"diaphragm" poems
Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.
Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.
So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk.
8k
My body is tossed about by violent jolts that fling my unwilling and powerless self about,
a helpless prisoner within.
Even without breath my chest still contorted,
making the pain sting, poke, and **** with every up and down.
Of course,
I am afflicted with hiccups.
I put my small sufferings into poetic sequence in an unconscious attempt at being rid of them.
They're gone.
Going through the short poem,
Correcting little errors.
Up
Down
Jolt
Sting
****
They're back
Of course,
I am afflicted with hiccups.
Hiccups are *****
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 3:56 PM UTC
My throat’s all scratched from this screaming I’ve done
My diaphragm is all rubbery from these animal calls
But I carry on until you answer my distresses
O Captain, o Captain! Take me away from these generic hoes
I’m too swag for this ghetto
These ******* be hatin’ but you were always mine for the takin’
So take me now—like I did you…
Please. We’re friends. We’ve partied together and cried together.
I even bought you taco bell.
Take me away on your disco stick because
This club can’t handle me and my electric *** pants
What good is your love when just our chakras touch…
I need your grasp, I need your smell…and your **** dramatic stare
Captain, my Captain, you may not be fly like Kanye
And I may not be glam like Beyoncé,
But this club can’t handle us right now
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 7:31 AM UTC
“i’m done with furries”
i.
i can’t dream your dreams,
but you’ve told me about them.
you wear an owl mask
shaped by fists and transgression;
a laceration splits your side
from a skin split
to your rib splits.
your love,
Bill Clinton or Donkey Kong
(whoever populates your thoughts),
crack your bare skin
until makeup
leaks out of your pores.
you dream of emulating art;
O hanging from a ceiling claw,
clicking heels against drywall
until leg muscles give up
and her diaphragm accordions close.
but who is your sculptor?
who is your artist?
ii.
alas, i am only
a paper mache bird.
i flinch when it rains,
i flinch when i move;
my paper skin
could cave in
from lip crack to *** crack.
(i hate
Inside Out.
but, i’ve only watched it once,
and i’ve been told
my eyes would adjust
on the second viewing.)
i dream of emulating art;
Marat in an ice bath,
tragedy and love and death
captured
without conflict.
but who is my muse?
who won’t break my bones?
iii.
you don’t know my dreams either,
but we could dream together.
two reveries in polyphony
of an owl and bird *******
making love
before they
make art.
our love
is ******* weird;
a childhood seesaw
we’re trying to
find the perfect balance
to with our weight.
we dream different things;
**** fantasies and intimate kissing,
but that doesn’t matter.
at this point in two years,
we can see through each other.
i can’t make art without you.
you aren’t done with furries.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 11:15 PM UTC
acting on a stage,
she builds with each step,
step,
step,
stepping,
the floorboards trail behind her feet.
they form from the soil,
the earth breathing beneath,
wooden planks sprouting between her toes.
she sings in a voice strained and trained,
her diaphragm strong and core
rumbling in single breaths.
her skin brushed with pigment,
cheeks tinted rouge and lips scrubbed till pain,
gold-dusted on her bones
rays reflecting and blinding from her beauty.
stomach she ***** in,
twenty-four
seven,
always prim and proper,
a perfect specimen of femininity,
her blood flows in a viscosity unique
only to the elite.
fingers down
but she lacks words to throw up,
she's silent,
an empty vessel,
her lips meant to be a two-way gate
but nothing flows either way.
her skin sunkissed turmeric,
her irises tapioca pearls,
hair flowing and falling from her face
toasted nori on the white rice her dress.
daily rehearsals of sixteen
odd years practicing lines;
memorizing them, repeating internally,
the stage she builds like a church
her loves oppose to the act,
but she builds an antidisestablishment
forcing her audience of parishioners
away from her.
Aug 23, 2018
Aug 23, 2018 at 10:54 AM UTC
Anxiety is not a feeling
As some of you may believe
You wouldn't be alone
Because plenty of people place it in the same category as
Sad, angry, elated
But one of these things is not like the others.
You see, anxiety is everything and nothing
All at the same time.
Anxiety is when no matter how spacious the room is
It seems to be getting smaller
Until you can see every intricate detail on every wall
Each corner touches your skin
And flattens your chest
As it rises and falls
Your breath is getting short until it stops
And then you become as functional as a corpse
After all, isn't that what you are?
Anxiety is
When your love stands over top of you
Watching your diaphragm as it rapidly pulsates
Wishing he could hold your hands as they sweat profusely
Wanting to breathe life into your convulsing body
But instead, he cannot even grasp the concept
Of why you are not alright.
Anxiety is
Accepting that your reality is not truly real at all
And deciding to realize that people wish they could fix you
But understanding that they don't know what to do
And you don't either.
Anxiety is
Learning from all the
You're blowing things out of proportion's
And
You put to much pressure on yourself's
When you begin to have these panic attacks
In which you feel like death in imminent
Over trivial things.
Anxiety is
Being with people who love you
And still getting bursts of loneliness
That ignite and explode inside your pores and underneath your skin
The blood flowing silently through your veins reminds you
That you are all alone.
Anxiety is
Relating each and every thing you do
To how you are not adequate
And how you must take charge of everything.
It influences the things that tell you
"Make yourself throw up"
And
"Skip that meal today."
Most times, you shoe it away with every particle of strength that you have
Other times, you are not so lucky.
Anxiety is hard to personify
But it is.
And as I muster up the courage in my soul
And the hope in my being
I realize that those things need not be stored
Because I use them every day as I fight this battle.
We are all waging wars
Mine just happens to be against
This thing that is so intricately woven into the chemistry of who I am.
It is a part of me
But it is not all of me
And my voice is louder than this sickness.
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 10:23 PM UTC
he's terrified of her voice
that whips his eardrums like kashmir switches
and tickles his diaphragm until he convulses
in nervous laughter inside his head
the way it inquires broadly,
like an opera written in tornado sirens and megaphones
and the brightness of lighthouses,
for conversation he thought
had drowned long ago and only
reemerges as bubbles on the lake's surface
a boiling body popping deafeningly
with anxiety, and plumping
bravery pasta, which smells seductive,
which he loves...
he's just not hungry right now.
Oct 10, 2013
Oct 10, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC
You are not original
You are not unique
There is nothing special about you
You are every step taken
By every sole
Of every shoe
In the history of shoes
You are every vein
On every maple leaf
That has ever fallen
And every one that has
Grown as replacement
Everything
Everything
You are every joke
You are every stroke
Of every painbrush
Every pencil
Every pen
Every primitive crayon
Against a cave wall
You are every sightless
Creature in every cave
You are every speck of dust
Stuck to every speck of dust
In the cosmos
You are every diaphragm
Contraction
Of every laugh ever laughed
You are every
Perverted thought
In every brain,
You are every measurement
Of time
Of weight
Of temperature
Of character
You are every pressure wave
From every pair
Of clapped hands
You are every pigment
In every premature obituary
You are every hair follicle
On every bison
You are every decision
God or bad
Or wise or naive
You are every influence
Every force
Every imagined deity
Every word ever spoken
Every word you are reading
You are every sunset
On every satellite
Of every star
You are every villain
Every success story
Every tragedy
Every spark that has
Birthed a flame
You are every set
Of rolled eyes
Every kernel
On every ear of corn
Every oxidation
Every drop of alcohol
Ever consumed
You are heaven
You are every molecule of water
In every hot spring
Every strum
Of every guitar
Ever played
You are condensation
You are every witch trial
You are every frown
Every school of skipjacks
Every byte of data
On every hard drive
You are every meadowlark
You are every broken arm
From every fall
Off a bicycle
You are the way Autumn smells
The way he looks at you
The way she makes you smile
The way earthworms
Escape the mud
when it rains
You are every passing car
Every glimmer of hope
Every plane crash
Every time math fails
Every swift defeat
You are everything ugly
And everything beautiful
You are nothing
You are everything
Everything you've done
Has been done before you
You are every paradox
You are beautiful when you sleep
You are me
We are nothing.
Everything,
Everything.
We are everything
We're not.
We are nothing we are.
The snow has fallen,
Terrible is the sound.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 10:53 PM UTC
I am making a desicion
to clean my body of
your hollow whispered bruises
cracks in my diaphragm
your words left sizzling there
like acid that dripped from your lips
I forgot the deception that swam from your eyes
I have never been stupid
enough to believe
that you were only one
when there were three.
But we stood and watched that house burn
never feeling colder,
than we did that night.
Im sorry your brother died and took
your parents with you.
So you are an orphan that
demonstrated car crashes
in the mere rhythm of your hands
or melody of your speech.
But I find myself drawn to angry cobalt blue eyes
too often enough to know that
I cannot grapple out of your choke-hold
and frozen fingers will bruise me every shade of your
roaring ocean-like blue.
I can only admire the sapphire in your soul from a distance
and hope the red ruby rage turns to wine and not blood.
I have left my marks on too many wooden floorboards, pleaded with too many icy aquamarine eyes;
from boys with steel in their voices but a fury in their hearts.
Too many fingernails stuck between infinite spaces somewhere in houses
where the silence reminded me of the stillness of a teal lake in spring
your eyes are reminiscent of a grey morning I do not wish to remember
I will leave a mark here.
Oct 19, 2012
Oct 19, 2012 at 8:54 PM UTC
We fell together like we had no other choice.
We fell like two body bags in the back of an ambulance.
And suddenly you were killing me,
a razor to the femoral artery in a bathtub.
My own shirt wrapped around my diaphragm,
your laughter made louder by lack of oxygen to my brain.
And there was nothing else.
My wold turned black and gray because of you.
When I was a real girl,
back before I ever met you,
I would pray to god for a cleansing rain to wash me of my sins
so that I didn’t burn if I stepped foot in his home.
It has rained 729 times since then
and I am still stepping on hot coals.
Aug 14, 2015
Aug 14, 2015 at 4:03 PM UTC
Inhale, exhale.
Sing to the small dot in your head.
Keep your diaphragm expanded.
Your body is your cello. Use the space for resonance.
Keep your throat dilated.
Small breaths for long notes.
Constant vibrato, but no shaking.
Approach the high notes from on top.
Consistency of technique.
...
Empathize, but not too much.
Reveal, but don't show off.
Control of heart.
What?
Empathize with your own story
Applied to the music you sing.
Reveal the love, the pain, the laughter, the rage, the angst.
But don't let it go wild.
No one likes a show off.
Singing:
All about consistency.
Singing:
All about control.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 3:37 AM UTC
There was suddenly sun spilling all over,
and suddenly hyacinths everywhere.
I have watched everything change so slowly
that nothing ever seemed to move at all,
and in my obstinate blindness, I didn't notice
that the ground had thawed, never mind that it had begun
to bleed spring.
I have never seen spring.
In all honesty, I have never lived
in any sort of weather –
only the starched, air-conditioned bedroom
in my parents' sickeningly stereotypical suburban concoction
of a house, where nothing –
not the dusty closed blinds or even
a blade of grass – ever moved at all.
Here, there are magnolia trees that move,
swaying in soft rhythm.
They have peeled themselves like vinyl stickers off
the backs of my windowpanes, and they really are
alive. I know because they wave to me
in flurries of dip-dyed pink petals –
like a good diaphragm-laugh,
or maybe like a good cry.
I have never laughed,
or cried.
But I cry at everything now –
now that I see it is all alive.
It must be what happens when you start living
alone – growing pains –
I imagine the hyacinths must get growing pains, too,
from exploding like purple fireworks
out of the frozen soil in
no time at all.
Apr 17, 2021
Apr 17, 2021 at 1:31 AM UTC
I'm ruptured whole and am considered
inadequate
as my
amygdala slides through the trachea drops to my ventricles falls through the aorta plunges to my diaphragm hits the esophagus crashes to my phalanges. There is no hope.
May I hold something over your cranium?
May I remind you of your neuron imbalance? And yet
you sit and
watch as
my septum separates from the left atrium from the right ventricle from the bicuspid from the tricuspid from the pulmonary semi-lunar valve.
I love you. (Stupid cerebral cortex.)
I love you. (Imprudent Broca's area.)
I love you. (Hopeless frontal lobe.)
I love your nonfunctional mind and functional soul and
Well
this is all a metaphor for unrequited love.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 9:41 AM UTC
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Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.
Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.
So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk.
Dec 9, 2009
Dec 9, 2009 at 7:29 AM UTC
Let me walk you through inside a writer's mind.
Aren't you curious?
How can someone write like that?
How can someone have those sick emotions?
How can someone be so dramatic?
How can someone be that suicidal?
How can someone be so sad?
You know what?
Being able to write about those things is a privilege.
If I have no one to talk to,
if I have no one to vent all my sentiments,
poems are going to slap me with a pen and a paper.
And i'm all good.
Once i've let go of that burning pen,
the moment I read what I wrote into that ****** paper.
My diaphragm finally relaxed,
I can finally breathe.
And when a writer doesn't have any inspiration,
that soul must do all thy take to feel everything and anything in order to fill those pages, those ****** pages.
You must value every word you read inside a poem or any kind of literature.
Because you didn't know what emotional ride that living flesh took just to serve you those burning hot raw words.
But aren't you curious?
Don't you want to know what it took?
What it took to serve those emotions to you?
A writer...
Scream, screamed like a mad sicko.
A writer...
Cry, cried like a new born baby.
A writer...
Laugh, laughed like there's no tomorrow.
A writer...
Burn, burned in their own oil.
A writer...
Slit, slitted thy skin and...
A writer...
Cut, cutted thy flesh and...
A writer...
Bleed, bleed until there's no more left.
Bleed until that living soul can write something.
A writer...
Is empty.
A writer...
Is a lost soul who can't find it's way back.
A writer...
Is dead... inside.
Then, viola!
A burning hot literature is served.
And that, my friend, is what inside a writer's mind.
Dec 29, 2018
Dec 29, 2018 at 12:42 PM UTC
Catatonic fusion with bathroom tile
vapor patina about my lattice
neophyte - les enfants - lain there
my fingers dipped beneath ribs
diaphragm compressed - ***** tatting saliva
I firmly grasp the seam-ripper and unspool
aortic tissue
extracting one thread at a time
tying the fist in a knot
releasing kinetic ****** each time
I attempt
enigmatic repair
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 10:09 PM UTC
I saw you withering
before me, like I felt the air in my diaphragm build up slow
then fall out shakily.
I saw my grandmother wince
put her hand to her mouth,
side-ways gripping this tiny Chaplain
who’s name I’d forgotten, the moment I heard it.
I saw my cousin staring deep into empty space, his nervousness illuminated
under harsh hospital light. My uncle’s red tie screaming in this room of too tired eyes,
wearing reddened faces from crying.
The fear of this reality bit at our ankles. We shifted in place, we talked about the Sox game. We dared each other to keep on pretending to carry on.
Through this blur,
I saw you underneath piles of tubes.
Lain upon the bed a shattered man
shoulder blades peeking upward and out in what was poised to be
an eternal shrug
head hung, eyes fluttering, only held up in increments of straining. Straining to be part of this conversation about nothing.
About your impending death.
Rounds of tears and silence
rounds of nurses coming
and going,
rounds of knowing
then suddenly,
not knowing.
Propped up by a tank of air, a bag of liquid, a ton of pillows and the slow-burning will to live.
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 9:10 PM UTC
A melodramatic
pirouette, colliding
with the
garbage dumpster.
Dreamt spiral,
*****
Toilet. Sink. Shower.
A final heave,
the diaphragm groans
like a
broken accordion:
carnival
antiphon.
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 4:37 PM UTC
Your spine is a holy place
From the tip of your neck, to the cradle in your pelvis, it is baptized in your waters
Starting with cervical, a lucky number of seven sections
The number of days it took god to create the earth
Greek mythology tells me, Cer is the personification of a violent death
Vic means to substitute,
Therefore this section substitutes itself for your violent death
Holding up an unlucky number 13
Pounds.
Of skull, and flesh and
Blood. Which it facilitates the flow of
It has hollowed itself out for nerves
Hollowed itself out so that you may feel
Everything.
Thoracic.
A dozen protective pieces,like the disciples foundation
Hammered in by thor himself
God of the sky
The horizon within dotted by a heart, some lungs,
Spleen, stomach, diaphragm
Stars in your very own galaxy
Lumbar
Five little graces
Luminary
Holding enough weight so
that the sun could settle down
right between your hip bones
root within your nerves
Apollo has come to visit
Showing you just how much holy light you can carry
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 4:44 PM UTC
Test, test.
Do you know what's really inside my chest?
Beep, beep.
The horrors in my ribcage will make you weep.
Thump, thump.
Inside there isn't a single fleshy lump.
Tut, tut.
Now it's time to tell you what.
Tick, tock.
My heart is nothing more than a clock.
Ring, ring.
My lungs are made out of fraying string.
Bam, bam.
Asthma's left me with half of a diaphragm.
Crying, crying.
Now you know that I'm dying.
Sigh, sigh.
I'm afraid it's time to say goodbye.
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 11:43 PM UTC
I am leviathan swimming through
the ashes of your remains
dying on the ground
you will soon be saved
masses falling to the graves
fearing fire and brimstone
your soul enslaved
ready for your grave
resting there under the sun
finding comfort in the birds song
escaping the malicious tongues
All will be rebuild before to long
life is just a lief falling
beautiful yet slowly dying
fleeing there torches and guns
maybe it is just time calling
balancing your life on the run
balancing life on the run
walk the beaten path
carry the weight of the wizards staff
through the mountain and seas
see his trinkets glistening
the agony of your hypocrisy
vanish into thin air not to be seen
don't give validity to your insecurities
make life the way you want it to be
the sunflower set in the west
white rabbit rest on your breast
words don't always make sence
everyone has there own quest
sing your zombie song
dead astronaut and lizard skin
the devil's in dark cats and woman
marvel at the colors of your death
take the veil from off your eyes
and watch the sunrise
The beauty you seek is inside
my heart goes out to the night
resting here under the sun
finding comfort in the birds song
escaping the malicious tongues
life is just a lief falling
beautiful yet its slowly dying
fleeing there torches and guns
maybe it is just time calling
balancing your life on the run
racing to the red light
you fear personal hell
violate every law of the universe
and yet you feel so frail
put your coin in the wishing well
Satan's diaphragm, pentagram in hand
Die is the O, death is the answer
voice carrying, through the under lands
tempting you like an exotic dancer
resting there under the sun
finding comfort in the birds song
escaping the malicious tongues
life is just a lief falling
beautiful yet its slowly dying
fleeing there torches and guns
maybe it is just time calling
balancing your life on the run
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 2:33 AM UTC
That nameless spark
The one that starts in your diaphragm
you think it’s your breath,
but it gets stuck
Chest—hot
Breath—ragged
Heart—taiko beat
But you turned away...
“Didn’t want to start something”
You said
“Smart for you, sad for me”
I said
...Incompatible, I rationalized
What to do now?
Did we dodge a bullet?
Would your woundedness have moved
Through me and left a mark?
Your hesitation has.
“Everyone is complicated”
You told me after you kissed my neck
Do I stay soft?
Stay open?
I didn’t know when you said “everyone”
you meant yourself
Aug 14, 2019
Aug 14, 2019 at 11:59 PM UTC
I've talked about things before that people consider to be dark
I've never thought of them that way
I guess I would consider them gray
before any other color though
but when I think about beautiful hues, I remember heather
and when I see clouds in the sky
and I scrunch up my face real small while the rain flies
I think it's beautiful weather.
So while everybody puts on their protection:
raincoats and galoshes
umbrellas that sheild washes
I'll put on a cardigan and get covered in shivers
and I'll lay in the middle of the road
and pretend I'm floating in rivers
Goosebumps will be my second layer
They'll make my skin thicker
and the rain will wash the tears off of my face
and nobody will be able to tell that I was crying in the first place
and I'll laugh all boisterously
and hardiness will fill my diaphragm
and I'll scream for no reason at all
I'll scream that I would rather love that I hate how I am
than to hate that I love how I am
I will look at everyone around me
staring at me
arms folded and crunched
hidden under their plastic cape
afraid of being cold
okay with being weak
and reliant on umbrellas for protection;
shadowing faces that are disgruntled and meek
I'll realize they have no idea
how it feels to grow thick skin of goose pimples
and to have agony washed away
and to float in rivers in the road
and to be the only thing in a world of complexity
that is lowly and simple
They probably think that they know how it feels to laugh
because they do it at parties and gatherings
But those are only chuckles
Because they never release their knuckles
They're always clenching them in restraint or force
Everybody should laugh in the rain
and not be afraid of tears in the eyes of the sun
because they'll only get washed away
nobody will know
I promise.
Jan 8, 2012
Jan 8, 2012 at 6:53 PM UTC
Your child bearing hips
Are crushing my diaphragm
I have lost my life.
Jul 2, 2010
Jul 2, 2010 at 12:11 PM UTC