"cinderblock" poems
I was relaxed, and deep in thought
The type of talk that silence brought
When just in earshot it rocked,
tick tock
tick tock
"Must be a clock"
I told myself and resumed my thought
Though as the seconds passed I could not,
Despite the will with which I fought
Do to its incessant knock
Tick tock
Tick tock
I searched for the clock
Unable to find the train I sought
I grew more and more distraught
With each and every tick and tock
That find the clock, I could not
As the silence grew more fraught
With the knock,
Tick Tock
Tick Tock
I knew the pain of Lancelot
On and on it ticked and tocked
I cursed at the unseen dreadnought
It no longer merely mocked
But each and every tick and tock
Became an unseen onslaught
TICK TOCK
TICK TOCK
T'was 11 o'clock,
When my heart felt the gunshot
Though the shots I could not block
And on and on the bullets poured
Further into the fray I bored
Each foot a cinderblock
Weighed by war
I slowly walked
Tick Tock
Tick Tock
How I'd make it answer for
Alas
With little blood left to speak for Desperately I implored
"Restrain your hands that caused such gore;
We need not fight evermore!"
But when I heard the ceaseless knock
Tick tock
Tick tock
I new my words had been ignored
And slowly collapsed to the floor
****** and bludgeoned when I hit bed rock, I had still found no clock
But tick and tock it had forgot
The church bell rang t'was 12 o'clock,
Though mortal wounds the seconds wrought
I no longer was distraught
And as I lay in the hemlock
It occurred in my last thoughts
I would miss the beating knock
tick..., tock...
tick..., tock...
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 9:04 PM UTC
My father is an old truck
Sunbleached red
Breathes broken bottles
A faulty catalytic converter throat
All the smoke trapped inside
But the nicotine helps his brain function
Cinderblock sturdy
But skinny
A single pillar holding the roof up
A man built in a time when you had to tell things it was time to die
Leave them in a field somewhere and forget about
How do you write a love poem to a car of a man
Built in a time without airbags?
A car of a man who crashed with you inside so many times
You learned about rebuilding from experience
From trial and error
And how do you forgive a man who can no longer tell you he’s sorry?
Trucks
Don’t feel
Don’t give up
Don’t hurt you on purpose
Sometimes something inside just breaks
And no one catches it
And maybe you crash
Break a nose
Black an eye
As far as I know
I am not a broken man
But I’ve learned where all the parts go
And if I am my father’s son
A mechanic more often than a car maybe
Then I will be fine
The truck is dying
And beyond repair
You forgive it for that
It is old and past its time
And maybe it can’t say that it’s sorry
But there is a field somewhere that you plan on leaving it
To collect weeds
And rust
And be forgotten
So you forgive it
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014 at 4:59 PM UTC
maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through
glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,
that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating
the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,
cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab
hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,
his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,
3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,
liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks
in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-Whiz, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-
and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-Whiz crust in his stubble,
and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying
she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 4:25 PM UTC
Her laughter pumps the gas, dumps the clutch shakes and rattles from each intersection
Her wet feet leave monster tracks long damp claws arching across the cement
Her hair grows brambles collecting thorns and twigs with the best of bushes
Her senses, corvid, snatching up dropped coins, pencils, paperclips
Her tongue unfettered, butterfly breath reels with snips of story and songs
Her eyes hold drops of honey, sticky sweet lashes follow the sun
sunflower cheeks blush cardamom on yellow velvet
glow butterfaced with dandelion kisses
Rough, regular under hand, stubbornly slate, unchanged unmoved.
if her soul is a garden there is a cinderblock there
holding down the sunflowers,
along with the grass at her core, it grows roots,
but no moss.
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 2:23 PM UTC
Anxiety reverberates through my body. My chest becomes so heavy that it feels as if a cinderblock has been lied down on it. All of my body's involuntary functions pause to listen to the demons that live in the back of my head. The demons announce to my anatomy that I have no worth, no value. The demons mock my lungs, "Why work so hard to keep her breathing when nobody on earth wants her alive." My body receives the criticisms and obeys the demon's demands. My lungs quit. I cannot breath. My mouth quits. I cannot speak, the only sounds escaping are soft screams. My ears quit. I hear nothing, besides the demons. My stomach quits. It tries to commit suicide by consuming itself causing me to curl into a ball in severe agony. My eyes try to fight off the negativity. They push the negativity out through tears, but it isn't enough. They look myself over in the mirror, trying to find some value. My eyes explore my entire body, searching desperately for something beautiful, something worth fighting for. They find nothing, but disappointment. My hands fight too. They find a blade and slide it across my wrist, a demon escapes me through the tear in my skin. My body feels a slight relief, but soon a different demon rekindles my self disgust. I let the blade dance across my body, over and over again, feeling slight relief each time. Eventually my entire body is bleeding and I am still only slighting relieved of my pain. My eyes work with my hands on the search to find a place to help the demons to escape. There is no place on my body left, that I could use to release my demons. My crying has stopped and enough demons have left my system to breath comfortably. I put the blade away, and slip into bed, my entire body aching. The physical pain is much easier to handle than the physical and emotional torture the demons would have caused. I lay in bed, trying to be as still as possible to avoid agitating my wounds. I cry to myself silently, because I know I'm going to have to rip myself open again tomorrow night. I feel numb enough to eventually to fall into a slumber. Will I spend the rest of my life rereleasing the same demons over and over again, just to feel unsatisfied and numb? Are my demons right? Is my life worthless? Especially considering I'm at my best either when I'm unconscious or when I'm numb? I am so tired of being numb. Agonizing numbness.
Aug 16, 2013
Aug 16, 2013 at 8:55 PM UTC
1. if i knew where to get drugs, i'd be a ******
2. sure, my ribs are visible, but what of it?
3. i lose myself in dreams at night and during algebra ii
4. i'm in lust with a girl with a boyfriend
5. or maybe i'm just paranoid
6. i'm lonely in these cinderblock walls
7. i find myself again under stage lights
8. i'm homeless (although not in the traditional sense)
9. i know i'm loved but
10. when my friends laugh with their other friends, it's about me
11. or maybe i'm just paranoid
12.if i lose it, who will visit me in the hell known as 'psychiatric ward'?
13. i can't hold my own in a fight because i cry into my wounds
14. besides, i don't write anymore
15. what is there to write about besides love and insanity anyway?
16. my demons visit this safe haven and desecrate it
17.their names are sarah kate and victoria
18. or maybe i'm just paranoid
19. but i swear i didn't name the voices inside my head
20. i make endless lists of things that don't matter
21. to do, to buy, to cry about, to write about
22. so i close my eyes when i sing
23.or maybe i'm just paranoid
24. and you hated this poem but
25. maybe i'm just paranoid
Oct 23, 2014
Oct 23, 2014 at 10:40 AM UTC
carrying Kalashnikovs on their backs,
the rebel mules have panic in their eyes
and resting at the back?
fear filled pupils that dilate
with every corpse seen vacating itself
of tissue and blood,
smell the perfume of gun barrels
and those lonely enough to be culled,
picked off by a trained eye
and a government lie and
a man laid down in an apartment block out of sight up high.
civilian fathers laying spread on the back of a flatbed,
cinderblock walls that offer no protection but that of protecting the dead,
sharpen another knife for another internet viral video of another guy without a head
and finally, cat walk model rebels wearing beaded shrapnel necklaces, gorgeous and chrome red.
and they’ll try give them away around,
a daily sound of the everyday
so they can have a price that they can pay
for the ordinary,
for the sane,
for America’s definition of the lame.
Jun 16, 2013
Jun 16, 2013 at 12:44 PM UTC
person feels a wave of heat through their neck and face when struck with a thought of their ex boyfriend. a ninth grader gives them a ***** look. person leans against a cold cinderblock wall and relaxes their face. focus on the empty space between the eyeballs and the brain. feel the limp arms and identify the beat of a pulse running through them. repeat after me: self care is boring.
paul laurence dunbar knows why the caged bird sings. he never wanted to be an elevator operator. it's a point of privilege. person asks a ninth grader if a bird could see the wind, the river, the sun. "oh... no..."
one thing person notices time and again is that when these students drop something they do not pick it up. they let someone else do it. where person is from it is not like that. students would not help person like that, they think.
person remembers one time, when they themselves were in the ninth grade, dropping their lunchbox in a crowded hallway and picking it up swiftly in the next step without slowing down. a tall boy behind them said "smooth". person felt proud at the time. person feels good remembering this.
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 7:44 PM UTC
You’ll find them in all such establishments,
(Be they graceful small-town former Victorian homes,
Or cinderblock edifices mindful of some campus multi-faith center)
Sitting in the basement, cheek-to-jowl
With moldering burial records and banking statements,
Yellowed newspaper clippings, faded prayer cards
Small squared-off boxes hastily tabbed together,
Ostensibly temporary containers which have acquired
An unintended and wholly unwelcome permanence.
The whys and wherefores of their subterranean placement
A mixed bag of foible and outright foolishness:
Unresolvable squabbles concerning possession and burial,
Families that skipped out on the bill, leaving mom behind,
Cases of outright not giving a good-goddamn.
And so they remain, in lieu of repatriation and redemption,
To sit for something akin to perpetuity in some cases
(Members of the profession resolute in their respect
For the dignity of life,
Though their sincerity enjoys less unanimity)
While others wait for mass burial
Once legal niceties have been satisfied,
While still others, in care of firms not so scrupulous
About crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s,
Are flung, albeit somewhat surreptitiously, out the back door,
The remains to take flight if the grass is dry and the wind is brisk,
Otherwise to be left to the vagaries
Of curious birds and creped soles.
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 11:28 AM UTC
I sat outside
Lauren's LS classroom
While everyone else was at lunch
Chewing up and equal mixture of
Soggy bread and lunch meat.
I sat outside
While my back went numb
Against the cinderblock
From leaning a little too hard.
I sat outside
While other kids
with different schedules
Wrote elongated essays for English
Just to make 500 words.
I sat outside
Of Lauren's LS
While she tried her hardest
To explain to me
Why I got 17b wrong
And
Of course
How to fix it.
And I sat outside
Doing test corrections
For a poisoned class called
Geometry
I sat outside
Because of my 57% score.
I sat outside,
And I decided to study.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 10:00 PM UTC
These streets knew feet in days gone by,
bustling sidewalks, crowded storefronts,
laughter, light and dancers leaking
out of smoke-filled bars.
Cars would wind through intersections,
blood cells between neighborhoods.
From The Corner came The Roar.
He remembers how the Autumn sounded
back in '84
when Alan Trammell brought The Series home,
the arcing shot off Gibson's bat,
the rolling wave of soaring voices.
Old English
"D"
tattooed on the hearts
of a city
who's been hurting since the 50's.
Bless You Boys.
Ya did it--
went and Sparked up Michigan
and lit a dimming town again
in Corktown's widening eyes.
In 20 years, though, losses pile up.
55 and starved for signs
of trends reversing, luck upending,
impending relief or just some kind of
something.
Sickening, cloying rapid decay
as neighborhoods die.
These streets know crumbling cinderblock
walls and blistered paint coats don't
cover ribcages starting to show--
steel girder bones--and windows blown
out, like teeth lost from a well-spoken mouth,
allow the Lake Michigan wind to howl
out the tale--
through oxidized bones--
of just what it looks like
when economic war hits home.
Heartbeats still find footing
in Motor City streets, beneath
the Old English "D,"
but mind the scoreboard smart;
the Tigers lost a hundred games
in 2003.
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 6:58 PM UTC
Underneath the burning building in my gut
So much is preserved safely
In the memory where you are smiling
I find peace
I want to be lonely in private
But there is no space for that
Under the rubble
Compound fracture of bitter jawline
That same smile a photo
Warping in fire
I want to preserve you
Like a wasp in amber
But we are not as slow as that
Not as gentle
The theory is
Two objects fall at the same speed
Regardless of mass
Except for people
We do not fall for each other at the same pace
I felt like the man with the rescue dog
That heard your heartbeat
After the cement settled
And the wood grew cold
White ash
Black cinderblock paperweights
Your body preserved under
Layers of broken building
But you felt safe
Because you set the fire
And I was the man that found you
Some secrets can’t stay buried
We were cave people
Found and revived
I’m not new to this
Just rusty
Just dusty
There are burn marks on our bodies
And I have almost forgotten how mine got there
There were things you thought you should go back for
Things you wanted to leave behind
But in the saving you took what you could carry
There was baggage in your desperation
To save what you thought was important
When you burnt yourself to the ground
You forgot that fire is a funny thing
It lives too
And you can’t control it
There were some houses
Left standing
Whole acres unlit for no reason
Not everything gets burned
And there is a photo of you
Cigarette hole dimples
A smile that brings me peace
And you brought with you
Bits of burning ribcage
And smoke filled lung
To hide your heart minimally
I brought nothing
Mine is slightly weather calloused now
But it works just fine
It’s just rusty
Just dusty
So take this
What is left of my burning breast plate
Carved message on the inside
like an oversized locket
Underneath the black and white negative of your film strip
“Thank you for trying”
Dec 27, 2012
Dec 27, 2012 at 6:01 PM UTC
The movement of her body was entirely too loud
She is desert throat gasps
When the water is so good
She doesn’t stop for air
Can hear her comin’
Her rusty train wreck tremble
On loose tracks
Her collapse is a cinderblock rain
The crumble is so much quieter than the crash
Her crumble is so much quieter than the crash
Her hands shake as she swipes her EBT card for the fifteenth time
She puts back the bacon this time
Throws down 5.50 for the Marlboros
She talks to herself
Angrily
Slams ever door she enters
Every door she exits
Her children think she is crazy
She is crazy
She is a body built
On passive aggression
And the threat of a shaky foundation
When the earthquake hits
Any day could be my last day you know
Her son turns up the tv
Her daughter plugs her headphones into her cd player
Do you all think I am talking just to hear myself talk?
And if you don’t stop sleep talking
*Telling me you’re going to **** me*
I am sending you to the hospital
The boy mutes the tv
Dries his eyes before they’re wet
He shakes his head
Begs her not to do that
Says he doesn’t know he’s doing it
Says he doesn’t want to **** her
She walks away
And he is left wondering
I remind him later
That we were not raised on truth
So it’s hard sometimes
To trust people
I put a lock on his door
Tell him to shut himself in at night
As for the mother
We don’t talk anymore
Like I said
She’s crazy
And I’ve got too much of that myself already
Somewhere a door is slamming
Somewhere cinderblocks are crumbling quiet
There is a sizzle like slowly cracking glass
I feel it crawl my spine
It crawls his
The girl misses it
Head buried in pop culture
Going deaf in trying to drown out
Her mother’s noise
Do you think I am talking just to hear myself talk?
As a poet I ask myself the same thing
Ask how far the apple can fall from the tree
If any one of us are lucky
It will be just far enough
Apr 23, 2012
Apr 23, 2012 at 1:20 PM UTC
The restaurant where I often eat has a raw cinderblock shell to show the world
It was painted a long time ago, when a new owner bought it out
It was meant to beautify, it didn't work
But I guess it's the thought that counts.
On the East wall, near one corner, is a rectangle of thick white paint
in a field of grime. Always fresh, always clean.
It is marred by a series of looping black slashes.
Stare at them for long enough, relax the muscles behind your eyes, let them slip out of focus
And you'll start to see letters
In the dipping and diving bands of black.
It's writing
An alien calligraphy
People as woefully uncool as you or I weren't meant to decode it
There is energy in the strokes though.
It's a performance frozen at it's moment of completion
You can see velocity, grace, excitement, a little fear, and a deft, darting contempt.
All of these things in the broad and narrow ribbons of paint.
When I'm in the right sort of mood, with a full stomach and a lazily sunfried imagination, with the heat from the asphalt making things in the middle distance quaver,
I can make out the dim shape of the artist.
See where they stood, the sweep of their arm
the turn of their head, wary of witnesses.
Days in and out, it goes on.
Bare white one day,
blackened, besmirched, beautiful the next.
The snowy rectangle grows thicker.
Why the owner never stakes out his restaurant one night, I'll never know.
Why the artist doesn't venture beyond that one little pen, or choose a new wall entirely
will remain a mystery, probably for all my breaths to come.
It's like some mad story penned by a poor, gibbering lunatic.
Each is doomed to a war neither can win, and neither can lose.
I bend double I'm laughing so hard
They take it so seriously.
But then, don't we all have our petty conflicts?
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 9:59 PM UTC
I would sell myself a bill of goods
Before I would ever inveigh
The babble
That some-have the chutz-puh
To accept as some obscure
Personal quest
That they must compel
Themselves to fulfill
As the Tower Of Babel was
To the intrangient zealots
As they go about
Invoking invidiousness
Binging on the intoxicating inversion
Of partisan opinionativeness
Quoting as they go
"Do unto me not as I do unto you"
When... In a chronometric second
Any possible bipartisan thoughts
That they may truly possess
Has passed through their cinderblock brain
Like the ray of light
On a birefringent trajectory
Unable to acknowledge or accept either one
As the refracting action
Accentuates the intolerance
Invalidating them for
The total lack
Of introspection
Resulting from the
Total absence
Of any biological binder
That on any level would ever
Allow even the slightest sprig
Of libertarian thought
To escape deracination
Slamming the lid tightly
In hopes that noone would see
The dividends that grow from
The derivation as a desideratum
People who can't see it
Personally.... I don't need em.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 2:57 AM UTC
He is red
Flakes of skin breaking away from his arms and face
He smiles stretching the cigarette stain on his white mustache
You young people have got it all wrong
Let me tell you a story
Don’t worry it’s a funny story
He looks behind him to make sure he can soak up my time
I tell the cashier to stay and check if anybody comes
One time there was this really dumb bird
Had a nice beard like yours
Real busy guy
And he waited til winter to fly south
If this story is about me I’m not sure
Some of us work real hard
And still manage to justify that we have nothing
I wonder if he knows I can see the boogers in his nose
The bird finally took off for home
But it began to rain
He kept flying
Then it started to hail
The hail beat his wings
It was getting hard to flap
His body began to shiver
He smiles again
It makes his lips crack and bleed a little
Underneath the stretch of yellow
He exhales and his breath smells sweetly of beer
It began to snow
Lightly at first
Though it was cold it was easier to fly
But the snow fell thicker
It coated his body
His heart slowed
He began to feel really tired
He started to descend
He was dying
He places a hand on mine for a moment
His is comfortably rough
Shovel callous rough
Cinderblock stack rough
If that touch was for me or him
I’m not sure
All these stories are just ways we beg people to stay
This poetry is just a way to keep you here
Touch you with my rough and tremble
So you can look at my cracked broken and ******
A little longer
The bird kept falling
Until he hit the earth
And you know where he landed?
Right in a big cow patty
*But the warmth of the fresh ****
Melted the snow
Gave him his life back
So he rolled around in it and began to sing
He sang and sang and sang
And a hawk heard the singing
It was winter
The hawk was hungry
And he ate that bird with the nice beard
He slaps the counter separating us
Eyes widen to mounds of earth
Two big fat piles of cow **** staring at me and smiling
I don’t feel like laughing
And the moral of that story young man
*Is if you’re covered in **** and somehow happy*
Keep your mouth shut
These stories are just reasons
And I don’t feel like laughing
I laugh anyway
May 28, 2012
May 28, 2012 at 5:10 PM UTC
No need for dramatics but cinderblock house arrangment tempo
Is not equal to the federal concordance
Checking back
No
No
No wait
equals
What professor 25
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 12:51 AM UTC
a lament locked on her lips
held in place by lipstick
its powerful sorrows leak down
her chin in a thin red rivulet
to fall to the pure white satin sheet
pooling there like a lake of fire
smouldering there like a woman's
scorned heart
the song of her eyes
has become warped and
distorted and distant
like the sound of a small child crying
in some obscure corner of your house
but you cannot place the sound
it moves with a religious dignity
that defys logic
it escapes your grasp for you were never intended to
to see her vulnerability
his closed fist mouth
is drawn taught
with all the things he withholds
with all the children of his long nights
spent pacing and thinking in the small cell
of his cinderblock mind
these children are but shadows of thought
but he feeds them like starving dogs
rabid to be released into steaming hot sun
his mask of a ****** expression
haunts his brittle dream
he keeps coming to a mirror
to behold that he is unchanged
he is the man the boy wanted to be
he is what his mother always dreamed he'd be
her nurturing touch is cracked
its egg shell surface bleeds
its sounds are foreign
and i surrender to its relentless devotions
bend to the precise course they dictate
absolution
prostrate to the purchased dream
follower of the prepaid horror
a lament locked on her lips
held in place by lipstick
its powerful sorrows leak down
her chin in a thin red rivulet
to fall to the pure white satin sheet
pooling there like a lake of fire
smouldering there like a woman's
scorned heart
and within that punishment box
i bleed for the face i am not
i suffer the eggshell dream
for a tenderness that i did not harm
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 3:24 PM UTC
*standing still
feet glued to a floor that’s falling through
destined for destruction
your eyes glass over
you turn your head away
you don’t see me
you release me
from your gentle grasp
a cinderblock
falls on my chest
crushes me
i can’t breathe
all hope is lost
but
right before
i flat line
my lungs fill with air
my heart begins to beat
you rescue me
for a second
i’m weightless
i’m safe
time passes
seconds are short
and you remember
our little
emotionless game
the cinderblock
comes flying at my head
how did i
ever
feel safe
he loves me
he loves me not
it’s like picking petals off a dead rose
leaving everything to chance
throwing a dice
and hoping it lands on the side you desire
you wrap me in your arms
yet i still feel
miles away from you
love
anger
sadness
envelope my mind
sending my thoughts into a whirlwind
of crazy emotion
drowning
in the tears
that escape through the cracks
of the glassy walls
that you constantly break down
i’m naked
you see through me
no secrets
nothing just for my mind to know
my body
my eyes
scream every thought
i desperately
want to keep inside
i tell myself
be strong
protect yourself
with the glassy eyed distance
with which he drives you insane
failure must be my strong suit
‘cause having strength
when i’m with you--
impossible*
Feb 2, 2014
Feb 2, 2014 at 6:30 PM UTC
Your long fingers tap on my nervous heart.
I love your fickle soul
and freckled shoulders.
You say you won't find peace of mind
in a cinderblock room
or on a piece of notebook paper,
so you crumple up your doubts
and hide your body with mine.
My shrunken lungs cannot draw breaths
not used to say your name.
I will be a blanket to warm your bones
from your downdraft hopes.
I will comb your hair with my fingers
on the days you don't wake.
But my heart breaks
on battlefields you will never hear of.
I lick wounds
you will never know to see.
I train my trembling hands
so they may gently soothe you in sleep.
I can love you better than I can fix myself.
I will fight becoming what I fear
in order to be all that you need.
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
This morning I read your name for the very first time.
The sad thing is, any other day, I would have just seen a name.
But today I saw a cinderblock on the vital organs of those left in your wake.
Laying heavy in the mouths of those trying to remember the
importance of breathing, of moving on.
Today we are forced to remember that no one is ever just a name.
You were a heartbeat. A soul.
A vibration of the universe that felt anger and pain and love.
Someone should have told you that, the night you tried to find wings.
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 2:24 PM UTC
It is grey and snowy here
And I kinda miss the sun
She said
Woman
I am wishing you the warmth only a lover can offer
Via breathy nothings into your ear
Fills you like a balloon
And stands you so still
That your shadow on the snow
Looks more like a stain
I know you
Like the snowy backdrop of my foggy thoughts
When poetry is all that is left
To know who we are
And what we’ve become
It is us trapped in the porcelain distance
Between scalding hot coffee
And your shaking palm
So this is me
Wishing you warmth
And love
And burning belly cinderblock butterflies
The kind that don’t make you tremble
Just settle
Into the comfiest spot you know
Still cold?
I didn’t think so
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 3:49 PM UTC
Should have
put a bullet in the brain
Should have
doused it with kerosene
and lit a match
Should have
tied a cinderblock
to the worthless wretch
and chucked it in the lake
But the most rotten things
resurface
and eat the sweetness
that you spent
two years
building
Should have left
well enough alone
instead of
leaving the coffin door
wide open
for the wickedness
to crawl back out
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 4:12 PM UTC
Cinderblock ashes and miles a sunder
And the crestfallen seas as wide there after
The nightingale as she was called
Bold, brave and on a journey
Searching for the missing piece in her heart
She looked and looked
But she couldn't find
She asked and asked
But nobody replied
And her words came to deaf ears
But the nightingale traveled still
Far and wide and never wavering
Wandering the great vortex within
And asked every possible being
But to no avail
The nightingale of the dark was lost
And in midst of the ever looming
Swallowing shadows coalescing
To a tapestry of nothing but black
She recognized one fateful truth
No amount of screaming nor
Soothing of her pain will surmount
The fact that no one
Nobody is going to come help her
Find what she was looking for
Only herself
Aug 3, 2016
Aug 3, 2016 at 7:00 AM UTC
Over the bridges to the north side of town
fluorescent flickers, the beer billboards are bigger
Where you live.
We don’t really have billboards on the east side of the rail yard
Where I live.
But I don’t find you in the elementary school
shut down, infested by the deadly spiders.
or patriarchs inebriated, stumbling back to
cinderblock houses where no one really waits up anymore.
Every soul a flickered star. Maybe dying,
finding last comforts in the black velvet of night.
No, I don’t find you hiding in the hateful corners
of your brother’s triangle folded flag that rested
on a coffin.
Or the alcoholic bottle your mother hands me with a friendly smile.
Tiny threads of crumbling concrete barely connect my world with yours
I might be dreaming, at night lying in the grass of the tallest hill
Where you live
Holding me selfishly, the night is black in my eyes
and the view is not so clear back to
Where I live.
Jun 30, 2011
Jun 30, 2011 at 10:39 PM UTC