"chalkboards" poems
I am secluded
by the steps of a brutal mind
Written in black and white
numerals on ***** chalkboards
Was I sleeping passed my childhood lesson?
Please, wake my tired, bloodshot eyes !!
They are weary from
illuminated nightmares
and X rated dreams
The sting of the wooden rule of measure
punished my hands
The welted numbers tattooed
on my swollen palms
Ten Hail Marys are not enough to stop this atrocity
The towering stoic women,
dressed in black habits
I do not dare look away
but I did
Time was broken
when the rulers cracked the desk
Ear deafening sounds
with my frozen tears stuck in pause
I looked up to the heavens
to seek answers from my god
Not one whisper back,
I was screaming vulgarties in silence
Lowering my head to my desk,
I closed my eyes
and counted the numerals
on the ***** chalkboard
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 9:03 AM UTC
Sand paper bags scratch empty city streets, like nails on chalkboards. It’s amazing how silence can be scary. I gaze upon empty playground grass, the rampant, rapacious children are no longer able to climb jungle gyms to be king of the world. Why? I believe someone invited the Devil to dinner. He scorched earth and burnt tears in barren city streets, I alone see the beauty in the destruction. Amongst anguish and anger, lies pure serenity. An ending is just as beautiful as a beginning, like light to files, I’m addicted to pain. If you’ll allow me, I’d like to show you how demise is perfect. It’s starts with a smile, broken. Too many demons spiting languages of hot lava that sounds similar to the solar maximum, It’s my mind that breaks from reality. Unstable and unappreciated, pain is the only way I can rid the stress, So I have believed. Starting like a headache, addicting like ****** or cough syrup, The rush of blood spiraling round my upper thigh is something I used to look forward to,
It was the only thing I could say I did for myself.
Moments spilled into months, months pouring into one self-inflicting year, If only I could show the buckets I filled with the sadness I was afraid to share with the world. I finally put the blades away when I made a mother watch her baby boy dig scissors into his wrists. Rosy-red cheeks and rain-drop tears slipping down her face was enough to know I could I do better. I needed to do better. So, I washed the blood away, erasing every past memory I thought I should regret. I know life is no ethcy-sketch, the marks I once was proud of bare the same weight of shame. I consider my addiction to be my savior. If I never landed on rock bottom, I would never know the power it takes to stand back up. Now I wake among empty city streets, Sand paper bags sit silently, It’s amazing how silence can be comforting. I alone see the beauty behind the monster that tore apart my freckled canvas. I look at the Devil in the mirror.
Dinner is finished.
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 8:04 AM UTC
The hue of streets; cousins of chalkboards;
the distinct voice of transition; of forbidden love
sipped through straws of anticipation;
swallowing decadent tribulations
to nourish picturesque gardens
and English dreams; the line between
appreciation and alienation
Happens to be the blemish
of today's death; headline hopscotch
founding father of premeditation
Sound prints in the sand
Mar 17, 2012
Mar 17, 2012 at 9:35 AM UTC
⚊
everyday i wake up and i’m reminded -
people will never be there like they said they would,
you can’t make someone understand;
you can’t make anyone care.
it doesn’t matter what you’re facing,
it doesn’t matter how many times you warn people.
as soon as you need more than you can give,
everyone’s opinions change.
if it’s not about them -
no one's listening.
it doesn’t matter -
if you paint your fears on the walls.
it doesn't matter -
if you claw for support on chalkboards.
you could say you had a plan,
unleash all the demons.
you could try to beg,
you could try to plead,
doesn't matter.
it'll never matter.
you'll never matter.
you can’t make someone understand;
you can’t make anyone care.
Nov 4, 2024
Nov 4, 2024 at 10:17 PM UTC
Mid October takes its end of season's leap
into the solitude of post-tourism autumn.
The landscape shows its truer face to celebrate
the reassembly of local solidarity.
Tat and trim tucked into hibernation,
chalkboards erased,
scant takings totaled,
inflatables deflated.
Unsold crafts packed between pages of yesterday's
'Correio de Manha'
Shocked freezers stand open-mouthed
their diet of ice dwindled to a thin trickle.
Sunshades collapse in deep south style,
redundant loungers relax supine.
Kids slope back to school -
a mule-train of shoe-scrapers packed to the hilt
dawdles through warming scents of
post-salad indulgence,
sweet with the street-aroma of 'feijoada',
garlic, and aromatic oregano
pot-grown in a back plot, littered with
discarded placards and tired bikes.
Past men leaning doors, unsure of new routines,
idle hands and minds with new time to fill
mostly in cold bars for warm camaraderie.
Women pick fitfully at quiet-season's crochet
squatting to gossip under a white wash
slung and pegged, stick-sure
against thin bleached facades.
Under Planes, old comrades congregate
shuffling at a make-shift table,
tired eyes set on cards,
playing for cents under a limited sky
once defined by Salazar.
Car parks thin.
Beneath the russet canopies street-sweepers
scorn a reckless wind, where still sun-crisp leaves
gather in gutters, thirstily anticipating
the first deluge under autumn's gathering clouds.
copyright © Caroline Grace 2011
Oct 11, 2011
Oct 11, 2011 at 7:13 AM UTC
Here, I loaf,
Coffee in my left, a second wisdom in my right,
Shredding years off of "the plan" to pay the dues, society bills,
Thousands on thousands pile up in pre-season games,
Fingernails digesting in the stomach, slashing through the stream like a cross-saw paper-cut,
Here, my feet bounce,
Behind generationally equal minds, I peak over dandruff and hear nothing but dry lips,
Avoiding the eye, I dip into the ocean,
I wade, I pause, I sink,
My joints crunch and fingertips tap dance,
Here, the static fleshes out,
Every thought a raft, casted away, I play Tom Hanks,
Chalkboards accumulate fine powder, the particles tickle the sneeze,
Outside, the rain is still, falling through the ice,
Inside, my brain is still, falling to the vice,
Here, I watch those watching,
The wrapping on the box, present inside, today we learn tomorrow,
I sit on the bow,
Distraction by means of technology, we are all second-hand smoke detectors,
Together, we learn to strap our seat-belts on correctly,
Here, the window is foggy.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 11:46 AM UTC
The month of May may not be a part
Of our struggle. It belongs to those
Who have chosen to remember the
Blots of blood showered along the
Mendiola pavement, paving a closely-
Knit kinship of beliefs and bewildered
Minds, of a passing moment, of a
Movement passed on generations.
Struggles don't end, for they never begin.
Gun's barrel is where power grows. Mao
Theorized it, generations lived it. Not until
This generation's search for new reason,
Tilling fields
Are mapped in the hearts of the masses;
Where new weapons are fashioned, new
Passion grows for living the theory, for
Doing philosophy out of soil, out of gears.
Superstructure is rebuilt on chalkboards.
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 10:29 AM UTC
The video stutters and she jitters to a halt in an intersection;
Traffic lights turn green, and the display revs up,
The Broken Egg food truck clips her heel and spark-like static fogs the screen.
His fingers, once lightly brushing over a braille textbook, freeze out.
The book lifts itself and scraps left to right under his palm.
Her professor speaks, and her lecture on Maxwell's equations propagate towards the classroom wall,
only the walls have fled with their chalkboards, and the standing waves have been left stranded
in the sudden infinite space. She has lost reflections; only direct, brute force remains.
The Truth: I wear petty images like a cloak.
The Truth: My gears tremor under the strain of life, stuck on
The Truth: I think
You'd think me stupid, a bust, and the truth is
I'd rather stand in traffic, frozen, mute and dumb,
than ask questions, intern, or learn the difficult stuff.
Secondary screens:
I'd rather write poems and post them online for strangers
than talk about chemical potentials or spherical wavefunctions.
I'd rather talk about chemical potentials and wavefunctions
than figure out what happened to my remote.
There's too much movement to feel good standing still.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 3:29 PM UTC
We are fickle,
rushed, lonely, and lost.
I can either care for you
or forget everything in apathy.
Do you understand?
Before you say yes
and kiss my face,
realize this:
You are not
my weakness.
Love is,
or, the lack of it,
the endeavor,
the hope, the chase.
Interlaced fingers, wandering hands
are the best teachers,
the perfect cons.
The Captain doesn’t teach
how to tear love apart,
we do. We are earthquakes.
Don’t you dare romanticize
natural disasters.
They scratch on the chalkboards of your mind
and implant ideas that never should’ve existed
or they run their fingernails down instead -
sometimes destroying everything
they breathe on.
Jul 6, 2013
Jul 6, 2013 at 7:51 PM UTC
Fight, fight! Through these hallowed halls,
The chalkboards that seem to scream,
"Rah, rah! You're trapped within these walls,
And all is not as they seem!
'Brilliant!' You may say, and 'Brilliant!' you may be,
But the cramping hands, begrudge,
And no match are you for these cackling C's,
And a brain that just won't budge—
Oh hark! Hear! Oh the scribbles far and near!
Watch your own blank page!
And know why white is the color of fear,
My dear, where is your sage?"
" 'Tis here!" Cry I, and gnash with my teeth,
The grit that lies wherein,
For what shall be, my God will bequeath:
The writ that lies within.
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 9:25 AM UTC
i will sketch myself a gun
and load it
with toxic lead scrawled neatly, letters looping like a noose,
with scratches on chalkboards, like footprints on the moon
and scars on my wrist.
i will give these words the power to ****
and with one last remaining breath
i'll place it against the fire, beating in my temples
and words and letters and music
will flow,
into me and out of me
an endless whisper
of poems
surging through my veins.
and all will at last be dark.
-j.s
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 7:15 AM UTC
There's blood on the chalkboards
and chalk on the crosswalks,
but the wrong one is being told
that it's clearly out of place;
The other, a wolf in a wooly coat
baring his teeth as he pockets his coin.
Sep 11, 2025
Sep 11, 2025 at 1:04 AM UTC
These kids don't care anymore,
we're out of the time of cursive writing,
when there would be an apple on my desk,
kids would only groan when asked to clean the erasers.
These kids are going to live,
in parent's basements, awaiting dinner and laundry,
rather than actively seeking adulthood.
What happened between my time and theirs,
causing them to become so electronic?
These kids don't make eye contact,
staring blankly into pixels,
unable to draw away from their techno-seduction.
These kids can not learn,
for they're only taught memorization,
then forget all of the rest.
These people expect me to teach,
but how can I do so when they're already powered down,
disconnected and wandering lost,
needing their fix of a shocking brightness,
they call a new and better world.
Apr 7, 2013
Apr 7, 2013 at 1:58 PM UTC
We draw them in sand,
On sidewalks and crime scenes;
We adore them on Granny,
Abhor them on maps.
On chalkboards, I will not...
In Clubs, Don't I know you...
In poems we can hear them
Playing songs of I love you...
A line is infinite,
Yet begins with a dot;
Those lines run right through us,
Like it or not.
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
it’s hard to bring back
to life someone who’s
already a shadow suspended
by dust in sunlight.
a partially eaten heart
trailed by ******
bread crumbs with no
start in sight.
replications of
past complications
forge a plagiarized
grin notarized by a shaky
pen on abstract paper.
bringing back to life
sand-burnt knuckles
reflecting tremors
through coils in the bottle
seems anything but feasible,
recovery and relapse are
few and far between
with a fine line that
splits at the seam
without warning,
the ice meeting
the bottom of the glass
again is a slow
graze of fingernails
across chalkboards,
help seems out of reach
when the leather begins to
leech to your skin
with each question repeated
over and
over and ******* over,
perceptions of positivity
can only withhold the
constant of being
a placeholder in
the tangent of
consistencies,
but light has the ability to break
through windowsills
and curtains,
yes I speak from experience
because it’s the only thing
that wakes me up in the morning,
but as I become use to
walking dead
I found my light that
wakes me up
in the afternoon
and puts me to sleep
at night
Dec 8, 2015
Dec 8, 2015 at 2:03 AM UTC
Can you imagine?
The time when being ask
To stay after school
To clean the chalkboards
And erasers was fun.
Can you imagine?
Waiting for the teacher
To pick you to
Take papers to the principle.
Yes, that was special.
And i never thought to peek.
Can you imagine?
Learning to do the waltz
And the foxtrot in gym?
Boys on one side of gym
And girls on the other.
Pick a partner...
No, no, boys are yucky.
That was grade school
When they really were.
I can't imagine not growing up
In the 40/50's
With kick the can,
Home made circuses
And running down to a friends house
And calling,
Can you come out to play?
I can't imagine not having a memory.
By judy
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 5:30 AM UTC
I’m still in awe at the fact
that I can stand straight,
I can’t tell if I’m mindless
or spineless, whenever I’m
asked to leave, I leave
I never slam the door,
when I’m asked to come back
I drop what I’m doing and knock,
the door isn’t always answered
and that’s what picks away
at my backbone,
I stay planted
on the same doormat I’ve
tainted with leaving footprints,
steadfast shinsplints are nails on
chalkboards,
I keep running,
but you know I’ll be back,
keep that doormat clean.
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 12:57 AM UTC
Zombie
Zombie,
Walking through life
Blindly,
Aimlessly,
Empty
Empty,
Feeling nothing at all,
Mind thoughtless,
Blank,
Like the chalkboards
Rendered useless
By the projector
And the small screen
In your hand.
Don't bother me,
Don't say a word.
It goes in one ear
And out the other.
The passage simplified
By an empty canal,
A boat waiting for your words
To be carried across,
To be left unprocessed.
Staring blankly out the windows
Whizzing,
Unmoving,
Landscape,
Portraits
Of youth outside
Laughing,
Foolish.
You come to me with
Arms wide open,
But
The only arms I want
To hold me are the
Outstretched arms of my warm
Welcoming bed
That will hold me forever
Like the dirt
Embracing the dead
In a coffin,
Like a zombie.
Feb 7, 2016
Feb 7, 2016 at 12:23 AM UTC
There's a lot I wish
I could accidentally spill them every time--
On chalkboards, on papers,
On everywhere I could write.
Misses and regrets,
My heart is about to explode
My saving grace,
Where art thou?
A time machine
It's what I wish
Bring me back to when
My moments, my memories I could relive.
Past--
Yes, there's nothing I could do to it
Can't revive, what's past is past
I have to turn around, say my goodbye.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 12:37 AM UTC
i used to write
the ink that dripped from my quill
formed paisley and damask on the page
syllables rose from parchment and became tangible
now its just chicken scratch
illegible drivel
carved into chalkboards with dull knives
footnotes to a glorious view
i use to draw, paint, tag
whimsical illustrations or swirly oils
on objects both dedicated and found
a distinct style all my own
but now it's all devolved
mediumless and barren attempts
glaring at a skill long left me
clutching and shivering with a brush
i used to hike
i would traverse a plane or a thicket
at altitude with all teeth showing
looking for a place to set up camp
but now i just pace
wearing a rut between the front and back door
studying a tired environment
peering out the windows
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 3:19 PM UTC
Isn't it strange, how you explain to me
you don't want to be with me anymore
but after that moment, you are
kind again, sweet again, everything I
want and more... again. And how is it
that when our bodies meet, the rest of the world is
much smaller than you and I. And how could it be that we are years apart
but magnetic like no other, I can feel your pull.
How is it that you want to see me now, and I know you wont leave me
to bits all scattered across my room. And if I could explain
any of what I'm feeling right now to you I know you would be
silent
and act as if none of this matters at all
because we are "just friends now"
Friends that kiss, fight, love, scream, **** cuddle...
but just friends.
Those words have humor in my mind. I can't even think about us being "just friends"
or maybe I can with time
but you are lying next to me half asleep
and I can't remember the last time I wrote poetry while a friend was
sleeping next to me. I can't remember the last time my fingers
were not keeping up with the thoughts in my mind, or the last
time you rolled over with the sunlight hitting your face
and you lifted your upper body, and brought your lips slowly together for a kiss.
I can't remember the last time you and I were able
to spend the weekend at my apartment
without having to leave, because of breaking glass and
nails scratching chalkboards and not your back in the heat
of the night.
And then I stop remembering everything of our past, because what I have
looking me in the eyes on this bright sunday morning
is is the warmest place I could find my heart.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 7:16 PM UTC
And everything I knew
Flew
Out the window
In with the new
A student again
Chalkboards and recess
A mighty mess
Indeed
A brain weighed down
With eternity
A tomorrow I don’t live in
Because I am here
A tiny town
Not far from the moon
A big heart
With lots of scars
Kindred spirits are few
Though I smile as I walk
Down these streets
These ***** streets
In need of rain
Come on down
Wash it all away
Take it to my innocence
As my inner child
Peddles by
Smiling hard
Against the sun
Country road
Welcoming me within
But that was then
Another lifetime
Almost alien
To this world
I’ve landed in
Much to my chagrin
Left only to close my eyes
And hope for a dream
I can escape into
A doorway to another place
Hoping to find a familiar face
Some clue, some memory
To help
guide me home
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 12:10 PM UTC
i must remain hidden
in the corners of classroom
As equations and sentence fragments
Complete their long war
Drawing borders on chalkboards..
Me and deformity
the deepest of companions.
The world has twisted
And i bend from the ankles
And i just continue
With
A small world
Hidden in my throat
Mark its boundaries
with a dreaming tongue…
i an unlikely guardian
i whisper it new words…
And when the school girl laughs
it is not at me
as i trip
Sprawling on tables and books
Releasing flocks of paper
In echoing celebration to the ceiling.
It is because
No sparrow has nested
in the desert of her heart
so i water her mirth
with an unassuming smile
careful that my
feathers are hidden
deep in the shiver
of my body …
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 12:33 AM UTC
If hummingbirds could
sing
would they make a
pretty sound?
Or,
like
nails
on
chalkboards
in
classrooms
with
no
walls.
If the stars could keep you warm at night would you ever miss the Sun ?
Or shun the coming of the dawn in theconfinesof the night.
If I could write a love song do you think you'd like the sound?
Mar 8, 2013
Mar 8, 2013 at 12:43 AM UTC
I am obsessed with my name
The way it swells and curves
With straight edges that can cut
A knife wrapped lovingly in silk
I write it everywhere these days
On papers scattered around the room
On the oily remains of the dinner plate
On chalkboards in empty classrooms
On your skin in the middle of the night
each stroke is radical
Me to mine and
Mine alone
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 12:13 AM UTC