"chernobyl" poems
kissing you was like swerving into oncoming traffic
i can never tell if i am more haunted by empty picture frames or the ashes of their contents
you taught me that the saying "pick your battles" meant not answering when love was at the door
sometimes when i drink whiskey i swear i can hear your voice in the creases of my bedsheets & i sleep on the floor
i still catch myself running my hands over things you touched the most, looking for the echoes of your fingertips
i practice things i'll never say to you
i remember the day you told me you didn't like poetry, how "everything's already been said" & how "nothing meaningful can be captured without being cliche" you know, i don't miss you like the sun and moon, i do not miss you like tide bent waves crashing on the shoreline, i miss you like a chernobyl swingset misses children
rumor has it that drowning is a lot like coming home, that drinking bleach can **** the butterflies in your stomach
for your love of cigarettes, i would have been an ashtray
this halloween i want to dress up as the you when you loved yourself and show up on your doorstep
i never understood what you meant when you said i was an instrument, back when you would cup your hands around my chest and breathe through the holes in my heart, i still wonder if the sounds i made remind you of wind chimes
i never paid much attention to abandoned buildings until i became one
in my dreams all the flowers smell like your perfume
i am the only person who has ever wished for the same snowflake to fall twice
if i could go back, and rewrite the definition of audacity, it would be how when we lost the bet of love, you said "we never shook on it"
i love you, if the feeling is not mutual, please pretend this was a poem
the only apology i want from you, is to have you repeat the names of children we will never have in your parents living room until they *****
we are the same person if you find yourself up at 4am dry heaving promises, or if you are kept awake by the laughter of those who've abandoned you
nobody ever told you that goodbyes taste like the back of stamps
sometimes i'm convinced that the only reason we hug, is so you can check my back for exit wounds
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 11:08 PM UTC
Just a wicked peacenik’n quick draw from the Paw
Game of Thrones’n the Shah, cRussian bones of the law
And still spewing the news like the red dragon’s maw
When the baby-skull splitters want nuclear winter
Ideal New Cold steel and send Chernobyl shivers
Down Roman Republicans’ severed headlines
Till there’s no more dead kids on for prophet front lines
I’m in exile sharpenin’ [sic]kles in style
Pyongyang’n Kuomintang climate denials
Erasing their nation-hate racial profiles
Outpacing their skinhead disgraces by miles
Shell casin’ this place like the Nuremberg trials
For Fords sellin’ swastikas stockpile bibles
Defiled by Normandy tide genocidals
Fresh meat off the boat spreadin’ Plague mercantiles
I smile and **** ‘em with kindness
Then grind
Battle tax in my acid bath
Salt Marchin’ prime
Because WAR IS THE CRIME
I’m the Clown Prince of Rhyme,
Level 9 state of mind
Like the state of Rakhine
The Black Hand before time
Runnin’ Africa’s Luciest Sky Diamond mine
I’m the ronin alone in
The monkey god shrine
And my guile’s reprisal’s Versailles treaty signed
Strippin’ pride from the Rhine
‘Till your Motherland’s mine
Swine
Apr 8, 2018
Apr 8, 2018 at 2:37 AM UTC
We live in a time of uncertainty
No jobs
Climate change
Mass killings
warnings of pandemics
Where is our utopia
where is our heaven on Earth
1900's we had
San Fransisco's earthquake
McKinley was assassinated
First Nobel prize
The Tunguska Event
nothing as changed in my eyes
1910's we had
Spanish flu
The sinking of the unsinkable ship, the Titanic
and World War 1
What else is needed to say about this decade
nothing changed as the human race lived on
1920's we had
Discovery of penicillin
The great depression
and prohibition
1930's we had
Bonnie and Clyde
Hindenburg disaster
Discovery of Pluto
Al Capone imprisoned
1940's we had
World War 2
Mount Rushmore completed
Big bang theory formulated
Israel founded
Nothing changed but who knew
1950's we had
Castro becomes Dictator of Cuba
Laika the dog goes into space
Korean War began
History never changed and neither will the Human Race
1960's we had
The rise of the Berlin wall
First man on the moon
Vietnam War
Nothing changed and won't any time soon
1970's we had
First test tube baby
Tangshan Earthquake
Kent state shootings
Elvis died
1980's we had
Chernobyl
Tiananmen square massacre
Exxon oil spill
Nothing changed and never will
1990's we had
Oklahoma city bombing
Princess Diana died
Columbine massacre
World Trade Center bombed
End of the Cold War
2000's we had
Hurricane Katrina
Pluto reclassified
Obama elected
September 11th
2010's we had
Haiti Earthquake
Japan Earthquake
Bin Laden killed
BP oil spill
England riots
Brazil riots
China banned time travel.
We're only 4 years in.
**** sapiens are nearly 200,000 years old
nothing changed
and never will
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 6:07 AM UTC
I cracked the window to my past
wondering, hoping, I was strong enough to bear
what was left of the pain
of the life I’d left behind.
But the pain, still real, erupted inside
ripped wide the scar.
Blood and tears combined, exploded
and filled my mind and soul with fear.
I feel myself slip down that lonely road again
being drawn down that black ribbon;
its blackness seeps in through the cracks in my soul
and muddy the joy I knew.
How can I brace myself against
the tide pulling me,
holding me,
enveloping me,
and dragging me down
until I no longer can breathe
beneath its endless waves?
I fear now I may never be so strong
as to face my memories.
So I entomb these behind a mighty shield
like the Chernobyl of my past.
Mar 31, 2018
Mar 31, 2018 at 12:07 PM UTC
Anthropogenic climate change
Nuclear fallout Chernobyl
Raptors flourish
And wolves
Dwell
Sleeping.
Catfish swimming
In a cooling eye
Grown old and untouchable
By mans wills.
Rusty ships
Wetlands
Roam free.
Storks in their nests
1875
The cheval de prjevalski
Dye without mercy
The fallout from time
A call to restore
A broken land.
The wolves cry
The wolves cry
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
I wish stars grew in your skin
Next to the oxygen humming in your lungs
To thaw your stagnant blood
So I could watch you orbit your part of the planet
Three hundred miles away,
Because your heart would then permeate faster than life's speed limit,
Scaling all the mountains between us to
Float in my peripherals like
Residual Chernobyl radiation.
Dancing hazily,
Constant reminders of my past
And the jenga monkey ladder to my future.
I never liked being insignificant.
Now please infect me with your cancer
So you can't escape again.
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 9:17 PM UTC
Routine tests
failed
Number Four reactor
Walls melt, floor buckles
Gamma disaster
one half million men mill
by the banks of the Dnieper
Level Seven Event
Unprecedented disaster
Flesh sloughed off
Rounding the corner
cellular structure instantly scrambled
eggs toast and jelly
Gaze upon the elephant's foot
Bathe in green glowing brilliant stochastic calculation
Mutant dogs roam the tainted halls of Prypiat
Disparities reflect
true death toll unknown
Concerned Scientists shed their lights
on the encircling environment
Glittering glass carpets coat abandoned streets
Creaking Ferris wheel slowly turns into madness
Toxic twin of Fukushima
Thyroid Leukemia Cellular Damage Tumor
the caustic clouds still settling today
Generation after generation
dead women and children
Global impact particle spread
none have been spared
even into tomorrow.
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 5:07 PM UTC
you can hear the echo via Zizek the Slovak,
well, attire me in slavic myths and
i'll be mumbling purrs in mud too
for a helium bubble to become a comedian,
i know a jittery ******* addiction
when i see one...
if one thing the catholic schooling system
taught me was how to avoid
sniffing glue and how to recognise
a Freudian apostle - still, with all
the hippy **** you'd think
sniffing glue was what Ukrainian existentialism
prescribed with paracetamol,
catholic education just said: no no.
**** me it's the late 90s and we're talking
post-Chernobyl antics...
but that's how i see the left, leftist politics,
the right
utilises prefixes and suffixes in the
old stance of simple pre- pro-
anti-
qua-
-so so...
the left? oh they're right in there...
their prefixes are
Marxist-
liberal-
Hegelian-
whatnot...
they don't
use abstract prefixes,
their prefixes
are concrete,
they want the porridge in their mouth
to ensure a slur that never comes,
among a range of onomatopoeias they argue
from the perspective of the hushed and ushered crowd,
via one observation: Stalin clapped after a speech
to enjoin with the crowd, a real big brother,
****** never clapped, a sitting-duck method;
i'm not advocating, but by a proxy placebo dynamo
experimenting, it's called experimenting with
thought rather than practising with will,
former no chance of footstep evaluation for
cult status imitable -
the left intellectual
has no rubric of thought concerning to and fro -
it has to be concrete layered and a shut off
perfect architecture without fault -
it can't be what it is -
con-
has to be conservative
pro-
has to be socialist
you once said legitimate
transparency - but you didn't say legislation -
well, the left understood it as legislation,
the right too wanted legitimate transparency -
the green party said we could have neither
but could have the replanting of a thousand
oak trees with a Robin Hood placard on the first
oak tree replanted in Sherwood Forest...
b. ~ d. ~... shot ~100 bent arrows into a bullseye -
hurrah! hurrah! maid marian lost her virginity
too! to a broomstick rather than maradona's
fingernail toothpick!
at an essex market the cockney shouts (out of
place): *** yer courgettes! *** yer courgettes!
ta fa a pudding! ta fa a pudding!
*** yer cucumbers! tooth firth 'un!
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 9:50 PM UTC
Brother Iran
by Michael R. Burch
Brother Iran, I feel your pain.
I feel it as when the Turk fled Spain.
As the Jew fled, too, that constricting span,
I feel your pain, Brother Iran.
Brother Iran, I know you are noble!
I too fear Hiroshima and Chernobyl.
But though my heart shudders, I have a plan,
and I know you are noble, Brother Iran.
Brother Iran, I salute your Poets!
your Mathematicians!, all your great Wits!
O, come join the earth’s great Caravan.
We’ll include your Poets, Brother Iran.
Brother Iran, I love your Verse!
Come take my hand now, let’s rehearse
the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
For I love your Verse, Brother Iran.
Bother Iran, civilization’s Flower!
How high flew your towers in man’s early hours!
Let us build them yet higher, for that’s my plan,
civilization’s first flower, Brother Iran.
Published by MahMag (translated into Farsi by Mahnaz Badihian), Other Voices International, Thanal Online (India), Deviant Art, Portal Vapasin (Farsi). Keywords/Tags: Iran, Iranian, Farsi, Persia, Persian, brotherhood, culture, civilization, poetry, literature, poets, mathematicians, philosophers
Mar 26, 2020
Mar 26, 2020 at 3:06 AM UTC
i am the controlled group
i expected interferon and
i got a saline injection
hepatitis c is the
monster
hiding under my skin
i've called for 300,000 favors
from faceless friends - IRC, IRBs, dietitians, physicians
to try to cheat the system
and to cheat the 4 horsemen
harbinging my own internal apocalypse
"If they don't give me anything,"
I began calmly to my wife;
"the scars on my guts will generate another
Chernobyl out of frustration;
out wanting to see my son graduate."
my white blood cell count is 3
and i will wreck this study
go to mexico
and buy as much real medicine
as i need to survive
rudely refusing the FDA's
50% miracle drug
the ingenious intravenous
sugar pill
i only have 3
white blood cells
circumventing valuable scientific knowledge
is not off the table
i will walk away in slow motion
after saving my liver from
hepatitis hellfire horse jockeys in lab coats
with the entirety of clinical research
burning behind me
Jan 1, 2014
Jan 1, 2014 at 8:02 AM UTC
why i am an only child?
you have to ask the Polish women
who were forced to drink iodine....
1986...
Chernobyl...
it spread to Poland from the Ukraine...
a "rainbow" effect,#as my great-grandmother
recounted...
in the local park?
streaks... of autumnal trees
in their full bloom decay,
and the furthest green in summer...
a strange time...
why wouldn't my mother have
more children?
i guess, in fear of breeding a ******
pro-life, what?!
you raise them!
see how they turn out when
you're dead!
god's "grace"...
you ever curate the fate
of your grandmother?
well then!
now you know!
nature is ruthless!
man attempting to
overcome it?!
you know
what nature does?
i know what nature does...
steam-roller and...
somehow the most vocal speakers
are those daring to
question the feathers
of a macaw parrot...
substituting it with
fashion trends...
mort in concencus,..
vive in conscissio...
i might have been born with
a sibling...
but i wasn't...
the Scandinavian countries learned
of it,
from under, beneath the iron curtain...
and who can actually blame Gorbachev?
when the U.S.S.R. was made
dissolute?
and no war took the zeitgeist
garments of a pope's approval?
no cardinal red,
with Attila's river...
who is to blame,
the scolded transition period of peace?
no one unless my grandfather can
understand the peaceful transition
of the disintegrated U.S.S.R.,
into a Russian Fed.?
no one?
but the women of Poland
and the Ukraine? still had
to drink iodine...
and i am...
i am...
i am...
i will always be...
the long lost cousin of the Chernobyl
geblüt;
there is not concept of
a butterfly effect...
when it comes to the query of an,
atomic reactor!
Aug 22, 2018
Aug 22, 2018 at 10:50 PM UTC
descendants of those left behind,
they found fellowship with
a singularly brutal environment,
free roaming meanderers
of a crepuscular exclusion zone,
having trekked into
the camps of liquidators
to beg for scraps,
they nosed into empty buildings
and found safe places to sleep,
stopping at Café Desyatka
for some borscht,
the guides speak only of
visitor or occupant,
there are no tourists here,
only the genetically distinct
Mar 13, 2023
Mar 13, 2023 at 10:05 AM UTC
oh i can tell you why Brexit happened...
apparently in light of the European
i was not European enough,
a mongrel, a ******* Mongol...
eastern Europeans are Mongols,
mind you...
i'm pretty sure the Brexit vote
happened...
because the A8 joined...
when the Eatern European joined
the old post-colonial powers...
plenty of Pakistanis...
do i mind?
do i ******* care?!
i don't care...
you deal with: the minding!
no...
i have an inheritance tax
without any ceremonial
past...
your **** is your ******* ****
plus the Arab, and the curry...
**** off!
i'm no *******
*vierte ***** pussy-whip...
you ******* yo-yo oreo!
mind you?
put me down on this one...
i hate the Poles...
i ******* hate the Poles...
what they did to the Chernobyl me?
i hate the Polacks...
don't like them...
i'd rather spit
than talk to them...
i've learned my lesson...
i hate them more than
the Germans, or the Russians...
i hate them with the sort of hatred
reserved for
patriots...
Judas Priests...
i abhor the ****** catholicism...
it makes me... cringe...
then i think:
thickens the thong -
better than the Islamic
crap to mind making a boot...
Brexit only happened because
of the supposed invasion of the A8...
the Pakistani mobile gave off a jitter -
somehow the "excess" Europeans
migrated...
whites combined with
whites...
Europeans mingled...
big problem for the Pakistanis...
Brexit only happened because
"eastern" Europe joined the
*vierte *****
well... "joined"...
some of us had enough sense as
to keep the currency...
******* Pakistani bullshitters...
what?!
i thought English girls loved
being gang-rape-fucked?!
no?!
my bad...
the joining of the A8
disrupted the presence of Britain in
the EU...
thumbs up on the curry-sauce...
thumbs down on the Baltic
sauerkraut....
guess what?!
**** you!
you ******* British Empire
bonkers...
relief contra racism with an
Empire disintegrating!
wankers...
sure, beseech alliances
outside of Europe...
seek them, find them,
govern them...
the next time you come shoveling your
**** into my: awareness...
i'll be asking...
so... Rotherham...
no, not really... don't bother me
with that sort of ****
you deal with your ********
before shoving your ***** into my mouth
expecting me to gargle
on the produce...
you're closer to Pakistan
than i am to Mongolia...
you draw the the postcard...
i'll draw the pretty picture.
don't get me wrong, thought,
i hate the Polacks...
i don't belong between them...
i'd prefer to be strapped to a Hydra
of homeless dogs...
than exercise the humanity
of a shared tongue
with these... mongrels;
mind you... the British are just as
bad... when it comes
to their, mongrel stature.
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 6:54 PM UTC
alien abductions and cabinets filled with shelved memories
of the skeletons
on the dark side of the moon
radioactive cover ups
buried deep
beneath chernobyl manholes
and short conversations
with mutant ghosts dissipating in the morning rain
what if a psychopath alien
with delusions of grandeur
chasing dreams of immortality
met a genie who granted him his wish
and became the catalyst for the world religions?
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 7:57 PM UTC
Saw a documentary about the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster today, and came up with this:
There's a person waiting for you to come back home
and sleep by her side
She waits for a future with you and her
and maybe an innocent child
You could play all day
and put him on your back
You could see the smile on his face
and spend the rest of your life like that
Do you really wanna give that away?
Do you really wanna give them away?
Or are you waiting for the world to say
Please don't **** me for you ego
I don't deserve to die right now
Remember the games you used to play as a kid?
The ones with Superman and the bad guys
You've grown up now and there's no Superman
I'm not so sure about the bad guys
Do you know how many kids are playing
that very game right now?
Do you know how many mothers are praying
for their safety right now?
Do you really wanna take that away?
Do you have any right of playing with their happiness this way?
Or are you waiting for the world to say
Please don't **** me for your ego
I don't deserve to die right now
I'm a man, I'm a common man
A faceless man, an innocent man
I'm walking on the street
Following my daily routine
Can you give me a reason
for killing me slowly?
For killing my parents, my wife, my kids
my friends and my family?
I know you can't
I know you can't
I know you can't
Coz you're the same as me
Please don't **** me for your ego
I don't deserve to die right now
Jun 6, 2012
Jun 6, 2012 at 1:40 PM UTC
That was then, this is now
Who was where when what was how?
Hear them take their last breath as they're shot down
I scream
Floating in the gene pool, expecting the man who can walk on water to arrive
Sell outs and everyone who has had a bad week even though it's only Monday
Whippersnappers hang their heads in shame
I am one of twelve
So expendable
We live in gluttony
Lineleaders, math teachers, bottom-feeders have no idea
Watch them fall and be forced to crawl on their bellies
We laugh
Lewandowsky-Lutz dysplasia, getting back to your roots
Progeric clock-makers, lying dead on The Yellow Brick Road
Thin-skinned Transsexuals putting bricks in their purses
We live by eight
We die from our weight
And go unbloomed
-Tommy Johnson
Standing in a nuclear reactor somewhere in Chernobyl looking for the truth
It might be in my contaminated endoplasmic reticulum
I am a radiant
Doppler radar
Monopoly dollar
Singing in the shower, amateur hour
Projecting sour notes
Pouring out their hearts and souls, hear them
Trying
Moo-juice nectar, spilling off The Round Table
Blondes in red bracelets, Kabbalah saves them
Henry pays no tax, John Berryman's bats tell us
You are the lunatic
We are the two quarters of a half-wit
This whole thing is insane
-Tommy Johnson
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 10:49 AM UTC
Caught in the middle of a nuclear warfare,
And we make love beneath the mushroom cloud,
Sparks fly amidst the dust and rubble
From the remnants of our incinerated world.
Hollow hearts like Chernobyl,
Desolate and dilapidated,
Chemicals still lingering deep beneath the soil,
Forbidden to connect and to flourish
With one another.
Veins lined with toxic waste
That spill from our mouths
When we kiss,
Our skin is radioactive
When we touch,
The boiling point
Before we have a total meltdown,
Slowly eroding
Into ash and ruins.
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 6:27 PM UTC
A is for atom
Rotten to the core
Melting down
below the ground
just outside the door
Where presidents and statesman
continue to play
with hot core rods
in a box of sand
forgetting where they've buried them
From Kazakhstan to New York
they walk away and wipe their hands
Now all young boys like hot apple pie
but uranium cake is hotter
and those who've tasted such elation
will tell you that it's nearly sinful
the way the warmth slowly infil-
-trates you to the bone
Hear! Hear! A noble cheer
for the best warm dish
served in years...
Soviet meltdown in hot sause
There's a piece for brother and sister and you
There's a piece for mom and dad
who chatter in the parlour
like a geiger counter going mad
Now the nuclear family
eats plutonium pie
and triple scoop reactor splits
melt and drip
from every bodies spoon
Cheer noble! Good men! Cheer noble!
Please stand tall solicit applause
Cheer noble!!
You'll get your rewards
and your just deserts
with a noble cheer
CANDU!!!
Roosty
Feb 2, 2017
Feb 2, 2017 at 10:07 AM UTC
Children of Louisiana,
Swept away and drowned,
In the river’s flood
And the ocean surge.
Never have recovered
Fully from the rain falling down,
And of a city that was purged.
Ignored by the government
And its fellow man,
Follow in a long line of sufferers
Since the melting, ice age glaciers
And even a tsunami in the North Sea
That wiped out Doggerland.
Dark Ages got darker as people ran
And Britain’s white cliffs were sheared.
Times got better and then got worse,
But the people carried on.
Now, the floods are a weekly thing,
A blip on a newscast,
As lost as the victims in a mess
Of other disasters,
Of wildfires, droughts and don’t
Even mention the quaking earth
Or volcanoes! We can’t take credit
For causing those!
Rich men in their castles,
Feasting and clapping each other
On their fatty backs,
Rolling in the spoils and spills
Of oil, on the flaming water of
The American plains.
Sheikhs in old Mesopotamia
Whine about oil pipelines,
Promised to them by President Cheney,
While the people starve.
Bloated oligarchs spread destruction
All over the world, from
The Congo to Chernobyl,
Melting icecaps and raising the sea,
Sinking islands where they don’t live,
Vacationing in the Maldives,
On special rates before those go under.
They won’t fix Miami, but let it sink,
But not before they plunder
The empty towers built on foolish dreams.
Of course, they’ll be the last to go,
Crammed into mansions up in the Alps,
Fighting with the European nobles
Over who gets a crumbling palace
Now sitting on the last ice floe.
A few American cousins round each other up
To catch the Dixie Flyer down to New Orleans,
Trying to hide from the polar vortex,
A dazzling case of ignorance and greed,
Only to find the tracks buried in the sea…
Down in the mud of the deep, brown sea.
Mar 10, 2021
Mar 10, 2021 at 4:26 PM UTC
Hollow points break to pieces
memories are liquid gold
time is the jet of life
school the prison
unbound from these links
the reaper looms over the fallen
like polar bears--those released are the new homeless
Chernobyl shall be our name
Alcatraz has abandoned thy past to repeat
A heart as strong as Hank Williams
in the end we are the England Patriots of 2007
but before that sorry night
2012 will be Disney World
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 5:00 AM UTC
The quiet hours stack like parts of blocks in "Tetris."
The one they took less "seriously" as the "dying Joker"
Has a powerful and energetic heart
What it has shared was out of beauty and loving creation...
Every time he stood back up to start creating "Interruption"
His fists are clenched with rage and anger
The "Chernobyl" ready for it's "Fatal Nuclear Eruption."
Right at the most inconvenient of moments..
"I want this and you are not getting that"
"You are spoiled and without a conscious"
That's not it..
"Where are you at?"
If a question is asked to the days interrupted
You get the punishment and are forced to fore fill to their "fall"
as they wish for their "rules to be iron clad"
Not based upon Rational "Movement"
Universal "treatment" scars rather than heals..
and you are the Joker "rising" who they refuse to listen to or fail to see that he does "Feel"
Trying to be "real"
He returns to this moment of thought and quiet
where he yet "fights onward" for what he knows is truly what he needs
"can these people meet you half way"
before forcing you into their music
like a broken reed
on a wind piper
can't this world see that this is far from what is right..
it's too far down "wrong"
I cannot say
For I've been silenced
I laugh to myself in my silence
waiting for their next movement to force...me to have to become more insane and fight
all due to to their "beliefs" and "works" in which they force in "vain?"
I know..it's insane.
As I put this pen down.."At least my voice is the stain..."
Maybe another face will come along
that will walk with me instead of in front
and we both can live with each other
"in equal confidence?"
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 1:38 AM UTC
A love like pomegranate seeds — I am condemned to a mortal marriage with Death, waiting for his hands to touch me in the winter; I am stuck inside an autumnal equinox, waiting for the spring. My mind is a brothel — filthy and thoughts floating in and out but not looking for any sort of commitment. But you say that my brain is efflorescent and something lovelier than I would believe. There are cities in the palms of my hands, once teeming with life like the Great Barrier Reef, but now moan the silent sounds of desolation within a Chernobyl wasteland; but you are roaming the ashes atop my fingertips like a lost child trying to unearth the memories of her mother beneath the rubble of a shaken faith, despite knowing she was lost forever in the wake of brutal destruction, kicking me left and right as though I were the collapsed mountain of infrastructure in the wake of early September, 2001. I say all this to confirm that I do miss your voice and its fluidity on the phone — I miss your voice even though I know you'll hang up, and I wish I felt that way about living. I only want you to hold my sticky heart like melted candy. I want you to stop sighing and slumping in your chair like the names of every Holocaust victim is engraved on your eyelids. I want you to smile like an innocent child, for once.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 3:36 AM UTC
I could tell that you had smoked a cigarette
yesterday before I saw you because
your shirt smelled like smoke and
your lips tasted like
lung cancer. (I like to to pretend
that it doesn’t really bother me that
this is not the only connection
you have with my father.)
My parents, my sister, and you, my darling, all
have green eyes. Green like miniature
earths turning in space, like Lake Michigan capsizing,
like the summer leaves in the woods behind my house.
Sometimes I think that I’m more closely related to
my grandparents because when I
turned down the emeralds, I was given
sapphires to use as kaleidoscopes instead.
And, you know, my father called me a month ago and
wished me luck “in the big city” and I still
do not know if that means he knows
where I am or not; I have
not heard from my mother in over five years.
(I like to pretend that your relationship
with your parents is much easier than mine.)
Do you remember that time when you told me that
“everyone sins?”
I do not think that you took into account
the amount of which we all sin. (All sinners are equal,
but some are more equal than others.) Sometimes
I think that the Viking blood inside of me
makes sure that I identify with
the villains more than the heroes.
Sometimes I think that
you are the hero.
But, darling, there so many things I
tip toe around when it comes to you, and
I am not sure why—religion, politics; the
Chernobyl boy, the inked boy, my father, my mother; the
moths that live inside my gut, the layer of dust over my limbic system.
I wish that I had the words to say that I can never
be what you want, what my
family wants, what anyone wants.
I wish that I could tell you how I
think I am drowning in the in the gene pool,
how I am convinced that I’ve broken three bones
without actually breaking them, how I lay awake
at night, scared to death that my
dreamcatcher will stop working and that the
nightmares will finally catch up with me.
There are broken wishbones in my bed that
I keep as trophies of losing to luck and
blood stains on my clothes from all
the lambs that I’ve been forced to slaughter.
All I want to do is tell you why I prefer
cigar smoke to cigarette smoke
and how I would rather have you
quit all together than live another day knowing that
you’re dying faster than me.
But darling, I watched the world spin last night
when I opened my eyes and looked at you
looking at me, and for now, it’ll do. You
can be the nightlight in the corner of my room.
Wait for me in my chrysalis. Listen to my wings flutter.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 3:03 AM UTC
The ******** of Eden
Licking Chernobyl ****
Humming that post atomic hit ™
Oct 7, 2014
Oct 7, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC