Lately,
my words have hit the trash can
rather than decorating
the wall of fame.
My mind is on a constant frown,
deeply obsessed with you.
I wanted your life to be perfect,
not flawed with worries
about tomorrow.
I wanted you to reach the height
of unlimited potential.
But lately, I’ve been the one
delaying your deliverance,
creating treason and misery.
Making you less
than you were before.
Lately...
...my words tainted your soul
with disappointment.
Unmade your dreams
and disrupted the prosperity
of your wants.
Young titan - no longer mine,
Letting you go,
unchaining your heart
making you soar...

Equates...
unsurmountable  measures of pain...
...and alcohol.

Diary confessions

I hear the cries for help..
but right now Im busy...
Let them all drown..
they ain't did nothing for me...
Except get me *****...
I can't get up now
The blood is to direct..
I never understood how..

Woman Woman Woman
This Fruit of my *****...
I guess I had to create one..
To find one....
I guess I had to **** one...
To love one...
- Signed a ****** Superhero.

It been a while since I've been like this.
Being apart sure was bliss.
But now you've come back sinking in again.
Back deep inside where you began.

I don't really understand
I'm actually quite confused.
Thought I'd started walking in a new pair of shoes.
But here you are and here I stand.
Depressed, sad, and so alone again.

I sit alone in my room
Uninterested in everything facing certain doom.
It makes me hate myself that I can't control
The urges to cry even in a room full.

I stand in the shower
So people don't know theyre tears.
When you live in a dorm it becomes a fear

Hide your problems act like it's alright
Just make it through the day make it till night
In darkness you can cry but silently
Because tears give relief even while roommates sleep.

None of them know what's raging on
The fight I'm fighting to stay strong
I do my best to smile and wave
But sometimes it's not possible sometimes it fades.

i hate you.

i hate every single little thing about you.

the way you laugh way too loud,
and smirk way too much.
the way you flirt with other girls,
and dress like a ***.
the way you are hilariously unfunny,
and just a tad bit to mean.
the way your hair is unkept,
and your room's never clean.

sadly, i'm mistaken.
it was once said there's a thin line between love and hate,
and i really don't hate you at all,
quite the opposite actually.

They never let you touch them.
They always hover just out of reach, and if they sense you've gotten too close, they swiftly flutter away with no hesitation, giving you not even the shadow of a chance.
They're so beautiful, the way the light reflects off of their wings, how the dust shimmers like powdered diamonds across the silky cloth.
You want to hold one, to examine its intricate design, the delicate art of Mother Nature; you want to observe this magnificent creature up close for yourself, yet you can't seem to get a hold on that fragile jewel.
It's faster than you are, and startles so easily every time you move in to capture it.
So you prowl, sneak up on the unsuspecting darling, gently curl your fingers around it - - and oh! how it struggles against the sudden darkness.
It fights desperately in its prison until its energy diminishes completely, and it collapses in your sweaty palm, defeated.
Gradually you peel open your makeshift cage and peer inside at your new prize, only to be disappointed by its lack of flitting and glimmer.
It doesn't twitch with gorgeous energy anymore.
It's limp, lifeless litter in your hands, and you toss the pretty tragedy so carelessly to the side as you move on to your next venture without so much as a blink.

Lying on my bed suffering a case of Sunday afternoon musings.
An apathetic approach to the inevitable week.
A marching fanfare of deadlines and due dates and doodlings.
If beige was a day, tomorrow would be just as bleak.

Falling through the inevitability of time and life and death.
Life is just a diary of appointments to be met.
Dabbling in thoughts and feelings before my following breath,
Moments follow the next whilst the last I forget.

Send some rain, please God send some rain
For the earth is dry and needs to drink again --
And I know not how to speak to You anymore
I’ve run and run and run from You
I have feared, disgraced, shunned, and longed for You
All in single breaths, all in one gasp
There is too much, Lord
This wall is too thick
Too high, too strong
The gate is shut and I know not, remember not, the key
Did I hold the palette knife, Lord?
Was it I that mixed the concrete and placed the bricks?
Who drew those plans?
There is not a day I remember
Where I decided to shut down and shut off and shut away
The people on the outside
Things are safer on the inside, this I know
That this mind is a trap and this body is a bomb
But at least it isn’t as frightening as the ones outside --
But no, that isn’t true
I’ve seen how this mind will break and this body will fail
How the counter keeps ticking down down down
How I will run out of tape and glue to piece
These cracked halves and splinters back again
I’ve watched myself snap, teeth bared and nails out
Primitive and carnal, ready to destroy and ****;
Sluggish, depleted, apathetic, incapable, laying on the floor
Wheezing breath in and out, body crumpled to the ground
He says he loves me
God, isn’t that hysterical?
I have fallen too far for people to love me, o God
I have not quality
Nor quantity to make up for it
I don’t know how to feel safe with others
How to trust and how to love
Perpetually planning, there is a degree of calculation
In every move I make, every word I speak, every breath I take
The alarm bells will not stop -- stop! -- ringing
Everyone is faulty, everyone is dangerous
I cannot make them safe to me
Or this odious warning system
I write to feel
I speak to find help
But I am not better
I am not alright
God?
God, are You out there?
They spoke of You in church this morning.
Every Sunday is another battlecry of you.
The mere mortals moralize and maneuver
They built their society on You,
But lost You in their rules --
Hell is empty, all the devils are here --
The Sadducees live again in this century, o Lord
I know His was only a single ticket
But perhaps there is another plane He could take, God
I was told this wall needed to descend for You, God
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
But I have never reached for You
You know this, I know this
I am looping round and round
This reads more like a child’s diary entry than a poem
A confused convoluted confession
Not a profession, a solution, a heartfelt love
My God, You have got to save me
Medication might save or destroy my brain
But it will touch not my soul
I don’t know how to love
You love me
Could You teach me what it means?
God I would serenade You for Your love
David’s desperation and my muted, confused despair are one:
Save me, O God!
For the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire,
Where there is no standing;
I have come into deep waters,
Where the floods overflow me.
I am weary with my crying;
My throat is dry;
My eyes fail while I wait for my God.

A drunken god has
spoke you into existence
A stolen diary that told you,
it’s a sin to return this body
even if its weak bones
couldn’t carry the weight
of your heavy heart

I know I can speak myself out of it
With a blade in my hand
standing on the edge of the stage,
I’ll wait for the Almighty to sober up
and watch me steal his role

After twenty years of rehearsal
I’ll play god,
lights will go off,
and curtains will close

Your followers will clap in awe
at my convincing performance

As I bow before them
As I fall before you

There is no whiskey in his room tonight...

Instead,
There is a half-empty glass of-
Rock shandy, Pepsi-cola, Dr.Pepper,
Or something black.
Something minuscule,
even though he has not sipped from it.
He has not looked at it- his tongue
Was only dry for two minutes before he
Locked the door.
For the only presence that made it hard for him to swallow
Was in the form of something that he was still trying to release...
at 2AM.
Release at 2AM.
There is a typewriter in front of him and he is feeling as permeable as
The glass that is sitting next to it.
'as permeable if it had a closed lid made up out of carbon' he thinks.
'Closed lid', 'Carbon',
'Closed lid'
He does not know what to type.
As distance diminished it's existence throughout the years,
He began to realize that Letters were starting to transform themselves
Into Diary-Entries and vice-versa.
The art of belittling seclusion through the method of fictionalizing himself
Was turning more into a hobby than an art and
he did not know what to do except to accept it as a tragedy
That nobody else needed to know about.
"Tragedy:" he types.
"I don't know how to forget about you."
'And etcetera,' he thinks.
In his minds eye he sees a girl in a school far away.
She's holding a camera and a textbook and a picture of a boy
That isn't him.
She's walking into her new life and one day she will go a week without
Thinking about how it feels to know interest and feel it shared
from someone who thought it never existed.
One day she will go a week without thinking about the boy who stared at empty pages
And wrote letters about bitter meals that his tongue thought could never be tasted.
One day she will go a week with just the thought of how glamorous a life spent alone is...
Before she meets someone there...
Who will make her taste something that is less bitter than him himself.
'I hope that's where my story ends.' He thinks.
And then imagines himself embedded into
Dark bitter things.
(Tobacco, caffeine, dark chocolate.)
He sighs and stares at the words he has already typed.
He can imagine these bitter things spilling into his glass and changing its taste with each
little drop.
"You were dead to me before you even walked out of the door..." He decides,
And puts it onto the paper.
He lifts the glass and takes a sip and then puts it back down again.
'One day she will go a week without thinking about me..."  He thinks.
Release at 2AM.

Don't know if I want to
drink this coffee or smash
the cup on my head.

Maybe it would look great
with coffee staining my face
like the pages from an old diary.

Maybe I am just a bunch of words
but you can't read all of them
because of the coffee staining
the pages and the words and my life.

The only thing that separates me
from Plath is that my words are
either written by a child or by someone
illiterate or by someone sad or by me.

He got on top and satisfied his ******* soul
Rolled over and snored himself to sleep
Her mother screamed in her dream
He’s the man, give it to him
Not her, not anymore
Oh no, not this ******* *****
She planned the wardrobe for the dumb
The other wardrobe to make her ***
Sessions in the morning
Whippings in the afternoon
He took her bent across the desk
She took him straddled on the floor
He took her hard against the wall
She blew him till the final fall
She dressed in rubber, nylon, pvc
Thigh length boots
Against the tree
Spoke *****
Hand or blow
Glad the hubby didn’t know
Arrived home
It caught her eye
The envelope with the word goodbye
She read the letter

I’ve tried my best
To give you hints
But not anymore
Our marriage is just a bore
You just don’t seem to realise
Sometimes a man just wants a *****...

Dear diary,
Can anyone see this pitiful,
being inside of me?
Broken hearted, yet always singing?
Nothing to smile for, yet always smiling.
Torn apart, and never put back together?
This wound is young,
but it will stay forever.
I’m drifting into nothing-
numb, but breathing
dead, and living.
This emptiness…
is like a glass house.
I’m waiting to crash.
Can anyone see this pitiful,
being inside of me?
Broken hearted, yet always singing?
Nothing to smile for, yet always smiling.
I’m waiting for someone to inspire me.
I’m pushing through this life-
is it breaking?
I hope that I can-
save me.
From this numb,
this stranger to you?
I feel abused.
It’s so illogical-
I always was a little bit irrational.
I don’t deserve to feel this way,
karma owes me a better fate.
But then again, I need to be grateful-
Can anyone see this pitiful,
being inside of me?
Broken hearted, yet always singing?
Nothing to smile for, yet always smiling.
Emotion is chasing-
and I’m hiding.
Why won’t it find me?
Maybe I’m just too delusional-
Maybe I’m just a fool, but-
I can’t help but feel this way.
This numbness is choking me.

I've gained a new power
the one thing that I lacked...
see we stand attached
back to back
but I'm a little taller so I walk for her...
and her feet slightly drag..
I lead the way and she tells me when the coast is clear..
when the trail is gone...
I fight everything head on and anything I miss...
she cuts it down
with iron fist...
When I'm hit hard I might stumble
but my new power wont let me fall back..
for when I leave my feet she bounces me right back
a super duo
But I'm the super hero...
Saving all the girls
with a woman on my back
I told you don't judge me...
So never try to attack
A ******....

we can pretend we’re jack and sally,
simply meant to be.
but really we’re joker and harley,
a disaster bred to leave
or else just fall apart.
babe we’re always playing games
but never playing as ourselves
and in all honesty i’d keep playing
if you too are so compelled.

i remember when you called yourself
alice, strung out and imbalanced,
riding from one edge to another
with a half-hearted intention
of having your whole life tip over.
i remember replacing your self-imposed noose
with that grey scarf,
because you needed somewhere new to rest your neck.
i’d break into that old school with you again
without breaking a sweat
just to have your lips part like the red sea,
breaking apart for me.

my stomach always squirmed when you said
“London,”
always scared of your need for running
and being stuck in the mundane,
the past life of past-you,
a constant re-run, when you got recast
or maybe killed off, or our contract didn’t hold fast
and i watched you walk right out of my TV
i watched, frozen, when you passed by me.
i wanted to play peter and gwen
and follow you, fight jack the ripper
and swing from big ben every now and then
but beautiful blondes were always fated to fall again and again
as stan lee said.

do you remember
the year of dev, me in suits
and lots of la dispute?
a rough spot, i’m sure,
but worth it at the end
when i caught up your heart
as the credits rolled
dedications and dead roses
blossoming another season of love.

sometimes i think of cliched times
like prom or new years eve
and I had hoped, maybe finally a halloween
i hold old memory lane tight like its my job
i go 60 down my mind, and with my brakes, i can’t stop
the days where your smiles keep coming
never-ending,
up-end me.
i earn those split lips and some teeth
like currency.
but those days dance around my calendar
falling like rain in a California-dry July:
uncertainly.

the thing about me is i come saturated
with sorry’s and mixtapes
and i don’t think anyone’s every quite ready
for all of that.
but my mixtapes, like me
like to tend towards a surprise
every now and again.
like how you’re nancy from now on
or maybe that’s me, i’m convinced
you have to be reading my poems.
rhyming’s everything
gotta get that **** right
“she’s a wolf and i like it when she bites me.”

one more remember when
before i rhyme you to the end
remember when
we played ***** king and queen
at high school prom
i was always good at spooking the scene
but you were only really good at ever scaring me.
you aren’t the nostalgic type
so i guess that duty falls on me
here it goes:
dear diary,
my dear is as far as the late solstice sun
and the distance is far enough to wrap my arm
around the other side
of the earth, and tap her shoulder
or i would, if it wasn’t so cold there.
i wonder who she’s playing now
i wonder who she is today
i wonder
i—

’m not ready for our year to end, yet
but summer left
like 500 Days said
and we’re bonnie and clyde again
falling over each other trying to run from time.
at least we’re not sid and nancy
well, one of us is
but which one’s which?
it’s always come as a matter of circumstance
trying to pick who’s been vicious.

but you’re still my november girl
and i don’t want our fall
to end, or start.
this was both of us at our best.
leaves are counting down the days till
the sun stops burning so hot and the trees stop working so well.
on daylight’ savings do the clocks stop ticking?
and do we stop ticking too?
or just you?
can i stop ticking until winter’s bringing
spring again?
or am i busy living
in my memories, like a has-been?

snow is here and you’re not.
the winter forever.
but no broken plea for my honeybee.
the birds are far and few between
and the trees feel as naked as me.
i guess having them is a little less lonely
but it’s not fair we call them leaves
if every year they come back.
what should we call you?
you have a million names
but none of them fit on tight enough to stick.
i don’t know what they’re calling you now
but i still want to.

Alien’s heaven

poems

Barton Smock
June 2015
 

 
pilot light

baby, baby talk, and pilot light.

kitchens everywhere,
god is alone.
 
no brain

father smokes to make something disappear. he says he’s no brain but can pass for touched each time the bug is resurrected. when he rolls out of a blanket and into the side of a building, I believe again in the man mistaken for god’s pencil. mother can’t leave him anymore than she can leave her ears. terrify no one your childhood knows.
 
son

it was born in a bath of milk when there was milk to burn.  it drew with daylight.  when asked for details, it pulled a shadow’s tooth.  we took it to a movie, a war movie, where it made its first noise.  its pain went everywhere.  it sold, it sold until it ran out of clothes.  its mothers had fight.      
 
knees

visiting hours are set by a god who knows I smoke.  leaving my mark means I’ve pressed the barrel of a cap gun into my brother’s temple because the ****** keeps scooping into his ballcap the same toad.  my two fathers are here to bounce things off my mother when she prays.  sit long enough and ***** will dry them together.        
 
yearly

our collective identity is a sick child. some say fever, some say welcome to the loop of the biblically speechless. people are for others. are for making eyes at the gender of the god as it oversleeps in the coma we slip from. the child prays. the child causes a stir in the pastoral urgency of a moral imagination. we pray. we miss yearly the showdown between the town drunk and the town ghost. I trace a finger to put my finger on. the television belonging to our lady of snowy reception has fallen on our little angel more than once. nothing in the world is the world.
 
boy and gun

it entered my heart
to take a bird
from the world.
I felt nothing.    

the recent absence
of nothing.  
 
vernal

when you begin
to show
say
instead
you’ve a soft

spot
for god
 
race

says poverty
someone
at this table
has nothing to hide.

says father
touching
a UFO
cures frostbite.

says mother
open
the stomach
of the winning
monster.
 
area

somewhere, the mostly boy body pretends to be explored.  we are not we.  my mother ruins a sketch of my mother.  my father smokes two packs a day because online he was called prematurely haunted.  the name of your existence

is

priest retires to make umbrella for jack-in-the-box.  (her bus

is rain)
 
barbaric terms

each twin
slower
than the last, she spits

over my dead body

baby
after baby
out.

as news
of the massacre
spreads, the young
call it mother
by word

of mouth.
 
longing*     *for Gen

the baby boy stiffens at the sight of unrolled dough.  we say he is pointing the way to god.  crippled by the sadness in her hand, his mother keeps a claw mark like one keeps diary.
 
closings

trespassers
shoot themselves.

your son gets hired
by city

to illustrate
a book on mirrors
for households
with one
adult.

my son
dies
before the machine
that keeps him
alive

turns on.

a doll in doll country
burns its nose
trying to enter
the future
museum
of racist
oddities.

my hand tries my hand at forming
firstborn
erasures
using only
redactions.

god is exiled
for bringing
the animal
its childlike
behavior.

I am far too animated.

your body is the notice
eyes

give.
 
ins

night
the land
of a single
unseen
settler  

-

father
half eye, half oil    

-

self, self panic
 
bloodless     for Noah

my brother was blinded by a crow.

I’d tell you the story
but know
you hate it.

*******.

brother’s darkroom
became
the crow’s.
 
breathing spells

I chased only
the brother
I’d dreamed
of beating.

I told my sister
she didn’t have
a tail. told mother
it’s not suicide

unless you ask
to be born. I had a hand
for the year
father

went quiet
a hand
for the year
father

went quiet
for good. had dolls
over which

dying
out of character
held sway.
 
intelligence

magic amplifies in my loneliness a single flaw.

a bird, a high window. sound of a brain cell.

hunger and its unremarkable kitchen.

as a doctor I hammered the baby’s knee.

bio, and the undisclosed location of god’s recovery.

harm is harm’s audience.
 
disability jargon

i.

when it opens the bomb
it knows
like my brain knows
what it sees

ii.

homicide grief
is a recording
god’s message
speaks to

iii.

eight years old
she leaves the trampoline
in her body’s
fearful
accounting
of self
 
concord

cap gun.  swag from an uncle’s suicide.  

the daughter
the ghost
cartoonist.

voodoo dolls
in isolation.  isolation

in its prime.    
 
altar

the baby is too light.  its mother puts it on a scale that reminds her of a plate her empty childhood couldn’t break.  its mother invites neighbor boys to punch her in the stomach.  some of the boys bail.  some don’t.  the mother’s nickname doubles as her real.  the baby is not called bricks.


 
zero

when I couldn’t get my head around the surrender of my body to the flotation device of an immaculate conception, I’d simply swallow a baby that had swallowed a pill.  years go by and I am zero.  the number arrested for suicide.        



 
basics

because he is asleep, he does not find himself sleeping in the tub.  something slides from his belly and becomes wedged.  his dream business goes under even in dream.  he makes eyes at CPR manikins.  his son, his life, pushes for legs.
 
preparedness

you look like you’ve just been given permission to sleep in your clothes.

it’s a **** whistle only crows can hear.

it’ll put sheep
on the moon.
 
outlet

depression is a non-starter.  depression is depression unknowingly cured.  it is like I have this shirt because it exists and not because it invites everyone whose shirt it’s not to enjoy joy.  I don’t want to hear you say you’re sad to say.  I ******* to reappear and think it might be why my father vanished.  it’s enough during foreplay to flicker.

 
viewership

my youth spent trying to see the devil as a young man.  my motherly youth.  my **** scene a return to form.  cut from yours, you have your baby’s eyes.  I went unborn.  I went beaten.  we went together in broad daylight when broad daylight was god’s elevator.


 
pressure

the original thought in my head was to be postdated by god until god learned he had a baby on the way.  I had children until I could only have four.  what I say to self-harm is pay attention.  my daughter raises her hand on the off chance she buried something in her teacher’s body.  (we have stopped talking

but I can squeeze her anorexia into a phone booth)  poverty myth:  I groom my sons with the beak of bird abandoned.  real time I tell my tongue it’s ******* curtains for the mouth I’m getting.  full circle my daughter surrounds those brothers of hers that mine clone.        
 
high

mother, in the early stages of her food fight with god.

father, I can’t bury
my face.

in lieu    
of the lord’s
dog, raise

the lord’s
bone.
 
the mice

the conditions for mentally composing a suicide note for his sister are less than perfect. she’s sitting on his bed with a cigarette in one hand and his baseball glove on the other. both hear three traps snap shut in the kitchen. sister gags and it makes him think about gagging. now no more, these were the heart of the note.
 
signal

as my face
will one day
correct
my body
I expose

the elements
to my
ugliness  

-

my son is my search

history

-

headlights
when headlights
emerge
emerge
from a period
of non
worship

-

(wave your arms
long enough
you’ll have sticks
for arms)

-

they don’t  
happen
in my
lifetime
the terrible
things
I’ve done  
 
observance

when drought came
to my brother
I left
for the city
where I found myself
blanketing
manhole covers
with my coat
for women
who gathered
on rooftops
with men
whose daughters
had been killed
for jumping
rope
 
peril

I bit my tongue
when my tongue
was a cloud.

take cover, bones,
says my daughter
dancing.

I crushed my son
like a gift
and offered
god
my tactile
outlook.

stay small, future.  

persuade
a peephole
to show
some blood.      
 
no devil

the knock knock joke in need of my father’s skull is all that’s left of the outside world. hell was always the preparing of hell.
 
inseparable

mother is watching a show that keeps her from picturing the gods who portray us.  father is choosing an ice cube to bury.  myself I am very close to stripping for the cigarette my sister rescued from a baby’s crayon box in a dream that smelled like her clothes.      
 
masters

I have just had it written down for me how I am not classically racist. I am alone. I am brief stay of bullet. god is using each hair on my head to scribble on my son’s thought process. when I think of crab legs I think in color of the lightning bolt it snows inside. I miss mom. gospel, gospel that I hang these rags for invisible crows.
 
was

ask now my father if it still believes the present to be the future of a past life.  

ask then if it unscrewed one day each inessential light bulb that my party would have balloons.  

-

violence in movies.  also, food.  my mistake.  I glue myself

to nothing.  my shyness

-

is kind of
my angel.  

-

the body invents the soul it recalls.
 
gauze

the boy’s mother is biting off less than he can chew.  her insomnia
has put her inside a worm
her body
tries
to fill.  her milky eyed

-

husband
revs a tow truck
to death
in a heavy fog.  it is possible, humanly

-

possible

-

there’s nothing
to see here.  that her god

-

is, in a sense,
seizure activity
in the boy’s
spirit

-

animal.  
 
image

and do not
believe, as such, that yours
is a body

leads god
to inquire
 
godless

godless
balloon
animal
 
root effects     for Miles J. Bell

like he’s laying
yellow
on his road
out of grief
brother
takes a drag
and keeps it
until his head
is underwater
is what they call
with apples.

his eyes
have always been
two poverties
unexplored.  he is old, alien’s

heaven
he is old
but not before
he knows it.
 
the alien wept but was not heard weeping

not all
drones
dream
of you

I did love you once.
-Hamlet

Light floods the road
invisible from the pavement
turned into beds of beggars
begging for the godly hope.

People plainly pass
perennial plot of pretensions.

Peace tonight is fragile,
so fragile that car honks fade,
so fragile that tire screeching
dies in the night.

Above are stars eaten by smoke.

The father and daughter
shared the night
with the blanket of stars
made of dusts.

(The night so fragile can’t hide their stomachs growling)

1.

Clarita, 24
let the night pass
under the warmth of coffee
and her broken press
whose myth died years back
but never in memories.

2.

(An old woman passed by with her cane fiddling the asphalt. I can hear her wishes. She wants to die.)

3.

It was Clarita who smiled
to all foolishness of childhood. True.
It was her way to ****
the marrow of life
knowing Thoreau or not,
from the threads of forgetting
& horrors of remembering.

4.

Her communique
falls flat from what she supposed to say
for she can’t utter a syllable
so ironic that she just tend to pretend
she never remembers
she never cares
for all what she need
is to let things reveal themselves
so apocalyptic that even herself
don’t mind when.

5.

(Lovers passed by with their hands swaying, either by gravity or by air)

6.

Her mother tried her luck to pick cherry blossoms.
Her father stole her past.

Clarita killed them in the vignette of her neurons.

7.

If only she can turn back in time
and live like her diary’s wishes
Clarita, whose heart pierced by a chance lost
will redeem what she has to,
& sleep like a child in a dusty bed
where the blanket hide her
& her universe.

8.

The phone rings. She can’t ignore the line.

9.

She hates the feeling of falling in love
like how she hears the phone ringing
in the middle of the night
where insomniacs finally sleep
from a distant snoring of customers
barraging like thunders of senseless
predicaments and tongue-tied promises.

10.

Tonight, Clarita made a promise.

She will let the night pass.

My hand moves left to right,
over a blank piece of paper,
smudging what I write.
As my sleeve
absorbs my pens red ink,
The edge of my white sweatshirt
turns a shade of light pink.
"just roll up your sleeves"
I can't, not even a little bit.
It may not seem like a big deal to you,
but that's where I hide my secrets.
You may be okay with sharing yours,
But I try to forget mine exist.
You write your secrets in a diary,
and I write mine on my wrist.

death's disarray
shows up as
the pages in my diary
a reminder of transitions
of moving on
of skins shed to morph
yesterday i died
today i was reborn
only to die yet again
the cycle goes on

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
   08.02.2013
   Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

Dear diary,

Today was a sunny day. I love sunny days! Momma says sunny days are God's kisses! If God is kissing me, he better stop giving me a sunburn on my ****! That's weird!!!

Dad is working on his book. He's been working on his book a lot. I don't see him when he does it because he does it in secrecy. When I do see him, he drinks a lot. He says it helps him write. Dad has been drinking a lot since the restaurant fired him.

I don't know how to do my homework! It's called algebra! I asked dad and he didn't know how to do it either! Dang, algebra must be hard because dad is the smartest guy in the world!

I decided to join this website so I could make my dad proud! I want to make mom happy too! She has a lot of bruises! Dad says she keeps falling down the stairs! Clumsy mom!


Sincerely,

Frank Ruland Jr.

The night I met her,
She gave me a necklace.
It's silver. A pentagram. A simple little charm.
Two years later, I wear it still.
That necklace became the symbol of her.
People ask me if it's a religious thing,
And I answer no
But wonder privately if it almost is.
I hold it when I am sad, or afraid, or in need of guidance.
I've taken to...
It's silly, really,
I've taken to photographing it wherever I go-
A little silver chain on a park bench in the sun
Or the velvet cushion of a broadway show seat-
A sort of diary of my life, the places I've been,
In relation to her.
The places I've been
And still thought of her.
That necklace has rested on New York coffee counters,
Hung upon branches,
Floated in sandy shallows and caught the light.
I have held it tight during important auditions,
Felt its cold weight upon my chest during funerals,
Rubbed it between my fingers for luck on wide stages,
And pressed its mark into my wrist on lonely silent nights
(To be sure her impression was still indented in my skin.)
I have quietly kept her with me
Through every important moment of my life
And every unimportant one
As well.
People ask, still, sometimes,
Why do I wear that necklace every single day?
I tell them somebody I love gave it to me,
But that simple little explanation seems to fall so pathetically short.
I wear it because even though I hardly see her face anymore
I want to feel her fingers the way I did the night she hung it around my neck,
I wear it because its thump against my chest as I walk
Is a rhythmic reminder never to let her slip from my thoughts
No matter how far I may wander,
I wear it because there is a space in my heart
Just beneath it, under my skin,
That is that perfect, precise shape- a pentagram cutout-
And when I take it off
The hole echoes emptiness
Like the bell tower of a cathedral.

I don't have my black pen today and it's killing me.
The blue ink is murdering me.
I'm so dramatic, remember? ;)
So how have you been?
I like all your new clothes,
The sweatshirts and stuff.
Except the drug rug;
That still makes me a little uncomfortable.
But I can get over it.

I've been pretty good.
I was failing English a few months back.
I'm better now!
Have you done any of the Macbeth diary project?
I haven't. Glad she gave us that extension.
Hey, I started Breaking Bad a while back.
NOW I GET THE HYPE.
It's so good.
Only on season three, though.
P.J., Doug, Claudia and I
Want to have a Tremors movie night.
(Honestly, the idea's been thrown around for months.)
You should come!
Do you even know what Tremors is?
It sounds AMAZING.
Well, actually,
We all paid for the movies.
But maybe you can just mooch off me and come anyway.
You'd love it.

People keep trying to be Joe's and mine
Third wheel.
I wish it were you.
You were my favourite third wheel.
You're so good at it!
I guess I'll just deal with the ones I've got now.

I'll be honest,
It has been rough since you left.
I've been crumbling significantly lately,
Missing you a lot more.
Joe's been helping,
Really well, too.
I was a hot mess before he started helping me.
I think you two would like each other,
If you got to know him.

And I . . .
I cut myself again.
More this time,
A lot more.
Go on, yell at me and storm off
And ignore the problems.
But I've stopped
Again.

I don't like it when you yell at me,
In case you haven't gathered.
It's so scary,
The only time I'm truly terrified of a person.
All the anger surging through your arms. . . .
The anger in your eyes. . . .
Your eyes are angry all the time.
You have the fiercest green eyes. . . .
ANYWAY, I'm off topic.
How are you doing in Algebra?

I talked with a poet friend
On the phone today
Can't say I didn't find it all
More than a little strange

The conversation went quite naturally
No bleeps, burps, or dead air
Funny she should call me
Me being here, her being there

I understood her English accent
Her, me my Southern draw
We both got a good laugh in
Isn't that why she called after all

This is something I have dreamed of
By chance to one day meet
Some of the special friends
That I have made through poetry

So this day I will remember
In my diary, pencil it in
That poets have real voices
They don't all just talk with pens

27.2.14

My poster looks like it's about to fall off and all I'm doing is pushing it back to the blue tack even though I know it's going to fall again.

I think that's a metaphor for my life at the moment

Big resolutions, small hopes,
I want to read more useful books
Worthy ones not captivated by looks
And have strong deadlines without hooks.

Big resolutions, small hopes,
I want to balance school and sports
Learn more games at the courts
And make my bones lift heavy loads.

Big resolutions, small hopes,
I want to maintain a diary, so true
Make every entry with a poem view
And give it a unique hue.

Big resolutions, small hopes
Which I do hope will come true
For new Resolutions I blew,
God, don't make this year blue!

I've been wounded...
By the one part of me that said
"I will never hurt you"
Weight...
Of Humanity placed in my cup..
As I sit in this Garden..
Trying to regrow dead seeds..
I choke.. On
My empathy..
Realizing that this
Death is just the begging...
Of a War...
1 million years in the making..
I can't save them all..
From the genetic codes..
Already intrinsically connected
Inside my sins. ...

-Signed
Psychosuperhero..

Johnny 16 years old, dear (diary) journal whatever,

Ive been a hypocrite

Ive been a hypocrite because i hate school yet i follow around the norms and the rules and their curriculum when i believe a student will never learn from them,
Ive been a hypocrite because my classmates ****, but then they ask me for life advice and i give it to them expertly
And how funny is it that i hate them but i like helping
Ive been a hypocrite because i hate my acne of a face so i embarrasingly ask for ****** tips from my sister Jessica, yet i claim that i dont care anyway
Ive been a hypocrite because i debate over human rights with my teacher yet i think about the end of the world too much
Im a hypocrite for giving my virginity to some older woman just because i want to feel HUMANE
to feel like THEM, like all the people i hate
And maybe that is why i dont like LIVING because i become "them"

Will i be CURED if i become them?