"deflates" poems
to turn into the whole wide world, the one that I design,
the one with lights of glistening gold
and wonder undefined.
Is to ignore the very brutal truth, on one's own accord,
ignorant and powerful, a
mistake one can't afford.
So here I am, as usual, how deeply I deny,
that "everything isn't so bad"
I stumble in the lie.
..maybe one day i'll get to see, right through the guise of gold-
the one disguising my whole life
the one denial upholds
Goodbye tomorrow- stay away- I wish to be no more.
my heart contorted, my mind deflates as
my soul and spirit tore.
Aug 19, 2017
Aug 19, 2017 at 4:37 PM UTC
Freedom flings
Tyrant kings
Into their rightful place
A head on a plate
Democracy inflates
The morale of the people
Oligarchy deflates
The idea that we're equal
Spiteful dictators make their way through the system
And dominate the world while nobody listens
Distracting people with things that glisten
Disseminating hatred as their vision
Engendering fear is their mission
To buy or sell weapons
For more money or more power
Dropping bombs from their ivory tower
From extreme explosions we cower
Explosions of hatred then violence
Explosions hastened by silence
Explosions of fire we ferment
To burn the faces off our enemy
To avoid exercising our empathy
Creating a world filled by entropy
People say ******** like freedom isn't free
When the currency we pay for freedom
Is restriction
We dampen our fiery feelings
With prescriptions
Freedom is free
It's inherent
It can only be taken or given away
It is not a proper excuse to slay
Those that rightly disagree
With what you're imposing
Freedom is fleeing far far away
When people are molded by clay
Of those with the power to shape civilians
Of those with the power to bring billions
Of people to their knees
When freedom is our fee
To live in timid apathy
Aug 31, 2017
Aug 31, 2017 at 11:46 AM UTC
my heart deflates
at just the taste
of bitter hate
it comes in haste
and leaves no trace
of joy or faith
upon a face
I can't relate
to such a fate
to make a date
in karmas grace
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
Where buses still elapse with Time
Down straight Dame Street
The Trees are satellites that allow Children to look up
and let the pavement breath.
Earthen Columns that gate the Boombox Clubhouse tint
Flanked by the Yeoman Guards of Hollister
but forget to pay the same compliment
outside of American Apparel
Where Teenagers dream out fantasies
of lamp-lit, flash-shot
worship-worthy objectification
in a converted loft in the real New York
Their headphones spring streams of bright optimism
as they cradle knitted knee-high socks.
Take the curve round Trinity College
and laugh past the rumours
that it may soon float on Dow Jones
and dodge past the charity advertisers
Strutting over campbags of sleeping homeless
to Lemon Cafe for an overpriced Mocha
Which regardless deflates the sheen-covered hollowness
of green-comfy Starbucks
and learn the subtleties of speaking lightly
to dark-jaceketed Blonde girls
Whose eyes seem to sparkle "Yes, we have sipped
on Veuve Clicquot at reserved tables on Graduation nights
at Cafe En Seine"
-"Where Oscar Wilde might have drank"
- "..Had he been alive."
Then speculate on the best Festivals and whose
Films and Books are over-hyped and under-appreciated
and the after-College Gossip on who broke-up or stayed together
or who hooked up even though they shouldn't have
or regretted it
and who's doing a paid internship and who's moving abroad
and afterwards charmingly tease their superficial attitudes
as meanwhile they secretly take photos
to upload on Instagram
and later you'll fake-admonish them
for how they did this behind your back
while you were staring into the lake
in St. Stephen's Green.
When the moon no longer glazed the water
and had receded its contrast to the farthest grass
and you decide to take the last bus home.
Throughout
Caution Glints The Vowels
and Brands them too.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 10:11 AM UTC
I can see myself
destroying
my own dignity,
popping it like
bubble-wrap
and watching as it
deflates
under my
forcible
fingertips.
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 5:24 AM UTC
*"Though the mills
Of God grind slowly;
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience
He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow*.
The Mill
The grueling weight
of happenstance,
A millstone for to grind,
It deflates the ego
And shows us
Where we're blind,
It renders flesh a ruin
Obliterates the mind,
We leave our idols desolate
Leave the ties that bind.
Under painful hardship
We release the very things
Which put us in the circumstance
And caused the suffering
We leave behind our craving
For wealth and diamond rings
Everything exalted
All exalted above God...
That means EVERYTHING
Whatever you adore
On this temporal earth
Whatever gives you pleasure
In which you find worth
These very things will shackle you!
You'll find out they're not free.
They are just the Golden Calf
Of base idolatry.
But the millstone slowly purges
Turning hour by hour
Turning the wheat kernels
Into useful flour.
And so I am refined
As I surely must
Put to naught my flesh
Make powder all my lusts
For I am as ashes
for I am as dust.
SS (C) 8/23/2017
Aug 24, 2017
Aug 24, 2017 at 1:43 AM UTC
Glittery, jittery raindrops.
An old, long lost friend turned cold.
Beckoning to move faster, and rush
Until out of the wet, and onto the damp cotton jump-seat
Faked bliss, but still happiness edges nearer
And nearer.
Little green bells of our lady of artistic inspiration
Observation and fresh vegetable
Graveyard maintenance.
The mundane.
Frog-legs dance on their tip toes.
Buttery biscuits and the sound of gagging from the stall--
Instantly gratified.
Small child-stares, and alone in a fantastic universe.
Melodies cease, imagination deflates
The mundane.
Sticky leaves stuck on black and white cats.
Voracious, they ravage the tall grass.
Passive-aggressive sunshine sprinkles now, and burns later.
Fortifying iced drinks, and pinkish, blueish, purplish
Does the sun go down?
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 3:40 PM UTC
Lying low on the beach of the lake,
small as a snake,
a naked leech.
Its body deflates as I bathe—
as I dive in the wave—
it bakes in the sand.
I rise to a sea of them, boiled,
spoiled black in the sun—
bloodless beasts.
But I’ve a few bottles of beers
to elicit some cheers
on my day at the beach.
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 12:13 PM UTC
It's the silence that always gets you.
The laughter is a drug and there is no worse a addict than the comedian
Behind the laughter is the insecure person you never see .
It's the empty rooms the miles between gigs it always comes to that next fix.
Those few seconds when I can be everything I'm not the escape is the best release there has ever been.
And as you leave it behind the ego deflates and the isolation sets in were all children in tattered shells called adults .
So fragile the rock that seldom does embrace the sea .
Were all ****** up in are own separate ways.
Behind the laugh at times is the worst place you may ever realize you want to be.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 10:53 PM UTC
"i'll love you until that balloon deflates"
a 3 am lie.
pining over old prom dates,
trying not to die.
don't act like we're first mates.
stop making me cry.
devours. he satiates.
i'm grasping air, i'm a shallow sigh.
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 11:08 PM UTC
A heart deflates
into a circular fire,
burning a tunnel in reality
so a dark train of thought can barrel through.
Hieroglyphic crocodiles swim
into a stream to eat gazelle.
A universe is just the iris
of gods.
I grew up in a cactus hut
that was atop the boogeyman's hat.
'Ol Skullface evaporates like a rippling image
in water...
dreadlocked lightning
bottle sips on the venus flytrap's *******
Maybe I'm the combination of Bob Marley's dope smoke
& Dali's pipe steam.
That right there
was his psychedelic ego
he o rarely sees.
The Native American sound in my brain
reminds me of beautiful cave paintings
in candle lit screams & moans
echoing.
Bamboo lightning
sword frightening shimmers
in the light.
Tribal war paint vicious sharp drumbeats;
fangs ready for battle,
a head bobbing mystic predicts victory
in the shadows;
glowing.
Ashes from the evening smoke means we've won,
thanks to my brain eye.
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 10:07 PM UTC
You keep your life on a pedestal,
Even when the love of your life is beside you...
Why is it every time I hid from my feelings,
I trip away, I hide, I even start to cry?
But every night I sleep, I get visions every week,
About him, and then I become scared.
My flame, he ignites it
Even when he stares deep into my eyes, my sockets
My heart starts to race, my body deflates...why am I feeling this way?
My stomach is filled with butterflies like my whole world has exhausted, like my whole life was on pause
Being trapped inside a box,
With no doorway that leads to anything,
That would turn my whole life upside down into something.
Every time I see him, my heart starts to melt,
My life starts to crumble, but the walls, they stay intact...
They won’t move, but there’s a door...
Whenever I step near, it’s like another person is on the other side, ...scared.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 2:13 AM UTC
I live vicariously
through anonymity.
The convex mirror
LCD flat-screen
deflates apprehension and
balloons confidence
I jump feet first
through the looking
glass slipper; which
will turn to pumpkin
just before dawn.
I am not Cinderella.
I am just another
Guy Fawkes impersonator
with “V” tattooed
on my heart-strings.
Just another harbinger
like the Plutonian bird
perched upon a pallid bust
sent to whisper:
“nevermore”
Jan 19, 2011
Jan 19, 2011 at 9:34 PM UTC
Having dispatched the sound rabble
with mostly love,
our already flaccid balloon
deflates with a final raspberry
a fitting fanfare to a term
that left its markers marked,
the shared mirth,
across eyes and hearts,
at a **** noise
proving once again:
we are why we’re here
Dec 17, 2021
Dec 17, 2021 at 10:01 AM UTC
I cannot explain all the pathetic measures
my eyes will take to avoid your gaze,
all the paths my legs will journey to avoid bumping into you on my way home.
All the ways I knead my hands to the bone and all the toothpick excuses skewering my tongue.
And I cannot explain the way your presence deflates something inside my chest.
I don't know what to do with all that empty space. It echoes.
I fill it with the thimble's worth of pride that I scrape together,
every meager flake of validation I pick from the floor. I shovel slopping handfuls of sawdust
to try and soak up some of the shadows
but everything dissolves in that oily void, green and hideous.
God, it echoes, and everyone hears it.
I muffle it with my radio silence.
I look at you and I see everything I hate about myself
under a microscope.
Every blemish, every scar, every gaping hole
that you lack.
Stop, look. Here. Wrong.
Hear?
I blind myself with radio silence.
I don’t know how to live with an eternal reminder that I am incomplete.
You, and the place you hollowed without even knowing it.
Green and monstrous.
It echoes and everyone hears it.
I love you, but I cannot explain my radio silence.
Aug 24, 2021
Aug 24, 2021 at 3:38 PM UTC
...breathe in.
...breathe out.
...breathe in.
It seems so simple. If we want to live, we need to engage in these basic, life-sustaining movements. Breathe, eat, drink, sleep. We cloud our minds with fears about those moments in-between... in the spaces we aren't quite sure how to handle.
Our breathing loses its depth. Our hearts begin their panicked sprint and our hands rattle with uncertainty. As our minds clog with doubt and apprehension, we begin to back pedal. Do we really needed to follow each exhale with an inhale? Could I hold my breath a little longer and do a little more? Could I die a little bit to live a little more? How far can our bones and spirits bend before they snap? How much death can I pump through my veins before the cardiac arrest of an engine without oil spills the contents of my well-maintained façade on the front porch of death itself?
...breathe in.
...breathe out.
...breathe in.
The emptiness of a self-imposed shallow grave pierces the best laid defenses of gold, glory, and gluttony. Previously plump posturing deflates to reveal sunken chests and dreams. Ordered beats give way to palpitations pushing the walking dead to, "speak now or forever hold your peace."
...but calloused hands and white-washed souls hold nothing more than fermented fears. Like a deceitful craftsman, fearing the testing of his work by the flames, we long for the warmth of the fire but fear our long-cherished idols will crumble to irredeemable ash.
...breathe in.
...breathe out.
...breathe in.
As the soot coats our weary lungs, a muted wave begins to lap at our roots.
...breathe in.
...breathe out.
...breathe in.
Joints creak back to exuberant life; the coarse rust giving way to polished jewel. Bread and wine flush the toxins and clear our eyes. Our searching hands at last placed in the rescuing wound we so long feared.
Wretched gives way to, "worthy."
...breathe in.
...breathe out.
...breathe in.
Apr 20, 2017
Apr 20, 2017 at 2:18 PM UTC
Hate is never describes as pretty
Never looked at like a blooming flower
Sprouting life into the ground
Bringing fresh air into the sky
For the wind to carry high
Hate is never described as a butterfly
Every flap of flight signed by grace and beauty with a ballpoint pen
Every color a screenshot of pure emotion
Every movement architected to perfection modeling God’s holy touch
Hate is always described as
Ocean waves washing you down to deeper waters until your dying in the very thing you need to live
Or thorns and weeds growing in a garden, attacking every plant like they are thoughts in my mind
Or fire spreading and growing and burning everything it touches, flames licking at my body till I’m ash
Hate is always described as poisonous, cruel, evil,
Because that is the way it makes you feel
Hate is really a sculpture
Every line shows something new
Every curve a double meaning
Every smile hiding something cold
Every eye revealing something untold
Hate is the sculpture and the sculptor
Mastermind of its own masterpiece
no one sees the flower in the fire that burns in my soul
No one sees the roots in the deep wading water threatening to take hold
If hate was a fire, we wouldn’t allow it to control
Hate blooms and blossoms into our life slowly
It starts as a fleeting thought
Planting roots in your mind
Then your questions becomes answers
A system stems and builds leaves of loathing that infiltrates your heart
The despise desperately develops in the depths below my diaphragm
And a flower of hate blooms from a beating heart I don’t even want beating anymore
Hatred is a flower.
It blooms it doesn’t seize
It grows roots so deep
Twisting and turning around every ***** every emotion, every thought
Until it’s impossible to **** it without killing yourself
Hatred is a flower and it makes you into soil
Decaying in despise and detest of love
Until body deflates in the darkness of your soul
-S.L.K.
Sep 23, 2025
Sep 23, 2025 at 5:03 PM UTC
I give her my jacket knowing when she’s gone
It will still smell like her hugs
Putting my arm around her shoulders is more honest
Than when I raise my arm to the square
I don’t know where she is going in life
But I wouldn’t mind if it were the same place I was
The wind blows silently when she is speaking
Because even the flowers want to listen
If her smile were a disease, I would gladly infect myself
Especially if there were no vaccine
My chest is an air mattress when her head rests against it
I don’t mind when it deflates, brining her a little closer
Even in the winter I can smell fresh-cut grass
And it brings back memories I wish she were a part of
If I were made of mirror, when she looked at me
She might understand why I stare
Feb 2, 2014
Feb 2, 2014 at 4:35 PM UTC
With every utterance that leaves my lips
Exist a thousand more my tongue have missed
Frustration causes problems compiling my statements
I try to recapitulate my day, but failure hides in my shadow
My mind leads me and I follow
Complex formulas and conundrums are riddle across my brain
Monday through Sunday overthinking regulates my plane
I soar through the sky in thought,
Though in reality I haven’t left yet
Though I consciously monitor my next step
Because I’m on plan E and I think F’s next
Entrapped by the scent of,
The woman that lies beside me
My soul watches her as she sleep
I lay awake thinking of the rising sun
The things to come with the next day
I’ve learned a lot mainly that patience pays
That vexation puts me in my place, kicks sand in my face
Obscures my way, to humble my spirit
Arrogance ravages my actions
But frustration deflates my ego
With every utterance that leaves my lips
Exist a thousand more my tongue have missed
Mar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 at 5:45 AM UTC
"Though the mills
Of God grind slowly;
Yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience
He stands waiting,
With exactness grinds He all."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The Mill
The grueling weight
of happenstance,
A millstone for to grind,
It deflates the ego
And shows us
Where we're blind,
It renders flesh a ruin
Obliterates the mind,
We leave our idols desolate
Leave the ties that bind.
Under painful hardship
We release the very things
Which put us in the circumstance
And caused the suffering
We leave behind our craving
For wealth and diamond rings
Everything exalted
All exalted above God...
That means EVERYTHING
Whatever you adore
On this temporal earth
Whatever gives you pleasure
In which you find worth
These very things will shackle you!
You'll find out they're not free.
They are just the Golden Calf
Of base idolatry.
But the millstone slowly purges
Turning hour by hour
Turning the wheat kernels
Into useful flour.
And so I am refined
As I surely must
Put to naught my flesh
Make powder all my lusts
For I am as ashes
for I am as dust.
Write of Passage aka
SoulSurvivor
8/23/2017
Mar 23, 2022
Mar 23, 2022 at 6:43 AM UTC
your mom’s Honda
my thighs stick to one another
as you stick to me
the AC in your car imitates the moans we make
the windows that look like we just got out of a shower
it’s already hot enough in the backseat of your mom’s Honda
as we hold each other
my forehead against your chest
as the heat makes us lazy with lust
your chest expands and deflates
and i can hear your heartbeat slow to a normal rate
but after I’m sure you’re asleep
i gently get out of your arms, untangling myself
I want to be more than just your late night call
or your fuckbuddy
just another one of your girls you take into your mom’s Honda
and treat her like a queen the night of, and trash the next morning
this woman doesn’t want to sleep on uncomfortable and chunky seats
this woman deserves a man, not a boy
this woman deserves someone who treats her right
this woman wants someone who is not afraid to be loyal
and since you can’t provide that,
this woman is leaving
locking the door behind me
and opening the side of your mom’s Honda
the oil filler cap clicks between my fingers
and as i throw the cap behind me
my other hand flicking open a lighter, I ignite it with my anger
and I watch the skeleton of your car blaze with the sparks we felt
and that was the end of you and your mom’s Honda
Mar 10, 2018
Mar 10, 2018 at 11:32 PM UTC
When Sylvia Plath first met Ted Hughes, she bit his cheek so hard that blood oozed from his skin.
I want to believe I made an impression like that on you.
(Not the first time, when I was fourteen, because I was awkward with too much eyeliner and not enough ideas)
I marked you, on your bones, beneath skin where only I could see it.
(Beneath layers and layers and layers, so I could
fit comfortably. A parasite)
Sylvia and Ted married quickly,
but the idea of marriage terrifies me,
but I want to be with you forever,
(and yet I don’t)
Sylvia loved Ted.
and I love you. too much. so much.
(my chest deflates when I think about
empty beds)
please do not leave me, like Ted left Sylvia.
do not find muses, inspirations,
but since I am the writer, I need to find my muse.
(you are my only one)
I think Sylvia and Ted shared writings,
but I cannot show you most of my words,
for the truth would burn, and I wouldn’t know
how to put out the fire.
but Ted was a writer, you are not.
so I will be like Sylvia, writing about people I love,
until it consumes me
entirely.
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 12:32 AM UTC
When I think of you,
My Mind detaches my Heart from my Body.
It floats alone.
It teeters to the rhythm of the words you say.
It nests itself in the warmth between my legs,
When you say "I'm still hurt".
It elevates and rolls in front of me,
As if powered by hot air.
But it easily deflates like helium balloons,
To the point where it sits empty on the floor,
With its legs straight out in front,
Cracking its toes and rolling its ankles in confusion.
Sometimes my Heart stands on tip toes,
Reaches with fingertips extended,
Waiving at my Body,
Pleading for me to put it back in its place.
But my Mind pays no mind to its advances.
My Mind's ulterior motive is to divorce my heart,
To separate entirely.
To be completely distant entities.
They were once lovers,
Who've now found comfort in each other's pain.
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 1:10 PM UTC
Continuation without meaning, meaning
Lacking merit, chains whose warders have
Long since deserted
Fallen prey to common gestures
There is no editorial for these thoughts
Of sound mind and sight body we
Press on
Some say it is the chlorophyll that keeps leaves
Green
I know it to be hope
I know, should hope grow tires and fail
To recognize her surroundings, leaves
Will drain to brown with
Worry
I challenge you, try to understand
Walk in the depressions left by the others
Feel their breath fueling your thoughts but
Keep them your own, always and
Forever your own, even as
Forever deflates and sags inward, a
Shadow of its former self
Reason, everything's about reason but to what
Ends, for what purpose and why?
A reason
Will not bring people together
A reason
Cannot solve a problem
A reason, a stupid ******* reason
Can't do much of anything at all
What is it for? What
Do we seek to justify somehow with this
Talk of talking we need
Three-dimensional speaking we need
Spheres of understanding not this
Circle we ride in silence without so much as a
Remark about the unchanging landscape
Fallacies will be present in all walks of life, hell
In every stone witnessed in all walks of life,
Hell,
Everywhere
And to dwell on them is to play the fool to
Succumb to defeat to rise above all we
Know and realize there is nothing else but
Cascading color waterfalls and this nub of
a pencil
Nothing crucial, no time for time when
It all is so vibrant, yet reflections adore
Our world because we invite them even
As we recognize the harm done, still welcome
Views built on the backs of the long dead and
Idealistic initial impressions of a
Flower before the wind steals it from the
Tangles of your hair and gifts pedals to
The breeze
Jul 14, 2011
Jul 14, 2011 at 4:16 AM UTC
I watch humans fumbling to make a connection between the universe and our bodies, as if without their metaphors and poems likening birthmarks to galaxies, we would be two separate entities, a collection of particles that inhabit entirely detached spaces from one another. Truly, the connection is evident in far more than freckles that resemble specks of dust and planetary material; our skin is not just branded by our environment, but bloated by it.
We are made of mostly water. We are oceans, our insides are swampy, and when we bleed, the sight is reminiscent of sunsets. There is a universe beneath our flesh, internally, like how we exist within the flesh of our universe.
I feel this connection most when I consider him. My body deflates into a cloudlike existence –soft, floating, pacified. His touch warms me, it calms me, it grounds me but in the sense that I am still free to kiss the stars, and my lips become soothing to them.
One of our final nights together, about midnight on Valentine’s Day, he took me to the beach and faced me in front of the ocean, stood me below a dome of astrology in the skies. Lucid blue from the constellations and water stretched for what seemed like days, all-encompassing me. But my eyes could not leave him, especially his mouth slipping into smiles, because somehow he appeared even more beautiful than the immensity of our earth enveloping me. He cradled me there, he lifted my dress, and still I felt warm against the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean in winter.
He is a dream, and he is an angel, and I believe he steals ornaments from the sky to gift to my heart so that I can feel as beautiful and as grand as all the universe combined.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 11:31 PM UTC