridge
and all these maps
these photographs
I wasted nails on
when they hung on the wall
but I'm tired of mending
all the small holes
so I leave them there
open and empty
to remind me where
the heart goes.
Apr 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2017 at 11:28 PM UTC
I went back to that bookstore last Friday
Because I told myself I missed it
I was always so fascinated by the secrets
hidden between splinters in the old wood bookshelves
And the fleeting thoughts scribbled hastily
onto the ripped pages of old romance novels
That bookstore always reminded me a lot of you
In the way that it went practically unnoticed its entire existence
Yet it was still so fascinating inside
The floorboards creaked with every step
As if trying to remind you that they exist
And all of the good books hid on the top shelves
Just out of reach
Those shelves seemed to hold more mystery
more love, more passion, more life
Than any human being could ever comprehend
The lights would flicker just as your eyes did when you woke up in the morning
and you could hear their soft hum
Filling these halls with life
It reminded me of your shallow breathing
As you used to lay asleep so gently beside me
And I used to come in everyday to read new books
But there were so many
And if it took the rest of my life
I was determined to read each and every last one
And I went back to that bookstore last Friday
Because I told myself I missed it
But maybe I just miss you
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 1:08 AM UTC
the bookshelves in my room
are filled up with poetry books
and the bookshelves of my soul
keep their words
they keep the heart of the ones who wrote them
inside my heart
they keep stories like mine
and unlike mine,
a reminder that we’re all making art
and beauty out of our lives,
that we are making songs out of our days,
making our burdens and the things we carry lighter
and that we belong to each other.
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 9:50 PM UTC
My girlfriend has coveted
Installed bookshelves
For over thirty years.
She has imagined them
Bookending her hearth,
When a visitor walks up
To scan her collection.
She has books lying about
On her tables, my tables,
A few on outside tables.
She is an insatiable reader,
But never had shelves.
So, as a double gift,
I fabricated,
Installed and stained
To match her gum wood mouldings.
From vision to reality,
Better than Plato.
She's so pleased and proud
She refuses to use them;
To distract the viewer's looks
With books.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 10:43 AM UTC
A blue guitar, twelve pieces of silver-
ware, some feldspar, an essay on The Art
of War, two pine bookshelves, fifty-four books
about the past, a stone axe that must have
belonged to the last of the Mohicans, fifty more
books about bones, stones and famous pomes,
a sliver of glass from a mirror that shattered
the last six years like they didn't matter
plus one to go, a shitload of old liquor bottles,
a fossil of an inner earbone from a killer whale,
a spear-point older than 12,000 years+plus,
a tooth from a shark as big as a ****** bus,
dust marks from missing pictures of us.
Feb 21, 2016
Feb 21, 2016 at 4:21 PM UTC
Sometimes you just gotta smash
your laptop against the wall
Tear and gnash your your canvas,
burn your pens and paintbrush
into a colorful tye-dye fire
**** on the kitchen floor
and smash the whisky bottle
across the glass wine rack
kick a hole in that guitar
spinning with lighted matches
spinning with a numb-reckless-abandon
toppling over bookshelves
laughing like a monkey
tossing the toaster
into the bathtub
break the mirror with a head-but
and take a 2x4 to the porch light outside
smiling like a python
stomping on the oven door
taking a knife to the floor
because carpet angels are totally in
Nov 8, 2012
Nov 8, 2012 at 10:07 PM UTC
he paints me
reading a book in my faded nightie
lounging on the armchair with a daisy in my hair
huddled by the window looking at the cars passing by
he never lets me see them.
i write of him
padding around our apartment in bunny slippers and
blue plaid boxers
thanking the people who buy his paintings
wiping the lenses of his glasses with the hem of his shirt
saving the world
i never let him read them.
we share
a tiny kitchenette we don’t use because we don’t
know how to cook
bookshelves that line our every wall
snapshots of the city, framed in matte black
wood and macaroni, in the hall
we don’t invite people over.
our parents
don’t send christmas cards anymore
stopped paying for university tuition
and his sister helen gave birth to a baby we
aren’t allowed to see
(but helen sends pictures in the mail)
they can’t take away our love.
Sep 21, 2013
Sep 21, 2013 at 10:50 AM UTC