"dartboard" poems
I noticed a while ago.
I am subconsciously
Objectifying everyone.
And when I think about it
Objectified people
Are easier
To deal with.
I don't think this odd tendency of mine is
Natural.
In fact, I'm sure it isn't.
It's the result of a subdued conscience.
A conscience I always had.
I cared deeply for others.
I felt bad
Cried myself to sleep
For the smallest things.
An offhand insult I wasn't sure was even heard.
A chip taken from the lunch table.
An argument to be forgotten and ignored the next day.
I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I cried
Hated myself
Continuously hit myself
Cried more
And had nightmares.
As I got older
These feelings faded
But still I get these pains in the pit of my stomach.
And I remember how I was
Before I was numbed by
Objectification.
I saw people as people.
I cried because
I don't want people to feel bad.
Not because of me!
I can't think of anything worse
Than being that picture on a dartboard
That gives the incentive to
Never.
Miss.
To be hated.
Even disliked.
Thought of as trash
As I often am
I suspect.
Looks of disgust I draw
From people I care for
Who I don't want to hurt
Who constantly hurt me.
It tears me apart
And as I write this I feel tears welling up
Which they haven't done for
Years.
I began this objectification.
"That's just a dumb person."
"He's an idiot."
"Just one of those mean kids."
And I stopped caring if I hurt them
Because caring hurts.
A lot.
Aug 29, 2013
Aug 29, 2013 at 1:42 AM UTC
chocolate fireguard, teapot,
or fender, icecream sofa, dry sea
or wet towel, glass hammer,
waterproof teabag, newspaper
raincoat and umbrella, lead parachute, ashtray on a motorbike,
handbrake on a canoe,
vote in a dictatorship,
loudhailer to a deaf mute,
grief at a wedding,
****** in a monastery.
inflatable dartboard,
spoon in a knife-fight,
screen door on a submarine,
wooden soap, shortbread tires,
knitted light bulb,
bread boat, plasticine wire cutters,
paper hole punch, water hat,
custard floorboards,
ceiling tiles made of gravy,
portrait of a bowl of soup,
a stone cigarette,
syrup knickers, hole in my bucket,
plastic oven, wax truss,
liquorice bridge,
false teeth made of soap,
lemonade roof,
jelly boots,
jam cardigan,
paper bicycle pump,
ice-cream saucepans,
soluble drain pipe,
packet of rubber nails,
see-through mirror,
revolving basement restaurant
roll-on hairspray, rubber pencil,
****** with a hole in it,
limp **** pockets on a lettuce,
**** on a fish, lolly pop van in Hell,
one-legged man in an ****
kicking competition,
meaningless life,
unnecessary death,
forgotten words and deeds,
ignored needs,
this poem.
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 4:11 PM UTC
For my birthday
you bought me my favorite book
That I already had
for your birthday
I bought you
the party
when you met the new boy at school
I told you he wasn't a good guy
you did not listen
when you told me
that the boy I'd known my whole life wasn't a good guy
I list without question
last night
you told me that your mother did not approve of my new haircut
this fact I already knew
last night you told me that you are uncomfortable and ashamed standing next to me
this fact I did not know
8 years ago when I met your parents
I was astonished and ashamed to stand next to them
for they pinned you to the wall like a dartboard
like a piece of meat for their game
they pushed pins in you of self doubt
of self hate
They said to you word I had never heard and adult say to a child before
if they could they would have cut into your flesh themselves
taking razors to every fat cell they did not like
8 years ago I stood up to them
to do what you never could
1 week ago even after you stoped listening to me I stood up to them
I tried as desperately as I could to take away their words
now
I stand here as your own personal dartboard
and because of that
I am now ashamed for you to call yourself my friend
Jul 4, 2018
Jul 4, 2018 at 7:16 PM UTC
pulse of 80s music
conversation
swirls
between drinks
bubbles rolling
under
the tongue
bank holiday getaway
beermats
not getting any younger
doesn’t mean
you have to feel older
people
stream in
shadows pour
across the floor
names that haven’t spilt
from my lips
for years
and you wonder how long
the puddle will last
names scribbled
by a dartboard
the faint
clunk
of potted pool *****
dialogue fizzles
like tablets
in water
voices
dripping
coming then going
wilt into
the cool spring night
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 11:15 AM UTC
"With the awareness comes periods of days, sometimes weeks, when I have to avoid looking into a mirror. My self hate is so deep, so palpable, I fear I'll lunge at my own image, shatter the glass and cut myself with shards of broken reflection."
~Jax Teller (Sons Of Anarchy)
The mirror reflects images
Of past things I'd like to forget
Memories project ghosts that faded
Long ago after I built up my regrets
And that reflection shines through
All the different scenarios
Of this life that I've lived through
And heartbreaks, everywhere I go
Heartbreak, heathens, hounds and Hell
What wonderful whispers the mirror has to tell
I've heard them before - **** - they came from my core
Love was the loathing that turned into lore
**** the person in the mirror
The truth could not be clearer:
A monster spawned once the medicine cabinet filled with liquor
You hate me? Join the ******* club
I'm the ******* dartboard at the local pub
Then comes the crashing, the breaking, the cuts and bruises
Spectrums of pieces and shatters of truths
And yet it all just reflects right back to mistakes from our youth
The mirror, just an ugly reminder of shame with all the proof
But what can we do? How can we forget?
The images of the past can't change how they reflect
From another angle we could possibly alter the effect
But no altercations can take away the pain and regret
I take a walk to distance me from myself,
but there is no harbor for demons hiding from Hell
I tried my damnedest to become better,
but despite how earnest, I only grew bitter
Now, being sober just gives me the jitters
I can't be alone with the Devil inside
I can't change things when the problem is I
People see me and they are befuddled
I see only a shell when I pass by these puddles
Empty, that's all that's left of me
Nothing, there's nothing left to see
The mirror is blank, a black hole
Drained into space, the remnants of my soul
Blank reflections shattered against my heart
Feeling of hate and self doubt ripping me apart
The eyes staring back at me have no emotions
Wide gazes and high tides like endless oceans
This nothingness is completely consuming me
My life, love and happiness have been swept out to sea
Jun 26, 2015
Jun 26, 2015 at 5:34 PM UTC
It's like this:
You sit in your bedroom and the fan is on, the window is open, yet it is still hot.
You have your laptop open and music is playing.
On your walls there are numerous posters, a world map, and a dartboard.
On your nightstand there are letters from last year's World History teacher, empty bottles, a switchblade and an ashtray.
There are books on your shelf written by many great authors, poets, playwrights, and philosophers.
In your hand there is a cigarette, and in the other there is The Stranger by Albert Camus.
You sit alone, smoking and reading and drinking and suddenly you stop doing all of these things because inspiration has struck.
Although you prefer a pen and paper, you begin typing on your laptop.
The words come out and form sentences.
The sentences form stanzas
and eventually the stanzas form a finish a finish product.
That is what it's like to be anything at all.
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 2:06 AM UTC
There are a lot of things I can never put into words, phrases, sentences, analogies, a concluding statement things like the feeling of falling apart when you just can't close your eyes at night or the impetuous carvings of your name into my heart when there was no more room for you in my head. I search on the internet a synonym for angry I get cross, vexed, indignant, irked, galled; when there are things I cannot put into words like when I feel this ditch, cavity, trench big enough to fit in all my sorrow at the bottom, extremity, underpinning, base of my stomach which flips with every bus ride home. Home. Property. Abode. Domicile. A place I never really had or knew how to get to because I always got distant— Location. I close, shut, get rid off the tab on my computer and I close, shut, the laptop screen. There are no words to describe this feeling. The feeling of messy closets and not sleeping for three nights and finding meaning out of a life that had no value to me. So I wonder if things will ever change. If my hair will get shinier, if my worries fade away and I still ask myself if I will ever stop asking myself to do things I can't do. Do. Execute. Achieve, I have achieved nothing but let parts of myself descend deeper and deeper into a Tiffany and Co.'s box filled with dust that never catch the light and a Marc Jacob's bag of dimes that just weigh it down. A glass hammer, an inflatable dartboard. A helicopter eject seat, always throwing myself into situations— I can't fix with the same bare hands I've used to beat myself up. And still I try to make sense of the nothingness I am typing. Yet, I still take the train to school. I take showers. I listen to music on long walks. I try. Everyday, I try.
Jul 2, 2016
Jul 2, 2016 at 12:14 PM UTC
Bar: Drinks are on me
Dartboard: Make mine a double!
Pinball: Down the hatch!
Bottle: Who's having a half-empty day then?
Glass: Stick a cork in it
Table: Steady on lads
Clock: Time gentlemen!
Dancing Girls: Bottoms up!
Calendar: Same time next week?
Windows: You're all barred!
Door: We are now closed
Lights: We'll be off then
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 8:24 AM UTC
"sitting on the wrong side of heaven
sitting on the wrong side of hell,
sitting on the wrong side of everything"
Two truckers talk miles
weight stations,
and *******
as the barmaid coughs up
a sharp,
wet,
smokers laugh,
at the racist joke
an old man tells
while he rolls up a cigarette
cracks with wrinkles,
and upsets
the heavy middle aged woman
feeding dollars into the slot
of a game machine,
trying to beat her own
high scores.
My draft mug sheds frost
into a soggy napkin and
I notice how useless
everything is.
The empty pool table
with a warped stick on it,
the display of snack food
behind the bar
that look old and dusty
The man coming from the bathroom,
coughing as he passes
a twinkling electronic dartboard,
a powered down
Creature from the Black Lagoon
pinball machine,
and a hi-tech jukebox
that will never be used
because the patrons here
are low-tech with no interest
in the cyber-generation's toys.
Too early for happy hour,
too late to go in for work
We are all just waiting,
killing time,
trying to remember
or trying to forget,
and hiding from the world,
Of course,
we all could be drunks,
losers, the **** that lives
in **** town, but the latter
seems more romantic
and truthful.
Eye of the beholder
I guess.
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 9:55 PM UTC
I once painted a dartboard in the corner of a room.
Half on one wall, half on the other; hit bullseye every time.
I thought I had found an answer.
I once jumped out of an airplane.
Nowhere to go but down.
That wasn't the answer, either.
I once walked a trail bordered by a swift river and a sheer cliff.
I could go where I had already been, or someplace else.
I found the answer.
r ~ 4/27/14
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 10:05 PM UTC
Music
Slides from your eyes, hands,
Guitar strings
Voice
into
my senses like
wine
elixir
Cut grass
Woodsmoke
The demons of your mind
Are the demons of mine
The animals tearing the surface
Of a pinpointed, widening iris
The delicate lisp of
The depths burning
The surface
The sarcastic twang of an
Upturned syllable
Starry twinkles
In the corners of your mouth
Mirrored in my
Starry
Iris whispers
And the music
Of
Every whimsy
Sliding into my eyes
Like wine
Spilt on a dartboard
Waiting to be hit
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 6:41 PM UTC
Eye hospital facing sun
What words write in the history of sight
Who writes the nick name of fall, on the body
when it seems like water?
Blind date of wall
Hide the target mark too.
Dartboard, bring up the hidden strap.
See, the mirror and whereof ammunition in the sleeping room.
The wrong key but three note of time in the moneybag.
Turned lips-watch
Yours
Visibly disease of eye.
Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015 at 11:36 PM UTC
The nurses at the front desk
throw folders
and wisecracks
across the spaces between them,
and offer one
as a moving target
for a game of darts
with pretend syringes.
Watching the relaxed bustle,
I'm reminded of a line
from Stranger In A Strange Land,
where "waiting is",
but at times you have to wait so fast
that you move at blurred speed.
All seasoned with
a light-handed graveyard humor,
promising to make sure
and dull the needles for me
special-like next time.
Just to make it official,
I throw my folder
at the main perp at the front desk
when leaving.
The dartboard du jour
cheers with thumbs up.
I'm one of the gang.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC
I'm always accused of some sort of voodoo or magic,
that I possess the ability to make people become
irrevocably infatuated and attached to my presence.
But I think it is those surrounding me that are the ones who are compelling and captivating and mesmerizing and I can't keep up.
I'm burning in thoughts surrounding the idea that I may be intriguing
but I'm never entertaining.
I feel as though I am a sideshow attraction in a ring of circus performers.
The bearded lady and the trapeze swingers;
the human dartboard and the fire dancing singers;
intrigue versus talent and disappointment versus awe.
I'll draw them in for a second,
a quick glimpse of what and who I really am is all
and they tilt their head in confusion and pity and dissatisfaction
when a giant teddy bear down the brightly lit and vividly colored lane catches their eye and they stroll away with wide excited eyes at popcorn and corn dogs and dogmatic persuaders with yellow balloons and the promise of a prize.
The only part I feel I can compare is the feeling that my brain is a contortionist, it twists and folds into itself until it's hardly recognizable.
I am made up of loose joints and a personality that is flexible enough to love any and every one and perhaps that is what is so lovable about me.
However, I'll never be the ring leader. I'll leave that up to the man coaching the nice lady in red parading around on the elephant's back.
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
I'm the targets
U try so hard to
Get it bullseye
Yet each time u
Throw the dart
The sharp
End feels like
Its piercing my heart
Jun 1, 2016
Jun 1, 2016 at 10:32 AM UTC
I am being constantly reminded
that,
'this is the dawning of the day'
and me
yawning like there's no tomorrow
I hate the radio that
sits
like a cameo
on the backstage of my life
and **** the teardrops too.
Too many flood tides.
I will drown again
in the repetition
of the constant pain
I will
drown again.
I eat Chinese for dinner.
She was the lotus,
a gossamer blossom.
all that's long ago
and before you were born
a thousand fortune cookies
under the bridge.
**** me or cure me,
but
can you be sure of me?
it's something that I
need to know.
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 2:15 PM UTC
the moment before I saw you
someone threw a dart at a dartboard
I didn't see where it landed
didn't want to
your hands were in your pockets
I was terrified
Still am
because I'm thinking about the dart when
you turned to look at me
and I could feel it hit the board
somewhere in the center
**** i thought
I gotta stop finding girls with aim
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 4:54 PM UTC
after the day she told me she loved me, and the day i told her the same,
we never saw each other again
don't tell me that timing doesn't mean **** to true love
cos' cupid needs to learn how to time the shots of his arrows
i'm tired of being his ******* dartboard
i'm tired of being speared through the heart
when i don't have any heart to spare
and i'm sick of the fact that i care
iv'e scrawled her initials all over my arteries
iv'e torn my ******* heart out for her
and iv'e waited
and waited and waited
but you decided not to wait
you rushed us into this mess of ****** love poems and forty minute phone calls and i'm pretty **** sure that cupid's arrow was released a few years too early
i doubt i even know who i am yet
maybe i'm more than a socially awkward
poetry writing, chess-playing, guitar-strumming,
lazy-ass hopeless romantic
maybe i'm more than a wannabe knight in shining armor
more than the idiot that makes the little things grow large
maybe i'm more than what you saw in me
or what others see in me
or maybe i can be who i wanna be
-----
is there a restart button on this thing?
because i lost the game, and i wanna play again
i really, really love you
but i don't know if i still want to
i know this doesn't sound like the first half of the poem
but you leave with me with doubts
and i'm left with but an ounce of push to get you back
let's see how far that takes me
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 7:49 AM UTC
Be oh be
he said,
silently
she
listened
With half an ear
and a tear in her eye
I
blew a kiss which
hit the dartboard
scored a double top
It didn't stop
the volume increased
even as the silence
ceased
and I knew
that
it would be.
Oct 18, 2016
Oct 18, 2016 at 5:03 PM UTC
in the gutter, she lost herself in waves and echoes
she found colors in their noise
brought her soul out as a brush
and let herself be free
building off of the whispers in the air,
she tangles herself in the wires of headphones much too silent
her hands wailing with her: offkey but peaceful
making art of a dartboard rather than a bullseye
she hears the texture, hears the emphasis, and the contrast
she paints notes, paints not so pitch-perfect progressions
bathing until her eardrums shake
and the canvas leaves no room for silence
Nov 5, 2020
Nov 5, 2020 at 2:00 AM UTC
You look for love where it is not wanted, hoping you can throw a dart and it will hit the bullseye
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 7:18 PM UTC
now it’s camaraderie down
the plughole dry pint glasses
and an unstabbed dartboard
as this Parthenon of chalk dust
played host to its last epic
clash of the amateurs
baize blessed for the final time
many-houred conflict of breakoffs
and ***** shots
a throng of fortunate bespectacled
punters quiet for the final frame
all back and forth
‘til two unknowns outside of town
shook hands proclaimed a draw
MORE the crowd cried
playtime was over but they’ll always
remember this tussle for the title
in the multi-tabled hall that sleeps
where an angry scarlet sign
on the entrance doors bellows
NO ENTRY to the memories held within
Mar 19, 2024
Mar 19, 2024 at 1:19 PM UTC
Trapped inside a prison,
Of lack of things to do.
I’d rather shoot myself than live,
In walls of painted blue.
A dartboard on the wall,
A bookshelf and a bed.
Yet I’ve done it all before,
I just wish my walls were red.
If I were somewhere else,
With the wind in my hair,
Would this boredom go away?
Or would I stick to my chair?
I blame the dullness on life,
But it doesn’t come from trees.
I scream at walls to entertain,
While I watch my laughter freeze.
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 11:22 AM UTC
Look at them, the rain-spotted Lovers:
hand in hand under lathered moon
as the bars flood out at cold close.
The night grass is April swaying
as they bluely stroll down the road,
unaware of anyone, anything else -
there could never be anything else -
isn't that the rule of all new lovers?
No care for a bright-cheeked road,
no anxious looks at a dartboard moon,
just two pairs of shoulders swaying
closer, closer, closer...
Yet now that the bars are closed,
they must join to something else:
a long laughing file beerily swaying,
a newly louched breed of lovers
under foam-headed moon,
carried down a water-hearted road.
Perhaps they sweeten the sotted road,
these two who veer so close
& share this last garnish of moon,
carpaccio of stars and space and something else.
Cars throw dapples across the Lovers,
shy white coins in spotted sway.
We drunks of course are also swaying
vaguely down the rained road,
but how different our rhythm is; these Lovers
tie spring breath tight as twine, and close
their fingers like mating snakes - no one else
seems tide-locked like earth and stubborn moon:
since this frozen-faced scrap of moon
refuses all requests, it's we who must sway
with them, at least until we find something else
on this cloud-tented tar-sown road
to hold us oh-so-close;
they're home, these Lovers,
& so someone else must follow the lolling moon
to become the newest Lovers who will sway
on wetted road as night closes off behind.
Apr 11, 2024
Apr 11, 2024 at 8:48 AM UTC